We meet in Yale with top philosopher Graham Harman, who belongs to the movement of speculative realism and “Object Oriented Ontology”. He defines the notion of object according to speculative realism, focusing on the particular case of the artistic object. As a professor at SCI-Arc Los Angeles, he explains how teaching philosophy can enrich architectural design.
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In this interview shot at the Laboratoire, a contemporary art and design center in Boston, the inventor David Edwards explains the role of architecture and sensorial design in inventing sustainable futures. David Edwards explains how technology affect architecture and design while allowing them to explore more and more the symbiotic relationships between the living and the non-living.
Addressing the complexity of contemporary issues requires turning toward different fields of knowledge, exploring the links that exist between disciplines, and creating new bridges, notably with contemporary art. David Edwards explains how his work as an inventor in the fields of health and the environment led him toward sensorial design and drove him to deepen the cultural dimension of engineering. For this he founded Le Laboratoire, in Paris and then in Boston, a space that explores the frontiers of art and science. By allowing the public to participate in experimentation he studies the future of design and our ways of life. Evolving human behavior requires efficient communication on an aesthetic level. The future is told and invented through art. “ArtScience” thus brings together creative principles that have been separated by institutions, between the intuitive and the deductive. For Edwards, the most interesting work in design and architecture explores the symbiotic relationship of the living and non-living, with technology playing a central role.
Environmental awareness redefines our human position as part of a whole in a global and complex interrelationship. However, philosopher Graham Harman, the founder of object-oriented ontology (OOO), refutes the commonly accepted idea that everything in nature is connected. Certain things are intimately—and dangerously—interconnected, others almost not at all. Holism thus denies the “problematic” dimension of relationships between objects. Harman specifies the understanding of the object according to OOO—which cannot be reduced to its parts or its effects—but also contests the idea of a negative theology, an approach which gives a “glimpse” of objects even without formulating discursive knowledge. Though OOO advocates the theory of an ontological equality between all objects, it does not claim a political or moral equality. A man is not on the same level as dust, but at the same time, Harman sees no reason for philosophy to focus so much on the human.