This week’s readings included several sections from Sherry Turkle’s Evocative Objects: Things We Think With that suggests that objects connect us to physical and emotional worlds. In her introduction, Turkle cites Claude Levi-Stauss, who describes bricolage as recombining a closed set of materials to come up with new ideas. The mini-chapters, then, in the text demonstrate this connection between people, objects, and identities: the cello, the physical and digital archive, the stars and the spaces between them, keyboards (music and typing), the yellow raincoat, and Murray the stuffed bunny.
We’ll take a few minutes to connect this back to interface today, but your in class assignment is to “comment” with a reflection of an object (preferably one related, even tangentially) to composing that connects that bring together thought or feeling, that catalyze self-creation, that are boundary objects, that shape and are shaped by who we are.
what.is.a.text? 
When I was growing up I always loved to write, about anything and everything. After a trip abroad, my dad brought me back a beautiful leather journal from Paris that I wrote in almost every day for two years. It was different than writing on a single leaf of paper or typing on a computer; writing in this journal was absolutely inspiring. For me, this interface was beautiful and the empty pages motivated me to fill them. It evoked passion and thought and feelings like no other interface ever had.
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My evocative object is probably a snow-globe and music box combination that plays a song from Hercules as the characters in the globe spin around. It reminds me emotionally of my childhood, where my bedroom used to be filled with music boxes and I would run around and wind them all up at the same time just to hear the clashing of the notes.
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My senior year high school yearbook is an evocative object for me. I was the Student Life section editor and I felt that this was our best yearbook ever. The design elements with it assists me in sparking ideas to create things in graphically and digitally for projects that I have in school and extracurricular activities. It also connects me emotionally to fond teenage memories that I have back home.
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The first object that came to my mind was a journal. Everyone has a special connection to their journal in their own ways. All their memories and secrets are written by hand in this tangible object. Many keep it hidden and almost never expose it to anyone because it is so special to them. The journal is a representation of someone’s life and everyday thoughts.
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An evocative object that is with me till this day would be my laptop. It is safe to say that I spend at least 90 percent of my time doing something that is connected to my laptop. Aside from school, I have all my entertainment and needs on my laptop. For example, I do not own a television but I have apps on my laptop that allows me to stream live television. Games are also stored on my laptop and if I need to find a place to eat, I would go ahead and locate the nearest restaurant and/or grocery store in fulfill my needs. It goes without saying why a laptop is an interface but it is more profound that my evocative object is a technological device. As we head into a more technological cultural environment, more and more individuals will come up with a similar answer as myself.
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When I was about 6, my uncle and grandma gave me a stuffed animal dog for christmas. I always had a lot of stuffed animals but this one I loved. I started sleeping with it every night and it was always on my bed. It was a way to always keep them with me, especially after my grandma passed away.
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When I was growing up I always enjoyed playing piano and guitar. Around age 13 I began to write my own music. My mom had bought me a small black notebook in which I wrote down ideas, songs, and lyrical hooks. Coincidently my freshman roommate also enjoyed writing music, but she did it on her computer. I appreciated my journal and felt a deeper connection with it then a computer. By being able to scribble out lines while drawing connections to different lyrics, I felt that I was making progress in each song I wrote. By being able to reflect on all of my past emotions and lyrics, I was able to reflect on my feelings and experience the songs in a bound book.
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An evocative object that has followed me throughout life would be my camera. I have gone through phases of different cameras but they have always allowed me to have the same interaction and experience. I have used one camera specifically since the time I was in middle school and I have a stronger connection to the tool than the others.
I began to be fully interested in photography in the eighth grade when I began photo classes. The camera reminds me of who I was at that time. I was introverted and remember using the camera to capture everything around me and help to express how I viewed the world even though I didn’t share so much through words.
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My evocative object is my soccer cleats.
when I see my soccer cleats I have infinite memories of the past 15 years of my life. since I have been wearing cleats I have grown from a toddler to a high school graduate.
I remember the physical interaction I had with them, blisters, the grip between them and the grass, and the way someone else’s felt against my body (which was not good)
it reminds of feelings of victory, defeat, happiness, sadness.
while I use them as a means of executing one particular activity, they still shape me in so many ways outside of the context in which they are used by being that specific interface. they allowed me to express my abilities and my passion as a player while also creating a means of nostalgia.
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When my family moved to Florida from Maryland when I was 10, I had a toy that my best friend gave me. Even when I outgrew playing with the toy, it still seemed to continuously remind me of my childhood school, home and friends.
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Before getting accepted into FSU, I was crazy nervous on whether I would be accepted, as I assume most are. The week before the acceptance, I went to donate clothes with my mother to Goodwill and while inside I came across a small Penguin statue who’s shirt read “Florida State University.” This obtains meaning because for one, Penguins are my favorite animal. Secondly, it was quite coincidental that I would find a specific item with FSU on it, especially given I found out that Friday about the acceptance. This has evocative appeal for emotional reasons, as well as signifying a time in my life where my future was still unknown to me, for the most part. I now keep said Penguin in my bedroom, and ever so often when I do glance at it, I am reminded about the instance and how the inanimate object brings about various memories.
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I think there are a lot of things, tangible or not, that evoke emotion from people. Those things are different for everyone. Specific things, such as a teddy bear or a set of golf clubs, can mean different things to different people. One thing that evokes emotion for me is a gold necklace of the mother Mary that my mom gave to me when I was very young. The necklace brings me back to emotional, nostalgic feelings of when I was younger. It reminds me of my mom and how special she is a person to me. The necklace was given to her by my grandmother, and when she passed it down to me it meant a lot. It evokes emotion because it went through two generations of my family, and I know when I have a daughter it will be given to her and the chain will continue on.
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For me, learning to play the trombone was one of the most important things to my own individual growth. I was an only child and was never compared to any brothers or sisters I had in school. I was always just the one, singular Voltz in my little hometown. My parents and family had no musical talent so, it was a big shock when I told them I was going to go off and venture into this world of music with no idea of what it was even about. My parents were supportive of this because they had no idea about it and they were afraid to see me fail so they told me, “Maybe you should look into something else”. I won’t forget that conversation because from there, I learned how much I like to be challenged as a growing individual and how I’m the one that’s in control.
For me, the idea of picking up a trombone was the start of my adult life. I went out on this kind of journey by myself and without a lot of help, except from a lesson every week or so on a few notes or pieces. It was new, refreshing, and very challenging. However, I didn’t feel as much accomplishment in my own musical ability until my seventh year with my instrument, my Senior Year, when I was given multiple awards for my musical ability. For those seven years, I played this instrument, sometimes thinking, “Maybe I’m not as good as I think” or “Maybe I should have picked something else”. Finally, upon gaining respect from my peers and mentors, and always practicing to prove myself to others, I realized that I can achieve whatever I want. Even if people didn’t think you could do it, as long as I believed it and worked hard, I knew in the end I would be fine.
I was very passionate about music and still am. I have ventured out into composing music, another thing my family or friends never looked into. I’ve ventured into creating stories and screenwriting, another thing my family or friends haven’t looked into. I have to thank taking the chance on playing the trombone was what lead me to wanting to take more chances on learning and perfecting new things in my life and I certainly believe that this trend will continue for me.
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My journal:
I’ve spent most of my life using journals to jot down my thoughts and feelings about the world. From early on I would use it as an outlet for things that were going on in my life without having to express it to another person. At first it contained simple paragraphs or entries that pertained to what I was feeling. However, as time has gone on, I started to include drawings or doodles, movie stubs or pressed flowers. I enjoy not having to feel like I need to write for pages on end to get across what I am feeling. Sometimes a funny quote or a weird drawing can sum up my day better than writing ever could. Each journal is unique and, in a way, encompasses who I was at the time. For time to time, I like to go through some of my old journals and look through them to see what I was going through at the time.
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When I was a child, I had a toy dog named Scruffy. He had wheels under his feet and a red rope attached to his collar. Scruffy was my best friend, and the first toy I remember ever owning. He was white with caramel-brown spots and the cutest brown tail that wagged when I pulled him, but was cheap plastic on skates to everyone else.
It didn’t matter where I went – Scruffy was coming with me. My dog followed my every step since the moment I started walking; we had an unbreakable bond.
My mother was a full-time nursing student in Charlotte, North Carolina and one day one of her classmates told her a story. It was a story of how she found a wondering silky terrier in the middle of the road and returned her to the address listed on her tag. When she returned the dog, the people were so thankful because she had just given birth to a litter of five and there was no other way to nurse the puppies. Because the owners of the lost dog were so thankful, they offered her any of the puppies to take for free. She neither wanted nor had time to raise a dog, so she rejected the offer.
The moment my mother heard this story, she immediately told her classmate to go back and get a dog. That dog became my second pet: Minnie Moo.
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As a child my mother always drank coffee, her car always smelled like coffee, and the mornings always had her rushing us out of the door with a cup of coffee in hand, ready to topple over at any moment. My mother always read books, she would take me to Books a Million and sit there reading a book, drinking a cup of coffee while she sent me to play alone in the children’s section. When I was a child I had a terrible relationship with my mother, she always favored my brother because he had numerous learning disabilities. Needless to say I yearned for her affection more because of this. I learned that the best way to spend time with her was while she read her books. So at a very young age I began reading novels with my mother. I would sit next to her and sneak sips of her coffee while reading a book. Eventually she noticed my not so sneaky sips and bought me my own cup of coffee. So I began drinking coffee. Now my coffee is always present, my car always smells like coffee, and I’m always rushing out of the door in the morning nearly tipping, and frequently tipping, over my coffee at any moment. For me drinking coffee is less for the necessity of the caffeine and more for the feeling of warmth and comfort of home that overwhelms me while drinking it. I reflect upon the things that I have read and the conversations I have had during these coffee shop conversations with my mother and it inspires me.
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An evocative object for me is the diary I had when I was a child. It is a Lisa Frank diary and it used to have a lock on it. I got it in second grade and I still have it to today. It was the first diary I ever had. When I first got the diary i wrote in it all the time but after i wrote in it sporadically. So, the diary spans from 2nd grade to 5th grade. I still look back on it and read the things that I thought were important in elementary school and its really interesting. Its moments in my life that I don’t remember but are documented. That diary was my first interaction with personal writing, as in I hadn’t wrote for purposes under than in school.
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An evocative object in my life would be my high school class ring. The class ring is is a symbol of your while high school experience in one piece, and although the class ring is a popular object, it is no longer of popular demand. To the world, people always ask to see it and even asks me if I can take it off so they could get a closer look at it. A lot of people regret not buy a class ring but many people resent the ring. They believe the ring is a waste of money, I even had some people say “you’re one of THOSE people!”
Then you have people who tells the story of how they lost their ring or how they don’t wear it anymore because the feel that after college, their high school accomplishments does not matter.
While I do agree that my high school involvement were “for the books,” I do take pride in wearing it because people don’t use them anyone.
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When I was in middle school, my mother gave me a giant red journal. I used it to write down my personal thoughts, poems, everything I felt I could not share with those around me. This journal was my comfort zone, and never left my house. To me, it symbolized not only creativity, but it provided independence from those around me- it was judgment-free rebellion. I could talk about what I wanted without being judged. It provided an interface of which I was comfortable enough in to begin writing (and eventually performing) poetry. This interface shaped the individual that began writing in it in middle school. The giant red journal represents the emotions that are shared within and, on a larger scale, the idea of trying to find where you fit in, in the world. Independence. Rebellion. Creativity. Openness.
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One object that provokes thought and feeling is the Purple Heart emoji that can be found on any iPhone. My best friend Allison is obsessed with all things purple, so her contact name in my phone has the Purple Heart emoji next to it. Whenever I see this emoji now, I automatically think of Allison and start to reminisce on the good times we’ve had. Seeing her name written out without the use of the Purple Heart emoji also brings a feeling of awkwardness when I first read it.
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I would probably say that an evocative object in my life is my computer. Through it I have so many capabilities at the touch of my fingers. It has served on multiple occasions as my music player, television, journal, and planner. With it I can keep in contact with my friends and family, a very handy tool because I live far away from many of my friends and family. Putting on Netflix or music gets me motivated to clean my room, and having access to millions of resources online helps me to prepare for creative projects, and see other forms of media that can inspire me. I find that because the computer is so versatile, I use it much more frequently than writing in a traditional paper journal. Though many times for creative projects I use it in conjunction with a paper journal so I can scratch things out and build on my own work, I still have my computer there to access anything I might need in the process.
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About a year ago one of my best friends enlisted in the US Army and was away at his basic training camp. During the span of about 4 months he was not allowed to use his cell phone, computer, or any other technological devices. So, to keep in touch we would write letters back and forth to each other. I keep those letters hanging on the wall of my room here in Tallahassee. Whenever I look at them or read through them they remind me of him and that time about a year ago. Reading through them makes me feel connected to him because I can hear his voice, the different inflections he would use and so on, while I read the words he wrote. This relates to interface because the letters allow me to connect with my friend without seeing him in person or even hearing his voice over the phone.
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I always loved reading as a child, but as I got older and began to read books of greater length or of more difficulty, I had trouble focusing on one book. I had a very low attention span which clashed with my love of reading as a child.
The way I learned to combat this problem was to to increase the stimuli without changing what I was focusing on. I began to listen to audiobooks while following along in the book I was reading. I was very consciously doing both things. By listening to audiobooks of the material I was trying to digest, I was accommodating my tendency for my attention to want to wander to other things while still focusing on the book I wanted to read.
I see headphones as an evocative image now. I use them frequently in times where my attention is difficult to manage. I listen to radio or podcasts when I’m doing any task where I can divide my attention without it being a problem, like doing the dishes or doing laundry. It allows for my attention to wander by allowing me to effectively divide it. I use headphones as an evocative image because they are frequently what I use to deal with a wandering mind to this day. What started off as a tool I used to advance my love of reading, I now use as a means to fight my tendency to get restless or distracted.
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