Vibrant Matter, Ineffable Forces and Wonderment

Intrigued by dynamic materials, like that of the bioplastic and the root systems: those that have their own agency and shift and grow and are in some way influenced by forces in the environment, I sought to understand the force of things and sense of wonderment they manifest in me when I work with them.  

What inspires this feeling of wonderment can be something as insignificant as lighting, an observation of a material property, or an unexpected or spontaneous action; other times, the matter can simply exude an inexplicable force that demands attention. It is something I seek and often discover in the unfamiliar, such as making and creating with the likes of algae bioplastic or root systems.

I considered wonderment in relation to an artmaking practice and possible connections to ineffable strangeness, forces/qualities, and “thing power” within contemporary theory of New Materialism.  The book Vibrant Matter by philosopher Jane Bennett explores the concept that non-human entities possess their own agency and vitality.[1] She posits that inanimate objects have “thing power,” and various interactive agents, forces, and our own experiences can be actants that give a kind of life force to objects. Drawing on philosophical traditions, including materialism and ecological thought, her work argues against traditional hierarchical views of the significance of humans and instead acknowledges the role of the material world, emphasising the interconnectedness of all matter.

In experiencing the sense of wonderment from the “thing power” of objects and materials, I considered what might the quality of something be to provoke wonderment. And what even is wonderment, and what forms is it manifested and identified, and how is it quantified?

Wonderment is defined as defined as “the rapt attention and deep emotion caused by the sight of something extraordinary”.[2] What is perceived by an individual as extraordinary would be as subjective as how beauty is perceived and measured, and that individual viewpoint would also likely be influenced by conditioning and personal experiences. Within her book Vibrant Matter, philosopher Bennett seems to acknowledge the forces people can perceive in matter and questions whether it is from the object (or assemblage) or the person’s experience. In describing her reaction to a random assemblage on a street and their “thing power”, Bennett wrote “Was the thing power of the debris I encountered but a function of the subjective and intersubjective connotations, memories, and effects that had accumulated around my ideas of these items?”, she then goes on to query “was the real agent of my temporary immobilisation on the street that day humanity, that is the cultural meanings of the “rat”, “plastic” and “wood” in conjunction with my own idiosyncratic biography? It could be.”[3] In relation to this, and reflecting on my experiences and connectivity with the natural world in childhood, Bennett’s writing seems to affirm the plausibility of those experiences influencing the ways animate forces in materials and objects in addition to empathetic responses towards the likes of plants.

Within the realms of art, namely in querying what elevates an artwork to the level of “masterpiece”, and the upholding of its status generation after generation, Kelly Grovier, an American poet, historian, and art critic, posits it “invariably is, strangeness.”[4] He describes how the art critic Robert Hughes stated after viewing Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night in 1984 that “no matter how many times it has been cloned, reproduced and post carded, it can restore itself as an immediate utterance with the force of strangeness when seen in the original.”[5]

Grovier goes on to discuss how Van Gogh himself had previously recognised this force of strangeness in 1888 in a letter discussing Eugène Delacroix’s painting Christ Asleep During the Tempest (1853). Van Gogh pinpointed that the strangeness came about from the halo around Christ’s head within the painting and the use of “an unexpected light lemon note, this colourful and luminous note in the painting being what the ineffable strangeness and charm of a star is in a corner of the firmament”.[6] Grovier continues “Once identified, the singular aspect of that ‘luminous note’ becomes the ‘unexpected’ detail around which the entire painting scrambles to organize itself. Suddenly, the ‘ineffable strangeness’ of Delacroix’s work, detected by Van Gogh, which vibrates like ‘a star ... in the corner of the firmament’, anticipates the ‘force of strangeness’, detected by Hughes, that will echo forever from Van Gogh’s own subsequent achievement of The Starry Night”.[7]

That “luminous note” is perhaps what Bennett describes as an actant or intervener. Bennett states that an actant “never really acts alone. Its efficacy or agency always depends on the collaboration, cooperation, or interactive interference of many bodies and forces”.[8] This seems to be what Grovier is alluding to with his description of the luminous note (as an actant), whose agency is what the whole painting is striving to do in collaborating with and organising itself around.

While the acuteness of an individual’s response is likely due to personal experiences and influences, the extraordinary quality which Hughes describes as a “force of strangeness”, what Van Gogh describes as an “ineffable strangeness”, and what Bennett describes as “thing power”, seem to be similar ways to account for attributes which grab attention and can evoke a sense of wonderment, which is one of the primary draws for me using the algae-based bioplastic.

[1] Bennett, Jane. 2009. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke University Press.

[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/wonderment

[3] Ibid

[4] Kelly Grovier, A New Way of Seeing: The History of Art in 57 Works (Publisher Thames & Hudson, 2018), 9.

[5] Ibid, 9

[6] Ibid, 9

[7] Ibid, 9

[8] Ibid,.