Tools and the
Evolution of Bows
Detail
from:
'All we, like sheep...'
2007
There are some that we can recognise as tools though we might not yet to understand their function - a lacing hook is a mystery to one who has never seen a corset. The appearance of the object is governed by its use, but if the function is not clearly understood then we are obliged to anticipate, to guess, to place function before form and the more obscure that anticipated functionality the more charged the tool becomes in our imaginations. By this reversal we place ourselves outside the normal confines of our constructed world and begin to see again, in an unlabelled world.
What is a bow?
A tool
A means to an end
A figure
A performance
That which creates beauty
A sound-giver
A phallus, staff, world-tree
Utterance, voice-box
Lover
What does it create?
Sound
Anticipation
Pleasure, and pain
Sadness and happiness
The promise of fulfillment
Hope, and sometimes despair
How?
By its application to another object which creates sound A violin, a person, an animal. The air.
Is it possible for the tool to become the product?
What is the separation between the bow and the
thing it is applied to?
Are they both part of a single entity?
To what extent does the bow imply the instrument, and therefore create it in the abstract?
To what extent the does the bow become the instrument?
If it creates the instrument by implication it must also make it redundant. The tool in this instance is both the creator and definition of its function, and the author of its own redundancy.
It is gloriously futile.
Other
texts
Meaning and Nothingness
Objects and the Surface
The Corridor of Rooms
Thomas
Aquinas and
Transubstantiation