There is narrative in the accumulation of things and sentiment in their possession.

Our things accompany us day to day. They’re familiar to our intimate spaces. They characterize us as much as we characterize them. How ever we consume, sell, collect, interact with and dispose of them, they have a social currency.

Sometimes, the value is in its commodity; where, how it was made. Often, the meaning is imbued with time, use and the association with its tender owner.

My grandpa used to tinker with things all the time. For a period in his life, he made film projectors for theaters. Whenever you’d visit, you’d find his room – shelves filled with old electronics, circuit boards, pieces and parts of things. He spent all his time building things, connecting wires, until one day, he had a stroke. I remember visiting him after his partial recovery and seeing for the first time, the walls bare. The stark white walls were heartbreaking. Though alive, he’d never be able to create or tinker with his things again. It was the first time I realized the extent of which someone’s belongings reflect their well-being, their craft, their livelihood.

There is a bystander in things. They can be a silent memorial to our experiences. Ultimately surviving us and our loved ones, Object carries the physical vibrations of our intonations – our lost conversations.

These 50 ceramic pieces are artifacts of a modern era. Embodied by the forms / trompe-l’oeil’s of one-time-use consumables, the bottles house discreetly collected information. Recordings made over a 5-year period of conversations, protests, spoken-words, subway rides... the data is distributed and consumed in fragments. Contrasting an ancient ceramic body that survives with age, the circuit within futilely preserves remnants of our exchanges.

Each ceramic vessel plays a unique 30 - 120s soundbyte upon being picked up. The module is triggered by a light resistor in the bottom of the ceramic. Every piece is a unique slipcast from 10 custom plaster molds.

This installation was created over a period of 1.5 years. I spent a lot of time thinking about things. Over 100 pieces were cast, some were glazed, but the ultimate 50 were only bisque-fired. The clay itself is a porcelain mixture, poured into a mold and allowed to sit for 3 to 7 days before manipulating and firing. There were 13 molds made from plaster, including a few failed attempts. For the circuitry, a trial of Arduinos, ATinys, MP3 shields, Wifi modules, sound modules, accelerometers, tilt sensors were prototyped, before settling on a greeting card module that operates on a coin battery. The module was resoldered to use a light sensor in place of an spst momentary switch.