What adds value to the items we own? Beyond quantifiable and tangible factors like price, performance and comfort, we find slightly more vague notions that rely more on an emotional than intellectual response. Attaching meaning in this way, is a phenomenon Rob Walker calls an object’s narrative, the memories we associate with inanimate things, from their provenance to their mere existence at significant points in our lives. It helps explain why we hang on to wedding dresses when they no longer fit and refer to beat-up caps as our “lucky hats.” But what happens to value when we learn the stories behind objects that we never actually experienced or even more so when those same histories are made up?
Walker along with Joshua Glenn and an impressive cadre of writers explore these very questions with their newly launched project Significant Objects. For the experiment, each writer is assigned a seemingly insignificant object that has been purchased at a Thrift Store for a few dollars and tasked with creating a story about it. The narratives will not only be posted on the website, but used as the product’s description on eBay where they will be auctioned off to the highest bidder, with all proceeds going to the author. And while the objects themselves might be worthless, the stories are bound to be worth every cent.
[via murketing]
Related Post:Â Happiness Objectified: Do Our Things Make us Happy?
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I recently read the gift which has a specific passage discussing native american gift giving, where the writer recounted a tale where an object value increased through stories created about it. This seems like a modern take on such folk tales.
July 7th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
We are publishing an article on the nature of this topic later this month in the first issue of MILK magazine.
It links into the notion of nostalgia. It’s nothing new and the mass interpretation would be the management of icons. Elevating the image of and character or brand to increase its cultural reference. Naturally this can be applied at an object level or item, but surely the interesting question is how to apply nostalgic status to mass produced items – e.g. First edition books, special editions…
More in MILK.
July 8th, 2009 at 6:49 am