Maria von Trapp sang about a few of her favourite things during a storm one night in a Viennese mansion. From memory there were brown paper packages, some mittens, a kettle, and some other things.
Things are ubiquitous. Buttons, buildings, hairpins, chairs, notebooks, teacups, street signs and pens - we are surrounded by the material elements of the phenomenon we call “culture”.
In virtual worlds our minds are full of tables, floors, ceilings, doors, and stairwells too. Social audio app Clubhouse invites you to “bounce around hallways” and the virtual meeting place Gather Town allows you to decorate your own desk. When you’re done decorating you can then wander from room to room to join conversations with your virtual colleagues.
“Houses and rooms; cellars and attics; draws, chests, and wardrobes; nests and shells, nooks and corners; no space is too vast or too small to be filled by our thoughts and our reveries’ Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
When describing culture people mostly mention intangibles: from shared values to beliefs, purpose to assumptions. They tend to overlook buildings, chairs, gardens, haircuts, headphones and cheese. In doing so they also overlook the intimate relationship between the material and non-material. The artwork on a wall, the black t-shirt, the laptop and the long macchiato – all “things” we relate to, with and through. Our relationships with one another are enmeshed with the things that surround us, and the things we surround.
Let’s talk chairs.
I once worked for a massive global enterprise that gave you a bigger and bigger chair as you were promoted. They would wheel your old chair out, and your new chair in. I was never sure if this ceremony signified an increase in power or was simply a practical exercise in preparation for the weight you would inevitably gain as your health and fitness declined.
As with chairs, so too with tables.
One of the most talked about objects in corporate environments is the boardroom table. Having a seat at the table is firmly ensconced in corporate vernacular. Even a person who sits in a chair at the Boardroom table is themselves called a Chair.
These inanimate, everyday, banal ‘things’ have social lives.
To not consider our material environments when exploring culture is to overlook the critical role material culture plays in the shaping of our lifeworlds, whether working from home, the park, or in that place we call “the office”. So, take a seat and read the room. Because walls do talk, some shirts really are loud, and matter still matters in an increasingly virtual world.