relational thinking (perry kulper's pencil)

perry uses this analogy often (i have now heard it multiple times, most recently in the MS_DR conversation earlier this week) to describe the meaning behind relational thinking and representational methodologies...

(paraphrasing)

"the pencil, when held up, can being to represent much more than what is seen in front of you. it represents education, industrialization, writing, penmanship, and creativity. but also at another level, i like to think what sorts of things make it possible? deforestation; history of writing; objects that dismantle and desegregate through time; the creation of the pencil through engineering and fabrication processes; educational and political hierarchies;temporalities through wear and use; ergonomics and aesthetics; the eraser represents modes of censorship and controlled culture. those things belong to me as systems and modes of thinking. the pencil is never hollowed out of attachments. when i re-situate it, that exuberance comes to the surface."

these ideas are concepts that many of the professors attempt to get us (especially in MS_DR) to think about and integrate into our work. so that the work begins to take on analogous thinking and approaches in finding new fields where are projects and ideas begin to situate themselves. they become new institutions, subjects, and territories for the work to place itself into.