Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life (Radical Thinkers in Design, 4) by Judy Attfield

Low stock: 4 left

241mm x 163mm x 25mm

Pages: 264

What do things mean? What does the life of everyday objects reveal about people and their material worlds? Has the quest for the real thing become so important because the high-tech world of total virtuality threatens to engulf us?

This pioneering book bridges design theory and anthropology to offer a new and challenging way of understanding the changing meanings of contemporary human-object relations. The act of consumption is only the starting point of objects GÇ£livesGÇ¥. Thereafter they are transformed and invested with new meanings and associations that reflect and assert who we are. Defining designed things as GÇ£things with attitudeGÇ¥ differentiates the highly visible fashionable object from ordinary aretefacts that are too easily taken for granted.

Through case studies ranging from reproduction furniture to fashion and textiles to clutter, the author traces the connection between objects and authenticity, ephemerality and self-identity. Beyond this, she shows the materiality of the everyday in terms of space, time and the body and suggests a transition with the passing of time from embodiment to disembodiment.