Shine

Shine

Throughout this term, my preferred material was aluminium. The reason for this election was its characteristics such as the reflection and shine of the surface, the clinical and clean appearance, the “unstable” monochrome and the possibility of drawing on and sanding its surface. With regard to the two first qualities, reflection and shine, these seem to be a constant in the election ofmy work materials. The interaction and the attraction of the viewer for these kind of materials is my subject of study: why and how the sense of sight feels a kind of pleasure when it is exciting whith shine.

First of all, and as a general statement, the sense of sight does not give us an objective view of the world, but rather an interpretation of it. The view is not synonymous with truth,but it is closer to interpret. This means that vision is influenced by all aspects that make a society such as values, beliefs, stereotypes, traditions, history, etc. As well as vision being dominated by our beliefs and knowledge and this affects the way we see things. To look is an act of choice “we only see what we look at” (Berger, 1973: 8), therefore, the people only see what they know, whatthey want or what they are expecting.

The top hierarchy of the sense of sight involves not only importance, it also involves power . Humans have a certain power over the things that they see, it seems that they know it, nevertheless this power is increased when the thing/person viewed does not have the same privilege: when we can not be seen. “The glass skin repels the city outside; a repulsionfor which we have analogies in those reflector sunglasses which make it impossible for your interlocutor to see your own eyes and thereby achieve a certain aggressivity and power over the other”(Foster 1988, 116). This idea is close to the concept of voyeur identified by Freud. The vision, here, connects knowledge, power and pleasure: you can see something, consequently know something and feelpleasure for this domination: “Pleasure is a response to visual culture, it is therefore an attribute of a viewer rather than an artefact” (Walker 1997, 152).

After saying this, we can focus on shine: this strange moving light which some things have. This phenomenon happens because of the reflective surface of some materials that make the light move across the surface when we change our point ofview or the source of light (natural or artificial). With regard to, Freud said that, in the very beginning, man felt satisfaction at dominating fire, particularly putting it out (Freud 1961, 73). The point here is why we feel attraction, pleasure or wonder with this phenomenon? After this brief review of vision, I could connect the desire of dominance which vision has with the instability inherentin shine. The mind feels consternation for something that stimulates the eyes so intensely as a clear light and tries to understand this situation trying to make this stimuli stable. I think that this constant fight among the vision’s modus operandi makes the shine an “unattainable” experience that drives a strong facination, even pleasure in people.

It can be said that humans have a sort of“positive phototropism” (as moths), it means that we feel attraction towards light stimuli, and the shine is one of these stimuli. In spite of this physiological attraction, I think that shine has a great social attraction too. Shine is one of the qualities that people look when they buy anything from a jewel or a car to an apple, which , almost always, has positive attributes in our culture. Theeffect of attraction that I am looking for in shiny materials drives me to think in some of the strategies that are used in advertising to exploit this effective resource. Nowadays the shininess is associated with high social status, happiness, success or luxery. In the publicity, which knows how to make, maintain and utilize the social meanings of almost everything, the shiniest car is the...