Digital Tool Thinking: Object-Oriented Ontology versus New Materialism (2016)
article⁄Digital Tool Thinking: Object-Oriented Ontology versus New Materialism (2016)
abstract⁄Within contemporary philosophy, two apparently similar movements have gained attention recently, New Materialism and Object Oriented Ontology. Although these movements have quite distinct genealogies, they overlap on one key issue they are both realist movements that focus on the object. In contrast to much twentiethcentury thinking centered on the subject, these two movements address the seemingly overlooked question of the object. In shifting attention away from the anthropocentrism of Humanism, both movements can be seen to subscribe to the broad principles of Posthumanism. Are these two movements, however, as similar as they first appear And how might they be seen to differ in their approach to digital design This paper is an attempt to evaluate and critique the recent strain of Object Oriented Ontology and question its validity. It does so by tracing the differences between OOO and New Materialism, specifically through the work of the neoHeideggerian philosopher Graham Harman and the postDeleuzian philosopher Manuel DeLanda, and by focusing on the question of the ’tool’ in particular. The paper opens up towards the question of the digital tool, questioning the connection between Object Oriented Ontology and Object Oriented Programming, and introducing the theory of affordances as an alternative to the stylistic logic of ‘parametricism’ as a way of understanding the impact of digital tools on architectural production. The paper concludes that we need to recognize the crucial differences between the work of DeLanda and Harman, and thatif nothing elsewithin progressive digital design circles, we should be cautious of Harman’s brand of Object Oriented Ontology, not least because of its heavy reliance on the work of the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger.
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| Year |
2016 |
| Authors |
Leach, Neil. |
| Issue |
ACADIA 2016: POSTHUMAN FRONTIERS: Data, Designers, and Cognitive Machines |
| Pages |
344-351 |
| Library link |
N/A |
| Entry filename |
digital-tool-thinking |
