Write That Down.

18th FEBRUARY, 2020 || CLASS – 7 ||

Topic: Introduction To The Evolution Of Objects.

Since the start of this semester, we had been talking about evolution of civilizations so much that I had nearly forgotten that the name of this subject was ‘Objects As History’ and not just History. If we break down the meaning of it, History means incidents and events recorded in the past. These events without a doubt impact our future. The reason why we keep repeating ‘Learn from your past’ is so that we do not fall into the same illusions, troubles, problems and situations like we did before.

Learning History as a definite subject and not just as a bed-time story only makes sense when it is put into practice. It is typical of people to assume that archeologists and anthropologists study History just so that they can know what once existed, is now no more. This is falsely believed because while studying History, we are, in a way, studying our own selves. In theory, we are the products of our own past, so it is essential to know what brought us where we are today.

This brings us back to the name of the subject. When we say ‘Objects As History’, we do not talk about just History in its entirety, but also the objects that are intertwined with the past. In terms of practicality, in the field of Designing, it is really important for us to study the origin of an object in order to modify it as per the current fashion. The aspect of History of the object enables us to pinpoint at the exact moment where a particular object has either evolved, or ceased to exist. Every time I use the word ‘Evolve’, it reminds me of Pokemon evolving. Weird.

Here is where we pick up the purpose of the subject from, with an introduction to our next project, the first project of the semester. For this one, we had to pick any tangible object, and show its timeline of evolution in terms of dates and civilizations. The timeline should consist of the origin of that object, followed by each and every date where that object evolves, upgrades, or gets altered. Through that, we had to choose a certain point where it stops evolving, or even existing for that matter, which depends upon the kind of object we choose.

I decided not to choose an object blindly because firstly, there is a high possibility of overlapping of objects used by multiple people at once. About 4 people out of a class of 60 chose to work on helmets. Primary rule of Designing, ‘ALWAYS SCRAPE OFF THE FIRST IDEA THAT COMES INTO YOUR MIND’. Secondly, it is often observed that when you get excited and choose an object without studying its summary, you will get disappointed to find out there there are not much evidences to prove your theories of evolution.

After taking help from the faculty and crosschecking with other students in the class, I decided to show an ‘Evolution Of The Writing Tools’ used and modified by different dynasties over the times. I believed it would be an interesting field of exploration considering the importance of a writing material in today’s time. Maybe I would stop somewhere in time where the writing tools start to take a form of a typical pen. For now, did not have an idea of how my booklet would look like, but one thing that I did know was, I would definitely cover it in coffee, because which History project is complete without a textured torn paper laced without coffee?