Vibrant Things: Casting Queer, Animate, Human-Object Relations
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The root of the English word ‘object’ is a compound of the Latin prefix, ob, meaning in front of, and jacere, meaning to throw. This applies to the word both as a verb: to oppose, I object to [x], and as a noun: a “tangible thing, something perceived with or presented to the senses.”[1] In both cases, the definition of ‘object’ invokes a relationship between ourselves and the thing itself, in our sensing or perception of it. Perhaps because of this, it is easy to infer a human-centred definition in which the object is defined by our perception and exists for us; physical objects stop us, present obstacles for us to manoeuvre around, much like an objection: an argument presented in opposition. But what if objects are not obstacles, are not in opposition to us, are not primarily defined by our sensing or perception? My preference is for the latter half, the thrown-ness, jacere, of this etymology; objects present themselves to our senses, they throw (jacere) themselves in front of (ob) us. This definition accentuates an animacy in materiality, and an energetic lived relationality to all matter — if objects throw themselves in front of us, they arrive at us just as much as we arrive at them. Our senses are constantly being presented with objects, whether we register them or not. John, Virginia Woolf’s character in “Solid Objects,” is presented with objects (beach glass, broken porcelain, meteorite) that influence the course of his life. My visual art practice engages deeply with objects, and, like John, objects have influenced the course of my life. For this reason, object-theory resonates with me, as do stories like that of Woolf’s character for whom life is, in a sense, a series of object-relations. In this paper, I formulate a conceptual framework for an ontology of vibrant things to explore what I intrinsically already know: all matter is active, fluid, non-hierarchical, and in relation. I describe a shift where I theoretically and physically orientate myself to objects as vibrant things, speculate on how this orientation might be queer, and recount how these relations are registered in my art practice and research methodology through the process of casting. [1] “Object” Online Etymology Dictionary, accessed March 17, 2021, https://www.etymonline.com/word/object.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.036 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.010 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.014 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".