Heidegger Response Project: Natures Final Triumph over Technology

My project is an appropriation of Heidegger’s metaphorical enquiry of the nature of Man and Being concerning technology. It is, in a sense, telling the classical story of good over evil in a narrative retelling where, contrary to history, the good guy wins in a rather romantic manner of inaccuracy.

The ‘machine’ serves a purpose mutually exclusive from this narrative. It is constructed in response to Heidegger’s reflection of the essential craftsman who evokes a piece, techné or otherwise, in a co-responsible manner thus revealing it (p.8). I attempted to remain true to this manner of bringing-forth despite the darker destiny of the piece to attempt to bring nature to a reductionist state. In such how true was its creation knowing the final purpose of the piece? The answer isn’t so readily available because perhaps, as Heidegger notes, the bringing-forth or challenging-forth of the techné may be separate from the use of the object and instead may be in the honest craftsmanship that simply creates. One can just as easily argue the opposite however stating that the piece is challenging-forth due to its intention of ordering nature.

The metaphor I chose to expand on I believed captured the most personal philosophical point made by Heidegger. He declared that technology can have a commanding position over nature despite its grandeur. It is the ordering that removes the basic dignity of an object not the voraciousness with which it destroys that objects natural state despite “A sawmill in a secluded valley of the Black Forest [being] a primitive means compared with the hydroelectric plant in the Rhine River” (p.5). David Waddington further develops this point and thickens the metaphor by also comparing the process of creating an object in standing-reserve to forestry. He states that even the most money-hungry people “may become uneasy when forced to watch a tree ‘harvester’ in the process of liquidating a forest” (p.575).

I set out with my machine to illustrate this exact metaphor and draw attention to the complexities of Heidegger’s argument by creating a machine lovingly “brought-forth” to set upon a young sapling in an attempt to order nature. In doing so, “This setting-upon that challenges forth the energies of nature…unlocks and exposes” consequentially (p.15). The monstrous machine finally meets its end though after numerous attempts to cut down the sapling whereupon the elastic rubber controlling the arm breaks and nature conquers this one piece of techné. The ordering of such a natural element erases any sort of dignity possessed by the object inherently Heidegger argues. He also declares that “Whatever stands by in the sense of standing-reserve no longer stands” at all (p.17). In this way my piece sets to write an alternate ending. An ending where despite this saplings brief encounter with an object challenging-forth, the machine at long last, breaks and in a heroic turn of fortune, nature is the conqueror and this sapling retains its natural position of standing by the riverside free from standing reserve; simply being. 

In my revision of the project I added further wooden braces to stabilize the gears and re-contextualized the piece in a 'gallery-like' setting by bringing in a physical sapling with the physical project while still utilizing the documentary of the project.

Heidegger Response Proposal

For a piece in conversation with Heidegger I wanted to build a machine commenting on the human relationship to technology. Heidegger mentions that the only way to truly achieve a ‘free relationship’ with technology is by questioning it, and I intend this piece to serve that purpose as a commentary and sow the seeds of that relationship. For this to happen first the essence of technology must be referenced. It is important not just to question the relationship in this manner but specifically the essence of technology that fuels such a relationship. Another important element in deciphering what Heidegger means by a ‘free relationship’ and the essence of technology is by understanding the role of the technological relationship in society today. More importantly, the difference in that role currently, from the role it played in the past. Whereas earlier societies’ artisans created and crafted technology through an Aristotelian symbiotic relationship resulting in a “bringing forth” of the object, current technology is almost exclusively “challenging forth.” It is exactly this challenging forth through processes of summoning and provoking that commands the object into a position of “standing-reserve” and, as David I. Waddington states, consequentially reduces the dignity of the object to a state of “objectlessness.” However, this method of challenging-forth is innate to human existence and stems from a natural ‘they’ think. One of my favorite metaphors utilized by Waddington, in his explanation of Heidegger’s theories, is the giant sequoia. He declares that even the most profit-driven people of this world “may become uneasy when forced to watch a tree ‘harvester’ in the process of liquidating the forest.” This is because, the unaltered tree stands on its own, “and as such, seems to have a kind of dignity.” This dignity perhaps results from the object coming into ‘being’ of its own accord and effort, and maintaining a state of being that is lost when the object no longer ‘stands on its own.’ My machine’s purpose is to, at an agonizingly slow rate, butcher a standing tree to exaggerate the dignity of the object. The tree, having been harvested from nature (I will have to go and get one in the wild) is prematurely reduced to an object in standing-reserve, the sole purpose of which is to be slowly cut in half in front of an audience. The premature reduced state is reduced almost further in this respect. The machine itself though serves a different purpose. Heidegger almost romanticizes the ancient artisan ‘bringing forth’ and object through a responsibility for the material, formal, final, and efficient causes. I intend to comment on this ideal form of production resulting in the ‘bringing forth’ of the object (machine) whose ugly final purpose is to further reduce the object in standing-reserve to a spectacle for ambivalent onlookers. Is it thus an object ‘brought forth’ due to the tender, caring, and responsible actions of an artisan? Or is it simply another machine predictably ‘challenging forth,’ reducing the “sequoia” to a standing-reserve due to the innate the-they think dominating our society?