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.