Dolls & Philosophy
THESIS POST IV
My friend Megha and I got this on the side of the road this week:
She saw a picture posted to NYC stooping instagram and we both ran from separate locations to try to get it, shockingly it was still there. And it was HUGE. It feels like fate is pointing me in the direction of dolls, but so far every way I try to visualize it doesn’t feel right. One thing we discussed before I owned a slice of Barbie’s dream, was the concept of playing dolls. I have this vintage 60s dollhouse in my apartment, just sitting there, staring at me. It is the exact opposite of Barbie’s house, minimal, mid century, simple, modest, small. There is no front door, it’s just an open face house. I stared at it and wondered about the mechanics of playing pretend. If I were to play with this, would I have a visiting doll knock on the door, or ring the doorbell? Even though there is no door? How specific is this kind of play, and how commonplace are the scenarios? I used to be a pro at playing pretend, most of us were. All I needed to entertain myself was a few inanimate objects and my own mind. How quickly I turn to my phone now to stimulate me. It’s not just about the phone, it’s about growing up. At some point we lose our ability to play pretend. Could I get that back if I started practicing pretend?
The dreamhouse is the lovely, childish, light side of dolls. I wonder if I’m more inclined to the gross, voyeuristic, controlling I found this artist on Instagram who makes stop motions with dolls, she doesn’t make the dolls herself but she linked to a few doll artists she associated with. She sculpts her face exactly and adds it to the dolls before creating these dark slice of life animations.
I went down a rabbit hole of 3d printed ball joint dolls, so many people do this but no one explains how. I’ve spent a lot of time just working on this one blender file of my body scan and it feels like maybe a dead end, or at the very least that the amount of effort it will take to have the technical skills required to do anything worthwhile on blender would exceed the amount of time I want to spend on something that might not be the direction I want to go. It’s a hard balance. At this point I’ve exhausted my beginner Blender luck and need to commit serious time if I want to make a doll with articulating joints for example. And I don’t know if I even want to do that so I’ve reached a plateau of following the dopamine and experimenting to see what comes out of something.
Reflections from office hours:
I met with Pedro and Phil today to get some thesis information. Pedro and I talked about the balance between art/design, science/technology, and social/critical in projects. The goal, he says, is to find the sweet spot in between all three things. I talked about how I didn’t know what to spend my time doing and I didn’t know how to come to a conclusion about which direction to go but I wanted to incorporate philosophy, dolls, bodies, and a bunch of other things maybe, I just spewed out a bunch of stuff to be honest. He asked me for an example of a concept in philosophy to explain how to break things up into different parts. My first thought was the mind/body problem- Or whether what makes you you is your mind, body, or soul. There are a lot of really interesting philosophical writings about this, with thought experiments regarding each of those parts. He said that for example, I could make one project for mind, one for body, and one for soul, and then one to tie them all together. It didn’t matter what form they took, one could be a 3D print and another could be a javascript library. This feels very freeing because it would allow me to explore the facets if my interests that feel conflicting. Because I’ve been torn until this point- the stop motion above is a good example of what aesthetically and personally interests me. It feels comfortable and tickles my brain in the right places. Everyone I showed this to who knows me well said “are you sure you didn’t make that.” On the other hand, I’m interested in teaching kids things and discussing philosophy with them. That obviously is incompatible with something like the stop motion. Speaking with Pedro made me realize that I don’t have to choose just one thing. Also I think there’s something telling about how the first philosophy concept I thought of that was worth saying was the mind/body problem. Just like when I said jokingly months ago that I want to be a Barbie doll designer when someone asked me what I can do with this degree. In the future I should pay attention to the first thing that comes to my mind when asked questions.
I talked to Phil about what interacting with a 3D printed version of myself had stimulated. I told him how when I handed the doll over to someone they would suggest what they thought I should do with it. It almost never had anything to do with me and was much more telling about their own relationships with their bodies as I can imagine they were picturing what they’d do with a doll of themself, and focusing less on the fact that they were holding me in their hands. One friend gave a particularly disturbing recommendation- I told them that I had thought about having removable and interchangeable body parts to see if people could accurately piece me together as a way to see if outside perception matched reality. They suggested I have interchangeable body parts that vary in terms of attractiveness and ask people to build me with the parts they find most attractive. It felt icky having someone say that while holding my entire body in their hands, but I knew they weren’t thinking of me at all, and their mind was off thinking about their own body image trauma even though they were looking at me. Phil suggested I ask a bunch of people what they think I should do with my doll for thesis and see what they suggest. He said I didn’t have to make them, because I told him I worried what I would unleash upon myself if I were to do something like what my friend suggested for example. It feels like at every turn with this doll I have the potential to see or experience things I cannot unsee or unexperience. The more I spoke with him though, the more I felt like I wanted to be vulnerable and open myself up to feeling these feelings.
My dislike for my friend’s suggestion doesn’t only come from not wanting people to pick a better body for me. I also wondered “why me?” If I’m just interested in what people think are the ideal body proportions for a woman, I could do that experiment with any doll. There’s no reason for it to be me. I am trying to reconcile that point with all my ideas. Why does it have to be me, other than the fact that I am interesting to myself because I…. am me.
Anyways, I spent two weeks messing around with Blender and trying to fix the 3d scan of my butt because I was wearing black shorts when I got the scan done and apparently despite 168 photos of my butt from every angle, 7 hours adjusting contrast and drawing highlights on photoshop, 4 hours tweaking control points on Reality Capture and there’s simply no way to get it to work. ¯\_(ツ)_/
On the top you’ll see how the scan came in. Nothing I could do to fix this, but you better believe I spent an unhealthy amount of time staring at pictures of my butt trying to get it to be detected by Reality Capture. Beneath that you will see what I constructed for myself. I just looked at these two pictures next to each other and thought- yup, pretty accurate. Just kidding. I realized I had fabricated a complete fantasy, and despite my butt being missing, not that much of it was missing, and went back and made adjustments.
