hyperobjects in design
Timothy Morton coined the notion of “independently of human consciousness” with the term hyperobject in his book Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World as “things that are massively distributed in time and space relative to humans”. For him, hyperobjects carry a distinct significance for philosophy and ecology.
Morton summarises the core of his proposal as follows:
“Hyperobjects have numerous properties in common. They are viscous, which means that they ‘stick’ to beings that are involved with them. They are nonlocal; in other words, any ‘local manifestation’ of a hyperobject is not directly the hyperobject. They involve profoundly different temporalities than the human-scale ones we are used to [temporal undulation] ... Hyperobjects occupy a high-dimensional phase space that results in their being invisible to humans for stretches of time [phasing]. And they exhibit their effects interobjectively; that is, they can be detected in a space that consists of interrelationships between aesthetic properties of objects.”
To better understand the concept of a hyperobject, it is helpful to consider an example. The city of Porto can be considered a hyperobject. Porto is viscous, meaning that when we are in Porto, we are absorbed and immersed in it. Our location is not the determining factor in whether we are in Porto; instead, we are inside its reality, in the air, in the water, in people, in all kinds of animate and inanimate beings surrounding us.
The city of Porto is non-local due to the ambiguous and non-existent boundaries that define its territory. To illustrate, the Douro River becomes part of Porto when it crosses the city. It is necessary to determine the point at which the city of Porto is considered to end horizontally, but it is equally important to idenitify the point at which the city limits are considered to end vertically. The non-locality of Porto implies that the particular compromises the general itself. Porto is not merely a geographical formation or an urban construction. It is related to all other objects incorporated within it and to those objects containing it. This can be exemplified by the river bank, a riverside house, or the Clérigos tower. Porto is geologically millenarian, having been formed over a considerable period of time. However, it was baptised by the Portuguese hundreds of years ago. Moreover, the objects that make it up have various ages and are in different stages of their life.
These temporal and local undulations make it almost impossible to understand and define Porto. Finally, Porto is interobjective. It is a mesh of interrelated objects of various dimensions, shapes, types and physicalities. It is beyond the total comprehension of human beings, like any hyperobject,.
Morton goes on to say that there are hyperobjects so vast that they can influence our lives without us even realising it. Morton proposes that global warming is a hyperobject that fundamentally alters humanity's ontological and epistemological experience, i.e. the way human beings experience their presence in the world. Instead of feeling in control of their lives and activities, humanity is increasingly forced to adapt. Human beings lose agency, because "hyperobjects are not simply mental constructs (or ideals), they are real entities whose primordial reality is taken away from human beings".
Global warming challenges humanity's perception of control, and Morton emphasises the need to recognise the agency and interdependence of all forms of life on Earth. Human beings are just one more of the many forms of life and matter on Earth that have to coexist.
Given the multiplicity of challenges we face today, we must endeavour to develop new ways of looking at and evaluating the design process. Incorporating the concept of hyperobjects into the field of design is of great importance for the following reasons:
It defines and characterises an external world independent of human beings, and gives us a temporal, conceptual and structural view of objects.
It allows for a holistic approach and understanding of the conditions and state of the world in which we live and for which we are designing.
As a designer, we must consider the complexity and admit that everything can be a hyperobject. It is important to be able to understand the different scales of space, time and the mind. By doing so, we are making the size and complexity of a hyperobject tangible, relatable and specific.