Best friends

When I was younger I had a best friend. The friend had no specific name as far as I can recall, but I remember having fun and felt I had to take care of it. The friendship only lasted a couple of days as my friend exploded on the ground. All of its lifejuice were splashed against the floor.

My best friend was a balloon filled with water..

The balloon can be analyzed as an object located in space and time, but this doesn’t do any justice to my friend, but why?

You could say that my mind spread itself onto the external object. The sentiments that we feel towards these objects are better explained if we ‘gild’ the world by describing it as if it contains the features that are answering these sentiments. The spreading can be seen as to explain the experience that we have of certain objects. The simple shapes of Heider and Simmel are just plain digital objects, but their appearance (including movement) gives rise to a certain experience and in order to explain the experience we project certain featuress to the objects.

Does the projection of internal sentiment give rise to new creations and can we therefore call my former best friend an artificial creature? Stripped from my internal sentiment, my balloon friend , was just an object. I would say that the object turned into a new creation because of my projection, but that this creation is subject-depended. Subject here refers to the experiencer. That is why even something simple as a balloon can turn into an artificial creature, and not every subject will project the same level of internal sentiment.

Off course objects can be designed in such a sense so that the susceptibility for a high level of projection can be increased or decreased.

That is why not all types of appearances of objects have the same level of openness for the projection of internal sentiment. Some objects are designed with a specific purpose. There are robots for instance that are created with the aim of increasing efficiency or productivity. A factory that makes chocolate chip cookies has machinery that melts and mixes chocolate and although it ‘sucks’ when they break down and this could lead to some form of projection, it is not common for these objects to be susceptible for a high level of projection. In this sense we can manipulate, influence or steer the senitment we project on objects.