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Objects of Emotion, Sat 16 June 2012
On Saturday 16 June Melissa Trimingham presented 'A Thinking Puppet' at the Wellcome Collection's one-day symposium 'Objects of Emotion'. To find out more visit the symposium website here.
As humans, we have an ability to empathise with one another. Reading emotions and sharing them are integral to our survival and social cohesion. But why is it that objects can also spark these feelings in us? When we watch puppets, what triggers our emotions? Is it their movement or is it simply the stories they tell? And can we be just as moved by everyday objects?
None of these questions have straightforward answers, but in this unique event we'll uncover the latest science exploring the mysteries of empathy in puppetry and elsewhere in culture.
The Wellcome Collection
Abstract: A Thinking Puppet, Melissa Trimingham
We all have a false but convincing sense of our minds as essentially detached from our bodies and from the material world. In fact it is the material world and our ‘play’ with it that from our earliest moments brings meaning into being for us, minute by minute, hour by hour. Watching the relationship of puppet and puppeteer, especially if we laugh or cry, exposes and intensifies the unnoticed way that in day-to-day life we often ‘think’ through objects, the body and the surrounding world, rather than through language. Such an exposure makes puppetry intensely enjoyable and powerful, a return to a long-forgotten state of creative play, where anything is possible...