Train of Thoughts
Christelle YuanYuan Zhang
Each day we interact with “everyday objects.” The apple sitting on the dinner table, the comfortable chair in the corner of a room, and the hair that needs to be styled every morning all form a regular routine within our lives. At the same time, it is easy to overlook their existence. Could we perceive our surroundings to an extent that we suppose these objects have unlimited potential of performing beyond their ordinary meanings? As a user scrolls down a web page representative of their everyday experience with Wikipedia, they are caught off guard and presented with a series of illogical thoughts branching out into different tangents – both coherent and incoherent. The objects are presented in the form of interactive images, videos, and animations that make them think of how everyday objects can take on more thought-provoking means and purposes. As human beings, our snap judgments are derived from causal relationships we identified between two things based on our experience with them over time. For example, we assume there is a fire closely whenever we see a fire fighter. However, correlation does not imply causation. Because of causal learning, our thoughts tend to draw a correlation between two objects but they could be related without causing them. We usually overemphasize causal relationships so much more than correlated possibilities, and therefore this project suggests that we stop jumping to conclusions because of causal assumptions, and consider instead rational explanations that influence that object to be what it is. In other words, we may embrace aspects that are outside of the box.