MATTERIST MANIFESTO

matter
-noun
a substance of which a physical object is made of.
-verb
to be of importance

Today we look around at our scarcity. The neutral, bare walls, the generic labels on our food consumption bags, The communal transportation tubes. We awake to the holographic alarm and the drone of the universal awakening program. We get out of bed and can barely feel the ground beneath our feet.

We say NO! to the conformity, to the universalism, to the ant-like structure of the society we live in. To the assigned positions of which we fulfill, in order to serve the greater good.

We say NO! to the banishment of ‘objects’. We are weakened by your holographic technology. By the representation of objects in our environments and the falsity of sense perception brought upon by the Hub Corporation. In the rarity that it is present, the manufacturing of scent, color, shape and feel of hubjects are inferior to the reality of substance that we have experienced while touching an ‘object’.

We, the matterists have come across proof of the ‘object’ a proof of a society before us that was a precursor to this now docile, insipid existence of today. One of ‘object’ worship, where companies created and encouraged the use of ‘objects’. Where people of society themselves had a hand in creating and giving ‘objects’ to each other as ‘gifts’.

matterism

1. We intend to revive the tangible, awaken the senses and tear at the cloak that the Hub Corp. has thrown over our imagination and individuality.

2. Up to now, audio streams run by Hub Corp. have instilled feared and paranoia by declaring materials dangerous and synonymous of ultimate destruction based on little known historical facts that only they seem to possess.

4. We believe in what is called animism, the belief of all things possessing a soul including people, plants, and geographical destinations. We have been numbed to these vibrations by the automation of our society.

3. We believe that humans imprint emotions upon objects and the process of creating and choosing materials of an object is a sacred act. One of bonding and nurturing that will stimulate the drone-like mind of today. We must act before it is too late! Already we have turned into one bland, barely-breathing plain-wrapped organism. What of texture, poetry, what of color? No more browns, no more beige! We have found evidence of at least 100 shades of green! Where are those represented? Imagine one hundred individual preferences as opposed to the sameness in all that is given to us, no, forced upon us!

4. Courage, audacity, choice and revolt are essential elements in our actions.

5. We will bring back the gift! Set up stations of transaction, use materials of actuality and embark on a process of choice and creation with an individual human in mind, we will break down the barriers that they have built between one another, establish sentiment and promote mementos once more.

6. We will destroy all institutions, museums and holographic establishments of every kind. We will fight anti-matter and materialism. This is the ticket to our freedom!

Here reader is where you choose before proceeding to the next iteration of our word. If you decide to continue, you will become an active, no longer a dormant slave. Within you hands now is already a validation of trust, but now we must not ask only trust of you, but fearlessness. We intend to subvert while using the highest of technologies, ones that are used to suppress and replace the very things we are reviving. You are a matterist from this period forth.

7. We have found and already implemented a way to acquire lost materials, create them, and send and receive without detection.

8. We are able to pass through the matter sensing apparatuses undetected. With the use of anti-gravitational nodes secured to our parcels and soft matter technology taken from the dominating holographic one of today. With it we put the material in a temporary state of fluidity that the piezoelectric sensors can not detect, since they are completely reliant on rigidity alone.

9. We will continue to be undetected from coming back from what we call Material Farms. The Material Farms, other than the material museums we seek to destroy, have the largest collection of artifacts and salvaged material of the old world, we also have highly skilled chemists using old world recipes to create new batches of materials with new abilities to imprint neural patterns onto the object created hence forth. Ones of which you can create a ‘gift’ from for the recipient of your choice. Due to secrecy, these Material Farms will be consistently changing location. Once you have taken your first step within one, we will intercept the main chip in your brain tuned to the universal radio station and transmit through our own pirate station the locations as we hop to keep secrecy.

ONCE YOU ARE THERE:

2.1 Once you have your materials picked out, we will offer support in the creation of your memento. You will right away feel a sense of overwhelming community mixed with a feeling of individual expression pouring into the very molecules of the matter of which you will be holding in your hand. If you feel nothing, do not worry, use the imprint capable material until you are ready to move on by your own means.

2.2. You will caress the item, smell the chemical make-up of the material and feel various sensations that we can only describe with words we thought long lost in our vocabulary.
squishy
crackle
slimy
flutter
throb
crunchy
smooth
Many more will be discovered as we unearth this lost tradition!
Sensory overload may happen, we will have clinicians on stand-by in case of over stimulation.

2.3 Once we have worked and loaded your senses, you will create! Your creation will be reactionary to the stimulation and you will think of the person that you are creating for and make choices based on how they make you feel.

CHOICE IN MATTER
2.4 If you choose an existing matter, remember it is not the function of the object in the end, but the connection you will feel once you see the soul of the object for the first time.
- Item of found material is reserved for an advanced user, one that has connected to the old ways and have been able to communicate with the soul of an object without the assistance of neural technology. It will give the receiver a chance to build their sensory palette. They will be flooded with memories and associations that they might never have experienced before.

2.5 If deciding to create a piece from the neural imprint material, we will provide you with anti-gravitational nodes and transition your matter into a state of fluidity for 24 hours while you pass through the matter detectors. You will then take it home and sleep with it by your side, the new material will sync with you and be imprinted with your unique neural pattern. This is your individuality coming through. Do not be alarmed if you have vivid dreams that night! This is the soul being awaken within!
- This is a good way to introduce a beginner gift-giver into the system, wether on the giving or receiving side. The ability of our man-made material to grab your neural patterns while in sleep mode will assist anyone having a hard time finding the soul of the object and connecting with it. This can however also be dangerous in a way that you have no control over what it grabs. It can imprint as much pain as it can joy within the object.
We say embrace the heartache if it is there!

GIFTING
2.6 There is tradition in gift-giving that we have lost long ago. We believe that the process of creation invested within the ‘object’ will be seen, felt and transmitted to the receiver upon accepting the gift.
The receiver needs to be a matterist themselves in order to maintain the level of security needed to preserve this act.
Once received the made ‘object’ will emanate your personal intention and individual choice.

2.7 The recipient will have an hour to bask in this in our own facilities. After that, they will either need to set up an appointment to give an ‘object’ themselves, destroy the object or do what we encourage, go against the conformity and take it home with you to collect and use as a reminder towards the society that we will inevitably be creating through action!

Through encouragement of creation and connecting one on one with individuals through the sanctity of objects. We believe this new found investment of ‘objects’ will awaken the control we all have lost through assimilation.

Objects equal freedom!
Annihilate the Hub!

Exploring Project #1

Choose someone you have an intimate relationship with, communicate with them via a technology novel to them. Report on any responses from the subject and yourself.

My subject:
Mikie Graham

29 year old white male who grew up in tigard OR, a suburb of portland. Currently works at a steampunk large gauge jewelry shop and is a rep for blamo toys in San Francisco. Has a degree in Film studies and is currently single.
Now that the stats are out of the way, he is the kind of guy that doesn’t worry about anything and is in a good mood all the time, an optimist for sure. Shies away from confrontation only to let anger harbor within leading to explosions later set off by the most trivial of offenses. Acceptance, he is very accepting, I have a hard accepting people for who they are, but Mikie is oddly aware of what people are capable of and has no problem accepting it and moving on.

Choosing mikie was an apparent one, not only is he the single person i have an intimate relationship with on several levels that spans a decade, but he also is not the savviest when it comes to emerging social technologies. Might faulter on how he is to describe things in detail, but in the end is thorough in communication.

First is a rundown of some of the different planes that construct our relationship, before i deal with the smaller intricacies that have emerged from under those.
Started as someone to feel a connection with through group activities, planned potlucks, got drunk and danced together, went to our first burning man together (an institution to San Franciscans).
Proximity comes into play when I end up moving down the street from him, we then end up hanging out together one on one all the time. He is going through a break up, I had gone through a rough one that he was already well aware of since he was friends with both me and my ex. He could give me a fresh perspective on a stale topic that I could trust since I knew he had the experience of knowing my ex. Which gave him some authority in the matter. We discovered that we were both physically attracted to each other which lead to us sleeping together and starting our physical relationship. We soon shared living in the same space together and was then spending everyday together. From that arose heightened levels of humility and awareness. We began to know what each other were like all seconds of the day.
Within this period we dealt with death together, traveling, creative endeavors, dangerous adventures. We were true partners in crime. We then shared in the darker, more hurtful range of feelings and activities, learning to live without something you love. the absence of presence from something that was a fixture in your life; loss. Basically we ended our physical relationship and were able to endure the heartbreak that caused us, while still remaining friends and somewhat confidants. That ended two years ago, and we still are able to tell each other everything. Being able to withstand the feeling of betrayal, the ability to go pass your personal wounds and truly understand another’s point of view; sacrifice.

In Short I believe what makes out relationship intimate is the variety of transformations it has undergone and within that still having the endurance what we receive from each other today. Our lives also paralleled, we were on the same page, both in college, hung out with the same core group of kids, both in long term relationships, both left our relationships. We then started dating and ran our lives as one. Splitting in two, while still keeping ourselves as our safe houses, despite the pain we had caused each other.

Common interests, we are very similar in the fact that we are both explorers and collectors.

Set Up of Experiment:
I chose Aim for Mikie and I to communicate through. Sending Mikie to the Aim website was all that really needed to be done. He downloaded it and had the application running in no time. The only small confusion was when it took him a second to find where to create an account.
I ended up adding him as a buddy since he also couldn’t find either for some reason. All in all, a very simple process.
After we were up and running I decided to try something I never had either, video chat. Turns out on Aim you can have a one sided video chat, the person with the camera gets to have whatever their web cam picks up display on the recipients computer along with hearing your voice through their speakers. Their side of the conversation comes up as bubbles in the chat window.

The Conversation:
Mostly the conversation surrounded around the system itself, like “I wonder if I can video chat with you”, “your font is really small”, and such. I then wanted to capitalize on the video camera and called my cat in, who mikie is well acquainted with to say hi. I then swept the camera around my room and he commented on what I was wearing. We chatted about a concert and did comment on the performance of the app once more when Mikie compared it to an old delayed news feed.
The conversation mainly concerned the novelty of the camera on my end. Deciding to make it more of an Aim experience, I created a chat room with Mikie and our friend Syed. Once we got in, Mikies first bubble was “is this it?” I believe he was unsure from the simplicity of it. Syed sent us a barrage of links to images, and eventually Mikie and I decided to hang up.
I was excited to have him on Aim since I had been trying to get him to create an account for awhile. I was even more excited to show him Miss Fierce (my cat) and my room to him. It was an interesting juggle of interfacings for me, I was video chatting with Mikie, so was talking to him through speaking to my computer while needing to type to syed (which Mikie could see too) while reading their responses. There was a point where I almost shouted at syed through my computer, then remembered that I needed to type my responses to him.
Mikie was a little tired, so I felt like I was dragging him through the woods, but then he would get caught up on a topic and not seem so exhausted. I also thought that he would be annoyed at all the typing, He’s not a very good speller and thought that he would be frustrated by that. To the contrary he told me that he thought typing was faster than talking and he enjoyed this experience because of the facial expressions he got to see and the fact that I could let him see what my world looked like on the other side of the coast. When I asked him is he would do it again, I got a resounding yes, and he promised to get a webcam for the next time. His only critique was that the one-sided video chat caused a delay in the sense that I would read the bubbles, respond and be onto another topic before he could write something in response. I however liked the fact that no one could talk over me, and vice versa.
After the interview call he texted me later “honestly that communication was the closest i’ve felt with you in awhile, there is something important about seeing a face”.
Also worth noting is, when I called him back to do the interviewing, he hung up with “It was nice to see you”, that right there had an impact on me since he would never of been able to say that unless we were in the same state.

Attachment in Adulthood by Mario Mikulincer and Phillip R. Shaver

Reading Response Paper #2
- choose a sentence or idea that you agree with and explain why
- choose a sentence or idea that you disagree with or that confuses you and explain why.

I agree with a lot of what this excerpt deals with. Specifically though, what I think sums things up is a part of the “Individual Differences In Attachment-System Functioning”.
This idea can also be found in the reading under the head “The Cognitive Substrate Of The Attachment System”.
Within the opening paragraph it talks about the flexibility of the behaviors over time through experience. The more varied contexts that you engage in the more evolvement each behavioral pattern for you goes through. You tailor your interaction with each person you have a relationship with, knowing the boundaries and general reactions that will result from your behavioral-system. I do believe in an ever-evolving nature of interaction and that we are adaptable creatures who retain habits, we will learn from the reactions we receive and they will eventually become dominant through repetitive affirmation. When we are children, I do agree that there are patterns established, there are to be dominant ones that over time can be written over from monitoring and appraising behavioral systems in ever changing contexts. I believe that we can recognize the results even, but sometimes can not put them into practice right away. Something inside of us is programmed to a specific system, and when that system fails to produce the same result as it used to within one relationship, though you can cognitively rationalize why the changed outcome is occurring, your dominant behavioral system is invoked with same failure. It seems to take time for this evolution, or updated program to happen. So maybe this system becomes instinctual in a way. What causes this sudden chain-reaction of behaviors? Even after you have monitored and appraised the effectiveness of them with them clearly not being the most positive or productive one?
I will mention something of obsession here, looking and longing for this particular outcome can become an obsession, a loss of security that you can’t quite accept, but can understand on a basic level.
I feel like this excerpt didn’t touch heavily upon the coping mechanisms that one can acquire and practice, or the lack there of, in the absense of the “goal”.

Something that I found not to be true, or didn’t understand the take on, is that in order to fully develop an attachment bond you need to be in a relationship for 1-2 years. This shorter amount of time can then cause less grief if there separation occurs. This is speculated by Hazan and Zeifman (1999) As if to say that the two people have not simply had the time to interact with each other enough to know how they react and therefore go through this analyzing and appraising process. This is somewhat of a linear way of looking at this sense of attachment that you feel with someone. I do believe that perhaps it’s easier to move on when you have more to look forward, more to experience, more time to evolve without that one person. But I feel that I can say that I have had stronger attachment bond from knowing someone only a couple months, than I have from another that I have been involved with for years. Perhaps this is because I felt a false sense of security or I kept hoping for one outcome, and it took me a long time to realize that I would never get it. Where I have had a more responsive relationship in a shorter amount of time that I have mourned more deeply.
Here I would also like to bring up another study that my friend told me about. One which talked about the fact that by 3 or 4 years of age a child no longer feels anxious about being physically attached to the “principal attachment figure”. Hazan and Zeifman speculate that adolescent and adult relationships that develop into what they call “real attachment relationships” go through the same stages described by Bowlby and Ainsworth. Using this notion, my friend went on to reason as to why people’s relationships go stale or someone in the relationship feels restless. It is this new found detachment, or no longer the need of this kind of detachment that leads them to finding something new.