By Which Part Are We Different?
If each individual part of the Ship of Theseus was replaced, one at a time, was it still the same ship?
—— [ Ship of Theseus ]
With this project, Yuanhan Shen tries to discuss the ancient thought experiment: Ship of Theseus.
Different parts of the mould were flipped and re-positioned, to create new shapes of a cup. Sometimes you can still tell the subtle clue of the original shape, sometimes it is totally an alien. If change only happens on one little part of the origin, would we still call it by its name , with some minor amendment? When would we recognise it as a different individual? What is the boundary of individual difference?
In contemporary philosophy, this thought experiment has applications to the study of personal identity over time.
Stay with this identity topic, we can view all the cup shapes as children by two basic mother types. But with further individual preference and development of direction, angle, position, when every part can make choice to make a difference, endless outcomes are introduced.
While they do carry the basic character of this cup species in a way, the outlook, the impression, the ability, capacity, even the function, the purpose of existence can find great flourish after generations.
From the designer's perspective, it's also a good example to look into the concept of continuity and discreteness.
The mould in this project has been split into half, 4 parts, and finally 8 parts. If we go higher with this splitting resolution, the change of one mould part would cost only a most slight different of end result.
When delta approaches zero, discreteness approaches continuity.
Approaching is never equaling.
Approach as a word stands on the opposite of equal.
Yet, they can appear so SAME.