Still Life

Definition

Still life (nature morte) names the genre of the arranged inanimate object-world — and, in Rachel Carley's chapter, its transposition into a design method: the study of "how domestic objects, and the genre of still life in particular, could function as catalysts in the formation of innovative interior spaces." The genre is mobilized as both a research program ("Each student was required to conduct in-depth research into this genre, locating its currency for contemporary spatial practice") and a formation principle: still life "drew attention toward the significant role objects play in the formation and occupation of the interior, highlighting how quotidian objects can be studied to excavate their spatial potential." The literary counterpart is Life A User's Manual itself, in Wardrip-Fruin's formula: "Text and image, narrative and still life, the infra-ordinary and the outlandish tale are artfully combined" — the apartment house as a still life of rooms, each chapter beginning with a room's objects described in their arrangement.

The concept's design content is an anti-hierarchy: still life treats the domestic object not as the interior's filler but as its generator — objects that "individually and collectively… activate rooms and the interior imagination more generally." This is the genealogy running from Duchamp's readymade (selection and placement as authorship) through the surrealist object to Perec's combinatorial object-lists: the arrangement, not the invention, produces the interior.

Key Thinkers

• Rachel Carley — the concept's design-method source (2018): the Natura Morta: Architectures of Still Life studio; domestic objects and the genre as "catalysts in the formation of innovative interior spaces"; the twenty-five-model iterative exercise.
• Georges Perec — the genre's literary architect: the room-as-still-life chapters of Life, objects with "itinerant histories."
• Noah Wardrip-Fruin — the genre's naming reader: "narrative and still life… artfully combined" (not yet paged — see log).
• Pablo Meninato — the wiki's adjacent theorist: the tableau as "a three-dimensional collage" — the installation-art sibling of the designed still life (via the Spatial seductions chapter).

Related Concepts

• Infra-Ordinary — the genre's temporal content: the still life stops the infra-ordinary's flow into arrangement — the room at one moment in time (Steinberg's peeled-away facade).
• Domestic Interior — the genre's site: the arranged domestic object-world, "the significant role objects play in the formation and occupation of the interior."
• Readymade — the genre's artistic ancestor: authorship by selection and placement; "quotidian objects… excavate[d for] their spatial potential."
• Surrealist Object — the genre's desire-driven cousin: the object fabricated to expose concealed desire (Dalí), against the still life's arranged ordinariness.
• Interior as Biography — the genre's narrative yield: the arrangement that testifies to its occupant — "a partial biography of the resident."
• Interiority — the genre's indirect route: "the psychological interiors of Perec's characters are not excavated in detail" — interiority reached through objects, not introspection.
• Assemblage — the genre's spatial-art form: the object-world joined, stitched, or forced together.
• Tableau — the genre's installation form (Meninato): the room arranged to testify.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Puzzle (Carley 2018) — the concept's source: the Natura Morta: Architectures of Still Life studio ("how domestic objects, and the genre of still life in particular, could function as catalysts in the formation of innovative interior spaces"; "how quotidian objects can be studied to excavate their spatial potential"); the twenty-five-model iterative exercise (hybrid forms from three initial concept models: research question, site/context, design detail); Wardrip-Fruin's "narrative and still life"; the objects/surfaces register of Life ("interior surfaces and objects, both individually and collectively, can activate rooms and the interior imagination more generally").
• Spatial seductions (Meninato 2018) — the tableau as the genre's installation-art sibling: the arranged object-world as interior's formation mode.

Open Questions

• Still life is a genre of the stopped moment; the interior is lived in time. Can the still-life method design for the temporal interior (Weinthal's "temporary and fleeting"), or does it necessarily produce the frozen, unoccupied interior Massey diagnosed in the discipline's images?
• The chapter makes still life a catalyst ("catalysts in the formation of innovative interior spaces") — but a catalyst is unaltered by the reaction it enables. What happens to the domestic object when the design is built: does it survive as itself, or is the still life always consumed by the spatial life it generates?
• Is there a politics of the genre? Perec "politicizes objects" — interiors "not neutral but highly inflected spaces" — yet still life's tradition is the apotheosis of dead property. Does the constraint-arranged still life launder consumption into composition, or expose it?