Week Eight
Katamari
Week Eight of the Reliquary Engine has me wondering whether we can make light of the reliquary by inverting it.
The Collision
Can the chaos of a katamari damashii (”clump spirit”) serve as a vehicle for remembering? A living archive of collected objects, as testament? Alive and even growing, rather than dead and entombed?What objects remember best? How can we joyfully celebrate remembering and the accumulation of a life?
Katamari Damacy comes to mind, for me. The joy of collecting and remembering, indiscriminately: Everything Always Forever. The video game comes naturally with its own local physics; roll and collect, roll, and collect.
In the lore of the game, the King of All Cosmos gets drunk and destroys the night sky. He tasks the tiny Prince with collecting All The Stuff, that he might fling it back into the heavens to replace the missing stars. Ready? Go!
I’ve been thinking about my fascinations, as one does. Minature worlds become interesting when worn, with the wearer as the unassuming giant.
What if that tension in scale were explored by introducing human scale belongings alongside frozen Charlotte doll parts? A wearable katamari, both tragic and joyful, at once.
Another fascination: The life of objects. With human limbs and agency (the rolling) we have real stakes here, people.
I’m playing around with some maquettes this week, finally making use of all the tiny found objects I adore collecting.
This one is going to be all about curation, if I’m going to hit the right register...
Also, it’s gonna have to spin.