WORSHIP GOODS - Iper-goods and media society
by Fulvio Carmagnola and Mauro Ferraresi
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The last work by Fulvio Carmagnola, an aesthetician also interested in design, and Mauro Ferraresi, a linguistics teacher who is concerned with the goods communicative value, is the book Worship Goods.
Worship goods are all those products which include complex and symbolic meanings in themselves and are represented as different from what they are: just consumer "goods".
The book wonders about the object value and highlights some identification and orientation maps of the cult object, starting from four specific areas: of cultural representations, of performance, of narration possibilities and of affection.
These are objects such as Ferraris or Harley-Davidsons, innovative products and only for few people, which have become popular as goods representative of a determinate group of consumers and of a particular life-style, creating specific areas that live out of emulation and going beyond the value of mere utilitarian object.
Design has given an aesthetic quality to these products which were not previously based on specific projects: in this way they have become special objects for their shape and their material. There are many evidences: from Starck objects, even too quoted, to the Apple IMac and, last but not least, the Swatch - Mercedes Smart.
They are also artificial, though, with a strong formal expression, far from the everyday quietness; their value is in their communicative and symbolic power which goes much beyond the mere functional content.
The two authors explore the iper-goods world, trying to provide a specific guide to understand its meanings. For "worship goods" the parameters of the use value leave the place to new values: "iper-real", for instance, "...is looking for its quarter of an hour of eternity...", like the author themselves say quoting an expression by Andy Warhol.
In this world the goods are much more than themselves, they become "objects to think", extremely important for the understanding of our era.
Fulvio Carmagnola - Mauro Ferraresi
Merci di culto. Ipermerce e società mediale
Castelvecchi Ed., Roma 1999
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Text by:
Angelo Minisci |
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