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The Window as An Evocative Object

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Introduction

The setting sun slowly hiding behind distant mountains, groups of students walking between classes, the whistle of wind and the rumble of thunder – these are all sights and sounds accessible through my bedroom window. An object integral to architectural design, windows are embedded within the walls of almost every building, bridging the gap between interior spaces and the outer world. They allow for both the acts of looking outwards and looking inwards, offering a view of reality that is separate from one’s current situation. 

Windows have always been a significant part of my life, taking up space on the walls of my bedrooms, from the one in which I spent my childhood, to the ones in my different living situations during university life. They offer a view into the natural world that lies beyond the internal space that exists physically within my room and cognitively within my mind. Despite the ever-changing scenery, my bedroom window remains still and unmoving, acting as a constant that is always there. 

To understand more about the affordances of windows and what they can mediate, I turn to some relevant media theorists who were discussed in class. 

Objects of transition and shifting meanings

Sherry Turkle describes how the meaning of evocative objects “shifts with time, place, and differences among individuals” – a sentiment I find particularly relevant to windows (307). Sunlight streaming through a window could make it an object associated with positivity, encouraging someone to go outside. Conversely, the scene of heavy rain gives the window a gloomy evocation that is in contrast with the safety and warmth within one’s home. These are associations that I personally make with such scenes, though someone with different experiences may perceive things differently. 

Despite not quite fitting Turkle’s discussion of transitional objects as small, handheld ones that remain the same over time and distance, I find that windows can be still considered an object of transition and passage. They stay with us as we grow into adulthood, always present regardless of location. The view from my childhood bedroom differs from my current one, but the window’s function of showing the outside world remains the same. Windows can also be transitional in how they are decorated and personalized. In my first year of university, I made a crochet garland for my dorm window and continued to hang it up on my new one after relocating. This item holds memories from the past, framing the outside world through a sentimental lens despite the view being different from before.     

Old dorm room window (left) and current dorm room window (right)

Objects of discipline

Turkle’s discussion of objects associated with discipline and desire also resonates with my experience with windows. Opening the blinds in the morning and closing them at night is a simple part of my daily routine that I pay no mind to, but can be considered an act of discipline that has ingrained itself within my life. Michelle Hlubinka expresses how her watch and datebook structure her life and keep her on schedule. These objects are described by Turkle as having the ability to take over one’s life and control their perceptions of time, and thus, actions (310). Indeed, my digital devices, and all their applications, perform functions like these, but my window always reaches me first. It acts as my primary indicator of time and weather before I check my phone. Windows engage my senses and tell me information about the world before I even consciously think about it. The pattering of rain on my windowsill enters my ears, so I pack an umbrella; the rays of morning sun hit my eyes as I lie in bed on my phone at 5AM, so I finally decide to go to sleep. Hence, the window subtly acts as an object of discipline that dictates daily actions.

Mediators of the senses 

Caroline Jones’s chapter on the senses brings up Plato’s allegory of the cave. It describes prisoners trapped within the depths of a dark cave, with their only perception of the world being through the sight of shadows instead of the real figures that cast them. The prisoners are victims of a “partial form of sight”, blinded to the true content of the media that the shadows mediate and only being able to derive individual interpretations about what they see (Jones 89).

Since windows allow light to shine into a room, informing its inhabitants of the outside world in a factual and realistic way, they can be seen as something opposite to the cave. However, I realised that windows also have their limitations, and the somewhat limited world that they depict could, conversely, be thought of as the deceptive shadows in Plato’s allegory. 

Windows, most of the time, only span certain parts of walls, each providing a specific view of the exterior. For instance, my room’s only window is west-facing, which allows me to see the sunset. However, this means I see sunlight later in the day than those with rooms opposite to mine since theirs face the sunrise, leading to me having a skewed perception of time when first waking up. I have also experienced hearing music from outside without being able to see its source, leading to me only being able to make assumptions about the source’s location and the people involved. Windows are like transparent barriers to the outside, letting us witness the world while physically isolating us from it. They allow us to see, hear and smell information, but not touch or taste anything; we cannot touch the grass we see from the view of a window, nor can we feel the rain on our skin.

Jones states that only by exiting the allegorical cave can one understand the full dimensions of things, “thereby also discovering what has been mediating reality”(89). Similarly, windows provide useful but limited views of the world, and only by going outside can one immerse themselves in the scene and find the sources that information is coming from. 

Conclusion

Drawing connections between windows and media theory made me realize just how significant of a role they play as mediators of senses, memories and so much more. They ground us in reality, tell us about the world and subtly guide our perceptions and actions. I have found that my time spent looking out of the window has gradually lessened as the time I spend looking at my digital devices has increased. Although these virtual screens act as windows into different worlds that bring new perspectives to my life, they can never act as a replacement for the physical, natural reality that I live in. Finally, we must be reminded that despite their affordances, the extent to which windows mediate information is limited, and gaining a deeper understanding of everything requires going outside to experience the world in its full scope. 

References

Caroline, Jones. “Senses.” Critical Terms for Media Studies, Edited by W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen, The University of Chicago Press, 2010, pp. 88–100. 

Turkle, Sherry. “WHAT MAKES AN OBJECT EVOCATIVE?” Evocative Objects: Things We Think With, edited by Sherry Turkle, The MIT Press, 2007, pp. 307–27. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hhg8p.39. Accessed 6 Oct. 2025.

Written by Adela Lynge

Images by Adela Lynge

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The Locket I Never Filled (Until Now): A Heart as Medium for Memory and Intimacy

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❦︎

Introduction


Growing up as an only child, I received a lot of speculation — usually in the form of little jokes — about my parents absolutely spoiling me. The logic being that, since my parents have only one child, all birthdays, Christmases, and even day-to-day gestures of giving were magnified, as they only had to make one child happy via gifts. Although my parents were generous with the gifts they gave me on the two major celebrations per year, they were, above all, thoughtful with their giving; every gift had to have deep emotional meaning and was usually small, in some form of metal. One of the first gifts that I can remember receiving from my parents was a small heart locket. It is silver, engraved with swirls and now slightly tarnished from years of wear. I have worn it since childhood, and initially, my parents gave it to me so I could place photos inside that represented the subjects that mattered to me deeply at the age of five. I always wanted to put my parents inside of it, but alas, I didn’t have a colour printer for the first nine years of my life, and after that point, I had simply just forgotten about it. For years, the locket sat empty around my neck, enduring the hot waters of many showers and the stinging cold of the winters it brought to the metal. Only recently have I filled it with photos of my partner and me. To me, my locket mediates both potential and presence-in-absence. Even when empty, it carried cultural meaning and expectation; when filled, it enacted intimacy, rendering it a rich example of media theory around hypomnesia, anamnesis, and image as paradox.

Description

Describing my evocative object is fairly simple: if one pictures a heart locket in their mind, there is a high chance that the conjured image will resemble my locket. I wear a thick, 15-inch chain, which has replaced the thin, 20-inch chains that came before and broke due to excessive wear. On the chain sits the pendant itself, which is round and heart-shaped, meant to carry images close to the heart, quite literally. Despite the locket being empty for fourteen years, the absence of the photos did not erase the meaning of the locket for me, as the shell of the pendant reminded me of what is missing, and what is yet to come. As I have recently filled my locket with two images of my partner and me, the locket now mediates and embodies intimacy, love, and continuity.

Mediation

When empty, my heart locket mediated potential and expectation, as it was quite literally an object “waiting” for memory, in the form of special images. In terms of cultural and historical significance, heart lockets have been “associated with love, affection, and emotional connection” (Locket Sisters). Lockets bloomed in popularity as early as the Victorian era, in which lovers would store photos, letters, and even locks of hair from their loved ones — even when a pendant is empty, it stages that possibility of being filled. When filled with sentimental items, most commonly images, the heart locket mediates presence-in-absence: in my case, the photos of my partner stand in for him when apart. The heart locket creates intimacy through selection and scarcity, as the two images that are selected to reside inside the pendant are special and limited in quantity. Furthermore, the ritual of opening and closing the pendant’s hinge is a tactile mediation of memory itself. Empty or filled, the locket is never neutral. Rather, the shift demonstrates that this object and its mediation are dynamic and flexible, never fixed.

Theory

Upon thinking of which object of mine I would like to write about as an evocative object, my heart locket came to mind because of its ties to the theories and discussions we have engaged with in class. In Critical Terms for Media Studies chapter 05 “Memory”, Bernard Stiegler writes about hypomnesis, as the technical and externalized forms of memory, such as photography serving as memory externalizations, and anamnesis, “the remembering of things from a supposed previous existence” (Oxford). The former correlates to the locket when it held no photos, as it was already a technical support of memory. Its very design, with the hinge, cavity, and chain, indicates its intended use, of holding images of ones near and dear to your heart. When I wore my necklace as a child, I was very much aware of what it should contain — this cultural script is a form of hypomnesis as the object outsources memory before it is even filled. Its design and cultural script reminded me of the relationships I may one day want to preserve and honour with my pendant. When I finally placed photos of my partner inside, the locket became a coupling of hypomnesis and anamnesis: the images function as external memory supports, but only matter because they call forth embodied recollections each time I open it. In Stiegler’s terms, the locket demonstrates how technical memory and lived memory are inseparable in mediation (Memory 77).
In chapter 03 “Image”, W. J. T. Mitchell argues that images are always paradoxical — they are both present and absent, here and not-here (Image 35-36). My heart locket demonstrates this paradox in both ways: when it was empty, the absence of images was still meaningful as it reminded me of what should be there, consequently staging the absence as potential presence. Once filled, the photos embody the paradox even more clearly. My partner’s face is materially here in the locket, but he is also not here — only represented. Each time I open it, I experience both recognition and loss, the double-moment Mitchell describes where an image appears as both a physical object and a ghostly apparition (Image 39).

Conclusion

As a mediator, a heart locket is certainly dynamic, as they do not necessarily have to be “used” in the intended manner to mediate meaning. Connecting my evocative object to Stiegler’s theories of memory’s exteriorization and Mitchell’s detailing of image’s paradoxical nature reminded me that mediation is not solely about digital technologies — even small analog objects shape memory, intimacy, and identity. This is something that was also revealed to me in Sherry Turkle’s Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. However, connecting these theories to an object that I consider mundane and wear every day, is even more revealing, as it suggests that mediation includes both what is present and what is possible.

Works Cited

“Locket Sisters.” Locket Sisters, 2020, thelocketsisters.com/locket-stories/the-meaning-behind-heart-lockets-a-symbol-of-love-connection-and-cherished-memories/. Accessed 4 Oct. 2025.

Stiegler, Bernard. “Memory.” Critical Terms for Media Studies, edited by W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen, University of Chicago Press, 2010, pp. 64–87.

Mitchell, W. J. T. “Image.” Critical Terms for Media Studies, edited by W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen, University of Chicago Press, 2010, pp. 35–38. Accessed 4 Oct. 2025.

Turkle, Sherry, ed. Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. MIT Press, 2007. Accessed 4 Oct. 2025

“Anamnesis.” Oxford Languages, Google, 2025, https://www.google.com/search?q=anamnesis+definition. Accessed 4 Oct. 2025.

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Holding Memory

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Photo by me at the Laver Cup 2023 – making memories with friends

There’s a quiet intimacy in holding memory in your hands. My Fujifilm Instax camera has become a way for me to pause time, to transform fleeting moments with friends and family into fragile objects that I can touch, arrange, and carry. Unlike the endless scroll of images on a phone, each Instax print is deliberate. Film is limited (and a bit expensive), the picture develops slowly, and the print itself is singular. And by the time the image fully appears, the moment it records has already slipped into the past, leaving me with both proof and loss. This happened, and it’s gone.

I keep every print in a small photo album, a growing collection that has begun to feel like its own living archive. Flipping through its pages is different from scrolling through a phone gallery. Each print takes up space, carrying its own imperfections like a fingerprint smudge, a faded corner, a hint of overexposure. That’s why I think it’s an evocative object, one that teaches me how media hold onto time, how photos can mediate between presence and absence, and how the simplest object can become a way of thinking about what it means to remember.

To understand why these images feel so different from the thousands on my phone, I turn to media theory, which helps me see how the Instax mediates memory, materiality, and presence in ways that resist digital ephemerality.

Theory Part I – Objects & Materiality

Sherry Turkle writes that objects are “things we think with,” extensions of our inner lives that carry paradoxes into tangible form. My Instax camera has become exactly that. Every time I press the shutter, I’m reminded of what Turkle calls the way objects “extend the reach of our sympathies by bringing the world within.” This camera collapses an instant into a card I can hold, an object that forces slowness and attention in a world of infinite scroll. In the quiet ritual of waiting for an image to appear, I feel what Turkle describes in her account of Seymour Papert’s childhood gears, the way falling in love with an object can also mean falling in love with an idea. For Papert, gears opened the door to mathematics. For me, Instax prints open the door to thinking about time and how memory is always both preserved and already slipping away. Each print becomes, in Turkle’s phrase, a “partnership” that helps me live with presence and absence layered in the same frame. To hold one is to realize, as Turkle suggests, that theory itself can become an evocative object and that even in the smallest square of film, theory is brought down to earth.

Bill Brown helps me see why this matters so much especially now. He says, “materiality has come to matter with new urgency,” because we live in an era where images and information are constantly dissolving into pixels and numbers. With that context, my Instax photos feel like small rebellions. Unlike the phone gallery, where thousands of pictures blur into the endless scroll, each Instax print insists on its body. It can bend, fade, and hold the trace of a thumbprint. These so-called imperfections, in my opinion, are what make it feel alive and what Brown might call the “materiality-effect,” the way an object persuades us of its reality. Sliding a print into my album makes me realize that remembering is tactile and fragile, always mediated by surfaces, fibers, and light. Brown notes that new media often provoke a melodrama of threatened materiality as though the physical world is vanishing into code. But the Instax resists that narrative. It’s stubbornly here. A one-of-one artifact you can’t swipe away or back up to the cloud. In a time when digital photographs circulate endlessly yet somehow lose weight with every reproduction, my Instax reasserts the stubborn truth that memory is also matter.

Theory Part II – Images & Memory

W. J. T. Mitchell argues that images live in contradiction. They are, he writes, both “there and not there”material objects you can hold and spectral apparitions that summon what is absent. My Instax photos embody this paradox in the most literal way. When I watch a white square slowly darken into an image, I feel that double moment Mitchell describes: the excitement of recognition as my friend’s face or a fragment of sunlight appears, paired with the sudden awareness that the moment itself has already slipped away. Each print, I feel, is like a ghost, present enough to touch yet haunted by absence. Unlike the thousands of phone photos that blur together into a continuous stream, an Instax photo freezes the contradiction in miniature. Again, the feeling that this happened, and it’s gone.

Bernard Stiegler gives me another way of understanding what’s at stake here. He distinguishes between anamnesis (the living act of remembering) and hypomnesis (the technical supports) like writing or photography that externalize memory. The Instax makes me aware of both at once. Taking the photo is an act of attention, of choosing and framing a moment, an embodied practice of remembering. But the print that emerges becomes hypomnesis, a technical memory that lives outside me, tucked into an album. Unlike the automatic flood of digital images, though, this process feels deliberate. I decide what to keep, how to arrange the pages, what story the album tells. In Stiegler’s terms, my Instax resists the “industrial exteriorization of memory” that digital platforms often produce, where algorithms and infinite storage do the remembering for us. Instead, my album feels like a collaboration between lived memory and technical support. It’s not infinite, not perfect, definitely not optimized, and that’s what makes it special.

Thinking About Memory Now

We live in a time when most of our memories are outsourced to clouds and algorithms, where platforms decide what resurfaces for us through “memories” notifications and automated feeds. The Instax, by contrast, resists that industrial exteriorization of memory. It asks me to be deliberate, to decide what is worth holding onto and to give memory a material home. In that sense, it’s nostalgic but critical as it makes visible the stakes of how media mediate our lives.

In a way, this is a return to photography’s origins. Early cameras required patience and darkrooms producing images slowly and with effort. It feels like a strange return, a twenty-first century camera that reintroduces limits and imperfection. Maybe that’s what makes the Instax an evocative object. It reminds me that media are central forces in how we experience time, relationships, and even ourselves. And in thinking about memory now, in this moment of digital abundance and digital forgetting, we can see more clearly why theory matters as it helps us make sense of the fragile, human ways we hold on.

References

Brown, B. (2005). Materiality. In W. J. T. Mitchell & M. B. N. Hansen (Eds.), Critical terms for media studies (pp. 49–63). University of Chicago Press.

Mitchell, W. J. T. (2005). Image. In W. J. T. Mitchell & M. B. N. Hansen (Eds.), Critical terms for media studies (pp. 85–98). University of Chicago

Stiegler, B. (2005). Memory. In W. J. T. Mitchell & M. B. N. Hansen (Eds.), Critical terms for media studies (pp. 64–87). University of Chicago

Turkle, S. (2007). Evocative objects: Things we think with. MIT Press.

Blog post by Maryam Abusamak