<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><b><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">*research in progress, 2008</font></b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><b><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">We are pleased to announce the fourth annual</font><b><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> *research-in-progress</font></b><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">, presented by the History, Theory and Criticism section of the Department of Architecture at MIT. The 2008 workshop, focusing around the theme</font><b><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> “What Object” </font></b><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">aims to offer graduate students an opportunity to work together in cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional dialogues, and, specifically, with objects in mind. </font></font></div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></font></p><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">Please see attached poster for schedule and presentation topics. ** Keynote addresses by Edward Eigen (Princeton School of Architecture, History and Theory) and Peter Galison (Harvard, History of Science and Physics).</font></font></div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></font></p><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">Made possible by by a Graduate Student Life Grant (c/o the MIT Graduate Students Office) and the Office of the Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning.</font></font></div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></font></p><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> --------------------</font></font></div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></font></p><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> Objects are at once physical bodies, grammatical constructions, and philosophical abstractions. We obsess over objects of desire, objects of affection, and objects of scorn; we encounter found objects, objets d'art, object lessons, and the occasional objection. In short, we are awash in objects, objectives, and objectification; the discourse of objects can be both concrete and endlessly expansive.</font></font></div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></font></p><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> To introduce Things That Talk, Lorraine Daston writes: "Imagine a world without things. It would be not so much an empty world as a blurry, frictionless one: no sharp outlines would separate one part of the uniform plenum from another; there would be no resistance against which to stub a toe or test a theory or struggle stalwartly. Nor would there be anything to describe, or to explain, remark on, interpret, or complain about – just a kind of porridgy oneness. Without things, we would stop talking."[1] </font></font></div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></font></p><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> Our object-riddled and thing-populated world, then, urges us to continue to keep talking. This is precisely what we hope this meeting of Research-in-Progress will foster: continuing dialogues about how objects work in our world, how they don't work in our world, what they do, and, fundamentally, how they keep us in conversation with one another. How are our practices – artistic, architectural, scientific, academic, everyday and otherwise – continually informed by objects? And how do the objects of our practices necessitate overlap with other kinds of practices? Or, alternatively, when do we reject objects? And to what ends?</font></font></div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></font></p><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></font><font size="2" style="font: 10.0px Lucida Grande"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> [1] Lorraine Daston, "Speechless," Things That Talk, ed. Lorraine Daston (New York: Zone Books: 2004): 9-24, 9.</font></font></div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font size="2" style="font: 10.0px Lucida Grande"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"></font></span></font></p></body></html>