Objects and Their Stories: Things Are Enriched with Meaning When We Know The Tales Behind Them

For quite some time this year, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around QR technology that enables folks to attach stories to objects.

Meanwhile, an update from Q&A subject Linda Garbe inspired me to really try to grok all the story/object initiatives I’ve read about this year. And I suppose the Christmas season puts me in mind of things.

In my family, an object story has been passed down through the generations, the “brass cannon” story, which coincidentally I first wrote about in this space exactly two years ago today. Based on the story, if a gift is given that the giver really wants for himself or herself, it’s a “brass cannon.”

Anyway, Linda Garbe writes: “I believe an object without a story has a short lifespan.” Linda is a storyteller and story consultant, but she also designs jewelry and notes that “many jewelry pieces live for decades because they do have stories to tell.”

She designed pieces inspired by the seasons, each with a story, and she recorded videos showing here creating the jewelry and tell its story. Here, the spring story/necklace, Standing in the Center of Spring:

Here are the others:

But back to QR technology: Those little scannable QR tags that became big this year for things like showing movie trailers on mobile devices are also being touted for their ability to tell the stories of things.

Tales of Things, in beta, is according to a Mashable article on the site, all about “adding memories and stories to objects and places via the Internet of Things and read/write QR codes. … Once an object is labeled with a scannable QR code, its movements can be tracked, as well as any subsequent stories. Each object has the ability to tweet when its memories are scanned, as well.” Tales of Things is the public tagging arm of the Totem Project.

Similar efforts include Itizen (about “using the tag code for your item and share a story about it: Who made it, where it came from, how you got it, what made you want it, whatever you like”) and StickyBits, a site that doesn’t emphasize story and seems to offer some sort of rewards for scanning things (“Stickybits is a free app you use to scan barcodes on all the stuff you love, instantly turning it into even more stuff you love.”)

Meanwhile, Significant Objects, which I first wrote about here, is still going strong. The site embraces a theme similar to that of the others but doesn’t involve tagging, does involve selling, and most interestingly, involves telling fictional stories about objects. Early this year, the site parsed data from a period including some of 2009 and some of this year. The premise of Significant Objects is that stories increase the value of objects:

A talented, creative writer invents a story about an object. Invested with new significance by this fiction, the object should — according to our hypothesis — acquire not merely subjective but objective value. How to test our theory? Via eBay!