Innate, Implied and Imparted Energy
Innate Energy (Industrial or chemical energy)
This is a general form of energy attached to an object. This type of energy is in proximity to the industrial or the chemical process of manufacture of the object in question e.g. innate response to an old shoe would be something like.
- The shoe design was common in Zimbabwe in the late1960’s during the wake of the industrial era after the land apportionment act of …….. This led most indigenous males to leave their rural home and look for industrial employment in the urban city.
- Made from tanned leather from Matabeleland cow hide
- Rubber sole imported from India.
This form of energy is usually very impersonal a general. Most people can relate to it at common aesthetic level.
Implied Energy
This can be described as the object’s intuitive ability to trigger memory or thought that is exclusively personal in relationship to the audience. This type of energy is very personal and differs with each audience. You can discover an item such as a necklace having a very special value being ascribed to it; usually this value is a non commercial one but a sentimental one. This type of energy can also be measured by using the energy test as described earlier.
At this level we look at how matter has the cognitive ability to appeal to the most personal and intimate aspects of an audience. The process of reflection and identification causes the object to acquire a new status and merit at this level the industrial and physical or aesthetic aspect of the object is outweighed by the newfound meaning of the object.
At this level of discussion we discover some of the reasons why art can be therapeutic and can be a point of contact for different people in a personal way. This type of energy usually appeals to the childhood memories. My personal illustration is the old brown suitcase at our house, when I see the same one of something like that it immediately connects to that part of my childhood back in the summer of 1992. There are several personal events that are intimately connected to that image, the cognitive process begins. Another example is the multi coloured umbrella at our old home the first images and memories that are triggered are closely associated with a very special woman: Mai Emilia our next door neighbour who was a cross border trader and used to bring the umbrellas from South Africa. Another example is the yellow maize commonly known as ‘Kenya” to most Zimbabweans it will remind them of the drought in 1992. This type of maize meal became very famous in this period as relief food aid.
With some of the objects the cognitive process is not only visually induced but can also appeal to other senses like the sense of smell, in the case of Kenya it had a very strong cereal smell which was not very pleasant. The visual interaction can also bring to life the smell associated with the object.
According to Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory The first five years of a child’s life are the most crucial. The Theory states that we re-enact child hood especially this period .With this view in mind the implied energy of an object becomes more elaborate. There are usually objects that characterise every stage of one’s life and they carry an energy associated with experiences that are exclusive to such a period.
I went to school with a lady by the name of Tafadwa Pamire. It was the agriculture class of 1997, Presbyterian secondary school in Mhondoro.This lady was traumatised the sight of a slaughtered and dressed chicken. To her there was a negative implied energy around the sight of the bird. We later discovered there was some traumatic event connected to the sight in her childhood years.
Imparted Energy
A unanimous type of value ascribed to objects because of their association with certain people. This type of energy is consensus based and has a stagnant and conditioned aspect about it e.g. the Shoes that were used to assault George Bush by a journalist were being bidded for on e-bay,The shoes that Nelson Mandela wore during his debut political campaign are objects of power a property of the Nelson Mandela Museum in South Africa, The hair comb that Michael Jackson used of his visit to Zimbabwe and pieces of Madonna’s underwear, a wrist watch and sandals worn by Mahatma Ghandi considered national heritage Ghandians.
Follow the rest of the article below
- A Thousand Icons on a cultural desktop
- Innate, Implied and Imparted Energy
- The energy of objects illustrated in Shona Rituals
- Zimbabwe in Cultural Transition
