Boa
Boa is a sculpture that challenges how we use superficial, inconclusive labels to make generalizations. Wood, both organic in material and form to begin with, is segmented into 17 pieces and reconstructed with synthetic adhesives, into a new organic form. Through this process of extensive manipulation, the sculpture resembles a snake in abstraction and exists as both natural and synthetic.
(Materials: wood, wood glue)
The labels “natural” and “synthetic” are often used to make blanket value judgements, e.g. “herbal supplements are good because they are natural”. Most herbal supplements while “natural” use artificially concentrated amounts of active ingredients for effectiveness and require extreme processing to become shelf stable. Not only are appeals to nature logically fallacious, the label “natural” is too often used ambiguously. As such, even if natural is in fact good, it is unclear what qualifies as natural in the first place.
On the flip side, snake venom is natural but toxic. Yet the boa constrictor — a non-venomous snake — triggers the same defence mechanisms nonetheless. It is important to not only think about over counting the boa constrictor as venomous. Also consider under counting other venomous creatures that we want to avoid but fail to because they do not satisfy arbitrary appearances.
While this might sound trivial as it seems better to be safe than sorry, accepting generics come with costs. One cost in particular is evidential. Consider the generic “sharks eat bathers”. Even though only a small minority of sharks actually eat bathers, we generalize that all sharks are predatory. Accepting this generic creates a looping effect: once we decide that sharks eat bathers, we consequently avoid sharks.
Thus, we directly remove our opportunity to observe how sharks behave around bathers. Because our behaviour is altered, we lose out on disconfirming evidence, such as non-predatory human-shark interactions, that would otherwise lead us to reject the generic.
To learn more about how generics shape our perception and influence behaviour, check out:
Beyond Average: averages as a statistical myth, why averages concerning human beings can become problematic indicators and the implications on education design.
The Original Sin of Cognition: generics as a psychologically fundamental means of understanding the world, consequent prejudice and segregation, and how modifying language use offers a hopeful solution.
Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing: factors that make some stereotypes useful and others harmful, how testifiers suffer credibility deficit due to prejudice held by the recipient (testimonial injustice) and how social experiences are excluded from collective understanding due to marginalisation (hermeneutical injustice).