NOBJECT ART

NOBJECT ART

The creations of SHA. captivate those who begin to engage with them, drawing them into a realm where the familiar world format of “observing subject here” and “observed object there” starts to dissolve. 

In this sense, SHA. extends a lineage of immersive art that, by means of ever-evolving technological possibilities, seeks to submerge individuals in artificial media — rather than merely confronting them with art objects. 

This process experiments with the relationship between self and world. 

At favorable moments, one of the defining challenges of our epoch becomes perceptible: whether and to what extent we can establish a third value, or a "nuanced zone," between inanimate and animate entities — a space populated by matter that has become relationally active, by hybrid agents existing between the psychic and the non-psychic. 

In an effort to carve out conceptual ground for such experiments beyond rigid subject-object thinking, Thomas Macho introduced the term nobject. 

At first hearing, this neologism may seem unusual, yet it serves to circumvent the psychoanalytic habit of describing even our earliest experiences of reality — those of the mother-child sphere — through the language of object relations. 

For such terminology fundamentally misrepresents the very first situation we all find ourselves in: a state in which no subject-object relationships exist whatsoever, but rather an experience of being carried, resonated through, held, enveloped, and warmed — without seam or dimension. 

Nobject Art — such as SHA.'s AlphaSphere — invites us to re-experience such nobject states, an effect that has already been impressively documented in scientific studies. 

The unique genius of the AlphaSphere lies in the fact that the “anamnesis” it enables and facilitates is not experienced as exposing or unsettling, but rather within a climate of relaxation and reassurance. 

This striking intersection of artistic and therapeutic potential makes the project particularly compelling from a psychological perspective. 

(Dr. Thomas Slunecko, Psychotherapist and Professor at the Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna)