Objets Trouvés, Shizen, and Biophilia

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Rich calling from Jackson, Wyoming.

Well, I have been in search of a word for a little while.

I am a freelance writer, and I had an idea for an article here in Jackson, and I’m sure lots of other places.

People, you know, we go out, we wander around the woods and we stumble upon a cool rock.

You know, that’s an interesting shape.

Or, of course, antlers and animal bones or even an interesting shaped stick.

And we bring these things home and we use them in our homes to, you know, as kind of part of our decor.

Or it might be outside.

And I just thought this was kind of an interesting phenomenon.

I have never really read anything about people doing this, but I know a lot of people do it.

And so, but my first task in sort of reporting the article was to figure out what the heck you would call that.

You know, like finding natural items, something in nature, and bringing it back home, you know, unchanged.

You’re not carving it or changing it in any way, but just using that natural item in your home as decoration.

That’s interesting.

And did you come up with anything for that?

I really have not.

My first thought was, well, the Japanese have to have a word for this because they have a word for all sorts of great things.

But I didn’t stumble upon anything.

And then I thought the Germans have a great talent for mushing words together to form a new word.

And the closest I came was when I Googled Natur, German for nature and Kunst, art.

I’m pretty sure that’s right.

And I did get hits, but they were like interior design companies.

They were like the names of interior design companies that kind of had like a nature theme to the sort of stuff that they did.

So it’s not a bad word, but I don’t know if it’s like a commercial.

It’s just something that a business glommed onto.

I also found a French phrase that…

Was it objet touvet?

That’s right. That’s right. That’s it exactly.

Yeah, that’s found art or found object.

And that’s what I was going to suggest.

Found object art or found art is very common and has been used for at least 60 or 70 years.

This idea that you use everyday objects that represent beauty in unexpected places,

And you use them to bring that beauty to your own designs and your own workspace or living space.

But it doesn’t quite capture the nature that you were talking about.

Thinking about rocks and antlers which are is another design aesthetic which is a biophilic

Design which is this oh that’s a good one yeah which is obviously the love of the nature bio

Being representing nature but usually that has more to do with architecture which is the

Structure of the space the structure and the light and the patterns the views of the space

The viewshed, as they call it in architecture,

What you see when you look through the windows and apertures of the space.

It’s funny that you should mention Japanese and German

Because there are two words in those languages.

You looked up the German word for nature,

But did you look up the Japanese word for nature?

I did not, no.

So the Japanese word for nature, one of the words is shizin,

And it means nature or naturalness.

Translated into English, it’s roughly about the unforced organic quality of something.

How you might place, say, those rocks or sticks in an intuitive way in a design or a space.

Not feng shui, but more like, all right, I just know in my heart that this is where and how these

Need to go in my house in order for them to work. You know, as an artist, these rocks need to go

Here this is how I feel as an artist right so that’s shizen spelled in English s-h-i-z-e-n

But the Japanese and then in in German and this doesn’t quite match because in English the concept

Is cabinets of curiosities and it’s about collections of rare and unusual objects you

Often see them represented literally as a cabinet with lots of cute tiny drawers something like a

A pharmacist’s wooden

Cabinet. But in German

It’s Wunderkammer.

Wunderkammer means cabinet of curiosities.

It’s a curated display of

Artifacts. And in this case, they’d be natural

Artifacts. So you might have feathers

And shells and you might have

Crystals.

But Wunderkammer is called W-U-N-D-E-R

K-A-M-M-E-R.

Yeah, that’s a good one.

I like that.

And Rich, I’m reminded

This isn’t exactly relevant, but it’s sort of germane to this discussion.

I keep thinking about the term leverite.

Do you know this term?

Oh, yeah.

I was telling a friend about this just the other day, and he came up with leverite.

Yeah, it’s the term leverite.

L-E-A-V-E-R-I-T-E, leverite, which is used by geologists when it’s a rock that’s not interesting enough to take with you.

Lever right there.

Lever right there, yeah.

Yeah, so maybe there’s some term that you could form out of lever right, you know, like un-lever right or something.

I also want to spell the French term we mentioned earlier, objet touvet.

It’s O-B-J-E-T space T-R-O-U-V-E with an acute accent on the E.

Mm-mm-objet touvet.

I mean, it just means found object, objet touvet.

Yeah, yeah.

Great, great.

Those are some awesome suggestions.

Yeah, I hope it works out for you.

And if you come up with something that you’re proud of, send it to us, all right?

I sure will. I sure will.

Thanks, Rich. We really appreciate you bringing this cool topic to us.

Thanks for your time. Great to talk to you all.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye, Rich.

Bye-bye.