Taking stock of stuff. What else do you think I need?

Abstract

There are many ways in which an object becomes ours. As current western society embraces the use of recommendation and generative algorithms in an ever expanding digitally dependent and consumer centric world, where does the agency of the individual's choice lie in deciding what they will get next? How will this affect the person's desires of what they really want or need versus what they are being fed through these systems? What stuff will be used and what will become a burden? What gets lost along the way? This project is a design research inquiry examining the desires and influences we receive from our collected objects, other people, and algorithms. By comparing the objects I have been given with things I chose to get myself, and by experimenting with recommendation algorithms to find out what I should get next, I hope to reveal more about society and the individual's conflicting assumptions, intentions, and consumptions of things.