Many names were given to apples over the years; apples played roles in many stories, books and movies. Perhaps the most common role that the apple plays in our culture life is becoming the symbol of passion. For example, a careful inspection of the Adam and Eve story (not in its biblical context, but as a human interest story) or the story of Snow White, reveals the passion of the apple as a tool, and though it seems that in these two stories the goal was different, the ultimate goal of the apple as a tool was one and the same: control. For this reason, the apple, represent not only the passion, but rather, it is depicted as the tool for passion for control.
In ancient Greece, to throw an apple at someone was to declare symbolically one’s love; and accordingly, to catch it was to show symbolically one’s acceptance of that love. The apple was considered sacred to Aphrodite, it was the object determining love and refusal, passion and control. “I throw the apple at you, and if you are willing to love me, take it and share your girlhood with me; but if your thoughts are what I pray they are not, even then take it, and consider how short-lived is beauty.” Plato wrote in one of his epigrams.
The witch uses the apple to seduce Snow White and cause her to fall into a deep sleep. By doing so, she was able to maintain control over the existing beauty scene.
When William Tell shot an apple off his son’s head, the apple represents the control that one has over his body, his hands, and above all, over someone else’s life.
Even the ownership of the name ‘apple’ has led to one of the biggest quarrels in modern era. Between the years 1978 and 2007 there were several legal disputes regarding trademark rights and ownership of the name “apple” between the label Apple Records and the computer manufacturer Apple Computers. Steve Jobs told of how he came up with the name ‘apple’, he had just came back from an apple farm, and thought the name sounded “fun, spirited and not intimidating”.
Similarly, many of the new apple varieties released to the market today are the intellectual property of their breeders. Every apple has a person who bred it and has the ownership “rights” for it and control over the variety. Growers must sign a contract that specifies how the trees will be grown and where they are sold, and they must pay annual royalties for every apple sold. This method of gaining rights over nature’s names or nature’s seeds is a new phenomenon that did not exist just a short while ago.
Should we restrain the control we have gained over nature? When we say ‘nature’, what do we see in front of our eyes? How does the industry look today? How does our food look today? How do we look today? The image in the next page reminds me, how people look today.
Humans, since the cognitive revolution, used power to control nature. This is one of the main methods that leads us to where we are today, for better or for worse and it led me to create this project.
Continue reading:
pommedesignproject.com 