Patina

A shoe is a mass produced object. From the factory, each pair is the same, and intent to be the same within one size. The traveller walking with a pair of shoes to the far corners of the world, picking up the dust and the experience of travel in its wear and tare, makes the shoe something-else: an object that has a history. Of course when the shoe finally fulfilled its function, it will go into the garbage can, with that history of the travel going with it. The person gained in knowledge and experience in that travel, may be a photograph taken or a diary written, then this unique occurance of a person's life is recorded or faded into the river of time. What is gain in this whole process, just as the same question is asked: what is gained in the process that is life? What purpose? This whole business of civilisation and culture our of the human species on planet earth. The time and space of history progress onward, developed, evolved, transformed, metamorphasized. The uniqueness of it all, its beauty and glory, its flashes of wonderment, of emotions, feelings in human. May be only human sees and appreciate the beauty, or regarded as beauty. The color of patina, of going through a certain time. This is completely different from the value of replication. The un-replicable. Replication is the mock of time because the same happens forever, or can be made to appear forever, yet the un-replicable happens only once in the catalogue of time. In the digital realm the copies proliferate, multiply and possibly fill the universe, it has power in numbers, it lacks the originality and beauty of the singular item that cannot be replicated, like a person, a life, the travelled distance.