The German philosopher Heidegger speculated that we never really come to grips with what a hammer is until we encounter one with a broken handle. Similarly, the artist Meret Oppenheim’s fur-covered tea cup compelled us to take a fresh look at an object so familiar that we hardly know it’s there. Thwaites’s bumbling attempts to build a toaster, meanwhile, could be seen as a way to open our eyes to the astonishing technological complexity we apply to the simplest of tasks, and the rampant consumerism this entails.

¶ 3:30 PM