On Observing - The Power of Timeless Art and Artifacts

Revered objects — an ancient bronze Buddha, the soapstone Christ above Rio — are not single things but superposed realities, each true to the one observing it. The scientist reads an object and follows its material backward through casting, ore, crust, and dying stars to the Big Bang. The faithful need none of that chain; the message lands whole. This essay argues that neither observer is mistaken, drawing on the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics and QBism, which hold that there is no observer-independent fact about a thing — no view from nowhere — but only relations. Walter Benjamin's concept of aura names the accumulated weight of having been witnessed, and the singing Colossi of Memnon supply a historical precedent for the reported "humming": one stone, a thermal mechanism, and a meaning entirely dependent on the listener. The piece closes on the figure of an observer whose "jays are aligned" — ego removed from the line of sight — who holds every relation at once and so perceives the object hum, glisten with endless color, and resonate with the whole history of its becoming. The power was never in the object; it is in the relation.