Ghostly Sock Odyssey, 2024

Curated by FYSIKA
Supported by FOC space

 

Everyone will nod their heads to this persistent mystery. Where and why did a pair of socks that I took off safely disappear? I’m sure you’ve been looking for a missing pair of socks at least once, so I’m sharing a video I recently enjoyed.

(Video1)

‘One pair of socks left’ packed in one drawer. The woman in the video says in a very definite tone that she is going crazy because she keeps losing her socks. “There’s a sock monster at home.” The reporter guessed that the socks were inside the washing machine and checked the bottom of the machine, but found only other miscellaneous items and no socks. (So, is it really the work of the ‘sock monster’?)

 

The ‘sock monster’ also appears in Austin Hillbrecht’s short animation ‘The Missing Sock (2010)’. The main character of the animation searches the washing machine for lost socks and is sucked into an unknown portal. Through this portal, he is thrown into an unfamiliar world where lost clothes are piled up like a mountain, where he tries to find his lost socks, but ultimately fails due to the interference of the ‘Sock Monster’. What is impressive here is that ‘Sock Monster’ appears as a character with mass.

(Video2)

‘Sock Monster.’

This monster, which cannot actually exist, gains its persuasiveness from the fact that it is impossible to explain why socks disappear without the intervention of unrealistic elements. The project “Ghostly sock odyssey, 2024” began as an experiment to twist and delve into this playful branch of imagination.

 

While searching for related data in addition to the previous two videos, I discovered some interesting research. Physicist Stephen Hawking and Nobel Prize winner in physics Roger Penrose, in their book The Nature of Space and Time (1966), attributed ‘naturally occurring black holes’ to the loss of socks.* This concept, reminiscent of Austin Hillbrecht’s animation ‘Portal’, explains the everyday phenomenon of losing socks in astrophysical terms. George B. Johnson, a renowned science educator, also raised two interesting hypotheses** regarding the loss of socks (although they were later rejected in the verification process): (1) The socks themselves have an ‘intrinsic property’ that causes them to disappear. (2) Socks are transformed into other objects, such as hangers.

 

As an extension of this academic approach to the cosmic riddle of ‘lost socks,’ Sehikyo developed a new hypothesis below from the perspective of a ‘garment maker’.

 

An object placed physically close to a ‘sock’ functions as a ‘portal’ that promotes the movement (or loss) of the sock. Therefore, it raises the possibility that socks’ neighbors, that is, ‘garments,’ rather than the washing machine, are ‘portals.’ Judging by the phenomenon of socks being found again one day no matter how hard you search for them, socks may have an inherent ‘will to move’. Socks that disappear without anyone knowing can be returned to their original place without anyone noticing.

 

The experiment process to prove the hypothesis is as follows. Sehikyo created several ‘wearable portals’, or ‘things to wear that function as portals’. Next, he randomly attached one of several pairs of socks made with a hand knitting machine to different wearable portals, symbolising the state of a sock being misplaced and lost. These ‘things to wear’ with a pair of socks attached are given a unique serial number (to track how two randomly separated pairs of socks find their ‘match’) and are available in the gallery. From the moment a person selects a favorite item from a wearable portal, purchases it, and wears it, the location coordinates of the separated (or lost) sock are synchronized with the wearer’s movements.

 

Now the possibility of the sock finding its match depends only on the following: When two wearers, each carrying two wearable portals with a pair of matching socks attached, meet by chance or intentionally track each other to find their partner. (We cannot rule out the possibility of a person purchasing two wearable portals with matching socks attached, but it would be very unlikely.) Two pairs of socks that are separated from the wearer’s daily movements that occur while wearing and living with the clothes on. Can we come to a dramatic conclusion of reunion? If possible, is it the result of the wearer’s subjectivity or the expression of the ‘will to move’ inherent in the socks? Are the subjectivity of the wearer and the inherent will of the socks completely independent of each other? If the answers to these questions are found through experiments, it may provide a small clue to many people’s arduous efforts to solve the mystery of the lost sock.

 

 

* Hawking, Stephen; Penrose, Roger (1996). The Nature of Space and Time (2010 Thirteenth reprinting ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. p. 59. ISBN 9781400834747. Retrieved 11 August 2021.

** Johnson, George B. (8 November 2008). "On Science: The Case of the Missing Socks". St. Louis Public Radio. St. Louis Public Radio (NPR). Retrieved 11 August 2021.

 

 

 

The exhibition was curated by FYSIKA and supported by FOC space. 

Photo: Dai MIYATA (Konel)
Poster illustration: Yuichi ETO 
Text proofreading: Haeun Kim (Bench and Press)
Special Thanks to Dai, Euna, Issei, Keiko, Satoco, Sena, Seoyoung, Tomoaki, Yuichi.