Tim Ingold’s essay, “Bringing Things to Life: Creative Entanglements in a World of Materials,” is a summation that nothing is static or ever finished; material forms are always acted upon by various sources. He emphasizes more importance in the process than a static product. Ingold states five aspects that support this idea of process being more important than form. His first argument is that forms are not objects but things. Things respond and react to forces allowing us to be productive or do. A thing creates a space where living happens. Second, he continues with the idea of life and agency. He defines life and agency through boundaries—not separate-but rather points where things diffuse or stick; it’s a place where things mutually act upon each other. Third, materials and materiality, is where people bring together materials in hopes of what might emerge. His fourth argument he labels improvisation and abduction. He describes this as allowing things to unfold unexpectedly; not to force a set direction or reach an end but to keep going. Lastly, he mentions network and meshwork. He describes this area of interaction as a place where things act indirectly upon other things. Overall, Ingold states that there is mutual interaction among things, whether indirectly or directly, and that forms are not static objects, but necessities that allow us to experience. We should look at the process of things rather than things as dead objects.
Ingold utilizes beautiful descriptions or metaphors as examples to explain these areas of interaction among things. The reading is a beautiful analysis for artwork, and how artwork is not a static object with a set ending; rather, a boundary where interactions occur, or the areas in which materials are brought together with no set expectation just a hopeful emergence of an ever evolving thing. In essence, his five points of argument are powerful supporters for the description of creativity.