By Angela Watercutter
www.wired.com
9-26-13
By definition, UFOs should not be built.
In order to have an “unidentified flying object,” the origins of said object must be unknown. And yet, technically, we know how to identify UFOs – or at least as pop culture has imagined them. They are flying saucers covered with lights that float through the air like spinning plates. Or something. Some people spend their lives looking for one, others fear what would happen if they were abducted by one.
Yet, artist Peter Coffin has built one. . . .
. . . The goal of Coffin’s
UFO is to evoke these very disparate reactions. After being fascinated by what UFOs seem to represent in our culture as a kid growing up in the 1980s, the artist began digging into how humans deal with
UFOs psychologically. That interest continued into adulthood when he discovered that analytical psychologist Carl Jung had actually wrote on the subject called,
Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies.
In the book, Jung didn’t concern himself with whether or not UFOs were real, but rather why anyone would think they might be. . . .