Hi John,
I just thought these lines reminded me very much on the 'things' placed at the tables in your's and Paul's exhibition:
'7. That thing is called 'free' which exists solely by the necessity of its own nature, and is determined to action by itself alone. However, that thing is called necesarry or rather compelled which is determined by another to exist or operate in a certain and determined way.
B.Spinoza, Ethics, part one on god, p. 75 Oxford philosophical texts , tr. G.H.R.Parkinson.
best wishes, Margit