Cultural Reflections
Cultural Studies in Visual Communication: Comparing Russia & China in the 1950s
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Huaixiang Tan, Kim Joo
This presentation will focus on visual arts communication in the 1950s, in Russia and China. Art is a medium of expression where the individual and a culture come together. Chinese and Russian art, of this period, are examples of overt involvement of a government in the direction of the content of art. This study will emphasize how an individual artist produces her/his artwork when culture becomes a tool of the government, and then politics impacted the art as an expression of the time; how the art was influenced each other between Soviet and China, under the social realism. The influence of art style reflects the historical and political significance of the recording details of the art training, people’s lives styles, and explanations about the significance of each piece of art that was produced during those time period.
Made in Italy: Articulation of National Identity through Prism of Vogue Italia Magazine
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Daria Müller Velasquez
‘Made in Italy’ is a phenomenon mainly researched in sociology, economics, and cultural studies. The current research is based on fashion studies, where creativity has always played the major role. The paper looks at the concept of ‘Made in Italy’ in the formation of Italian fashion and the role of the concept in the building of national identity. The paper reflects on the ideas of articulation of national identity through the prism of Vogue Italia fashion magazine. In order to understand how the phenomenon of ‘Made in Italy’ can be characterized today the study is aimed at collecting relevant data and explaining how the Italian style has been translated over the years and exported beyond the spatial confines of the nation. Besides, the paper sheds light on how creativity helped the Vogue Italia magazine to explore the market and to become one of the most recognizable fashion magazines in the world. The empirical base of the research begins with the very first Vogue Italia issue, launched in 1965, then goes through analyzing the essential issues, released in 1988 and 2008, and finally leads us to the deep understanding of the recent issues of 2018. The paper suggests the ‘three-C’ theory that is based on the three variables, such as clothes, color and context. Specific creative elements and their adaptation to the Italian market are being identified both qualitatively and quantitatively with the purpose to highlight the dominant characteristics of the ‘Made in Italy’ phenomenon in fashion industry.
The Cultural Representation Methods in Product Design
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Xuesong Wu, Zilong Li
This study explores the mechanism of cultural representation in design realms in order to provide new methods and ideas for regional cultural construction and cultural innovation designs. It deepens the understanding of the relationship between cultural representation and technology application and the essence of design by case analysis method. The most significant aspect of the process of the cultural representation is to propose the meaning, which is the process of interpretation and also the process of clarifying and returning the culture perspective. It is more difficult to represent culture by technology application. In addition, the approach of cultural representation by symbol could mark a culture, and play the role of identification, but it is difficult to understand the culture through symbolic cultural representation.
