Objects of Interest
Jagannath Icon and the Myth of Incompleteness: A Design Case Study and Visual Interpretation
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kaniska Biswas
Hindus believe in worshipping God in shapes and forms. Lord Jagannath is an iconic representation of God Vishnu, carved in wood and is worshiped along with his brother Balabhadra and sister Subhadra as a triad. The Jagannath temple from Puri, India is one of the four major pilgrimages according to Hindu belief, and the idol of Lord Jagannath has been discussed in this study from a visual perspective. Myth articulates that the first idol was crafted by God himself and is believed to be incomplete due to a legend associated with its creation. The belief is invigorated by the absence of fingers in the hands of the triad and due to the missing leg portions. This study has explored the design magnificence of this triad and has explained its completeness to be latent in its posturing incompleteness from the perspective of visual investigation. The study explores the synthesis of superlative art with mystic myths behind the design of this splendid iconography and found abstraction as the design mainstay.
Cultural Teapot Solution: A Design Study View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ezgi İlhan
Culture has a significant impact on the products. If a designer wants to create a product, first of all s/he needs to know the target people and the environment. Knowledge related to cultural elements and traditions makes the design process possible to begin one step ahead. How a product design can satisfy cultural needs in the modern life is the main question of that study. In this study, tea is interpreted as a cultural element of Turkey, like many different countries all over the world. Since tea has a strong power for Turkish culture, meaning of teapots play an important role for the culture, as well. The importance of tea, the role of teapots and a design process of a teapot is explained. This study focuses decisions, steps and process of a design study through a new modern teapot product, Teasy, which is designed for the present study. The selection of the product was done according to following criteria: tea has the power to create its own culture and the teapot can carry and symbolize strong cultural impacts. In the study, product design stages are defined from the beginning to the end product. Existing problems and potential users of the product, design considerations, materials, mechanism, and connection details of the product are also analyzed through the product.
Self-narrating Cloth: Engaging the User by Amplifying the Traces of Making
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jessica L Priemus
Despite almost universal participation in textile use, the understanding of the fundamentals of textile construction within the global north appears to be increasingly superficial. The typical person is largely unexposed to the making process of textiles and textile products, as production is outsourced to locations distant from the final user. In recent years, fashion and textile designers have attempted to engage users in their making processes and origins through the use of various supporting media. Brief and curated ‘haptic’ videos of work being made are commonly exhibited through social media channels, and advertising copy is increasingly engaged with construction details such as maker, origin, technique and materiality. The intention of my research is not to disregard the production of this additional media, but to propose a turn to utilising the textile itself as the site for further user engagement. In this paper I reflect on a collection of weaving experiments used in a series of interviews conducted in Perth, Australia – my place of residence, and Dhaka, Bangladesh – a major producer of textile products for export to the global north. Applying practices and theories in architectural tectonics and a gothic ontology, I seek to determine the characteristics of cloth that may a) increase user engagement and b) allude to the event of its making through amplifying the poetics of construction. The hypothesis here is that employing a tectonic methodology provides woven cloth, as a carrier of fundamental properties, with the capacity to narrate its own story.
