171 research outputs found

    Wajima Collaboration Project Research Report

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    Design revolutions: IASDR 2019 Conference Proceedings. Volume 2: Living, Making, Value

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    In September 2019 Manchester School of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University was honoured to host the bi-annual conference of the International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR) under the unifying theme of DESIGN REVOLUTIONS. This was the first time the conference had been held in the UK. Through key research themes across nine conference tracks – Change, Learning, Living, Making, People, Technology, Thinking, Value and Voices – the conference opened up compelling, meaningful and radical dialogue of the role of design in addressing societal and organisational challenges. This Volume 2 includes papers from Living, Making and Value tracks of the conference

    Traces of emergence: an ontological unification of perception, artefact, and process

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    Objects are part of a complex matrix that contain emergent experiences and meanings. Ernesto Rogers once claimed that if a spoon was examined carefully enough, one could establish how the maker would design a city. While this observation from the great Italian architect may be an over-generalisation, it draws upon an important point – the objects that humans create are reflections of ourselves, our beliefs, our feelings, motivations, and drives. In short, our whole material and emotional culture. The study of design revolves around the dynamics between form, the processes of making and the diverse experiences of object interaction and use – ontologies of artefact emergence that articulate with the complex patterning structures and practices that produce all of material culture. There are two dominant narratives we must consider when examining design as a practice of making. One, as a narrative of form evolution derived principally from a hylomorphic designer-agent ontology1 and the other, as a narrative of making and manufacturing understood through ontologies of matter manipulation. The relationship between the two narratives, this work will argue, presents deep and poorly understood problems with respect to the current taxonomies and ontologies describing advanced manufacturing, limiting the conceptual evolution of design thinking and processes of making and manufacturing. Moreover, this work will argue that pattern and patterning motions is a key meta-concept for understanding design practice that has until this point, received a limited amount of attention. While there are emerging paradigms of research including Industry 4.0 and ‘new materialism’, these have not comprehensively addressed the core disconnect between understanding process and understanding perception. The new materialism mostly explores the making processes of ‘craft’ - which have an important relation to and are indeed antecedents of advanced industrial processes – that do not include the conceptual innovations of advanced process control, CAM for instance. Industry 4.0, while offering interesting insights and innovations in terms of process control does not tend to examine the assumptions that go into forming its conceptual landscape – process ‘optimization’ or defect minimization are for instance seen as by definition, good.Objects are part of a complex matrix that contain emergent experiences and meanings. Ernesto Rogers once claimed that if a spoon was examined carefully enough, one could establish how the maker would design a city. While this observation from the great Italian architect may be an over-generalisation, it draws upon an important point – the objects that humans create are reflections of ourselves, our beliefs, our feelings, motivations, and drives. In short, our whole material and emotional culture. The study of design revolves around the dynamics between form, the processes of making and the diverse experiences of object interaction and use – ontologies of artefact emergence that articulate with the complex patterning structures and practices that produce all of material culture. There are two dominant narratives we must consider when examining design as a practice of making. One, as a narrative of form evolution derived principally from a hylomorphic designer-agent ontology1 and the other, as a narrative of making and manufacturing understood through ontologies of matter manipulation. The relationship between the two narratives, this work will argue, presents deep and poorly understood problems with respect to the current taxonomies and ontologies describing advanced manufacturing, limiting the conceptual evolution of design thinking and processes of making and manufacturing. Moreover, this work will argue that pattern and patterning motions is a key meta-concept for understanding design practice that has until this point, received a limited amount of attention. While there are emerging paradigms of research including Industry 4.0 and ‘new materialism’, these have not comprehensively addressed the core disconnect between understanding process and understanding perception. The new materialism mostly explores the making processes of ‘craft’ - which have an important relation to and are indeed antecedents of advanced industrial processes – that do not include the conceptual innovations of advanced process control, CAM for instance. Industry 4.0, while offering interesting insights and innovations in terms of process control does not tend to examine the assumptions that go into forming its conceptual landscape – process ‘optimization’ or defect minimization are for instance seen as by definition, good

    The Home as an Object: Material Culture in the Age of IKEA

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    The curiosity of everyday objects looms large in every human’s life. And naturally, these objects are almost as diverse in character as the person who bought them. This variation can be in style, period, shape, origin but also in the arrangement it is given in relation to other objects or persons in a space. On one level, the objects we surround ourselves with are meaningless, purely functional, utilitarian and banal. Especially on a budget, one may not consider aesthetic or design issues at all and purely buy a toaster because they want toast. Why would one buy a SMEG+Dolce and Gabbana toaster when they could just get one from Home Depot that works exactly the same? How does a chair that costs 3.7millionstackupnexttoa3.7 million stack up next to a 30 Ivar IKEA chair? Such is the daunting, age old question that collectors, designers, journalists, connoisseurs and gallerists alike have been discussing in cycles for decades. The 1851 Great Exhibition broke down the assumption that goods did not need to be starkly divided into everyday objects and fine art and since then, through our progressive obsession with Japanese and Danish ideals, the West has steady moved towards a sense of artificial simplicity. Through my thesis, I plan to further address this by analyzing new trends in furniture and object design in terms of fashionability, historical references and prejudices attached to the medium of craft. In sum, by analyzing this contemporary canon of design as an art historian, ultimately a new dialogue will emerge on everyday objects and their agency

    Monopponom as an Emerging Japanese American Craft: Creating a Transcultural Public Relations Plan

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    53 pagesThe popularity of traditional Japanese crafts and handmade crafts has dwindled in the past century. This thesis combines traditional Japanese craft principles with cultural theories of communication to create a transcultural public relations plan for Monopponom, an Oregon-based Japanese American craft business, in efforts to revitalize crafts into the mainstream. Specifically, craft principles by Soetsu Yanagi and Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions theory, Bardhan’s Third Culture theory, and Curtin and Gaither’s Cultural Economic Model informed the strategies for this campaign. The result was a transcultural public relations model that layered predictive and descriptive communication theories that together formed a more robust and culturally relevant communication campaign for targeting diverse audiences. The plan is yet to be implemented. Suggestions for future research include expanding target audiences beyond Japanese American niche groups and developing strategies for other international localities to expand third culture spaces

    Author Biographies

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    Textile Society of America 10th Biennial Symposium 2006 October 11–14, 2006 Harbourfront Centre Toronto, Ontario A-Z pp. 1-2

    Dimensions of Recipe Register and Native Speaker Knowledge: Observations from a Writing Experiment

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    This study investigates native Japanese speakers’ context-dependent linguistic knowledge of cooking recipes. Recipes are a typical example of a register, defined as the use of language in a particular social situation for a specific purpose. Thirty participants in the present study were asked to write a recipe for curry rice (a popular dish in Japan) or an unnamed soup (shown in a photo) on a blank piece of paper without access to any resources. Most participants’ texts contained specialized vocabulary and basic procedural organization. On the other hand, few integrated the typical grammatical features of commercial recipes. It suggests that the latter details are not part of the communicative repertoires of most participants. The grammatical characteristics of commercial recipes are likely a product of careful editing, aimed for clarity and consistency. Professional editing appears to have a significant role in shaping the grammar of the written register

    Design and Society in Modern Japan: An Introduction

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    Introduction to a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Review of Japanese Culture and Society. The introduction, which draws on the expertise and knowledge of the three co-authors in modern art history (Adriasola), social history of design (Teasley) and spatial design studies (Traganou), sets out research questions, challenges and opportunities for studying the relationship between design and society in Japan, 1900-2015, looking both historically and at contemporary practice. The introduction intends to introduce current concepts of design as social practice to historians and other arts, humanities and social science scholars of Japan, and to demonstrate how a perspective that sees social spaces and networks as 'designed', and that views design and architecture practice and products as valid, valuable examples of historical conditions, can enable humanities scholars to engage more effectively with research into modern and contemporary Japanese culture and society. The introduction also offers an overview of key historical developments and conditions for design as an industry, profession and product in Japan, c. 1900-present day. It ends by challenging scholars who engage with design in Japan to address questions around gender, class and other determinants of power relations, and to understand design as an expanded practice, beyond the outdated, inaccurate and limiting view of design that persists within Japanese studies
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