Intercultural Design: Proposal & lectures
04.01.2021 - 00.00.2021 (Week #1 -Week #7)
Seerat Tayyab Mukhtar Qureshi - 0345576 (BDCM)
Intercultural design
Lectures:
Week #1:
In our first lecture for this module we were introduced to what we should expect from this module. Our lecturer Mr. Asrizal gave us the weekly plan and we were asked to divide ourselves into groups as this module will be entirely group work. Dr. Charles then gave us a lecture on Netnography since that is the main medium of research we will be using due to the pandemic.
Fig 1.0: Netnography slides
Fig 1.1: Weekly Plan
Week #2
This week we had two guest speakers who gave us a talk over zoom. The first one was Mr. Tintoy who was talking to us about the traditional art of Wayang Kulit. He told us about his project where he combined the Star Wars franchise into this traditional art. He explained his thought process and his creative design process when coming up with the designs. He even mentioned that they got permission from LucasFilm in Singapore to use the characters. They even sent one of the puppets to Mark Hamil.
Fig 1.2: Mr. Tintoy and his Star Wars puppets
Fig 1.3: DC Heroes as Wayang Kulit
Our second speaker was Ms. Natasha Hishamudin who is the CEO of a batik company known as GAHARA. She talked to us about the origins of GAHARA and the significance of Batik to not only Malaysia but South East Asia in general. She talked to us about how the process of creating Batik can vary from artist to artist. Ms. Natasha explained the process of block printing and how the blocks are created. She mentioned an interesting think that when a block is created, the design is destroyed so that it can be unique and not copied.
Fig 1.4: GAHARA batik
SOURCE: https://www.gahara.my/
Week #3:
This week our guest lectures continued and we had Mr. Munir Yahya and Dr. Emelia Ong. Mr Munir talked to us about the challenges he faced while practicing intercultural design in the fashion industry. He mentioned that sometimes you have to design stuff that suits a culture or idea even if it clashes with yours because thats how you learn and gain more experience about the world. He describes his experiences as he travelled all over the world.
Dr. Emelia Ong talked about her abstract art practice. Her art is very expressionistic and she discussed the importance of culture in art. She explained a bit of her creative thinking process and how she is able to articulate such pieces of art that express emotion through abstract strokes and colours.
Week #4: No lectures from this week onwards and each of the groups presented their proposals.
INSTRCUTIONS:
Module Information Booklet
Group project:
PROCESS:
Reflection:
Week #1: When first presented with what we were supposed to produce in this module I was a bit overwhelmed and honestly confused because I did not know what we were expected to produce. Luckily as the lecture went on I started to understand what they expected from us. I was super bummed when I found out that we would travelled to another country under normal circumstances but due to the pandemic we cant. Nevertheless, we have no choice but to keep pushing.
For our group project we first brainstormed what subculture we could pick and work one. Everybody was asked to come up with one idea. My idea was to look into vintage fashion culture and how its largely influenced from vintage Japanese fashion.
Fig 1.5: A moodboard I created
After we all pitched our ideas we realised some of them had the common theme of Japanese fashion so we decided to stick with that. One of my group mates pitched the idea of Yamii Kawaii fashion in Japan and how its used as a coping mechanism for mental illnesses by people.
We all agreed that that was a very interesting topic and so we decided to go with that. We started working on our proposal slides. We liked the idea of using Tarot cards as a final design as seen below in our proposal slides.
Fig 1.6: Proposal slides
We also prepared a Google Form to send out to people as part of our research where they answer questions about Yamii Kawaii and state some thoughts they have on the subject.
Fig 1.7: Our Google Form
We received feedback from Ms. Jinchi and the other lecturers. They were not too convinced by our idea of using the tarot cards. So we decided to regroup and think of more ideas. We liked the idea of art prints or tapestry. Mt group member Naim provided us with this visual that we all liked.
Fig 1.8: Ukiyo-e art
By using the Ukiyo-e art style, which is an older traditional japanese art style to show Yamii Kawaii we want to create a contrast between the two. One being extremely traditional and fine art and the other being a rule breaking and modern form of art.
Reflection:
Week #1: When first presented with what we were supposed to produce in this module I was a bit overwhelmed and honestly confused because I did not know what we were expected to produce. Luckily as the lecture went on I started to understand what they expected from us. I was super bummed when I found out that we would travelled to another country under normal circumstances but due to the pandemic we cant. Nevertheless, we have no choice but to keep pushing.
Week #2: This was a super interesting lecture and I especially enjoyed Mr. Tintoy's work. I was amazed by his creativity and getting to see the behind the scenes of his process was quite insightful and interesting. It was very inspiring to see that how one small idea can completely transform into an amazing project that brought to light the dying art of Wayang Kulit in a way that would interest people in modern times. The GAHARA presentation was also quite interesting since I didn't know much about how the fashion and textile industry operated. Once again the creative process was very interesting to see and very insightful.
Week #3: Mister Munir was a very interesting and captivating speaker. He spoke about his adventures from all over the world and what problems he has had to face because of cultural differences in the world. He gave us advice on what to do when dealing with designs from different cultures and ideologies. Our next speaker Dr. Emelia was also a very inspiring lecture and her abstract artworks were very interesting. Learning a bit about her creative process was very insightful and useful.
Week #4: I was very nervous about presenting my part and I didn't want to mess up and let my group down. Luckily our presentation went well. Even though our tarot card idea was not as well received as we would have wanted, we got see an entirely new perspective of how our design might be perceived by others.
Feedback:
Week #2: Miss Anis liked our Yamii Kawaii idea and suggested we look further into Japanese street fashion. She sent us a 360 degree walkabout of Harajaku as it was the closest we could get to experiencing Japan. I looked through the video and it was interesting to see a few people dressed in a style similar to Yamii Kawaii
Week #3: Miss Anis said we need to make our link between Yamii Kawaii and tarot cards stronger. She suggested we look at some Japanese tarot cards rather than the simple modern ones. We decided to include those in our proposal slides as well.
Week #4: Miss Jinchi was not too sure about our idea of tarot cards she said that as they are used for fortune telling, instead of giving mental ease they rather cause more mental stress as people constantly worry about things that might happen to them because they were predicted by the cards. She said that would sort of defeat the purpose of Yamii Kawaii which is to ease mental stress through fashion and design.
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