Intercultural Design / Project 1 - Framing

04.01.2021 - 30.01.2021 (Week 1 - Week 4)

Jocelin Agustia (0345436)

Intercultural Design - Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media

Project 1 - Framing

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INSTRUCTION

Module Information Booklet
Weekly Plan and Assignment Detail

Week 1

I was most excited when I heard we could travel to other countries in this module, but sadly because of the pandemic, we can't go and experience the culture on the spot. As briefed, we will have guest lecturers that will help us learn about new cultures. This semester 1.5, we have new lecturers Mr. Asrizal and Dr. Charles. Both Ms. Jinchi and Ms. Anis was our lecturer back in semester 1 so I am already familiar with them. 

We need to form a group of 5 people for our project and Sir Asrizal suggested to us that it is better to have students from other majors as we can help each other. Then, we have Dr. Charles explaining to use about Netnographic Vs Ethnographic.

figure 1.1 Netnography Slide

Ethnography requires us to be on-site in order to collect data, interacting with the source face-to-face, and engage in their activities, while Netnography is more or less ethnography but online. That means it doesn't require us to be present as we can search online. However, there are disadvantages to netnography such as false data. 

We will be doing our project netnographically as we can't travel this time.

This project requires us to settle on one theme and we decided to use revival. Sir Asrizal told us to prepare questions as the next class we will have a QnA session, so my group came up with these:

1. Can we compare both the historical and modernized fashion? To indicate how it has enhanced through time.

2. Will there be specialists, as someone who can guide us with our research?

We had our questions answered today and through the session, we saw that a lot of groups are using hanbok as their topic, so we decided to change into Hanfu instead as no one has chosen that yet. Here are the answers to our question:

1. Can we compare both the historical and modernized fashion? To indicate how it has enhanced through time.

Answer from Sir Asrizal:

• Take a look a the application in older times and now, how is it applied in daily lives? 
• What is the representation before and now? Does it lean toward trend, style, or still have the same value and meaning as before?
• What does it carry? Status or something else?
• Look at the colors and design, which could have meaning behind
• What message you want to convey?

Answer from Dr. Charles:

• Identify discussion groups online such as community, fan base, etc.
• After that, we can identify a specific area that we want to deep-dive into research

2. Will there be specialists, as someone who can guide us with our research? (we didn't ask this but miss Jinchi gave us the answer)

    

Answer from Ms. Jinchi:

• The guest lecturer will not answer your specific topic so when asking questions we need to have wider questions not specifically towards your topic

Dr. Charles then suggested all of us start mapping, as it can guide us better

figure 1.2 Mapping

We had a group discussion and all of us did some research regarding our topic, although we are still not clear yet as to what specific area will we study. 

Week 2 

We had guest lectures coming, Mr. Tintoy and Ms. Natasha. We first learned about Wayang Kulit from Mr. Tintoy and it was amazing how he and his teammate could do a fusion of Wayang Kulit and Start Wars. They refer to the original Wayang Kulit and then designed a new one based on it, they also modify other parts of the Wayang Kulit to make it balance while still sticking to the original. Mr. Tintoy also said that when they first started this fusion there is a lot of challenges such as people criticizing their work as they think that they're ruining the value of Wayang Kulit, but then they have a solution: Show the people. And now, people are very much interested in this fusion.

Next, we have Ms. Natasha the CEO of Gahara to explain about Batik. The first thing I learned is that Batik Malaysia doesn't use fauna as their design, which is different from Batik Indonesia as they use both fauna and Flora. So, Batik Malaysia focuses more on Fauna. Ms. Natasaha also taught us how to choose the right Batik, we must first go to the boutique, open up the batik fabric and look at the design, we also need to have it stick on our skin so we could see whether it suits us or not. Lastly, we should ask where the batik came from.

Then, we were given time to do some research about our topic and we came up with a lot of research questions and objectives which could help us pave our way to be more clear regarding what we wanted to do. 

figure 1.3 Hanfu Research

This week we also had a consultation appointment with Sir Asrizal and after showing our research to Sir Asrizal he told us to do more specific research on some areas such as:

1. Identify the importance of these clothes, what do the symbols represent in the clothing. 

2. Understand more of the types of hanfu and how they differentiate from each other.

3. What do the colors and patterns represent?

4. How is hanfu in the past different from the modern hanfu?

5. Identify if the meanings have changed.

Week 3 

We had the 2nd guest lecture today with Mr, Munir and Ms. Emelia. They told us a lot about cultural studies and from there we can see what the importance of colors is, how perspective is very important, and we also learned a lot about their experience in the field. 

The consultation in week 2 results in deeper research and we decided to divide the work and put all our new research summary into Miro.

figure 1.4 Hanfu Research in Miro

figure 1.5 Hanfu Reserach Slides 

Mr. Asrizal said that we had a lot of research questions and we should narrow it down because there are some that actually can be put together, so 3 is enough. 

Week 4

We will have our next presentation this week and our presentation slide is ready, however seeing that we had a lot of slides and we were only given 10 minutes to present our proposal, we decided to rehearse before actually presenting it and as the result, we ended up narrowing it so it won't exceed the time limit. 

We also started to think of what we should do for our final result and came up with a lot of interesting ideas such as:

• Poster
• Resin Art
• Textile/Fabric Design
• 3D Sculpture
• Instagram Filter
• Chinese Painting

But then, because we think that Chinese painting is too common, we decided to not use it and 3D sculpture was also hard to make and we can't do it together because of the situation right now (Covid) so we decided to not go with it too. 

Mr.Asrizal said that we have already done a lot of detailed research however the research questions we came up with are too general and we need to come up with more specific ones. And the research objectives and questions are not really related.

We were so confused so we did another consultation with Sir Asrizal. He gave out few pointers regarding what we could do:

Research Question 1 -> Focus on political view

• How can the current community or hanfu enthusiast be able to develop this ancient hanfu into the current world without being diminished by the political community?

Research Question 2 -> Evolution of Hanfu

• How does the modernized hanfu decrease the symbolism strength from the ancient hanfu?
• How does hanfu evolve in the current era?

Research Question 3 -> Final Design based question

• To revive the Hanfu into the current world, how does the final design impact?

After having a discussion with my group members we came up with new ROs and RQs. We had a hard time deciding which word is better to be used.

Research Questions

First choice:

• What role does politics possess in the revival of hanfu?
• How can political opinions be reduced and hanfu restored to their original meaning?
• How can hanfu be restored to its original symbolism without the emergence of the political agenda?

Final choice:

• What role does politics possess in the revival of hanfu?
• How has the symbolism of hanfu and its meaning evolved?
• How can hanfu be restored to its original symbolism without evoking the political agenda?

Research Objectives

First choice

RO 1:

• Distinguishing the rise of the political agenda due to the return of hanfu
• determining if the revival of hanfu is influenced by politics
• Identifying the relations of political views on the hanfu

RO 2:

• Identifying the evolution of hanfu's symbolism
• Identifying and understanding the evolution of the hanfu symbolism
• Conserving the originality of the hanfu symbolism

RO 3:

• To produce a final outcome that enhances the national esteem of political threats
• Developing innovative and creative products based on hanfu without evoking the political agenda
• Returning the meaning of the hanfu without evoking the political agenda

Final choice

• Distinguishing the rise of the political agenda due to the return of the Hanfu
• Identifying and understanding the evolution of the Hanfu symbolism
• To produce a final outcome that revives the Hanfu to its original meanings without the emergence of political views

figure 1.6 Hanfu Final Proposal

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FEEDBACK

Week 2

• Take a look and identify the importance of these clothes, to indicate the symbols which these clothes present, in political or non-political views. 
• Understand each type of Hanfu clothing. The presentation of its colors or patterns, and what is it used for? Any specific occasions? 
• Make comparisons for both the Hanfu, in the past and the present, and identify whether these clothes still carry the same meaning or symbol. 
• Define Hanfu’s visual presentation.
• Search for more information through digital platforms like digital museums.

Week 3

• Narrow the 5 ROs and RQs to, 3 ROs and RQs (must be correlated)
• Change and combine a few research questions

Week 4

• Some of ROs and RQs are quite general, try to indicate something specific from the Hanfu
• Talk about the 'Modern Hanfu’, whether this modern hanfu styled clothing will diminish the design quality of the Ancient Hanfu or not
• Research done on political views regarding the Hanfu is good
• Try to focus on China's current situation to incorporate the ideas of  Hanfu with the political context. This can create a discussion setting.

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REFLECTION

Experience

4 weeks for project 1 is actually a very long time, so we have a lot of time to do research and we also had a lot of consultation regarding our project. The group members were great, they are all very nice and easy to get along with and most important of all is that they are willing to do the task they are given.

Observation

I realized that there are lots of cultures that I haven't learned of yet and they were all actually very interesting. Even with the topic we chose, Hanfu, there are lots of new information that were new and unexpected for me.

Findings

Since our topic is Hanfu, I did a lot of research regarding it and found it a lot. I was never interested in other countries trending news and stuff but because of this research, I find that there are actually a lot of things that need to be clarified. I also had a lot of fun when researching for the design and patterns in hanfu, they were all so beautiful and elegant.