It may also be useful for you to look at the collections of the Museum of Everyday Art. The website address is http://www.sanskritifoundation.org/
This museum is in Delhi and was established in 1984. Objects of everyday life connected with the manners and customs, beliefs and practices of the urban and rural populations of India are displayed in the Sanskriti Museum of Everyday Art. There is a catalogue of the collections written by Jyotindra Jain in the library.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
INVESTIGATING KITCHEN IMPLEMENTS - GETTING STARTED
Researching Indian products through published material is invariably difficult because Indian products are not documented and written about much. So this is why what this batch of students is attempting is very important. I don't think any of them has realizes this yet! So other methods of collecting information need to be used. Ahmedabad is fortunate to have a museum of vessels (http://www.vechaar.com/metal_utensils.html) and a visit to this museum good could be a good start. The bulk of the information would really come from oral testimonies - from senior product designers, from the older generation, from professional cooks, owners of shops selling kitchen ware, hotel owners and the like. The internet would also throw up something, especially from websites of companies manufacturing kitchen equipment. Also old magazines which product advertisements - the NID library has bound volumes of the Illustrated Weekly of India for instance. Find out what the object you have chosen to study is called in different Indian languages and that might give a clue (for instances see if the word is Arabic, or Persian, or indigenous - that will give you something to follow up). See if the kind of food related to the object is eaten in other cultures - for instance roti, tortilla, pancake - check what implements are used in those cultures.
Record all the information along with all available visuals. MENTION SOURCES FROM WHERE INFORMATION WAS ACCESSED - For oral testimonies mention person, date and time of interview and place of interview. For websites - mention url and date it was accessed. For books - author, title, publisher, date of publishing and place of publishing. Make a start on this and see how it goes.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
KITCHEN IMPLEMENTS IN INDIA TODAY
To explore the idea of continuity and change in the design of products we are going to investigate implements used in Indian kitchens – to see where they came from, how they are adapted to Indian food and cooking methods and how they have changed in response to changes in taste and lifestyle.
We have brought into the classroom a toy kitchen set – a set quite appropriately called
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
SYNTHESIS, CONTINUITY AND CHANGE
History is often seen as a catalogue of changes over time. Yet, most cultures have living traditions which go back millennia and while a study of the history of design looks at how things changed over time, we also need to account for how some objects, images, symbols and rituals persist – often with little change.
In groups, participants investigated ancient cultures from different parts of the world – Mesopotamia, Egypt, Rome, Greece, Indus Valley, China, Central America – to explore their cultural achievements, their contact with each other and the synthesis and sharing that this led to and elements that persist to this day.
HOMO FABER, HOMO LUDENS, HOMO SYMBOLICUS - HOMO DESIGNER?
What were the first acts of design? The course participants looked at ways in which early humans used elements from their environment to fashion tools made of bone and stone, shelters from wood, leaves and hide, clothing from bark and hide, visual expression in cave paintings and through hand gestures and ways in which these transformed human societies. Central to this investigation was the role of fire - the security it offered, the possibility of cooking food and its implications for hunting and leisure, gathering around the fire and its impact in the development of song, dance and storytelling and so on. There was also discussion on how 19th century archeologists, anthropologists and adventurers investigated, uncovered and deciphered this aspect of human achievement and transformed our knowledge of human history. And in the process our understanding of Homo Designer.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
The Forgotten Map
Due to the decisions humanity has taken in the past have to lead us to a place of global crisis.
Life is an understanding sequence of bifurcations. The Decisions in the life are very important. The understanding of Life holds for individual as well as for Community is the same.
` The world described in the 12th century was and felt was a world where love was not only possible but made sense and had a universal meaning. For the centuries there are always, two worlds representing the route we navigated, and the other the route which we still have to navigate. We and Nature, the observer and observed are separate entities. Science is the supreme Manifestation of reason, and reason is the supreme attribute of the human being.
A discipline where mathematics has become an end in itself instead of a tool, and where only that which can be measured is important, has generated models and interpretations that are theoretically attractive but totally divorced from reality. All of a sudden in the last century we found ourselves in the world of confusion; in a world where progress becomes so incomprehensible that we desperately seek refuge in a technology that offers us an escape into virtual realities.
We have never in all of our existence accumulated more knowledge than during the last 100 years. We are celebrating the apotheosis of reason, but in the midst of such a splendid celebration we suddenly have the feeling that something is missing. The result will be that we will know everything that van be known about love. But once we achieve that complete knowledge, we will sooner or later discover that we will never understand love unless we fall in love.
We have learnt that knowledge is not enough, and that we have to learn how to attain understanding in order to achieve the completeness of our being and the completeness of our science. We are, perhaps, beginning to realize that knowledge without understanding is hollow, and that understanding without knowledge is incomplete. ‘Knowledge is not the road that leads to understanding but understanding is the result of integration, while knowledge has been the result of detachment.’ Language influences our perceptions and hence shapes our actions. In the past there was nobody who was in hurry. After all they were constructing for eternity, and eternity in Timelessness. The language dominating the 19th century was basically that of the consolidation of the nation-state. It was only in the 20th century that the dominant language became that of economics, especially during the second half.
We have a tendency to perceive ourselves as members of a successful culture. However, the truth is that no matter how far we extend the concept of success, we are still incomplete beings, materially overdeveloped and spiritually poor.
We need a new language that opens the door of understanding; not a language that may emerge from the depth of our self-discovery as an inseparable part of a whole that is the cradle of the miracle of life.
“If we would seek comfort in the whole, we must learn to discover the whole in the smallest detail that which she intends as a whole.”
Girish Wagh
girish_w@nid.edu
Product Design
Life is an understanding sequence of bifurcations. The Decisions in the life are very important. The understanding of Life holds for individual as well as for Community is the same.
` The world described in the 12th century was and felt was a world where love was not only possible but made sense and had a universal meaning. For the centuries there are always, two worlds representing the route we navigated, and the other the route which we still have to navigate. We and Nature, the observer and observed are separate entities. Science is the supreme Manifestation of reason, and reason is the supreme attribute of the human being.
A discipline where mathematics has become an end in itself instead of a tool, and where only that which can be measured is important, has generated models and interpretations that are theoretically attractive but totally divorced from reality. All of a sudden in the last century we found ourselves in the world of confusion; in a world where progress becomes so incomprehensible that we desperately seek refuge in a technology that offers us an escape into virtual realities.
We have never in all of our existence accumulated more knowledge than during the last 100 years. We are celebrating the apotheosis of reason, but in the midst of such a splendid celebration we suddenly have the feeling that something is missing. The result will be that we will know everything that van be known about love. But once we achieve that complete knowledge, we will sooner or later discover that we will never understand love unless we fall in love.
We have learnt that knowledge is not enough, and that we have to learn how to attain understanding in order to achieve the completeness of our being and the completeness of our science. We are, perhaps, beginning to realize that knowledge without understanding is hollow, and that understanding without knowledge is incomplete. ‘Knowledge is not the road that leads to understanding but understanding is the result of integration, while knowledge has been the result of detachment.’ Language influences our perceptions and hence shapes our actions. In the past there was nobody who was in hurry. After all they were constructing for eternity, and eternity in Timelessness. The language dominating the 19th century was basically that of the consolidation of the nation-state. It was only in the 20th century that the dominant language became that of economics, especially during the second half.
We have a tendency to perceive ourselves as members of a successful culture. However, the truth is that no matter how far we extend the concept of success, we are still incomplete beings, materially overdeveloped and spiritually poor.
We need a new language that opens the door of understanding; not a language that may emerge from the depth of our self-discovery as an inseparable part of a whole that is the cradle of the miracle of life.
“If we would seek comfort in the whole, we must learn to discover the whole in the smallest detail that which she intends as a whole.”
Girish Wagh
girish_w@nid.edu
Product Design
Thursday, August 7, 2008
RESPONSE TO FORGOTTON MAN
History of Design
Philippa Abbott
Reading: “The Forgotten MaN”
Manfred Max-Neef
This article is very interesting in terms of how we can look at the past to see how we are to move forward from our current point of global crisis. The idea of “paths not taken” as a starting point for interrogating how to move forward is wise and sad. Many great peoples voices have been lost over so many centuries in favour of “reductionist science” and because of this it is true that we “find ourselves in a world of confusion; a world of disenchantment where progress is paradoxical and absurd, and reality becomes so incomprehensible that we desperately seek refuge in a technology that offers us escape into virtual realities” (p8).
We have pillaged the earth and much of it’s people for the creation of industrialised society with an undying thirst for more and more products and more and more money. Social progress and individual success is too often gauged in monetary terms and the translation of this into objects beyond necessity. Each object in this system has an integrated cost which is not financial. It is social. It is environmental. These other costs are invisible to the eye of gleaming consumerists, like monkies with shiny objects we want without consideration of the input of every object - the transportation, the embodied energy, the human disempowerment and poverty creation; the self destructive character of societies that allows this in the name of “neoliberal globalisation”. We have simultaneously constructed the delusion of searching for happiness and the attachment of this too material wealth, and many other social myths to displace the guilt of our ways and where we have come to.
Each man listed spent a life interrogating what was the meaning of life - what ideas could be used for an individual and society to live. Francis of Assisi believed that love is embodied in nature and is the path to universal meaning. Machiavellian thought created a dark world of fear as an effective means to control society. Mirandola believed that the reconciliation of different philosophies/religions and the respect and understanding of them was the key to social harmony; society constructed many truths rather than truth being static and immoveable in meaning. Bacon believed truth was absolute - inferring there was one right and by consequence everything else was wrong. Effectively creating a policy of inclusion/exclusion creating the Other. This Other is a dichotomy that is interlaced through all Western social constructs today - one such example is the “haves” and the “have nots”.
Absolute truth creating one right answer meant creating an absolute system of power. Those who were right, or in other words, knew the absolute truth had power over all others. Those who believe in different truths were automatically outcasts and the target for harassment or worse.
This was underpinning society before Bacon however his association of absolute truth with extraction of “fact” from nature under the name of science became particularly poignant in view of the past few centuries; the industrial revolution, technological advancement, consumerism and global crisis.
The beliefs of Bacon or Descartes become the dominant belief systems when articulated and accepted publically by the majority, or for the majority by those in power. At these points we see bifurcation. We see a place to start looking for what other opportunities as societies and individuals we have. By looking at Mirandola’s views we can then see how the other avenue may have worked, critically analyse this in terms of modern day issues and find a way forth.
It is interesting to then think about how the social conditions of how the theories of Bacon, Descartes, Newton or Gallileo became the path creating such drastic implications. The growth of past societies in such a way that society as a whole desires these thinker’s theories as an acceptable path. When I read Descartes, “what I see through my window are hats and coats covering automatic machines”, I do not believe he meant for the “triumph of mechanism and reductionism”. To me it is a social comment on the lack of initiative among the people around him, a feeling of alienation within Descartes and his desire for creative thought and individualism within the world he lived in. I here a forewarning in this quote of mechanism & reductionism as negative and to be feared. This is not in my view a call to rapidly create a dysfunctional society obsessed with technology, Descartes is saying society needed to recognise itself to become human.
This in itself is an interpretation of truth. I do not absolutely believe Max-Neef or my own explanation. Each though, can be argued as an engagement with the past to construct a world view in the present. A way then, of perceiving reality and create the next path.
What then does the next path hold? What can be drawn from Francis, Mirandola, Bruno and Goethe? There is a pattern of characteristics throughout the fields, that of integrating notions of love, feeling, intuition and contemplation of the world around us into scientific and thus wider social discourses, as a part of multiple accepted truths. This would mean accepting Machiavelli, Bacon, Descartes, Galileo and Newton also. All paths are truths due to the nature of truth, tolerance of difference and enlightenment. They are a key perception at a point in history of the world and their ideas of the future.
Max-Neef comments on Goethe’s contemplation, “the arousal of the feeling of wonder through contemplative looking in which the scientist would come to see God in Nature and Nature in God”. (p6) Much has come from the minds and hearts of many great thinkers who were also greatly religious - there is no doubt of this. This seems to exclude those without religious faith as having any power to believe in that which cannot be proved by scientific method. Science is beautiful, the discoveries from within it are incredible and prove the awesome power of the universe itself. This is Goethe’s contemplation however without the absolute truth that is created of the believer’s God. This may be Christian, Muslim or Jewish. So I think it is not a fair comment of Max-Neef to say, “Feeling , intuition, consciousness and spirituality are still banished from the realm of science.” I think the scientific method is to prove or disprove a totality in practice; it still allows contemplation of ethereality in the findings of this method. So although I agree that we do need to bring other senses into our interpretation of the world on a mass scale; this is not to say it as been banished from all discourses and that this in itself is the cause of “virtues such as faith, hope and charity manifest themselves today metamorphosed as schitzophrenia, depression and narcissism“ (p 8).
There is a deeper quality within basic values of mankind no matter the God that is tied to the Earth and the way in which we interact with it and each other.
The plethora of knowledge created from science is a means of bringing us to the point of navigation to experience. Unfortunately at a historical point we chose to use this information to advance technologically and lose our connection with nature and other people.
Max-Neef’s explanation of the difference between knowledge and experience is very enlightening. We can know many things however the less we experience and involve ourselves the more disassociated we become, “understanding is holistic, while knowledge is fragmented”.
I think this is particularly pertinent within the West where the indirect channels of goods to bring the product to the user (completely unattached to it’s origins) to become a commodity in a supermarket. Children in Australia have no idea beef comes from a cow. Meat originates in a supermarket to them. Although children voice this more clearly, most adults have also chosen this path also. They are so inebriated with consumer culture, so disattached from the experience of a cow‘s death to satisfy their hunger. Instead it is a slice of meat, cut, packaged in plastic (with no though of what has gone into creating that plastic or the transportation of livestock) available on a shelf in a supermarket.
I wonder whether this is a culmination of guilt, deliberate disattachment due to a subconscious or underlying realisation that all is not quite right with the world and we may not have chosen the right path, that each person must change to make any change. This is as Max-Neef states:
“a period in which global poverty has increased dramatically, debt burden has crippled many national economies and generated brutal over expolitation of both people and natural resources; destruction of ecosystems and biodiversity have reached levels unknown in human history; and accumulation of financial wealth in ever fewer hands has reached obscene proportions”.
We as Westerners are locked within our self inflicted reality and too addicted to change. Consumerism is an addiction and one with drastic consequences as Max-neef describes well. This must change, we cannot live in bubbles with our things whilst others suffer. I differ from Max-Neef in believing knowledge is incredibly important factor in the experiencing of the world, we need to integrate this knowledge into the experience. Without knowledge we could not talk of Descartes or Goethe. Without knowledge we could not read this article or discuss possible paths. It is the importance of not justifying actions for the sake of knowledge, knowledge needs to be living and breathing. It would be incredibly “wise to unearth the alternative map of the route we did not navigate”. I think this map needs to be learnt from and experienced through the reformation of social systems in accordance with values that have been swept aside by the whirlwind that is the pursuit of knowledge. These values are a spirituality however do not need to be attached to a God, and if they are, this may again be their denial once again. The world is suffocated : there is no longer any bifurcations if we want to continue living upon this Earth.
Knowledge itself has to be deregulated and sustainability must be the key to experiencing the world once more as something outside ourselves and our absurdly short time frames. We need to see ourselves as part of the living system that has been for many eons before and hopefully will be for many after.
Philippa Abbott
Reading: “The Forgotten MaN”
Manfred Max-Neef
This article is very interesting in terms of how we can look at the past to see how we are to move forward from our current point of global crisis. The idea of “paths not taken” as a starting point for interrogating how to move forward is wise and sad. Many great peoples voices have been lost over so many centuries in favour of “reductionist science” and because of this it is true that we “find ourselves in a world of confusion; a world of disenchantment where progress is paradoxical and absurd, and reality becomes so incomprehensible that we desperately seek refuge in a technology that offers us escape into virtual realities” (p8).
We have pillaged the earth and much of it’s people for the creation of industrialised society with an undying thirst for more and more products and more and more money. Social progress and individual success is too often gauged in monetary terms and the translation of this into objects beyond necessity. Each object in this system has an integrated cost which is not financial. It is social. It is environmental. These other costs are invisible to the eye of gleaming consumerists, like monkies with shiny objects we want without consideration of the input of every object - the transportation, the embodied energy, the human disempowerment and poverty creation; the self destructive character of societies that allows this in the name of “neoliberal globalisation”. We have simultaneously constructed the delusion of searching for happiness and the attachment of this too material wealth, and many other social myths to displace the guilt of our ways and where we have come to.
Each man listed spent a life interrogating what was the meaning of life - what ideas could be used for an individual and society to live. Francis of Assisi believed that love is embodied in nature and is the path to universal meaning. Machiavellian thought created a dark world of fear as an effective means to control society. Mirandola believed that the reconciliation of different philosophies/religions and the respect and understanding of them was the key to social harmony; society constructed many truths rather than truth being static and immoveable in meaning. Bacon believed truth was absolute - inferring there was one right and by consequence everything else was wrong. Effectively creating a policy of inclusion/exclusion creating the Other. This Other is a dichotomy that is interlaced through all Western social constructs today - one such example is the “haves” and the “have nots”.
Absolute truth creating one right answer meant creating an absolute system of power. Those who were right, or in other words, knew the absolute truth had power over all others. Those who believe in different truths were automatically outcasts and the target for harassment or worse.
This was underpinning society before Bacon however his association of absolute truth with extraction of “fact” from nature under the name of science became particularly poignant in view of the past few centuries; the industrial revolution, technological advancement, consumerism and global crisis.
The beliefs of Bacon or Descartes become the dominant belief systems when articulated and accepted publically by the majority, or for the majority by those in power. At these points we see bifurcation. We see a place to start looking for what other opportunities as societies and individuals we have. By looking at Mirandola’s views we can then see how the other avenue may have worked, critically analyse this in terms of modern day issues and find a way forth.
It is interesting to then think about how the social conditions of how the theories of Bacon, Descartes, Newton or Gallileo became the path creating such drastic implications. The growth of past societies in such a way that society as a whole desires these thinker’s theories as an acceptable path. When I read Descartes, “what I see through my window are hats and coats covering automatic machines”, I do not believe he meant for the “triumph of mechanism and reductionism”. To me it is a social comment on the lack of initiative among the people around him, a feeling of alienation within Descartes and his desire for creative thought and individualism within the world he lived in. I here a forewarning in this quote of mechanism & reductionism as negative and to be feared. This is not in my view a call to rapidly create a dysfunctional society obsessed with technology, Descartes is saying society needed to recognise itself to become human.
This in itself is an interpretation of truth. I do not absolutely believe Max-Neef or my own explanation. Each though, can be argued as an engagement with the past to construct a world view in the present. A way then, of perceiving reality and create the next path.
What then does the next path hold? What can be drawn from Francis, Mirandola, Bruno and Goethe? There is a pattern of characteristics throughout the fields, that of integrating notions of love, feeling, intuition and contemplation of the world around us into scientific and thus wider social discourses, as a part of multiple accepted truths. This would mean accepting Machiavelli, Bacon, Descartes, Galileo and Newton also. All paths are truths due to the nature of truth, tolerance of difference and enlightenment. They are a key perception at a point in history of the world and their ideas of the future.
Max-Neef comments on Goethe’s contemplation, “the arousal of the feeling of wonder through contemplative looking in which the scientist would come to see God in Nature and Nature in God”. (p6) Much has come from the minds and hearts of many great thinkers who were also greatly religious - there is no doubt of this. This seems to exclude those without religious faith as having any power to believe in that which cannot be proved by scientific method. Science is beautiful, the discoveries from within it are incredible and prove the awesome power of the universe itself. This is Goethe’s contemplation however without the absolute truth that is created of the believer’s God. This may be Christian, Muslim or Jewish. So I think it is not a fair comment of Max-Neef to say, “Feeling , intuition, consciousness and spirituality are still banished from the realm of science.” I think the scientific method is to prove or disprove a totality in practice; it still allows contemplation of ethereality in the findings of this method. So although I agree that we do need to bring other senses into our interpretation of the world on a mass scale; this is not to say it as been banished from all discourses and that this in itself is the cause of “virtues such as faith, hope and charity manifest themselves today metamorphosed as schitzophrenia, depression and narcissism“ (p 8).
There is a deeper quality within basic values of mankind no matter the God that is tied to the Earth and the way in which we interact with it and each other.
The plethora of knowledge created from science is a means of bringing us to the point of navigation to experience. Unfortunately at a historical point we chose to use this information to advance technologically and lose our connection with nature and other people.
Max-Neef’s explanation of the difference between knowledge and experience is very enlightening. We can know many things however the less we experience and involve ourselves the more disassociated we become, “understanding is holistic, while knowledge is fragmented”.
I think this is particularly pertinent within the West where the indirect channels of goods to bring the product to the user (completely unattached to it’s origins) to become a commodity in a supermarket. Children in Australia have no idea beef comes from a cow. Meat originates in a supermarket to them. Although children voice this more clearly, most adults have also chosen this path also. They are so inebriated with consumer culture, so disattached from the experience of a cow‘s death to satisfy their hunger. Instead it is a slice of meat, cut, packaged in plastic (with no though of what has gone into creating that plastic or the transportation of livestock) available on a shelf in a supermarket.
I wonder whether this is a culmination of guilt, deliberate disattachment due to a subconscious or underlying realisation that all is not quite right with the world and we may not have chosen the right path, that each person must change to make any change. This is as Max-Neef states:
“a period in which global poverty has increased dramatically, debt burden has crippled many national economies and generated brutal over expolitation of both people and natural resources; destruction of ecosystems and biodiversity have reached levels unknown in human history; and accumulation of financial wealth in ever fewer hands has reached obscene proportions”.
We as Westerners are locked within our self inflicted reality and too addicted to change. Consumerism is an addiction and one with drastic consequences as Max-neef describes well. This must change, we cannot live in bubbles with our things whilst others suffer. I differ from Max-Neef in believing knowledge is incredibly important factor in the experiencing of the world, we need to integrate this knowledge into the experience. Without knowledge we could not talk of Descartes or Goethe. Without knowledge we could not read this article or discuss possible paths. It is the importance of not justifying actions for the sake of knowledge, knowledge needs to be living and breathing. It would be incredibly “wise to unearth the alternative map of the route we did not navigate”. I think this map needs to be learnt from and experienced through the reformation of social systems in accordance with values that have been swept aside by the whirlwind that is the pursuit of knowledge. These values are a spirituality however do not need to be attached to a God, and if they are, this may again be their denial once again. The world is suffocated : there is no longer any bifurcations if we want to continue living upon this Earth.
Knowledge itself has to be deregulated and sustainability must be the key to experiencing the world once more as something outside ourselves and our absurdly short time frames. We need to see ourselves as part of the living system that has been for many eons before and hopefully will be for many after.
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