Abstract for Design Culture II - The Skateboard: Looking at How a Design Object Can Influence a Culture

     Thoughts about how people are going to interact with the design you make are crucial in the design process. Objects have the possibility to change how a person or group of people view and interact with the world. The skateboard, an object often associated with activity and play, is one example of this. In this essay I will explore different views of culture and use the skateboard to research how design objects can take on a certain role in a society. Focusing in particular on the introduction of the skateboard to Afghanistan, a nation with a culture different to most Western countries, I will look at how this object of design has influenced the kids and whether it can cause a change in culture. Bringing something new and foreign in to an established society can have both its positive and negative sides and I will look at different sources to explore these.
     Due to the differences in culture looking at Afghanistan compared to USA or New Zealand, where skateboarding has been popular for a long time, the meaning of the skateboard also differs. There are strong relations to the activity that are similar between countries and cultures, but also some that only exist with one culture. How does this contemporary object exist in one place compared to another?
     The way skateboarding has evolved in Western culture from the surfboard, is not a part of the story of skateboarding in Afghanistan, where the skateboard was introduced as a completely new object, not as an developed component of a previously designed object. I’m interested in looking more into how the skateboard changed these different cultures and to what extent. How do the values of the people in these countries influence the way the object is used and what it represents?

Annotated Bibliography

Appadurai, Arjun. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective

As the title says, this book looks at objects in relation to culture and different societies. I would like to use this as a resource to understand better what different design objects represent to humans.

Brown, Bill. Objects, Others, and Us (The Refabrication of Things). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010. Critical Inquiry, Vol. 36, No. 2. Chicago Journals. Web. 16. Oct. 2012. 

This is a journal from JSTOR that looks at objects in relation to time and their interactions with humans.

Fitzpatrick, Jim. Skateistan: The Tale of Skateboarding in Afghanistan. Berlin: Skateistan, 2012. Print. 

This is going to be one of my main sources because of its explanations of the Skateistan organisation and general descriptions of how skateboarding was introduced in Afghanistan. It also includes facts about Afghanistan culture and the country.

Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973.

I want to see if I can find this book or excerpts from it to use as basis for my essay, especially when writing about the cultural aspects. Geertz, who was a known researcher of cultural anthropology, wrote the book and it includes several topics linked to my research question.

Heller, Steven and Finamore, Marie. Design Culture: An Anthology of Writing From the Aiga Journal of Graphic Design. New York: Allworth Press, 1997. Print 

This book is a good asset to my essay because of it discussing the aspect of cultural ownership and different definitions linked to culture. It also looks at the culture of skateboarding and how the artistic side of it improves interaction with kids (from page 44).

To Know a Lot About a Little or a Little About a Lot

     Looking at "The March of Progress", the famous illustration drawn by Zallinger, it is quite obvious how humans' appearance have changed through time. We have, however, not only gone through great physical changes, we have also changed on a psychological level. Comparing today's society to how it looked just 20 years ago truly shows how humankind's knowledge has developed.

Zallinger, Rudolph. The March of Progress. 1965. Early Man volume, Time-Life Books

     Alongside the development of knowledge itself, our self-awareness has also changed. In "Modern/Postmodern: A Study in Twentieth-Century Arts and Ideas" Silvio Gaggi explores how our view of our own knowledge changed through the shift between modernism and post-modernism. He gives an example using the famous Marilyn Monroe images by Warhol, explaining how the audience's knowledge about the person in the image and the awareness of the process to make it changes the way they perceive the image (57).

Warhol, Andy. Marilyn Diptych. 1962. Tate, London.

Duchamp, Marcel. Fountain. 1917.
Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington.

     During modernity, in the early 20th century, the industrialization helped us become more aware of the different design processes and hence more conscious of how our knowledge is incorporated into our creations. Gaggi writes that "Postmodernism can be understood as differing from modernism either because it extends modernist principles further than modernists themselves did or because it rejects them" (19). So, knowledge started to be used in new ways and the post-modernists were trying to grasp over as many areas within art, politics, music etc., as possible. We still value this mentality today when we're living our lives trying to get the most done out of as little time as possible and searching for new knowledge and information whenever the opportunity arises. In this process of gathering knowledge we also have to remember the idea of how knowledge about an object will enhance its beauty (Gorman 133). So if we're just scratching the surface of everything it might start to be hard finding beauty in anything the way we once could. Can we see the beauty in Duchamp's "Fountain" without having knowledge about the artist and the work itself?
     Knowledge has and will always be a value for us, especially within the area of design, but could it be that the progress of how knowledge is used both as a tool for creation and for interpretation has steered us into a reality where quantity is valued more than quality when it comes to knowledge? Henry Miller's famous words "In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance" might have more relevance today than one would initially think.



Works Cited
Gaggi, Silvio. Modern/Postmodern: A Study in Twentieth-Century Arts and Ideas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989. Print.
Gorman, Carma R. The Industrial Design Reader. New York: Allworth Press, 2003. Print

A Mass Produced Individual

     In the 1870's two men named Jacob Davis and Levis Strauss created the first example of what we today know as the blue jean. From being a piece of clothing for workmen it is now one of the most common garments in today's society. Both my three-year-old cousin and my ninety-year-old grandmother own a pair and in my last lecture with Maxe, on the 19th of September, she pointed out how nearly everyone in the room were wearing a jean. From this observation a discussion started on how individualism comes across in today's society of uniformity.

Margritte, René. Golconde. 1953. The Mencil Collection, Houston.

     Several objects that 100 years ago were new, original designs are in today's society a part of a system of mass production. By the late 1920's there was an ideology rising putting an emphasis on collective needs instead of looking at individual needs (Raizman 167). Could we have gone too far with this mindset and thus creating a society where it is a challenge to find your own values because a common identity has become the main objective?

     In "The Shape of Time" George Kubler suggests a scenario where we look at all things man-made, as art (1). If we follow this train of thought we can deduce that a jean, being a man-made design, is art. The reason I bring this point of view in at the end is to better perceive how we in today's society have moved away from individual thinking in relation to design. Art is usually seen as something subjective and ambiguous. So, if a pair of jeans is a piece of art and it's place in today's society is as a common garment and a part of mass production, does this mean art is also becoming generalized and uniform? I realize there are unique designs being created still, but due to the increase in identical copies of products today, I think we need to be more aware than before the purpose of our design and how it links with us on an individual level instead of as a collective.

Byskov, Karen. Blue Jeans. 2012. Private photo.

Works Cited

Kubler, George. The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962. 1. Print.

Raizman, David S. History of Modern Design. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd, 2003. 167. Print

Moments In Time

     A ray of sun shines it's bright light through the leaves of an oak tree. She squints and looks down. Her feet move slowly, each step makes a crisp sound as the foot lands on withered leaves. And in between each step, a moment of silence. There is a breeze, gently blowing through the trees. Strains of hair dances across her face, partly covering her eyes. What is she looking at? It's hard to tell. There is a smile on her face, a subtle gesture of appreciation perhaps.

     I've always been fascinated by details. They form the basis for everything bigger and one should never underestimate the power they can have, both in design and other areas of life. Exploring the details of a single leaf can sometimes be more rewarding than looking at a whole forest. When I think of a memory, I think of the moments it consisted of and from there, begin to think of the memory as a whole. Details are more important to me than larger settings because I feel they can contain more information, especially such as personal thoughts and associations. The reason for this is that I connect more with single objects or experiences than I do with general situations. Certain smells, gestures, objects, people or words may evoke my memories and these are all parts, details, that make up both my past and present and link them together. I strive to be present and aware in my everyday, so that I can cherish as much as possible, as fully as possible.

All photos by me except the last one (credit: Mom)