Back to: Catering Craft SS 1
Craft Influencing the Meaning Making in Seeing Paper
This section illustrates the evolution of the research process and research question when craft was the key to conducting the research in the second and third phases (Figure 7). The research problem in the second phase focused on two interacting components: Physical material and artistic expression, the results of which were a series of artifacts. The artifacts and the relationship between material and artistic expression embedded in them became the problem to be considered in the third phase.
Seeing Paper (Figure 1a) explored the expressive potential of three different kinds of paper string. The first type of paper string was single-ply, straight, and rather stiff. However, its stiff physicality was noticeable only through touching, as it appeared smooth and gentle (Figure 8). The second type was untwined from the robust, straight, and smooth five-ply string. The visual and tactile characteristics of the untwined paper string changed due to the untwining. The material became weak, wavy, and coarse (Figure 9). The third type was a fine single paper yarn. It looked fragile but was in fact physically strong (Figure 10). The research hypothesis that the different tactile qualities of paper string express different things was tested in the production of this series. Translated from the hypothesis, the concept of Seeing Paper that a material metaphorically “lives” in the world was presented as dress-like objects shaped in similar forms and structures (Figures 8, 9, & 10). Each unwearable dress was made using a knotting technique and a distinct type of paper string to represent a metaphorical living individual. To represent different individuals, different kinds of paper string were expected to embody the meaning of dissimilar personalities and temperaments.
Figure 8. (From left) the first type of paper string used to make Let Go and Private Garden in the series Seeing Paper.
Figure 9. (From left) the second type of paper string used to make Get Sorted and Private Area in the series Seeing Paper
Figure 10. (From left) the third type of paper string used to make Breathe Easily and Personal Joy in the series Seeing Paper.
Through the act of knotting, meaning was embedded in the physical material gradually transformed into an artifact, which in turn articulated this meaning through its physicality back to the maker (Nimkulrat, 2007b, pp. 17-24; Nimkulrat, 2009a, pp. 105-128). The maker’s experience and action to resolve creative pressures in the medium manifest the material object’s expressiveness (Dewey, 1934, pp. 60-69). The materialization of an object, i.e., craft making, can be considered the “subject-matter and sustainer of conscious activity” (Dewey, 1925, p. 393). Similarly, Merleau-Ponty (1962, pp. 365-378) points out that human perception and consciousness tends to seek association between the current tactile phenomenon and the prior one the touching person has experienced.
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