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- Title of Abstract:
Once upon a light........storytelling and the domestic product. (Ref #161)
- Date:
- 06-10-2006 06:42:47
- Status:
-
Accepted with revisions
- Rating:
- 6
-
Details:
- Authors: Rina Bernabei
Kelly Freeman
Siobhan Hargroves
ABSTRACT
Storytelling is a part of our collective human psyche. Stories appear in our verbal narratives, ceremonial customs, cultural traditions, and even in our utilitarian products. Historically products have carried with them a narrative ? a history of people, places, and events.
A number of designers are ?constructing? and ?creating? stories within products, crafting emotional connections between people and products. These products move away from having simple utilitarian value, and become unmistakably associated with their embodied stories and the memories triggered by them.
By embedding ?triggers? into objects, we can connect them to a bigger picture, a past or future, a culture or mode of production; to a story. In doing so, an emotional attachment between the product and the user is facilitated. In this sense the product designer is the modern day storyteller.
The willingness of the viewer to form a connection to the product allows the designer the opportunity to create an everyday object that will remain for a long time, eventually becoming a highly valued object ? perhaps even being passed down from generation to generation. With each successive owner, there is the opportunity to attach their story to the product, layer upon layer.
In this paper we hope to explore in greater detail the role of the modern product designer as storyteller, methods used to embed stories, forms of stories, as well as drawing on our own experience and products. Several examples of our work will be shown through case studies
Bernabei Freeman?s work draws inspiration from textiles of the past, traditions of domesticity, and the feminine textile industry. Graphic triggers inspired by these traditional domestic interiors are embedded within their modern works, re-telling the stories of the home ? the traditional feminine environment. These stories release the subconscious memories of the collective human experience; of domesticity, comfort and security.
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