Dear Sally,
Welcome and thank you for your question! It's an interesting topic area and
sounds like it will lead to fascinating research outcomes.
As an addition to Ken's advice, you might find it useful and relevant (and
even interesting) to read 'The Memory Code' by Lynne Kelly and the 'Society
of the Spectacle' by Guy Debord.
Kelly researched Aboriginal peoples' songlines and related rituals (going
back potentially up to around 40,000 years) in a variety of countries.
She details how such songlines and rituals were developed primarily as ways
of encoding in human memory very large amounts of useful information about
plants, animals, weather, navigation, people's behaviour etc in a way that
could be transmitted faithfully over many years.
The knowledge encoded in the songlines and memory-reinforcing rituals is
tied to landform and travelling through it. Pragmatically, it sometimes
uses invented god figures/concepts to provide an aide-memoire function; to
help categorisation (also to aid memorisation of such large amounts of
information); and to provide a running pathway of physical events tied to
landform that create a thread through the songlines/ memory-reinforcing
rituals to provide sequences and ordering.
It appears the primary purpose of the songlines and original rituals is
practical: collating and archiving accrued knowledge of what happens in the
world that is central to the survival of the society for which they were
developed. What we would infer as religious elements are secondary or
irrelevant to their roles as rituals
From this perspective, such songlines and related acts are the origins of
what we now call 'rituals'. Through this lens, what we now call 'rituals' in
the Western world are secondary pretenders - a bit like cargo-cult copies of
the real purposes of songlines and rituals.
I found it an interesting and challenging read.
Of potential deep relevance for designers and undertaking research in design
relating to ritual are Kelly's archeologically argued proposals about
purposes of megalithic sites such as Stonehenge. In short, her arguments are
something like... hunter-gatherers used songlines and memory-reinforcing
rituals whilst moving long distances through Country (Aboriginal sense) and
these songlines and rituals were in essence specific to Country. The shift
to farming removed the long treks through Country that provided structures
for the encoding of the knowledge embedded in the songlines and related
acts. One way to resolve this problem of settlement was to create local
permanent small-scale representations of the features of Country
representing the sequence of the paths and specific localities and landmarks
in the real Country. Thus the songlines could be sung moving from place to
place between the megaliths. There is some evidence that this is one of the
main purposes of megaliths and similar large constructions.
On a different but related tack, Dubord points to the role of modern
'rituals' as enabling and codifying human activity as a collection of
spectacles rather than being real human life.
Together these seem to indicate three potential paths of research into
ritual and design:
1. The ways people create 'rituals' at the large and local scale about and
with objects they use (in the modern secondary cargo-cult sense of the term
ritual).
2. How and why in current times such 'rituals' are primarily driven by the
creation and embodiment of spectacles rather than practical human benefit.
3. How such 'rituals' shape the semantics of objects (thanks Chuck); the
ways objects are used; and the limited ways we perceive of them.
An additional dimension is the self-creation of rituals when users
reflexively repurpose designed objects as design tools for designing their
own lives. The latter is something myself and Kari-Hans Kommonen (and
perhaps many others?) have written on. For the moment I don't have access
to Kari-Hans references but I'm sure he can provide.
References
Kelly, L. (2016), The Memory Code. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin.
Debord, G. (1977) [1967] The Society of the Spectacle, translation by Fredy
Perlman and Jon Supak (Black & Red, 1970; rev. ed. 1977). Online at
Library.nothingness.org
Love, T. (2003). Customers' Use of Products as Design Tools. In Proceedings
of the 6th Asian Design Conference. Tsukuba. (pdf) available
http://www.love.com.au/docs/2003/Prod-as-DesTools-TL.pdf
Regards,
Terry
==
Dr Terence Love FDRS, PMACM, MISI
Design Out Crime & CPTED
Perth, Western Australia
[log in to unmask]
www.designoutcrime.org
+61 (0)4 3497 5848
==
ORCID 0000-0002-2436-7566
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sally Cloke
Sent: Saturday, 13 August 2016 3:29 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Introducing myself and a question
Hello PhD-Design List people.
I've been lurking on the list for several months and I've found it very
interesting reading.
I'm in the first year of a PhD in Visual Communication Design at the
University of Newcastle, Australia. I'm looking at the design of ritual,
particularly how rituals could be designed to assist people to explore and
reflect on their relationship with their material possessions.
As part of my research, I am planning to acquire data through
phenomenological enquiry into the relationship between people and
possessions, the meaning that possessions have and their role in
constructing identity. I initially thought that the best way to gather this
information would be through my own phenomenological research. But now I am
wondering whether enough information is available though other studies to
make it more sensible for me to restrict myself to available literature and
not undertake my own ethnography/field work. This would enable me to
concentrate on the focus of my project, which is ritual design.
I am wondering what others think of this decision... I would be especially
interested if anyone could point me to any useful sources that I could draw
on. (I would be happy to provide a copy of a summary of this information
when completed to anyone who would find it helpful.)
I am also very keen to hear from anyone who has done research into the
interface of ritual and design.
(Please feel free to reply to me directly: [log in to unmask])
With thanks and regards
Sall Cloke
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