Having not blogged as much as I probably should be, I feel like I should keep up with it because I do really do do work! I just don't post it up here..it hasn't become an automatic reflex yet. Plus I really want to pimpmyblog :( I can be pretty bad with computers (just ask those who've seen me use photoshop, illustrator, you name it) but I'd like to show my work more and get it out there.
Anyway, I've started a mind map on subjects I think I'd really enjoy writing about/care about/am interested in, if it's not going to be interesting, and I don't enjoy writing it, it's not going to be a good read!
In second year I really enjoyed writing about Eastern Design, it was a sort of 'Western vs East' in way about cultural differences, and how Japanese technology is so advanced, how borrowing from different cultures can benefit our own. I think I would like to take this further but at the moment it's somewhat vague.
I'm also worrying that Primary Research is very important, and as I've never been to Asia or the far East before I'd be worried I'd end up writing about a country/continent I don't entirely understand? However there are other ways such as interviewing someone from Japan etc, but I'm not sure if that would be enough?
However I did get a wealth of knowledge and a great perspective on life in China from the assignment in second year, analysing photos. I spoke to a girl from Graphics who is from China, we talked for over two hours and could not have had a more different home life from each other. It was fascinating to find out more about a culture which i've never experienced straight from a person from there rather than looking through a book, watching a film, which may not be entirely accurate.
This also leads me on to the lecture 'Made in China' which we had before the reading week. I was so excited about this lecture. I thought yes, this is exactly what I want to know more about, this could help me so much to decide what I want to write about.
I knew China had a massive historical background, I'm still very unaware of the details. But because we were told this was literally skimming the surface of it's history, it made me wonder if I could research into Chinese Design without getting too bogged down in all the details. I tend to go off on a tangent when I do research and need to go back and think you need to focus on the most important points, but what's interesting about it without the details?
I thought this lecture as a whole had a huge effect on me. I had heard of Tiananmen Square...it was a place in China. That is it. I didn't know of the politics, the protests, the open fire on their own people. The way of life there as a mostly Capitalist country also worries me. The huge difference between the rich and the poor ways of life. Then we come to the factories...I know look at my ipod, with disgust, a lot of the time, and then think why did i not go for another mp3 player...which would also have probably said on the back, made in china. So why should i worry? It's a vicious cycle...the products are made there because it's cheaper, if we stop buying the products it puts people out of jobs..so what can you do?? Can design help? I was seriously overwhelmed and a little bit depressed after this lecture because it seemed all doom and gloom..I did wonder what the Chinese people in our year thought of the lecture? Considering that China no longer talk of the Tiananmen Square protests too. I found a lot of the things I saw strange (such as the fake English town) or to do with the overworked underpaid factory workers.
What good comes out of China/is in China? What makes people happy there, and is a normal day just going off to the empty, fake English village to get a post-marriage photoshoot done?
I want to go! I want to experience China for myself, the cities, the countryside and take in the culture.
However that lecture made me slightly scared and that I might feel like 'the idiot abroad'..
Look, the great wall doesn't seem that big..:|
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