Chapter-2 Literature Review
2.4 Research into digital craft and craft heritage
The second one is the Smartphone Usage Statistics, which is the amount of time spent using smartphone in specific situations. A person uses the smartphone for an average of 3 hours per day; if we ignore the sleeping time, it corresponds to almost 19% of the time available during the day. In addition to the time spent using the phone, there are other interesting dimensions that should be considered. For example, 52% of UK owners look at the device within 15 minutes after wake up in the morning, which increases to 86%3 within one hour. Similar values can be found considering the time interval between when the user looks at the phone and when he goes to sleep, with a 43% within 15 minutes that raise up to 77% within one hour. (Bignotti, 2018).
The above literature suggests the growing importance of digital technologies in our lives. It cannot be ignored that in the future the digital world will be growing and becoming a part and parcel of human needs.
Fig.2.26: Heritage Diagram (Thurley S., 2005)
The heritage diagram gives an overview of the benefits from the conservation of the cultural heritage but it lacks to provide us the philosophy behind the cultural heritage conservation. There are many important steps taken towards conservation of tangible cultural heritage. But very few steps are being carried out for the conservation of the intangible cultural heritage.
The conservation work of intangible crafts can be seen in parts of India too. The crafts domain has been an exciting area of work for the designers and researchers in India since independence. The Indian Craft museum in New Delhi is an excellent example of conservation of art from various parts of India. Sethi et al. (Sethi,2013; Greenough,1995) has studied the Dilli craft village in India and has mapped the craft there to the contemporary India. A major role was played by Pupul Jayakar in the traditional crafts tourism Post-Independence from British rule in India. (Sahay, 1994; Venkatesan, 2006).
Elsewhere in the world too researchers have been making attempts to preserve and transmit traditional knowledge. In the review of the book, ‘Nigeria’s traditional Crafts’ the author (Hodge,1982) has mentioned about the varied description of Crafts ranging from wood carvings, decorated gourds, mat work and basketry, woven textiles, died textiles, leather working, pottery, beads and bead works, Bida glass, wall decoration, and finally cicatrisation, body decoration, and hairdressing in Nigeria. The author has also mentioned about the lack of the importance to the crafts sector in Nigeria. For example, some of the primitive’s methods of pot making in Nigeria like Gwari pot making and techniques used by the Yoruba potters are neglected and may be lost if not conserved in due course of time.
Industries are attempting to capture the experience of retiring employees by assigning them new trainees for apprenticeship learning. Knowledge and practice time gaps and disconnect between traditional practices (say in different pockets of bamboo basket weaving communities) starts reflecting in such training too. The present generation of youth in the North eastern part of India is migrating to the cities in search of the other more lucrative occupations. To continue preserving skills and to retain new generations into the crafts-trade new design ideas but within the traditional boundary become necessary (Sahay, 1994).
Designers and researchers are attempting this problem in different manners. Some of them are encouraging the practicing of ancient arts and painting among youth. Some are trying to generate the awareness of the positive benefits which the art and craft practice can do. Cultivating the crafts and art helps once to develop his creativeness, helps to nourish the artist in them, helps to develop self- confidence which in turns does wonders in their lives.
Fig.2.27: Gwari pot (Source: Internet,2016)
In a blog article Athavankar (Athavankar,2017) raises some important question, ‘Is sketching as a representation tool an indispensable part of design problem solving?’ Athavankar argues that if sketching is necessary then it should be considered as an essential skill in the design and architectural careers. He conducted an experiment in which the designer is given a design problem to solve and is blindfolded and thus prevented from sketching. The designer builds a mental map of the solution to solve the problem. It was difficult for the designer to solving the problem as mental images are fragile and are difficult to work with. As a result, Athavankar modifies his previously raised question
‘What design thinking needs is an ability to represent an object in some form that act as a relatively stable display, but allows you to manipulate it quickly and effortlessly. Such a definition
no doubt fits sketching, but is inclusive enough to legitimately accommodate other forms of representations like mental imagery. Even if designer develops competence in handling one of
them, he should be able to make a reasonable headway in design career.’
The above paragraph suggests that to cultivate the metal model of an idea some form of flexible tangible interface is required. Likewise, the human brain tries to process things in a systematic or categorical manner. In the book, The Discipline of Organizing, (Glushko,2013) Annechino, and
Hemerly have term categorization as the process of grouping things, people, processes, abstractions –anything, really – into categories.This can be seen while we encounter daily objects. The authors give an example of a door knob and its various classification as compared to a window door knob and a main entrance door’s door knob. In the example the categorization of the door knob helps a person to obviously recognize when he is in front of a main door or he is about to close a window.
This experience of categorization helps a user to see things/objects in a systematic manner.
According to Annechino, and Hemerly, categories are sometimes called as equivalence classes because all the members of a category are similar in nature. Category judgements are not only used to classify what is included in the class but also to classify what is excluded in the it.
The different mode of categorization according to Annechino, and Hemerly, are classical and modern.
In the classical point of view, the members of a class are defined by the necessary and sufficient condition. Example a cupcake is defined by certain characteristic shape, texture, and taste.
The categories can be implemented in an organization by various technological tools. Schemas are one of the methods which are used to represent categories. For example, an extremely simple data schema might describe a system for organizing a pair of shoes on a spreadsheet. The data schema specifies that the spreadsheet contains information about pairs of shoes (the “pairs of shoes” entity), and has four columns, or data elements. One column contains the row number, which is automatically generated by our spreadsheet program. The row number is an attribute of the shoes entity that uniquely identifies each pair of shoes. In addition, our data schema might specify that there are three additional columns that we have labelled “Size,” “M/F,” and “Heel Height”. The labelled columns are also attributes of the shoes entity, but they need not be unique for each shoe. Further, the schema might specify that the “Size” column must contain a number on the standard US shoe size chart; the
“M/F” column must contain either the letter “M” to indicate that the pair is sized for men, or an “F”
to indicate that the pair is sized for women; and the “Heel Height” column must contain heel height in inches, with 0 representing no heel. Every item on the spreadsheet must have a unique row number, a US shoe size, an “M” or “F” indication, and a heel height in inches. Schemas are one of the important tools to collect the data in a categorical manner.
Likewise, another researcher, Connell (Connell, 2000) also focuses on the concept of categorization or sorting. Connell argue that categorization is due to the conceptual processing. It means that human brain tries to categorize the things based on the certain concepts which it has earlier processes for
example the categories of table or categories of chairs etc. There were two experiments carried out for the choosing the category.
In the first experiment consisted of choosing an example of category based upon the context. For example: "The girl played the guitar while the others sang around the campfire". The subjects were to rate how good an example guitar is on a 7-point scale. A score of 1 (one) means that you feel guitar is a very good example of the category (musical instruments) in this context. A score of 7 (seven) mean that subjects feel that guitar its very poorly with their idea or image of an appropriate instrument in the context of a campfire. A score of 4 (four) means that the subject feel guitar fits moderately well, and so on. Subjects were told to use the other numbers of the 7-point scale to indicate intermediate judgements.
In the second experiment the subjects were asked to judge how good an example of a category an item is. The subjects may see a pair like this: "animal dog”. The subjects were asked to rate how good an example of animal that dog is on a 7-point scale. A score of 1 (one) means that they feel dog is a very good example of the category animal. A score of 7 (seven) mean that they feel that dog fits very poorly with your idea or image of what a good example of Animal is. A score of 4 (four) means that they feel dog fits moderately well, and so on. Subjects were told to use the other numbers of the 7-point scale indicate intermediate judgements. After the experiments the different objects were given a single score rating and ranked accordingly in terms of the context.
Cornell concluded that categorization in terms of the context was helpful in users to rate the things properly and so it forms an important element in categorization or sorting of things. The ability of the brain to recognize and detect different objects in some seconds is remarkable in nature. To make it out in the computer systems is a really difficult task. The field of visual categorization is an active area of research. (Mohan K, 2013).
The idea of digitalization in Craft sector utilizing the above methods and ways discussed above can help revolutionize it among different stake holders. This in turn would help the creative, emotional as well hands on practice on craft to cultivate.