Traditional Thai Shapes, Lines and Curves, Especially in Buddhist Art and Sculpture - Literature review Example

Traditional Thai Shapes, Lines and Curves, Especially in Buddhist Art and Sculpture Research Student Progress Group (RSPG) Form RD1 (Registration) SECTION THREE Programme of Research 1. Title Please provide a preliminary, descriptive title for the proposed investigation (30 words max): I will do this question last 2. Research aims, objectives and/or questions Please list the aims, objectives and/or research questions of the proposed investigation. My intention for this project is to explore traditional Thai shapes, lines and curves, especially in Buddhist art and sculpture, in order to translate this into pieces of contemporary jewellery which will provoke an ongoing emotional response in the user and ultimately create feelings of calmness and tranquillity. In effect, to embody Thai identity within a piece of jewellery but an identity that will become engaging to people across the world. Although the study will primarily focus on Thais’ mind frame and its connection to jewellery, the findings will mirrored in diverse social and scientific fields relating to image perception and emotional response. Aims and objectives that my research will investigate: a) How can different materials, techniques and designs in jewellery-making be used to enhance emotional responses? (This will result into many ways of method in experimenting and testing). Testing with images of the Thai, Sukhothai Buddha statue. Testing with shapes/forms, Size, finishing surface, 2&3 dimensional and colours. Testing with the design of finished pieces, together with and without its functional use within the piece itself. b) How can jewellery affect the emotions of a user in terms of a positive effect (positive emotion)? “Positive emotion” are ways that broaden habitual modes of thinking or acting which are represented by various thought-action tendencies from their own well being i.e. to optimise, to play, or to explore and to appreciate. c) To define the relevant terms of understanding the linkages relationships between Thai artistic experience and jewellery design in a contemporary world. “Thai artistic experience” knowledge within the Culture of Thailand in terms of culture and art Link in this context implies situation where one thing affects the other in human interaction platforms such as profession, religion, or socially. 3. Relationship of your proposed research to previous research Please explain how your research will build on or add to previous research and how it will make an original contribution to knowledge (approx 500 words). Buddhism lays the basis for Thai cultures. Arts, whatever the type, act as tools to guide and persuade people to think and take action in the righteous way. As an ordinary person, one is still persuaded by the “religious defilements” such as beauty. Therefore, art forms are an obvious tool for myself to teach and direct the way people thinks from my experience in the work which have been experimented towards myself. My work portrays perfect combination of concepts and related traditional Thai art components shown through the interplay of shapes that interact upon my emotion to being still and relief. I am mostly interested in a traditional Thai culture and the search on forms/shapes to find myself, as a wearer and a jewellery designer into a better condition of emotion. Jewellery is therefore, the best medium to articulate these ideas since it extends beyond the body surface and has to be touched or felt from the close distance within the body, which can be reflect to the mind. It is as though we must enter the wear’ personal space of mind so that this personal space aspect created will disclose stories. The shapes, which are created into jewellery pieces, can heal the wearer such as myself emotional asserting my intension. I can feel the smoothness and puff up form of the porcelain when touching. The smooth feel and puff up form reminds me of the importance of this emotional reflection, which is very personal to me in terms of shapes/forms that can have the potential to heal myself into a better condition of emotion. The below are samples of my earlier work which I will be using as my first investigation to collect information in order to produce newer ideas for a new body of work for the future. Figure 1 Shapes and Forms: Porcelain and bone China were my choices for material, as it gives a lightweight feeling. Figure 2 Design and Making Jewellery from the Shapes and Forms in Figure 1 The aesthetic emotional effect of shapes in any study context will be meaningless without a profound understanding and presentation of connection between the shapes and the brain. Therefore, an appreciable part of the study will be based primarily on neuroesthetics. Among many researchers in this particular field, neuroesthetics work by Prof. Semir Zeki will be heavily relied upon. Particularly, visual processing systems and image cognition in response to different aesthetic shapes will be considered in light of Prof. Semir Zeki. However, I aim to broaden my designs to be more effective and relevant. For people to be receptive to the idea, this will bring a deeper and fresh perspective to the wearing of jewellery as well as hopefully encouraging 'new' people to wear jewellery. I also wish to educate others within the jewellery industry in Thailand to develop successful new ideas and approaches, without losing touch with traditional design fundamentals. More importantly, the study will realize new dimensions of personal connection with jewellery even to those people who have been using them without discovering the full emotional potential of jewellery. Although I have made profound study and research work on jewellery as it applies to Thais and Buddhism, this work remains fundamental in this part of my PhD. It offers an ideological and understanding framework in which my PhD work will be founded. The PhD will be a profound extension and build-up of the understanding I have on emotional effect of shapes on human mind. A synergistic approach consisting of theoretical research on ideologies of people who have worked on the same or related field such as Neuroesthetic, Prof. Semir Zeki as well as practical on-field study will considered for this PhD. 4. Research Design and Methods Please explain how you will conduct the research. Depending on your particular research, you might explain the: i) Study or research design; ii) Theoretical, conceptual or epistemological framework(s); iii) Sampling frame(s) selection criteria and sample size(s) for primary and secondary data (where relevant); iv) Research instruments, measurement techniques and data collection tools (where relevant); Also, if your research is practice-based, please indicate if you will be submitting artefacts with your thesis. (approx 1000 words) The focuses of the study are both in Thailand and UK based. A series of projects which will be looking at are visual-tactility, sensory experience also identify choices that the jewellery would seek to communicate will be undertaken to explore the responses of the people when handling the object. This method of research will be recorded on video and the pieces of three-dimensional work produced for the experiments are available and also including a process of collating information gathered in written form. The potential outcome for the final synthesis of the jewellery series and proposal will be generated following the evidences. Apart from this, a form of conceptual context, which is the embodiment of the relevance within the Thai Buddhist culture, can transcend essence as well as achieving enlightenment. Initial research through reading, experimental making practice as you research mode discussion and analysis will be to engage in to foster in-depth understanding of: a) The cultural, emotional and social context within which people choose and wear jewellery. b) How designs, shapes and materials, especially in a religious/philosophical context such as that of Buddhism, can affect people and their emotions, c) How emotions can be, and have been, carried through into jewellery design/creation, d) How designs and shapes, utilising different materials, and combinations of materials, old and new, weight, sizes, dimensions or even senses from parts of our body can provoke an ongoing emotional response, e) How new ideas, technology and designs are researched, invented, developed, tested, promoted and implemented within the industry, The second stage, partly concurrent with the research above, is to develop and translate my ideas into actual pieces of jewellery. This will involve not only design but also experimentation with different materials and processes to enhance and extend the emotional impact of the pieces towards other people across the world not only just myself. Hand-in-hand with this will be the testing of the ideas, initially just testing of the designs but also later on testing with actual examples of pieces of jewellery. This will involve not only testing with my supervisors but also testing with other staff at the university, both academic and non-academic, and fellow students across a range of disciplines. Testing will be through direct question and answer sessions as well as discussion groups in combination with the use of video/photograph recording observation and 'mini exhibitions', sometimes solo, sometimes in co-operation with others. This will be undertaken partly in one to one meetings, partly in small groups of invitees, partly at fashion shows and such like, and partly through attending social events, e.g. parties or official or informal receptions. Testing will often be on the university premises but for testing involving businesses and non-university insiders, it will often need to be at business premises, function rooms or even people's homes. Some of the testing will also be in Thailand. An element of the testing will be to identify responses by social strata, gender, religious persuasion, and cultural origin or background. None of these sub divisions will necessarily be easy to identify and will sometimes need to be approximate, but the process will add to the usefulness of the work. Sample of reference Materials has attributes: colour, texture, feel, a sort of ‘character’ deriving from the shapes to which it can be formed, its ability to integrate with other materials, the way it ages with time, the way people feel about it. These, too, can stimulate creativity, the kind of creativity that gives a product its personality, making it satisfying, even delightful. Material has many dimensions i.e. an aesthetic dimension, the one countered by the senses of sight, touch, hearing and a dimension that derives its features from the way in which the material is perceived, its traditions, the culture of its use, its associations, and its personality. Materials and Design, The Art and Science of Material Selection in Product Design Mike Ashby and Kara Johnson Installation art in Thailand As it stands now, Thai people are affected by issues such as the adaptation of Buddhism to modern society or the affects of runaway growth on the environment. Likewise, these issues show up in installation art. Montien Boonma Montien Boonma, Drawing of the Mind Training and the Bowls of the Mind With many of his works dealing with Buddhism and the transcendent human spirit, Montien Boonma's thoughtful installations appeal to a wide audience of Thai people and others interested in Thai culture. The son of a schoolteacher, Montien Boonma is said to have rediscovered the use of Thai elements in his art after returning from years of study in France. He is an avid Buddhist, and Buddhist themes pervade much of his work. The following work, included in a 1994 joint Thai-Australian exhibition called "Thai Australian Cultural Space" mixes objects and illustrations to convey the ideas of meditation and the exploration of an internal, abstract space. In regard to this installation, Montien says, "I am fascinated by the monk bowl. For me its shape looks organic, geometric, and ambiguous. I think about the space in the bowl. I prefer to be in this space, which separates me from the outside world.... I would like to place my mind inside the bowl"[19]. Montien Boonma's work is a good example of the importance of Buddhism to the Thai spirit. Through working with the forms and ideas outlined by his beliefs, Montien Boonma uses installation art to compel the viewer, Thai or non-Thai, to look within him or herself to find a meditative space. Could Installation Art be the New Medium for Southeast Asia? Explorations in Southeast Asian Studies: A Journal of the Southeast Asian Studies Student Association 6. Timeframe Please provide a draft timetable for your proposed research. First Year: The project will be primarily practical and visual with examples of the designs and jewellery pieces that is in progress and that I have produced. These will be backed up by details, pictorial and textual, of the different steps undertaken from inspiration, through development, experimentation, testing, and additional development up to the final jewellery product, which will be carrying on in the second year. “Primary Research” is the research, which has to start from a scratch by collecting data from respondents and then analyzing the results whereas secondary research data are made available through publications, newspapers, among others. Second Year: An ongoing process of jewellery product, which will meet its final. Alongside with reasons why each significant change was made and what affect the change. All this will be backed up with an overall analysis of the use in jewellery to produce an emotional effect, how that can work and how emotional reactions differ between different social strata, genders, age groups, religion, cultures and etc. Tables based on the responses to interviews, questionnaires and other public information-gathering exercises will be used to back up the various hypotheses and final conclusions. Third Year: Finalise establish the final body of work. Writing up dissertation about the practice-base research. SECTION FIVE Statement by Applicant I wish to apply for registration for MPhil with transfer to PhD on the basis of the proposals presented in the application. *Please note that approval to register for PhD Direct will only be granted in exceptional circumstances. I confirm that the particulars given on this form are correct. I understand that, except with the specific permission of the Research Degrees Committee at London Metropolitan University I may not, during the period of my registration, be a student for another award of London Metropolitan University or of another university. I understand that, except that with specific permission of London Metropolitan University, I must prepare and defend my thesis in English. Name Ploypim Boonnum Date 2012 SECTION SIX Supervisor comments and feedback Please note that these comments will be forwarded to students following the RSPG meeting 1) Please comment on the student's proposed programme of research. Please offer supportive, constructive and sensitive comments. Suggestions may be included for possible modifications; additional references; and/or potential improvements in design / conduct / presentation / language, which will help the student to strengthen their work. 2) Recommendation by the Supervisors We recommend/do not recommend (delete as appropriate) registration. Supervisor Name: Date: Supervisor Name: Date: Supervisor Name: Date: SECTION SEVEN Reader’s comments and feedback Please note that these comments will be sent to students and their supervisors following the RSPG meeting 1) Please comment on the student's proposed programme of research. Please offer supportive, constructive and sensitive comments on the registration application. Suggestions may be included for possible modifications; additional references; and/or potential improvements in design / conduct / presentation / language, which will help the student to strengthen their work. 2) Recommendation by the Reader I recommend/do not recommend (delete as appropriate) registration: Name: Date: RESEARCH STUDENT PROGESS GROUP (OFFICE USE ONLY) DECISION: Approve registration for MPhil with transfer to PhD Refer (to be considered at the next RSPG)* Withdraw** Chair’s Action*** * Reasons for referral: ** Reasons for withdrawal: ***Chair’s Action to be taken RSPG Chair: …………………………………………………………………………………… Date: ………………………………………………………………………………………………… Read More