Monday 1 June 2009

Who we are, what we were like

Leading on from the last post i have been looking at ancient Egyptian tomb art which gives us a detailed visual example of how ancient Egyptians used to live and thier customs. It got me thinking about how future generations hundreds or thousands of years from now will view our ways and customs. Perhalps as designers we must re-evaluate how we design objects. The idea im thinking about proposes that designed objects and environments should echo the current state of our world or the economy for example. So thousands of years later future generations can observe external factors from our time through our objects left behind.

1 comment:

Steph said...

I'm part of a sustainability forum. At our last event i was speaking about a similar topic. I was speaking about product life. One of the topics I spoke about was the decision that designers have to make about whether or not they should things to completely biodegrade. We have learnt a lot of things from archelogical digs. These are things that have been designed to be thrown away but not biodegrade and this is good because we have learnt from them. So having a modern take on this what do we want to show to future about the way we currently live. We are continuously being asked by one of our lecturers "the things that we show in galleries- why are they there? they don't actually show how we actually live!". Think about the things that don't make it into the galleries and museums. One of our technicians is working on a great project that I have. He is a potter. He decorates his pots, plates,cups and bowls with newspaper headlines and articles. So that once his work is disposed of it becomes a part of history to tell the future. A lot like the greek pots that tell of their gods and stories.