Semi-generative data-driven embroidered ethnographicornament for the European Cultural Region

Ioan-Ovidiu Cernei
Masterarbeit, 2014
Interface Cultures This thesis identifies an issue of missing tradition within ethnographic ornament - a generational gap of traditional transmission of ethnographic knowledge. In order to develop a designed solution to this problem the thesis must first identify a method for the formal and artistic study of ornament. At first it attempts to uncover a theoretical framework which can be applied to ornament which would allow it to be seen as more than decoration and actually as a communication medium. Starting from the statement of James Trilling that ornament must be looked at while considering the cultural, geographic and historical conditions that establish the context for particular ornament and supported by Branko Grünbaum’s observation that this type of analysis of ornament is rarely also supplied with a mathematical consideration this writing adopts a combined investigation framework to the study of Eastern European ornament. Thus this thesis attempts to compile on the one hand a geo-historical cultural context and on the other provide the ornament in question with a mathematical perspective as well. Building upon this analysis and the previous theoretical framework it is possible to understand how this missing traditional knowledge may be constructed and why the textile form of Eastern European ethnographic ornament can serve as an identifier. Finally technological and cultural perspectives towards ornamentation are considered within the broad field of cultural production with a special focus on textile media arts and networked software art. The development of a designed data-driven interactive process which synthesize this ethnographic knowledge out of the personal information of the user collected through an implemented web application is achieved. The application draws inspiration from the cultural field and applies the technical and geo-historical knowledge acquired throughout the research in this thesis. This application attempts to test the potential of ornamentation to support artistic media practices. What resulted is a data-driven wearable ethnographic ornamental medium which can be expanded into further research and multiple artistic project instances.Embroidered dataSemi-generative data-driven embroidered ethnographicornament for the European Cultural Region. ioan.cernei.ro/embroidered-data