Even if we do not want to, we are constantly thrown into interacting with people whose assumptions, points of view, ideologies, and backgrounds are different or totally opposite from our own. Perhaps never before was more complex and intricate the struggle to understand each other in the middle of multiple layers of go-between tech translators, screens, keyboards, and apps. So forth, we might say that the idea of interacting with strangers is essentially both the consequence and cause of why we are so bad at forced acts of translation.
AA: You spent a few months in 2022 at Tokyo Arts and Space Residency. As your artistic practice involves incorporating your daily life, routines, and observations into your work, did the change of scenery bring on changes in your work as well?
PK: With the change of scenery, I expected to see new elements in the ideas that flowed through me. Because you know, when it comes to my art practice, I am hesitant to label myself as a creator. Instead, I see myself as a “door” through which certain ideas emerge, and to fulfill this role, I must be present, a challenging quality that I describe as being in the world.
“Honey, escape!”
The sticky dance floor
clicks under my sneakers
while trying to sync myself into
the rhythm of bass to lose myself
in the sacred cosmic move(ment)
Artist Parsa Kamehkhosh invited Finns to participate in his new series of five performances. An exhibition is now being made of the photos taken during the performances.
Under the umbrella of the Congratulations project stand two ideas, one of which is called One Hour Contemplation, commenced on the 20th of May, 2018, and the other one which is known as Today Might Be The Last Day, which I started a few months later, in October of the same year. Both ideas are a series of practices/performances that I plan to carry on until the last day of my life on earth.
One Hour Contemplation is a life-long project including a series of performances/practices through which I try to maintain an awareness of my approaching death. During the performance, I will be lying/sitting for one hour trying to comprehend and internalize the absolute reality that I might die at any second. Next, to me, there is an elaborate list of things that need to be done in the event that I die during the performance. This list is maintained based on the situation of my life on the days that I perform and will be updated before each performance accordingly. Contrary to the prevailing attitudes towards death, I have come to the realization that this event is just the beginning of the actual life and liveliness and the one who experiences it deserves to be congratulated.
Its simplicity allows for focus on its detail. The colour of the metallic surface so dependent on the light, fluctuating like the surface of the water, partly dark, partly reflective. The rusty patches on the porous metal, the apparently solid material undergoing decay. The wooden logs have a gap between them, making the whole thing look more light and airy, as if it didn’t need solid support. Its body cuts itself out from its surroundings; it is clearly man-made, yet neither its placement nor any other visible signs betray its purpose.
April 2013
Our vision captures a world teeming with complexity, yet our brains naturally focus on what piques our interest, simplifying our perceptions. This subconscious process is deeply influenced by the traditional geometric and reductionist approach to nature. In product design, particularly when drawing inspiration from the natural world, designers often tend to distill intricate organic forms into basic geometries and adapt materials for their projects. However, this prevailing approach may hinder our ability to truly grasp the complex reality of nature, which holds great potential for revitalizing the aesthetic language in design.
In response to this, I conducted a thorough phenomenological study in 2011 to learn from nature’s approach to “form,” aiming to uncover a fresh perspective. I meticulously observed various natural phenomena, including birds and plants, chosen randomly. The insights from these observations revealed that nature’s method of dealing with form significantly differs from that of designers, with growth being a fundamental differentiating factor as opposed to the assemblage in design.
The culmination of this study is presented as “The Theory of Design Naturally,” which serves as a platform to introduce product designers to an analytical and practical understanding of diverse form paradigms found in nature. This theory encompasses form-giving processes, geometry, gestalt, visual abstractions, function, and more.
Abstract: In the context of product design and when it comes to studying the physical forms in nature, aesthetic norms sometime can function as the filters that make the complex structures of reality seem only as the basic geometries, proportions and patterns in our eyes. In other words, although we look at the complex structure but the mind only picks the. It can even get more problematic when we take this manipulated, simplified and reduced perception of a phenomenon as the reality of it. This means we are depriving ourselves of seeing a huge aesthetic portion of reality in natural phenomenon which, could be of a great potential for pushing the boundaries of the aesthetic norms in the field of product design. This paper proposes an approach that revolves around minimising the dominance of reductionist mind in observing and studying the mater of forms in nature in order to get closer to the complex reality of them. This approach is presented under the title of The Theory of Design Naturally and consists of a collection of principles that hypothetically would help designers to deal with the complexity of forms with less reductionist approach.
July 2010
Abstract: The issue of globalization has been a major concern in many countries around the world and has led to the formation and consolidation of different approaches, such as localization strategies that share a focus on the design and management of culture. However, in some countries, including Iran, there is a deep gap between the two factors of culture and technology and its products. The solution to this challenge is to focus more on culture-based design and to seek a way to get rid of superficiality in this area. This paper proposes CAL futurology method as a suitable way to help designers to pay closer attention to culture, and through a series of experiments, it measures the effectiveness of this method in action. The results show that using this method in culture-based design is beneficial and can lead the designer to cultural considerations in a structured way. Having that said, it is also clear that it cannot cover the whole design process alone and requires a combination of complementary methods.
Keywords: Culture-Based Design; Layered Analysis of Causes; Layers of Recognition; Effective Interaction