Representation of Memory in Design for Humanity

Abstract

Artists often visualize their inner feelings or spiritual levels through works of art. In this way, the concrete expression of inner feelings marks the process from abstraction to substantialization. The delivery and expression process of these works of art can be described in the saying of famous Scottish philosopher, David Hume that all the perceptions of human thought break down itself into two different things, which are so-called impressions and ideas. Hume’s theory is used to verify how works of art are transformed by the transition of impressions and concepts to achieve emotional exchanges between artists and audiences. The mode of communication among an artist, a curator and an audience is that the artist transforms his idea into an authoring model through an inner transformation and presents works through the aesthetic external form. Through the curator’s interpretation, the audience comes to know how to appreciate the artwork [3]. In this study, we used nine series of gazing paintings to explore the extent to which artists want to express their messages and audience receives the messages. A total of 291 subjects were asked to learn about the images and semantic meanings and the middle school students’ art appreciation theory quality and effective art teaching are expected to be improved to achieve the social function of cultural and creative industry development policy through questionnaire of the matching degree of the work and the name of the work.

Keywords

1 Introduction

The greatest asset of an individual is the accumulation of self-traits and life experiences, which no one can replace and occupy. Kandinsky1 (Wassily Kandinsky, 1866–1944), mentions in Spirituality of Art that “every piece of art is a child of that age and every cultural period has its own art and cannot be repeated” [6]. Such spatial thinking has unique cultural symbols and spatial symbols. Therefore, by means of strong map ideas, attempts are made to present the meaning of objects in the interface of that space-time culture in their works. In his own creative experience, he decided to settle in the metropolis of Taipei City and commuted between the village and metropolis, but he had to adapt to the cultural differences and geospatial arrangements. This is an interesting topic, hoping to reappear the self-artistic life through the experience and feelings of the most real body. Due to the continuous conversion of the living space, the present experience also gives new experiences and feelings to the present culture. Today’s living environment enjoys convenient transportation and the fast change of time, space suffocates people and dedication to artistic creation not only presents in form, but also actively seeks the value of self-existence. In the process of education and learning, we constantly expect to achieve the goal of “art is life, life is art”.

The series of nine works of “Gazing” is to present his own experience of life through the installation artistic means and specifically present inner emotional or spiritual level, so that the specific inner emotional expression way is visualized to use the teaching field to try to study the students’ intuitive feedback. The purpose of this creation is to find a stage where the work and audience can communicate. That is to say, it is an object arrangement that operates from a plane virtual space to a physical space. Growing up on the beautiful island of Taiwan, with different humanistic ideas, living habits, religious beliefs, etc., these multiple cultural faces have also redrawn our living space. In different spatial atmosphere, they have their own unique language, symbols and social structure. Based on Hume’s theory, this paper discusses the similarities, causality and spatial proximity, explores the memory and imagination in artistic creation and explores the nine representative works selected from the self-created series “Gazing” through the style analysis, research. A questionnaire is developed to obtain the information and data needed for style analysis. Through such aesthetics education activities, art education appreciation or cognition related issues are imported into the campus. In 2007 general education reform program of Harvard University, the aesthetics education was listed as the first area of eight areas of core competencies. [2] What makes the import of aesthetics education into the campus so important?

Why does art impress students with vision that many fields of knowledge cannot give? I often ask high school students in the classroom: Will there be no art in life? What do you think in life doesn’t require beauty? Of course, behind these questions, I am well aware that art education can stop at the technical level, but it can also be a cultivation of sense of beauty and an aesthetic training. On the contrary, in our world where industry and commerce and science and technology dominate the social life, everyone should need some skills or sense of beauty of art. Aesthetic perception should be put into practice in life and it should be one of the most important indicators for improving the quality of the people. It’s an important way for everyone to self-develop and invest in the community [5].

In today’s world, industry has grown to a plateau, and in the post-industrial period that followed, the most important industries are knowledge and aesthetically creative industries. Although there are still many people who doubt whether such a thing has happened, it is doubtless that the society is indeed moving toward the trend of development. Through this research project, statistical analysis of the name semantics of works and the images of works will be conducted in the hope to achieve more effective transmission way of art language and information.

2 Literature Review

“Beauty comes naturally from the experience of life. After appreciating more beautiful things and cultivating judgment of eyes, a power, national power will be formed gradually.” [10]. In his series of works “Gazing”, he mainly explores the space symbols and cultural symbols in self-creation from the current multi-dimensional artistic creation trend. “Life Experience,” “Theoretical Exploration,” and “Creative Work” are the processes that I practice in the creation. The three activities are mutually reinforcing and contain the ways in which art, such as memory, thinking, reflection and action, can be virtually presented.

It is just like the natural experience of breathing in air, trying to combine with contemporary digital image painting and collage experimental research to locate the artwork. Using modern computer tools and equipment, some of them are presented in digital computer graphics and trying to combine them with other media through a computer, which does not mean that it is completely limited by computer. Instead, it is trying to find another possibility and artistic performance accuracy. In the early stage of creation, it is completely invisible whether there is a system to follow or even most of the attempts are made on tools and media [8].

However, we gradually find that we can formulate issues and then experimentally produce a series of works until the state of independent creation is finally displayed, which is not just accidental creation. However, it is undeniable that the work style and development will still be affected by the computer media and the output materials. On the contrary, this is also a new thinking of a material civilization society. The use of ready-made objects and digital collage creation require the combination of experimenters, computers, and a variety of media to reflect the multi-media era in the works [9].

2.1 Collage Art Technique of Expression

Picasso’s Still Life with the Caned Chair in 1912 creates a representative collage work of Cubism. Picasso leveraged on a wax cloth painted with caned chair, took rope as frame, and affixed the image with sketches of glasses and lemon slices. The upper left letter JOU represents journal or jouer, so that such thinking shows a diversity of creative changes that lead to another new milestone. The image of a work can be regarded as a meaningful language [4] (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.

Pablo picasso, still life with chair caning, 1912, oil on oil-cloth over canvas edged with rope, 29 × 37 cm (Musée Picasso)

To find some creative elements from daily life is to use the keen observation that artists should have. Maybe the artwork is slow and quiet, but I believe it is a surreal feeling. After determining the creative direction and issues, the observed phenomenon of life is expected to be presented through the way of artistic creation.

The history of art development is like a large branch of a tree, and creation must be built on the complete branch before we can experience the wind and rain and flowering results. I also try to find some corresponding roots in the history of fine arts, and extend the objects I want to express in the real space. Through the process of self-creation and the fixed forms, I present the desired style and the ideal spatial structure. The most important thing about “creation” lies in the embodiment of life thinking and life experiences, as well as the historical trajectory of life presented [7].

Gestalt psychologist Rodulf Arnheim (1904–2007) argues that the human mind accepts and interprets the images of the external world in an individual conscious and unconscious interaction and the unconscious areas will not enter our experience without the reflection of perceivable things of mankind. [1] “Art is life, life is art”, even if art stays close to life, it is sometimes overlooked, thus it is especially important to break through the previously established forms and restrictions of creation. Taking “gazing” series of works as example, the house of grandmother for childhood life is finally demolished as a shabby house for years. The action is not just building renovation, but a symbol of space, culture hidden behind it. It is fortunate that he projects his feeling on the art creation. The rubble of the remnant’s house is not the end, but the beginning of another art creation life and the self-creation life thus starts. Demolition of the old house is not just the demolition of the house, but the demolition of home. The demolition of house is the demolition of entity space and emotional parts. There are some memories reconstructions while feeling the demolished object. The contradiction relationship appears between demolition and reconstruction [11].

“There is nothing in the world that craves for beauty and can be easily landscaped as beautiful as it originates from its inner needs; it is beautiful because it is inherently beautiful”. [10] The feeling of artwork should come from the inner life, which is both the real expression and the hope of clarifying cultural symbols and spatial symbols in my creation through studying the corresponding roots of art history and related literatures.

2.2 Social Communication Theory

As far as communication theory is concerned, how does the artist convey the series of works “Gazing” to the audience and how does the audience convey the image information of the work completely? This is an interesting study. Therefore, the artist must have the process of coding at the very beginning when he creates the work, and the process of coding the process of materialization should convey the meaning of the image of the work. Naming is one of the pointers that materialize the image content.

You see a picture in the gallery with a couple of men and women dressed in European clothing from the early nineteenth century. You look a few more glances and have a deja vu feeling, finally recognize them as Napoleon and Josephine. So you come to such conclusion that this painting should portray the military genius and his first wife. However, when you look at the title of the painting, “Neighbor Couples before Masquerade”, you immediately find that the original interpretation is incorrect. This painting shows the painter’s neighbor, who looks very similar with Napoleon and Josephine in appearance after dressing up. The men in the painting are not Napoleon and Josephine and the scene is not in the nineteenth century. In the above example, one thing we can observe is that a title seems to be one of the elements that the audience notices in appreciation of a work of art. The American philosopher Jerrold Levinson calls this element “aesthetically relevant factor” or “appreciatively relevant factor”.

In the case of the program school of communication theory (Fiske, 1990), in the communication process of an art work (message), from the creation of an artist (sender’s) to the audience (receiver), there are three levels of communication that can be passed on to the audience: the first one is the technical aspect, so that the person who receives the message can see, hear, touch and even feel, that is, how the artist accurately convey the information through the artwork. [12] The second level is the semantic level, so that people who receive the message understand the meaning of the message, will not misunderstand or misinterpret the work, that is, how to let the audience understand the original intention of message. The third level is the effect level, that is how to let the people who receive the message take the correct action according to the original intention of the message, that is, how to effectively influence the expected behavior (Rungtai Lin, 1992).

Through Intuition experience, this study will analyze the extent of information transmitted through artwork by artists and readers based on the framework of communication theory (R. T., Lin & P. H., Lin, Personal Communication, 29/01/18), while “beauty” is more difficult to be divorced from concrete, sensible form. The artist or creator often transforms the image he sees, the inner or the imaginary image into the form of the work, and by means of which it conveys the emotional connotation of the self to resonate with the audience. The various forms and creation elements presented in the work are able to show their personal characteristics or personality, and reflect the impact of the spatiotemporal background, social environment and customs on the artist’s spirit, thoughts, beliefs, life, events… and so on, and then to develop the artist’s individual shaping of their unique style.

3 Research Methods

Appreciating artwork is like playing a new game. You may also need to know how to read the content of artwork in the first time of intuitive appreciation. To understand what art is, we cannot just look at the surface of the artwork, but rather understand the message conveyed by the art of viewing. In other words, we must continuously accumulate personal “artistic experiences” from the viewing and then discover the meaning through one appropriate “point of view”. The so-called appreciation is a careful observation of an object and reflection on the observed things. After one learns how to view the artwork, one can even learn to see everything around life from an artistic point of view. Therefore, this study hopes to conduct a Chinese name matching study after the audience directly views the series of installation work of “Gazing”.

3.1 Research Framework

There are seven basic relationships among thoughts in Hume’s book Humanity, including (1) similarities (2) causal relations (3) spatial proximity (4) identity (5) contradiction (6) number proportion (7) degree of quality. [14] The first three of them are the factors that he assumes to be the most important. Through the visual experience of the audience, we can study and discuss them. In this study, we will take 2007 personal creations of “Gazing” as the object of study. The research will be divided into three phases. Phase I includes literature review and theoretical construction as mentioned above. Phase II is the matching name test of painting titled “Gazing”. After the preliminary test and expert consultation, the formal matching questionnaire is conducted. Phase III will organize the questionnaire results into confusion matrix that matches work with name and explore related results with statistical analysis to obtain possible results and suggestions. The research framework is shown in figure (Table 1).

Table 1. Structure of the memory and research architecture of reproduction

3.2 Sample Selection

In this study, nine of the personal “gazing” creation series are named with 9 words and sentences for name matching test. In the works, some Google map image symbols are used in combination with objects left over from time to space, so that the perception in the memory can be presented through the reconstruction of creation, hoping to explore emotionally the home and house in the memory through art creation and perceptual intuition of audience, including composite media decorative elements of red brick, Hakka cloth, ancient porcelain bowl, window grille, tile… and so on.

When artists combine the various visual elements of their work, they become another way of presenting feelings or ideas. Similarly, as a viewer, the impressions that we perceive in a work from one visual element are all influenced by the interrelationship among the visual elements of the picture. The most significant, enduring and easily recognizable symbol of urban space is constructed from buildings (Tables 2 and 3).

Table 2. “Gazing” works title options

Table 3. Works options (a total of 9 items)

3.3 Questionnaire Design

The questionnaire content of this study is based on the communication theory discussed before and is divided into two groups. Group A only appreciates the work and the slide has no written explanation. Group B appreciates the work and reads the text below and then carries out name pairs. After the completion of the name options A1 to A9, students are invited to select their favorite piece of work, tick the 9 works listed by the researcher to benefit the follow-up analysis of researchers.

3.3.1 Description for Group A Questionnaire

Here are 9 creations. Please read work for 1 min and determine the matching degree between the work and name; fill in the options and answer the matching degree of following questions based on the intuitive feeling given by the work.

3.3.2 Description for Group B Questionnaire

Here are 9 creations. Please read the works and painting text instructions for 1 min, determine the matching degree of the work and name; fill in the options and answer the matching degree of following questions based on the intuitive feeling given by the work.

3.3.3 Group B Questionnaire and Text Description

Group B questionnaire and text description (Table 4)

Table 4. “Gazing” works text description form

3.4 Subjects

A total of 291 participants were invited to assist in the study, including 174 first graders from high school, 117 third graders from high school, 74 male students and 217 female students who were from the six classes of three attributes of first-grade and the third-grade mathematics experimental class, Chinese experimental class and normal class. Researchers observe in the secondary education scene that the appreciation of modern art in Taiwan is lacked for secondary school students, trying to use the “Gazing” series as a research material to grow aesthetic education in the creative appreciation of modern art in the school worshiping credentialism.

In the face of the rapid social changes and the changing trends and challenges, the talents needed in the future must have both modern care and global citizenship. However, the cultivation of art and aesthetic sense of citizen literacy must be carried out through the improvement of the art and aesthetic education system, administrative support systems, teacher empowerment, curriculum and teaching material research and development, integration of social resources and shaping of good social mood for the appreciation of beauty and truly implement to meet the needs of all walks of life.

3.5 Questionnaire Process

This study is conducted in the classroom by projecting the artwork and simulating the gallery context. Students are invited to get involved and asked for permission. When a student enters the classroom, he or she first explains the purpose of the experiment and the mode of operation. After reading the image works, he or she fills in the questionnaire that matches the name of the painting. Questionnaire content contains personal basic data and paintings name matching options and one of the favorite works and the reason behind it. Subjects select the appropriate name for each painting and questionnaire content is arranged in an A4-size questionnaire.

The situation is built and the target is effectively answered. In Taiwan’s art education, visual art is only one lesson in secondary school. In aesthetic experience, art-like teaching is easier for students to understandt modern art and abstract art are hard to be comprehended. The actual operation process is as follows: (1) The purpose of the study (2) Art appreciation situation shaping (3) The work name matching description (4) Filling in and answering. Each questionnaire contains open-ended questions which can be completed in about 15 min. I think that art is something that can challenge people’s intellect and incite emotions. Appreciating the artistic creation of others can help one to enhance his creativity and thinking skills and find expressionist ways of expressing ideas of creators, and at the same time, help him to highlight the familiar tools and techniques of art and develop better ways of creating art.

After that, through practical creation practice, new artistic creation method is tested. By circular process of observing, experiencing and practicing, each of us can cultivate the ability to observe artistic works.

4 Research Discussion

The traditional matching test system is used to explore the visibility of public signs, and a confusion matrix is obtained through the pairing of graphic signs and written semantic meaning. The reasons for confusion between graphic signs and written semantics are further discussed. [13] The name and matching complexity of “Gazing Creation Series” far exceeds the recognition of graphic signs and written semantics. This paper uses the confusion matrix of matching test framework to explore subjective interpretations of subjects’ acceptance of pictorial images and their semantic understanding, supplemented by objective data to try to study the possible causes of cognitive misunderstanding in the subject, and also try to develop a mode that is more suitable for middle school students in modern art appreciation in this study.

4.1 Test Results

Statistics of accuracy rate of name matching.

From Table 5, A8 is barely confused with A9. A8 uses “automatic writing” as the main creative technique. In addition, the background maps are densely populated cities and images convey the tension in urban life. In A9’s work, with the traditional Taiwan Hakka ethnic cloth as the main decoration, peony flowers convey symbolic symbol of prosperity and wealth, so the recognition rate is high. In A4 and A5 works, because of the object and subject relationship, A4 works take roundness to highlight the only color area of the screen and modeling contrast is quite clear. A5 works use the entity former window objects and windows symbols can be clearly distinguished by tester. A5 and A6 are similar. The situation that A1 and A2 are confused is high, and the two works are confused with each other, affecting the recognition rate. A6 and A7 enjoy the lowest recognition rate. Straight figures indicate that the painting is mistaken for other titles, and horizontal figures indicate that the title is mistaken for other paintings.

Table 5. Statistics of name matching accuracy rate of gazing works

4.1.1 The Same Name as the Artist

On the whole, in terms of A1 to A8 statistics, Group B has higher name matching degree than Group A. This Table 6 shows that the textual narration has a great influence on the extent to which the audience understands the work. Through text interpretation, artistic language conveyed by artists can be clarified. Only A9 enjoys extremely small difference in number and gap. The researchers analyze the reasons that the use of symbols in their works is quite significant in symbolic meaning, quite close to cognition of audience, especially the symbolic message conveyed by red print. In traditional art, flower images are always colorful, graceful and favored by general public. They are commonly used as the theme of literature and the arts with the Chinese cultural spirit and are often referred to as the symbol of personal style. Therefore, they have always been admired by the people. Peony is elegant with the reputation of the national fragrance. In Liu Yuxi’s poem of “Peony Appreciation”, “Only peonies are truly beautiful, which impress the capital with its bloom. In Song dynasty, Luoyang Peony is famous around the world with many varieties and documents… Peony flower features large size, rich fragrance, flowering in spring with red, white, yellow, green and other colors. They are elegant, extraordinary and auspicious and mark as a symbol of prosperity.” Therefore, the red prints have a deep meaning of cultural significance and are easy to convey its meaning through the works.

Table 6. Statistical table for the matching number of the same name as author

In addition, A8 works are selected by 21% of the participants in group A, which ranks high in group A. The works techniques of expression are similar to abstract artist Pollock (Jackson Pollock 1887–1986). The images are mostly Automatism. The researchers speculate that the image delivers impatient messy psychological and visual images, so that the great pressure undertaken by subjects for higher school admission can be echoed, hence the high name matching degree.

4.1.2 Statistics of the Most Impressive Works

In this study, Question 10, “Which one of the 9 works above do you like most?”, The top three works that were the most impressive are A8, A1 and A5, of which A8 is selected by 60 people, accounting for 20.6% of the total number. As mentioned in the previous section, the screen transmission allows the interviewer to feel more profound. The feedback part of the summary is as follows (Table 7):

Table 7. Statistical table for most impressive works on subjects

A8 works gives upset visual impression and researchers speculate with the Taiwan government and experts and scholars that they attempt to alleviate the problem of examination-led teaching through the reform of high school education and further studies. However, high school students’ anxiety about these factors is unlikely to be eliminated through high school education reform. As long as the working environment continues to be poor, the job market continues to highlight academic qualifications, student and parent’s anxiety will not disappear. Therefore, the researchers speculate on the pressure source of high school students: (1) The pressure of course learning: learning is undoubtedly the main source of stress in high school students and poor test scores directly affect the students’ college dreams, therefore, academic performance gives lots of pressure. (2) Pressure from peer competition: the excessive competitive pressure of students causes serious tension, which will affect the normal study and life. (3) Expectations from families and parents: every parent holds high expectation for their children. Under the high expectation and high pressure, the child will inevitably have anxiety. The strong pressure of high expectation on children and lack of inner harmony, concern, sincere feelings will inevitably lead to children’s coercion and resistance; increase psychological pressure. One of the root causes of student horror is the simple repetition and brutality of parental education methods. (4) Pressure from schools: students have a heavy academic load and their physical activity and entertainment time are reduced to improve their enrollment rate. The current school lacks mental health education with life education as the core. Students psychological pressure cannot be excused and released and there is no time for self-regulation and mutual adjustment, resulting in piled psychological stress problems. In testing, the A8 work with messy structure image greatly impresses us.

5 Conclusions and Suggestions

After the improvement of the material life, the improvement of the spiritual life of sense of beauty will definitely help to develop all the spiritual and physical development of a person. It is especially important to enhance art appreciation through appreciation of art, understanding of art works. The way that art creators convey their message is an important part of the process for artists to write in artwork through code which is decoded by audience. The “creation” value lies in the reflection of life experience and life thinking as well as the historical path of life presented. “There is nothing in the world that craves for beauty and can be easily landscaped as beautiful as it originates from its inner needs; it is beautiful because it is inherently beautiful”. The feelings of the artwork should come from real inner life presentation that artists can accurately convey their emotions. If we rely solely on the opinions of authority to “see”, that is, to “see” through the eyes of a critic, we must absolutely not learn the experience that can satisfy ourselves. Only through the process of experiencing itself can we acquire useful experiences and knowledge that are useful to ourselves so that we can feel content in the world of visual images. It may be a good idea to educate through art appreciation. The conclusions of the study are as follows:

• 1. The works of art have narrative help, which helps the audience to accept the importance of the message sent by the creator; to peel off the established logic of life and the viewpoints of things out of the original view, reassemble and add to the author’s perspective, and to have a greater understanding of the cultural representations represented by objects in the space in which we currently exist, and carry out further exploration.

• 2. In today’s life, people enjoy the convenience brought by science and technology for the whole world and easily ignore the emotional transmission of people and things around us. We hope that by this study, we can promote the reflection on the self-creation environment and aesthetic education because something cannot be redeemed once it is lost. Art culture is required to retain it.

• 3. The small objects of life used in the creation are often the result of the exchange of perceptions between the human spirit and the objective environment. Therefore, not only the objects but the expressions of self-feelings in the heart are reproduced in creation with known and unknown facts combined.

• 4. Taking into account both the concrete and abstract forms, learning that object exists space and the cultural code that cannot be ignored are worth exploring for the teaching of the collage art which is more reserved for the future course of the researcher so as to make the life more artful, make art closer to life, so that each piece of art has become a meaningful story book.

• 5. In the daily communication, although the language is powerful, it is often too explicit. The writing is more moderate and indirect, but if the speech is not satisfactory, the effect will be greatly reduced. With artistic creation to show one’s intention, the object serves as its material to interpret the symbolic meaning behind it. Even though the social culture has given some meaning, but with the interpretation of man, the cognitive space is more flexible and wide-ranging, creating subtle interactions and relationships with viewers to produce another communication language.

Living in this world, it is difficult to live happily by reason and sometimes a little more emotional artistic imagination will make life more harmonious and interesting. Many unknown things will become the taste of life. Therefore, the creation of works of art that resonates with viewers can also be an important driving force behind monotonous life. The imaginary and memory projection are projected in the artistic creation. It is like enjoying a wonderful essay, which is thought-provoking to read at any time. The study is surprised to find that the subject’s favorite work, “A8”, is messy and disordered for the general public. However, for middle school students, it is the most impressive and resonated and gives inspiration for the researchers that more art pressure release course will be introduced to the teaching curriculum to enrich their lives. Therefore, the research, combined with questionnaire feedback, statistical analysis, subjective speculation and comparative analysis, although not exhaustive, is only a preliminary research result and can provide reference for artists and teachers.

The participated test classes are concentrated and different learning groups are also the topic to be further explored by the researchers. In classes with more “science course” and “literature course”, whether their content of art appreciation or depth presents difference? It is also worthwhile for researchers to study continuously. Moreover, such an art appreciation study in secondary education with academic advancement as the most important goal serves as is a novel and interesting art appreciation experience for the students. With the use of technology media, in the future, we can continue to develop artistic appreciation to join the voice of the emotional operation or lighting to stimulate the operation and creation of other situation. These are interesting topics of art education and can be researched in a sustainable manner.