Transmedia and Fine Arts department Sint-Lukas Brussels, Technical University of Eindhoven & Technical University of Istanbul present a cross-disciplinary project, based on the values and urban heritage of Turkish culture.
In 2010, Istanbul became one of the cultural cities of Europe. It was our wish to celebrate and consolidate the rich cultural diversity of Europe through confronting the Turkish cultural heritage with our Western society by means of an interactive space.
This interactive space is meant for visitors from different countries, with different languages and backgrounds. It operated as the medium to concretize the multifaceted Turkish cultural context by means of (syn) esthetic experiences.
Cultural differences seldom are physically experienced through the senses. The interconnection between culture and (syn)esthetic experiences allows for an emphatic understanding of the situation by being able to reenact it and feel it in our body.
This space offers an excellent opportunity to keep in touch with and communicate new developments and inspiring ways of how young artists and designers handle cultural values and matters in a world in need of a strong cultural identity. It is meant as a discussion platform to reframe identities in the globalized world.
Students and coaches from the multimedia, interaction design and design engineering disciplines of 3 universities (Belgium, Netherlands, Turkey) engage in an iterative process, based on three layers (exploring urban culture, re-experiencing cultural heritage and developing a communication platform) in order to create interactive installations allowing visitors to directly experience Turkish cultural markers through their senses (e.g. bodily expression).
1. Urban Culture
How do students living in Brussels, Eindhoven and Istanbul perceive and trace the geographical strata or urban culture and the diversity and richness of Turkish culture? How do they look at each other? What about their perceptions, examples, stories, experiences, sensations of the other? How do they perceive Turkish culture from their point of view? How do they deal with stereotypes? How the culture of the immigrants from Turkey as Others and the local residents of Turkey differ?
Multimedia, interaction design and design engineering students focus on people’s everyday life, their activities, bodily expression, mobility and other patterns in public space as very specific way of analyzing cultural markers of Turkish society.
2. Common Cultural Heritage
Based on the analysis of Turkish urban culture/s, the students render Turkish and Western perception and preconception of Turkish values in an interactive space.
By means of re-enacting their perception of the modern Turkish people, they recreate the Belgian, Dutch and Turkish images of the streets of Istanbul and perceive how people react, and vice versa.
This space is the result of an intensive workshop, at ITU, where different views on Turkish society are confronted by means of interactive installations (working as cultural probes). The focus is on how and in what way the perception of Turkish cultural values differ.
The space itself elucidates the way our cultural participation and cooperation is colored by our own beliefs and disbeliefs and makes us aware of how relevant and irrelevant our face values are.
3. Communication platform
Third layer of this project is to open up the interactive space as an exhibition to enable the participants and new visitors to discuss and confront their points of view with the experience they will have from multiple interactive installations. Each installation shows a different view and aspect on Turkish society. Some of them come from a western perception of Turkish values; others from a Turkish perception.
This exposition allows European citizens to reflect on the way the perception of and reflection on the Turkish values can/must/should be adjusted and rectified, as to behave in mutual understanding and comprehension. This also gives a chance to discuss the perspectives of how Turkish people counter-perceive their cultural perception from the eye of Europe.
This moment of self-reflection is an important moment of catharsis. This operation also is indicative to the Turkish community, as they perceive the way we perceive them.
Methodology
1. Preparatory video fieldwork based on Ingold’s ethnography and practice on foot; workshops in the Brussels Brabantwijk, Woensel (Eindhoven) and in Istanbul neighbourhood. 2. Use of emphatic design tools, cultural probes and Laban movement analysis to get a deeper understanding of specific cultural markers. 3. Lectures about urban anthropology with Tim Cassiers (Cosmopolis, VUB) and co-reflection on cultural markers with Oscar Tomico (TU/e). 4. Vision development by way of multiple iterations, confronting the art/design rationale with society. Use of process mapping or transformative and iterative art/design processes as to reflect on this development and its outcome. 5. Website linked to the sites of the partners as platform for communication and discussion on all the stages and activities of the project. 6. Brain storming sessions and small sketch problems to understand the existing pre/judgments of different cultures.
Literature
Gaver, w., Dunne, T. & Pacenti, E. Cultural probes. Interactions, 6 (1). ACM Press, New York, 1999.
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Ingold, T. The perception of the environment. Essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill, London, 2000
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Ingold, T. (ed), Ways of walking. Ethnography and practice on foot, 2008.
Kandiyoti, D, Saktanber, A. Fragments of Culture: The Everyday of Modern Turkey. I.B. Tauris&Co. 2002.
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Tomico, O. Subjective Experience Gathering Techniques for Interaction Design. Doctoral dissertation. UPC, Barcelona, 2007.
Tomico, O, Frens, J W. & Overbeeke, C. J. Co-reflection: user involvement for highly dynamic design processes. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2009 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2009.
Ylirisku S, Buur J. Designing with video: Focusing the user-centered design process. Springer 2007.
Akin, F. Crossing the bridge: the sound of Istanbul. 2005. (Movie)http://www.en.istanbul2010.org/index.htm
Coaches: Johanna Kint (TU/e, Sint Lukas), Oscar Tomico (TU/e), Kris Vleeschouwer (Sint Lukas), Humanur Bagli (ITU), Peter Beyls ( Sint Lukas Brussels).
Meeting Istanbul 2010 had the support of Lifelong Learning IP Erasmus Program
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