| Abstract |
The idea of transforming tradition is to keep various old-but-valuable traditions alive. It connects tradition with contemporary lives, and makes traditional things sustainable. During my work, both as a designer-maker and a researcher, I have built a model, named as TCUSM (an abbreviation of technique-concept-utility-structure-material) that functions as a tool for artists, craftspeople, designers, and art-design students, to help them transforming many aspects of tradition into a new object/product. This tool operates by arranging five components of tradition and modernity -technique, concept, utility, structure, and material- in resulting rich variations of new objects, a blend of the old and the new; in a new shape, new function, or new context. My paper aims to illustrate how this TCUSM tool works, with providing some design cases including also my own work. By presenting the cases, I will show that “To preserve tradition is to continuously develop it”. As long as some fundamental components of tradition –or at least one of them- are continuously transformed in the production of new objects, a part of our tradition will be kept alive and be sustainable. |