Gigamapping

We had a new course called Gigamapping. It consisted mostly of in-class exercises and it was an interesting exercise to figure out the bigger picture of our research topic. It is a form of systemic thinking, in this process nothing is irrelevant, nothing is uninteresting. We strive in richness of information, we we are supposed to pour everything in our mind into the piece of paper, and it got real messy, but messy is good.

We did the exercise in pair, but because we have an odd number of students, I was paired with Circe, who is the head of fashion division from Lasalle. I was very honored to be able to work with her because she is very knowledgeable of the fashion industry and apparently she is working on a Phd that is related to fashion and culture, especially her Mexican culture. Our topics are somehow similar so it was really interesting to exchange ideas with her and we came up with gigamaps.

The first session of the gigamapping, we had to discuss to each other about our projects and create a map for each project. Below is my portion of the map. The ones circled are the main keywords in which the surrounding words are derived from. This exercise made me come up with keywords that I have never thought before such as "couture" and "nostalgia". I came up with "couture" because in Peranakan shoe beading, each piece is unique and took hundreds of hours to do with high level of craftsmanship. Seeing it as a "couture" piece can bring in new direction of looking at things rather than just as an artifact. 

Below is Circe's portion of the map where she is focusing on slow fashion, sustainability, and cultural heritage for her project.

We then have to redraw the map, imagining it to become one large project and show the common areas/overlaps, as well as clarifying the themes and subthemes. Luckily our projects are quite similar, the main themes would be the pink colored words and the words surrounding them are the sub-themes. We are looking a lot on arts and crafts, craftsmanship, and cultural sustainability.

On the second session, we look at design as a multi/cross/inter-disclipinary principle. It requires collaboration, new ways to share research insight and information. Generative thinking is a design skill. It's not enough to describe things, it's always good to visualize as a form of communication. Gigamapping is part of the materialization of ideas through visual thinking. For the activity, we have to review the map from last week, add any new keywords if necessary, and agree on one final map. I reviewed the map from last week and made it in a better sequence, almost like a timeline, starting from the history, to the meanings and interpretation of the culture/items/crafts, leading to bigger cause that we want to achieve through our design and creation process. Still linking those keywords to main themes.

That new map then leads to the next exercise where we have to choose one type of synthesis to do. I did a new map based on the ZIP analysis. I chose the "Interpretation" part to investigate further because that's the part that's very "loose" to me. The part that is very open to any kind of possibilities, where problems and potential deeply lie. I then speculate the kind of innovation that could be driven from those potentials, which is the platform that will connect communities of designers and craftsmen with materials to create a new system. 

For the last session of Gigamapping, we had to use the synthesized map from last week to map out each individual project again. We had to indicate how our projects connect to the synthesized map by linking any missing keywords, and then draw the connections to our design briefs.

Below is my final Gigamap. Harah recommended me to redo my map synthesis to use the "timeline", because it's more relatable in my topic since I'm exploring a historic craft. So I created a timeline for my topic, from the origin of the Peranakans until today. I realized that there hasn't been any development or adaptation of the culture in decades, which leads to the irrelevance of the culture today. Then, from that timeline, I put the remaining relatable keywords (in pink) around the events. From then, I figured out the missing keywords in my timeline and from then developed my design briefs that will connect the missing links (collaboration, network, creation). For now, I'm looking at creating a platform that will connect designers, artisans, and artists alike through collaboration.