Kang Yi
Installation / Artistic Research
Censer
2015
Kang, Yi
Lin, Chenna
Zhong, Fang Yu
-Concept
{Tradition to Futures:
Creativity, Design,
and/in Taiwan}
Series of lecture about Taiwanese traditions and cultures such as Puppetry ,Songjiang Battle, Statues Buddhna Fixing were given in early stage of this two weeks workshop. I borrowed a censer from my grandfather, I was raised by him and he is a very religious person who owned a temple. Due to my experience, our group agreed to start concept with my censer.
The meaning of censer is visualising the process of praying. We input action progress it in praying then get feedback like smoke. Rituals during eastern religions can be really complicated. So we tend to focus on meaning of ritual action. Compared to Japanese Tea Ceremony, Chakai, process of praying for local gods in Taiwan has also become well organised. But praying has been simplified as the time goes on. A famous temple called "Hsing Tian Kong" added a policy in 2014 that censer is no longer accessible. Religion in Taiwan is mainly mixed with Buddhism and Taoism. And this policy has worked for some believers.
This workshop aimed at future design background, so we threw out multiple ideas to see where our imagination takes us. Because of polytheism, prayers usually need to say the names of gods they have been talking to. We tried to change visual feedback to see if there could be any other possibilities.
In every temples, there are order for praying the gods. We wanted to make the process automatic. Taking references from the Chinese calligraphy work, the Orchid Pavilion, we used a scene in the work to build our ritual process. This work is talking about how people sit by the river and having fun with drinking the alchohol in cups passed by the river from upstream. So we came up with a concept that make the praying process automatic but can also be seen.
We developed this concept into two kind. First one is changing the whole ritual details and only keep the visual feedback. Combing the structures and scene of Orchid Pavilion, our concept is creating a landscape architecture in the temple. As prayers start the process with putting a representation of spiritual tea on the water , altars of gods would show signs with light or water smoke when the representations passed by.
Second expression is to made the simplified processes into a package. A box filled with tools for praying. Similar to concept of tower, this tool box is designed in order of each step.