First of all, I want to emphasise that this opportunity has absolutely nothing to do with the MSc Programme itself, save that it is being hosted by a colleague from Stuttgart Media University, Frank Thissen, who is known to some of us. Although I thought that some might be interested. What follows is an announcement from Frank. Anyone interested in participation should contact him directly.
Our next collaboration focuses on the role of culture specific stories, typical places and things and its representation in information design products.
As Pierre Nora (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Nora) and Aleida Assmann stated every culture has specific places, things, heroes and stories that are important for the culture and the people to identify with, as well to present the values of the culture. Fairy tales are an example, but also buildings and places (e.g. the Eiffel tower in Paris, the Amselfeld fort he Serbs), or heroes, persons or sometimes animals (the dragon in Chinese culture). The idea is that these cultural identification objects are present in the minds of the people and are used in information design, such as advertising, posters etc.
“As a term, cultural memory was first introduced by the German Egyptologists Jan Assmann in his book “Das kulturelle Gedächtnis”, who drew further upon Maurice Halbwachs’s theory on collective memory. Both Jan Assmann and more present-day scholars like Andreas Huyssen have identified a general interest in memory and mnemonics since the early 1980s, illustrated by phenomena as diverse as memorials and retro-culture. Some might see cultural memory as becoming more democratic, due to liberalization and the rise of new media. Others see cultural memory as remaining concentrated in the hands of corporations and states.
Because memory is not just an individual, private experience but is also part of the collective domain, cultural memory has become a topic in both historiography (Pierre Nora, Richard Terdiman) and cultural studies (e.g., Susan Stewart). These emphasize cultural memory’s process (historiography) and its implications and objects (cultural studies), respectively. Memory is a phenomenon that is directly related to the present; our perception of the past is always influenced by the present, which means that it is always changing.” (source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_memory)
The collaboration could follow the following steps:
• Each group identifies typical stories, places and persons of the own culture and present it to the other groups. (October)
• The groups look for similarities and try to find out the values and backgrounds of the own and other cultural objects. (November)
• Each group searches for information products which uses these cultural identification objects and present it to the other groups. (November / December)
We discuss, what we can learn from it and how we can use the cultural identification objectss for information design.
Our semester starts on October 4th and I can start with the group working from 13th of October. I think it will be helpful to read some texts from Nora and Assmann. A first text yo can find here: http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/106.3/ah000906.html
Could yo please look for your students to find other texts in English by Pierre Nora and about cultural rememberece places and objects.
I hope that there will be also people from Mexico, Bulgaria, Sri Lanka, China and Turkey in the collaboration.
Frank Thissen
frank.thissen@gmx.de
