Examining industrial product design from the angle of art and culture
"From the ancient flood period to the establishment and development of modern civilization, people have never stopped thinking about creation and actual creative activities."
Through this conscious activity, human beings have transformed nature and gained human aura. Nature has been endowed with human meaning, a world reflecting human intentions and activities has emerged, and "culture" has begun its life movement with the rest of the deep stone. A natural rock has no cultural significance, but after artificial polishing, it has injected humanistic value and entered the category of "culture". The process and product of human adapting to the environment, transforming the environment and transforming itself is culture. The process of people polishing stone tools, the improvement of knowledge and skills in the process of polishing stone tools, the relationship between people in polishing stone tools, and finally the achievement of this stone tool containing human value orientation are all cultural phenomena.
Culture refers to the sum of material wealth and spiritual wealth created by human society in historical practice. It is a creative activity that human beings meet their own needs in some way. "People in society are the product of the long-term development of animals. However, the cultural history of mankind began when people were not satisfied with enjoying the gifts of nature and began to produce their own consumer goods. " This kind of culture was born in the initial "creative" activities of human beings, which can be called "creative culture". Only later, with the development of productive forces and the enrichment of people's needs, the connotation of culture changed from simple to complex, from single to diverse, and the concept of culture was given more and more complex connotation with the in-depth study of culturology. But one thing is that human culture has not changed from monism to pluralism.
A cultural history of mankind, no matter which region or nationality, can be said to begin with the manufacture of production tools and daily necessities. When people use the first stone tool, it is not out of artistic and aesthetic considerations, but out of practical purposes of "labor" and "survival". That is, plekhanov (1856- 19 18) put forward that "practicality precedes aesthetics". Therefore, in the earliest sense, creative activities are comprehensive, universal and practical. However, as long as the general objects appear in the form of matter, they will have certain practical functions; As a material existence, it will have a spiritual impact on people. After the practical purposes of "labor" and "survival" were achieved, the consideration of "art" and "aesthetics" began to be added, and the general man-made articles rose to the art of creation. In the long history, with more and more consideration of "art" and "aesthetics", the man-made objects as their original carriers can no longer be fully satisfied, and they gradually derive from them and appear in the so-called "pure art", thus forming an artistic culture, such as paintings that are independently appreciated. As a result, the division between "material culture" and "spiritual culture" appeared. However, as a primary "mother type", the creation culture did not disintegrate, but developed along its own track. At this time, the creative culture is also the artistic culture of creation.
The creative activity of human beings is the beginning of obtaining a functional form that is not found in nature through human creativity, and seeking positive survival in nature, which is the most essential cultural phenomenon. Creative culture is a kind of culture that has not been decomposed between or above material culture and spiritual culture, and it is original and comprehensive. Professor Zhang called this culture, which is inseparable from material culture and spiritual culture, "primitive culture" in his theory of creative art. In the article "cross-century artistic creation", he said:
"... generally man-made, according to the usual saying, it is often called' material culture'; It is relative to' spiritual culture'. ..... Strictly speaking,' man-made things' in this respect cannot be regarded as pure' material culture', but are integrated with culture, which I call' primitive culture'. That is, it was the earliest cultural form before the culture was divided into pluralism. With the division of labor between society and production, culture has been divided from monism to pluralism, and primitive culture has not disintegrated, but developed in parallel with material culture and spiritual culture. And because it keeps up with the development of science and technology and the pulse of life, it has always maintained a strong vitality. Take ceramics as an example. It is not difficult to see from its historical evolution that although technology and lifestyle have changed, its production, style and use have also changed. Moreover, it can be seen that the style differences between different generations of ceramics and categories have become the unity of practicality and aesthetics, but they have not been interrupted for tens of thousands of years. Its cultural comprehensiveness determines its artistic and aesthetic comprehensiveness. The' creative art' and its design that we want to study refer to this culture. "
Creation culture, as a primitive culture, has dual social functions of practicality and aesthetics since its birth. The exertion of practical function is individual, while the exertion of aesthetic function is whole.
Creative art culture has the nature of creative culture since its formation. КаΥан, a scholar in the former Soviet Union, believes that artistic culture is a special culture which is different from material culture and spiritual culture in cultural form. Therefore, he divided the whole culture into three parts: material culture, spiritual culture and artistic culture. Material culture refers to the transformation from nature to culture, including products and methods of material production; Spiritual culture refers to the ideological culture created by spiritual production, and the two are mutual. And artistic culture is the result of the organic integration of these two cultures. He thinks: "This special spiritual-material integrity of people's artistic activities leads to the fact that the artistic culture shaped around artistic activities cannot be included in the boundary of spiritual culture. It is different from spiritual culture and material culture in cultural space and has relative independence. In other words, the internal structure of artistic culture is special, which is different from the structure of spiritual culture and material culture because it is determined by the characteristics of artistic activities themselves. " КаΥан's "artistic culture" here is the artistic culture of creation.
The development of human culture is now colorful. Gorky regards nature as "the first nature", while the culture created by human beings is "the second nature". He said: "Scholars observe and study all the phenomena existing in the' first nature', teach people to create a' second' with the power of this' first', and teach people to care about their health and prolong their life. Artists observe people's inner world-psychology. " He believes that "three people create culture: scholars, artists and workers." Art is an important aspect of culture, and its category is so complicated that it is almost impossible to classify it from the same angle. General art is a kind of "pure" ideology, which acts on people's spirit, plays a social role in cognition, education and aesthetics, and is easy to distinguish. However, some art categories are not pure ideology, but appear in material form, which affects people's spirit at the same time. This is the art of creation. The art of creation is directly related to people's food, clothing, housing and transportation. It is not only material culture, but also spiritual culture, and it is a kind of performance art developed to adapt to material production. Creative art has the characteristics of creative culture and artistic culture.
In the world, diverse artistic creation has become commonplace. However, when we live in an environment where everything we need is complete, we take it for granted that the art of creation is everywhere. So they turned a blind eye to the "mother-type" status of these artifacts, and simply classified this creation culture as "material culture", dismissing it as a craftsman's work and excluding it from art and aesthetics. Especially since the pre-Qin period, China pursued the metaphysical way and despised metaphysical tools. Creation belongs to the metaphysical category, and it has been brought into the secular mainstream in ideology and social practice, which has influenced the past dynasties. In practice, the strong social demand urges technology and products to intervene in people's lives in large quantities, which has become a material force that affects society and people's mentality. This is the inheritance of the traditional Chinese thought of "valuing morality and neglecting equipment". On the other hand, people despise the artistic labor of people in this workshop. Not only do a large number of artists and craftsmen not get their due economic and social status, but creative activities as a culture have not received corresponding recognition and attention in the overall sense. Ancient China literati even "sit and talk about Tao": "Although there are paths, there must be considerable people; If you are afraid of mud, it's because gentlemen don't do it. "I don't know how many people have been influenced by this' gentleman inaction'.
Marx pointed out: "The production of direct material means of subsistence, and therefore the economic development of a nation or an era at a certain stage, is based on composition, and people's national system, legal views, art and even religious concepts are all developed on this basis, so we must explain them from this basis, instead of doing the opposite as in the past." We cannot deny the essence of art and creative culture. Creating artistic culture is the foundation and root of artistic culture, a special form of artistic culture, a visual artistic language and a manifestation of artistic language. The two complement each other. With the continuous accumulation of creative art and culture, human art and culture are gradually enriched and human civilization is held high.
We know that human beings are a part of nature. Because nature is the basic condition of all life, without it, people cannot live completely independently. This is how our ancestors lived in nature as a part of it. In this case, the survival of human beings was dominated by complex laws that people's will was hard to change at that time. Fix your position in nature and you can't get rid of the natural cycle. At that time, people depended on the fruits of trees and rich nature to maintain their lives. In the face of serious and unusual natural disasters, they had to freeze to death and starve to death. In this way, nature is an absolute condition for human existence, and at the same time, it sometimes threatens human survival. To this end, mankind began to try to avoid the unfavorable natural environment as much as possible and create a favorable environment that is easier to survive. Humans became interested in fighting against nature. Refuse to let nature control everything that lives on its own, and begin to act on and transform nature. In this regard, human beings have created an artificial environment between man and nature, which should be called the second nature, thus getting rid of the direct changes of nature and starting to adjust the relationship between man and nature, and taking part of their own existence into their own hands. Because "animals just use external nature and simply change nature with their own existence;" Humans, on the other hand, let nature serve their own purposes and dominate nature through their own changes. "
Therefore, no matter how changeable the natural environment is, as long as we create an artificial environment that adapts to various situations, human beings can survive anywhere on the earth. Humans have created weapons to subdue their prey and necessary tools to satisfy all kinds of life. At first, it was by hand. Although the materials used are often natural materials, they have been deeply engraved with human traces. In the first tool of mankind-stone tools, we can see that after a long time, mankind has created the most convenient and practical art of creation. "We can call all conscious and objective items that meet a certain purpose product design. Generally speaking, all entities created purposefully by human beings can be called "product design". These creative arts are all handmade products, so they can also be collectively called industrial product design.
However, with the development of the times and skillful skills, the materials used are both natural and artificial. For example, the invention of pottery is a great success of man-made articles extending from physical properties to chemical properties. Since then, humans can not only change the shape of natural objects, but also use fire to sinter clay and change the properties of materials. This is a great invention in the history of science and technology in China. The invention relates to a regular and full-bodied pottery. Thus, the field and nature of industrial product design were expanded, and artistic means could be easily embodied, but the industrial concept at that time was still handicraft industry.
In the process of the high development of human civilization, after the industrial revolution began, creative art was condensed into industrial design at the beginning of the 20th century with the continuous integration of large-scale industrial production technology and artistic culture, and was established as an independent and complete modern discipline, and industrial product design became its real significance.
The design of industrial products comprehensively deals with the function, material, structure, technology, modeling, color, surface treatment, decoration and other factors of industrial products from social, economic and technical aspects, so as to meet people's requirements for both material functions and aesthetic tastes.
That is to say, when designing industrial products, we should not only study the possibility of manufacturing industrial products, the reliability of operation, the rationality of economy and the artistry of formal expression. , but also to study the value of industrial products to society, the impact on the environment and the physiological and psychological impact on people. The "artistry" here is a comprehensive concept, which includes not only product modeling, color treatment, decoration treatment, structural treatment and texture effect treatment related to visual effects, but also comprehensive sensory effects such as human touch and hearing.
Industrial product design is also a materialized form created by human beings and an art of creation. At the same time, it has become a comprehensive artistic language. As an activity created by human beings
Continuation and development is also an artistic culture. In terms of technical means, it has a modern industrial civilization unparalleled in any previous era; In aesthetic spirit, it is also the extension and development of human creativity and cultural tradition. As a result, industrial product design transforms human efforts to improve their own products from individual labor to professional social labor, and becomes a huge project to control and optimize human life and living environment by using the macro power of society. This means that human beings are no longer satisfied with just using the development of productive forces to obtain natural wealth; Humans have realized and consciously used modern industrial technology and artistic means to expand the spiritual space in cultural life in order to seek the continuous progress of mankind.
Yuri Su Roviv, the former director of the Soviet Institute of Industrial Design Science, once commented that industrial design is the "second culture" of human beings: "subordinate culture", that is, the "second culture" created by various products, reflects the complexity and conflict of all the results caused by the differences in social and economic systems and ideologies and the contradiction between material and spirit. The behavior of industrial design and its potential advantages and disadvantages cannot be separated from the socio-economic form and social culture to which its design is adapted. " Therefore, on the one hand, the design of industrial products must depend on the specific cultural environment; On the other hand, industrial product design itself also creates culture. The essence of industrial product design is to embody the creative culture with artistic language (modeling language), which is a creative artistic and cultural activity. In artistic creation, artistic factor is an indispensable factor, and its existence will actually make this creation more cultural and deeper.
The products produced by large industries are not only produced to meet the requirements of self-sufficient production and small-scale groups, but also for a broad market. With the mechanization of processing technology and the progress of science and technology, new materials are constantly produced. Various industrial products that did not exist in the past gradually entered human life, and artistic techniques that did not exist in the past appeared on industrial products. Industrial product design is popular and permeates the whole social life. Nowadays, plastics, automobiles and television have been deeply rooted in modern life, but we have neglected the essence of industrial product design.