State of the art, project management and documentation¶
Research - Ideation¶
For around six years now I have been studying the Armenian carpet and rug patterns as a documentation of cosmic events, natural phenomena, life and death cycles, the meaning of colors. Meanwhile, I was drawn to the ancient world of Mesopotomia, archeological finds, and what information the cuneform tablets give to us.
I took knowledge from Dilijan and I shared mine with Dilijan.
I moved to Dilijan from Yerevan, learned carpet weaving techniques, one typical to this region, the shulal weaving, specific patterns in the carpets and rugs in this region.
And I brought to Dilijan my experience in folk dances at Karin dance school, founded by Gagik Ginosyan and re-imagined ancient games. Over 2 years I have been sharing my knowledge with the community here on voluntary basis.
All the knowledge I acquired during various periods of my life puzzled up in re-imaging the Sumerian table game, the Royal Game of Ur, with my own authentic dice.
Hence, I am inclined to experiement weekly knowledge in making various prototypes of the game re-imagined by me based on correlations and parralels between Sumer and Ararat kingdom/ Armenia.
And for the final project, I want to make an innovative carpet: Dance-Carpet! Here I will use the 3 different weaving techniques to weave a carpet, and incorporate some special ornaments or symbols with sensors that will play the specific fragments of a dance music upon touching them. The ornaments or symbols are designed by me based on the orbits of some Armenian folk dances and carpet patterns that surprisingly coincide in composition, colors and meaning.
Inspiration - References¶
“Originalitiy is going back to the ORIGINS.” Gaudi, as was quoted on our first online meeting.
So, what is our origin as humans? Shapes? Colors? Meanings behind shapes and colors which were attrbuted to them since the dawn of civilizations? Folk dances and songs to mark each cosmological event?
And who are we BEYOND our names and family names, our nationality, our jobs…?
Knowing the traditional, bring back ancient knowledge with a modern touch, with an intention to find similarieites between people, cultures, countries is my biggest motivation! Here are the traditional and ancient knowledge that inspired and gave meaning to my future work:
a. Armenian Carpet and Rug knowledge acquired in the Fundamental library in Yerevan allowed me to fill my mind and heart with the knowledge on carpet and rug patterns, Armenian natural dyes, Armenian folk costumes etc.
Serik Davtyan - “Armenian Carpet”
Flora Grigoryan - “Armenian Taraz”
Nazik Awagyan - “Armenian National Taraz”
Arakel Patric - “Armenian Taraz”
Lilia Avanesyan - “Ornament”
Narine Manukyan and Diana Melikjanyan - “Rug weaver”
A. Sh. Mnatsakanyan - “Armenian Ornaments”
Local teacher Narineh Poghosyan
Felt and carpet master Anush Hakobyan
b. Cuneiform, Sumer and game knowledge started to spark due to Dr. Irving Finkel. He opened the world of cuneifroms and what they tell us, the peculiarites of cuneiforms in Ararat / Aratta / Urartu kingdom, daily life and aspirations of people 6000 years ago through a table game. I still can’t believe I had a once-in-a-lifetime chace to meet him in Erebuni museum, be among the 50 people to listen to his lecture!! It’s an unearthly, above earthly feeling to listen to him live ☀️
I acquired knowledge from:
Irving Finkel onsite lectures
Irving Finkel online lectures
[Armen Davtyan] ()
c. Armenian folk dance opened by to me due to Ginosyan Gagik, the Armenian parapet (Master of Dance) who is a true embodiment of resiliance, collecting and preserving precious knowledge inherited via dances, dance orbits, music, rituals, and cosmic ties. I’m so humbled to have danced next to him, to have felt the awe and a clear echo from the start of times…
I acquired knowledge from:
Gagik Ginosyan
Jenya Khachatryan - “Ritual dance among Armenians”
Srbuhi Lisutsyan’s invention: Kaqavagir - the notation system to record dance moves invented by her.
footnote [ˆphotobyTigranMadoyan]
d. Dr. Steiner is a true eye opener to looking at colors, ideas, even words from their essence. I am still on the go to spiritual growth.
e. Alumni!
To overcome the doubts and uneasy feelings of learning a totally new 'language', the coding, "survive" the load of studies at Fabricademy with my baby son, I checked out some alumni documentations, and specifically helpful for me were Carlotta Premazzi, Svetlana Khachatryan and Anoush Arshakyan. Thank you guys!
Tools¶
- resize images
- navigate Gitlab with the help of Markdown
- make a free style collage via InShot phone app
- make amendmants in my website via Gitlab
- help for color codes, fonts: HTML , Zensical
Process and workflow¶
My first week at Fabricademy is exactly like the picture of this week: an intangled yarn, however, it started to be clear what to do and how to do.
It's truely exciting to understand the scale of the knowledge I will get at the end of the course, meanwhile it is challenging to manage it all. It all started with attending the online meeting, watching the recording, too. Markdown cheatsheet also helps to get on track and start pasting the text I prepared separate from the Gitlab. Once I pasted, pushed COMMIT I refreshed my documentation page. Even I can see the preview of the page on the right of my screen, checking regularly on my documentation website helped me incredibly.
My textile academy page looked quite poor at the beginning, but with the help of workshop recording I worked on my website step by step, Anoush was extremly helpful both on the phone and onsite. Some process photos :D
but eventually, my website became better!
I checked also for online tools apart from the recommended ones, and I found ones that I found more precise and comfortable to work with. I mentioned those in the Tools section.
What did I LEARN?¶
- I learned about myself a little bit more: my resilience, my stress resistence, my changes and the features I still need to work on.
- I learned coding a bit, new tools, new techniques.
- Both personal and technical awareness helps me to visualize my final project better in terms of possibilites and solutions.