Author(s): Herbawi, Belal ; Chatterjee, Abhishek
Date: 2024
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/42691
Origin: RIA - Repositório Institucional da Universidade de Aveiro
Subject(s): Heritage management; Design research; Graphic design; Palestinian embroidery; “Tartreez”; Digitization
This article discusses the evolving affordances of modern digital technology to digitalise Palestinian heritage elements, mainly traditional Palestinian embroidery. ‘Tartreez’, a cultural marker practised within the community and its diaspora, also represents a unique iconographic system of motifs that carries historical ligations with bygone epochs and their large-scale sociocultural influences. The paper details the contextual framework of the research currently under implementation in Palestine, which explores possibilities for re-inscription of the craft’s aesthetic and semantic values in contemporary design discourses. The research is based on examining the technological options available in the scope of digital transformation to safeguard and employ these motifs in different design contexts in a practical attempt to preserve their visual identity and cultural relevance. The intended outcome is to develop generative, creative sources that provide more significant opportunities for designers in various fields to activate the related iconographic system in contemporary design practices. Accordingly, making sustainable ligations between traditional craft, contemporary design, and digital technology is where the project expects strategic ingresses of design to help resolve the occurring conflicts between convention and modernity, through structuring and scaffolding viable pathways for the respective communities of practice to self-innovate and forge advantageous interdisciplinary collaborations with other creative sectors and disciplines.
