Week 5: Material Thinking

What is material thinking?

Material thinking describes the innermost thoughts of a process and why we think the way we do it is innately "within the very process or tissue of making".

Choose one of the creatives from the lecture and describe their material thinking?

The creative I am picking is Cecelia Faumuina. Her work reflects a persons journey living with depression in terms of Pacifika values. Her work 'Manulua' uses graffiti as texture overtop her work. In terms of material thinking Faumuina uses her environment such as patterns and textures she has found outdoors.

How can material thinking be seen through your own work?

Material thinking I use the internet. Where it is finding textures and fonts online.

How would you reference the reading from today?

Bolt, Barbara. “Materializing Pedagogies.” Working Papers in Art & Design, January 2006.

References

Bolt, Barbara. “Materializing Pedagogies.” Working Papers in Art & Design, January 2006.

“‘Manulua’ by Cecelia Faumuina-Khakh — Thecoconet.Tv - The World’s Largest Hub of Pacific Island Content.Uu.” Accessed August 15, 2023. https://www.thecoconet.tv/moana-arts/pacific-short-films/manulua-by-cecelia-faumuina-khakh/.

Case Study Three: Boosted x Moana - Alt Group

I have always been a huge fan of this project because of the simplicity and range of audience that the typeface extends out to. From what I can see the typeface is made out of the motif ‘manulua’ in the Tongan culture which from my own knowledge, two birds. This motif is also prevalent in other Pacific cultures such as Fijian (Bottom image). 

I also find that the typeface looks better when used with Tongan words rather than English words, but this is my own personal preference.

UrbanNesian Tongan Manulua design available on various goodies at ShopUrbanNesian.com

#UrbanNesian #manulua #tongan #tonga #ngatu #kapesi #tonganngatu #tongankapesi #tonganmanulua #tongandecor #tongandesign #tonganprint #tonganpattern

Logo and Poster development. I need to finalise the compositions and finalise font sizes on these posters. I used some of the patterns I developed earlier and incorporated them into the visual identity. The idea behind this is that you need to establish familiarity with the audience without resorting to directly using existing motifs. So I’ve taken a primitive shape used throughout pacific patterns; the triangle, and created patterns that are familiar and unfamiliar. Part of the goals behind this club, is the expansion on pacific design. 

 The logo is a Manulua I’ve drawn in illustrator, taken into after effects and animated flying. It’s easier to see once you realise what it is. It’s also an abstraction of New Zealand. The font is set in aktiv grotesk. One thing I’ve noticed about Maori and pacific designers I’ve looked at is that they don’t over capitalise. I think there’s a tone you convey when you use modernist fonts in ALL CAPS. This is appropriate for a fashion/ architecture magazine, but not for a homework club. The display type on the the posters may change as my font was originally designed to be all caps, but I’ve since added lowercase glyphs. 

So many things to love about the #PasifikaArtsCentre at @corbanestate, #WestAuckland. This building is currently being transformed by @numanaturesgentleman! #PacificArt #Manulua #Portocom (at Corban Estate Arts Centre)

Week 12: Bibliograpgy

Burley, V.D (2020). The Lapita origins of Tongan ngatu and design. Matangi Tonga Online

https://matangitonga.to/2020/03/19/lapita-origins-tongan-ngatu-and-design

Tapa of the Pacific. Auckland War Memorial Museum - https://www.aucklandmuseum.com/discover/collections/topics/tapa-of-the-pacific

Jackson-Becerra. J (2019) Tales of Taonga – Tapa of the Pacific. The Coconet.tv https://www.thecoconet.tv/know-your-roots/im:13217/tales-of-taonga-tapa-of-the-pacific/

Heemsoth. A (2013) Ancient Art of Tonga

https://www.livingoceansfoundation.org/ancient-art-of-tonga/

Herle, A. (2002) Pacific Art: Persistene, Change and Meaning

https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=ZgXLIe1lojkC&source=gbs_similarbooks

Kaeppler, A.L. (2002) Tapa in Tonga: Wendy Arbeit https://librarysearch.aut.ac.nz/vufind/Record/1141400

RNZ (2007) Archaeologists in Tonga say Lapita find may identify first village settled

https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/171742/archaeologists-in-tonga-say-lapita-find-may-identify-first-village-settled

Gilles, T.E (2021) The Tongan Kupesi - TEDXNukualofa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da17bmmK71E

Lennard. F., Mills. A (2020) Material Approaches to Polynesian Barkcloth – Cloth, Collections, Communities

http://www.ancientgrains.org/9789088909719_Material%20Approaches%20to%20Polynesian%20Ba rkcloth_ebook.pdf

Glossary:

Amoamokofe - The act of rubbing with a bamboo stick. This design was developed by V ava'u.

Three Dots – Fo'i Hea

Kupesi - The ngatu's printed and drawn design.

Manulua pattern - consists of two birds or two pairs of bird wings. 

Ngatu - is a traditional cloth made from the bark of mulberry trees.

Nukuleka - is a small fishing village on Tongatapu's north-east coast in the Kingdom of Tonga.

Pendergrast, M., Neich, R. (18, August 15).

Tāmaki Paenga Hira

Potamanuka - Integerated Lines Tapa - The unprinted boundaries of the Ngatu

Tokelau Feletoa pattern - Fata 'o Tu'i Tonga refers to the centre beam of the king's home in Tokelau (north).

Ve'etuli - Herring bone ribs

Final Animation

My final animation uses the story of Hikule’o to communicate change, growth and confidence within one’s culture and heritage. Hikule’o was the creator of Tongan islands. In the opening scene of my animation Hikule’o throws stones into the ocean, creating an island that then grows a tree. The island is a motif for myself, recognising the stories of creation by Hikule’o as well as her being the ruler of Pulotu, where it is believed our spirits came from and where they will return to after death. The bird represents the transference of knowledge and the journey taken to retrieve knowledge. I think of the Manulua as a connection between relationships and in my animation I use this to symbolise the connections we have throughout our lives whether that be family, friends or partners. I use one of my manulua patterns to represent the change or progression in one’s life. Here is where I move from hand-drawn animations to digital animations symbolising progression in time, from the Hikule'o era and into the present. This can also be seen as coming from the spiritual world Pulotu into the earthly world we live in. I included another pattern that I developed from my pattern book that represents Hikule’o. I developed this geometric pattern from the statues of Hikule’o and made something new. I use this to communicate how in today’s day we take inspiration from out heritage and always draw back from our past and from our culture and how these things influence our lives today. The bird returns back to the island and the island then is prosperous. The bird transfers the knowledge that it has gained from its journey and transfers that back to the island, which then benefits from it.

I had a lot of fun making this final pattern, even though I found it pretty challenging. I found it hard coming up with ideas when I first started but after I found out about Hikule'o in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebBCFHPXeGY) I felt really inspired by her story and I was also inspired to learn more about what Tonga was like before Christianity. I chose patterns from my pattern book that represented change and progression as this was something I feel is happening all over the world and well as personally and I felt like these patterns and the story of Hikule'o fit together nicely. I had a lot of trouble drawing the animations as they took a long time to draw so I spent a long time doing that as well as trying to figure out how to fix the problems I was having. I has trouble with the sizing of my images as seen in my test animations and I also had trouble with keeping the lighting in my picture consistent. I think animating my patterns added a lot to the meaning of my patterns. It helped to show progression and change which was exactly what I was going for. Overall, I was able to finish my animation to a degree which I was happy with and that I think represents my intention and message well.

Week 8-12+13

Final Pattern Design

My final animation tells a story of my journey in life and how things are changing in my perspective as i view moving to overseas. The first pattern shows the movement of the zigzag lines and the wave lines, indicating my life journey through experience, learning, and the waves indicating the flow of living in every journey so far. Moving on, i used the colour transformation from white to brown as it pictures the colour of the ngatu. Because of this, a ngatu contains patterns that tells a story in the Tongan culture. I used this as a way of showing my pattern or telling my story through a ngatu. The larger waves indicates the movement towards another life. Notice that i would only show movements that are horizontal, this indicates moving forward. I added the Manulua kupesi to still portray my Tongan culture and the square like lines at the bottom represents the tall buildings found or have seen in New Zealand. This is ideal for me because there aren’t any tall buildings in Tonga. A change of culture and lifestyle occurs. The zigzag lines appears in black and white, the colour transformations shows the black ink used to draw patterns on the ngatu and the white is also used in modern days as an inverted colour to black.

Animation

I have created an animation that starts with birds, directly inspired by the motifs Manuta’i (or Mangaia) they form together to create a Manulua. With this animation I wanted to signify how as moana bodies, our culture is the environment, we are nothing without our land, our traditions are rooted in our environment, the land is who we are, it is the root of our identity.

Simplifying the idea ‘our culture is the land’ I used birds and showed the influence they had within moana cultures. 

As we progress into the animation our culture is being built, the creation of the Pacific. 

In the end I changed the pattern around. I have been developing the Idea of Manulua and the potential of it all, I loved the ‘rule’ ‘same colours can’t touch’ I swap the pattern with that idea. and create a flower within the Manulua, 

This part of the story this signify’s the effects of colonization, Its changed our traditions, we can never fully go back, but at its core we have the same values. (The rest is to slowly go back to a loop.)

Definitions/ origins:

Manuta’i (or mangaia) meaning seabird, in a tatau they are mostly on the fore arm representing someone who has a close connection to the moana like a canoe builder, fisherman, navigator etc. can also be found on paddles.

Manulua, one of the oldest traditional markings on tapa from Tonga, it depicts silhouettes of two birds or two pairs of bird wings, signifying unity of two groups/ parties combining.

Week 7

The animations that follow have attempted to articulate the Manulua and a figure of a Person within my Pattern book. i Was not able to scan an image due to restrictions however i drew the images using on the laptop. I used a lot of movement in my animations as shown. With the Manulua animations, i deconstructed the pattern to emphasise its original meaning. I then rotated the seperate birds 180degrees and back to create the image of flapping wings. I also minimised and moved the images an cm up, to create a flying away motion, which was though very tedious, it was super fun. In regards to the manipulation of speed. I rotated the sun 90-180 etc, and moved it in a round shape every frame to create the idea of sun sets. I used a more slower pace, to emphasise this. This gave me a lot of inspirations for my final animation, in terms of implementing a sun setting to invoke the idea of growing older.

Found this pattern on the seats on the train to uni. Matches the Manulua pattern I have used in my pattern

@VDakaSini: There's a few people in red at Bill Fish to watch the Mate Ma'a Tonga vs Kiwis lol I'll be on my way to the airport sting the second half, but there's no way on earth I'm missing this! And yes, I'm absolutely wearing a red/ white polka dot dress with red/ white manulua earrings! https://t.co/KqZf00hPwS

Test animations - Manulua Bird

My first test animation is exploring the meaning behind the Manulua. This pattern symbolizes two birds, representing two families or two people coming together and joining as one. I had the idea to animate the two birds coming together and forming the Manulua and I am vey happy with the result. I did have some trouble with the sizing of the images, its obvious that each image is a different size throughout the animation and I couldn't figure out how to make them all the same size which was a bit frustrating. Besides that I am pretty happy with how this turned out

WEEK 7 - Animation 2

In this design I have each quarter of all the Manulua patterns moving at different speeds, representing one of my overall themes of change and different journeys. I moved each quarter at different speeds to communicate different progressions in ones life, sometimes things move quickly and other times life moves at a slower pace.

I quite like this animation and how it looks aesthetically. This animation did take quite a long time, as I was still figuring out how to animate on photoshop but I found that it was a good challenge to help me to get use to how everything worked.

WEEK2

In this week we worked collaboratively in groups and had to form up a pattern that should have a meaning.

Figure1 Figure2

Figure3

In our groups of three, we each chose a pattern from our culture and had formed up one pattern design in a 10x10 cm square. Lupe and I are both Tongans and Lupe had chose the Manulua pattern and I chose the Tokelau Feletoa design. Kaira is of Maori culture and had chose the Ngutukaka pattern design. We each felt that these patterns meant to us in a way that represents our cultures.

We also found out the meaning of each patterns which the Manulua is said to mimic two birds as the two pairs of wings are formed to make the Manulua pattern. The Tokelau Feletoa is described to be the scales of a tuna fish, which is considered chiefly. The Nutukaka is formed as to mimic a parrot’s beak.

The final pattern design came about by combining each of our patterns into one. Kaira also drawn in the Manawa line, which is a heart line crossing through both patterns. This was to represent our life journey. However, the idea that we had came up with was to be able to combine our cultural patterns as to who we are, being together in our minor class and seeing where our future is going to take us during our learning days.

Ref:

Figure 1: http://manuka2014.weebly.com/uploads/1/4/1/7/14172481/pacific_symbols2013.pdf

Figure 2: http://tongan_tattoo.tripod.com/TonganTattoo/id5.html

Figure 3: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maori-rafter8.svg

Final Designs

It took a lot of trial and error getting a final design as all 3 patterns were quite complex. However I decided on a more simplistic route, in contrast to my team.

Meaning behind my pattern:

Kaira and I both chose birds, therefore i thought to merge both our birds. Merging of the two birds could be interpreted in two ways. The first being similar to the meaning of the Manulua, which is the unity and formation of two families to make a new form. In this case it can be a representative of two/more cultures. Since both members of my group are biracial/multiracial. Or the migration as all our parents or ancestors migrated to Aotearoa. Additionally culture gets altered through migration. I didn’t want to add any details in the negative spaces as Kaira mentioned that nothing goes into the mananwa as it is symbolic of life! Also because the only thing we know about Marie’s pattern was it was battle, I just put it in the bird. Ultimately, the birds are symbolic of ourselves and our constant battles of identity, oppression and more.