Featured White Papers
- Hosted CRM comparison guide (Inside CRM)
- Hosted CRM buyer's guide (Inside CRM)
- 5 Strategies for Making Sales the Engine for Growth (AchieveGlobal)
Content provided in partnership with
New media, experience and Japanese way of tea (Chado)
Visible Language, 2001 by Gunji, Jennifer
My goal is to further develop the significance of Japanese aesthetic education as an essential experience in teaching the study of art and design. I believe that the philosophy and understanding of the Way of Tea, as a primary aspect of aesthetic education, is basic to the quality and appreciation of life. It is within the framework of the Way of Tea that students are asked to cultivate their sensory perception, sharpen their aesthetic understanding, elevate cultural discernmeet, appreciate the moment and enrich their ability to create and express what they experience.
Focusing on the development of interconnecting the study of design and the Way of Tea, this unification provides a necessary balance between what is rational and systematic to what is emotional and what prompts such reactions. It introduces and recognizes the connective fiber between the mind, heart and spirit as a means of enriching ones' perspectives and capacities to experience life. My interest is to heighten student's sensitivities through experience. This heightened sensitivity provides the means to create design experiences that further scrutinize the process of development to fully account for the audience, rather, than focusing solely on the end product.
When experiencing tea for the first time, participants are often left with a sentiment of beauty and tranquility through their heightened senses, which is beyond their everyday realm. It is not a customary form of art or design here. Yet, in its most simplified form, it is an everyday occurrence in which we are all participants -washing. cleaning, making, serving, organizing, seeing, interacting, etc. We generally make such ordinary actions unconsciously. But through its ritualization, establishment of process and form, and philosophical recognition and implications these common everyday actions through the Way of Tea are elevated into an art form. Through single-mindedness of practice and understanding, and by surpassing the conscious effort to have perfect form. Chado enters a realm in which art becomes a way of life. The study of tea focuses on the development of the human spirit. This is something that we can naturally strive for on a daily basis, however this is rarely the case. We are often forced to amass information and knowledge and simply store it in our minds. The study of the Way of Tea, as everything else in life, also obligates us to acquire new knowledge and information; however the central focus does not remain that accumulation. Rather, the attention is on the process of knowledge accretion as it relates to our emotions and our spirit. The process is not only inclusive of the intellect, but embodies and requires the very elements that provide us with human interaction.
