Vol. 2 No. 2 (2008)

This paper explores the importance of human perceptual experiences toward objects, an effort to understand how human (as users of object) experiencing pleasures when interacting with a designed object. Having the purpose to explore the theoretical structure of human and object interaction, the paper contextualizes the concept of pleasurable experience in product use by (1) understanding the conceptual traces of “pleasure in design” in the history of design thinking (e.g. modernism and post-modernism), (2) correlating the identified traces with research results from other related field (e.g.…

The earthware figurines of Majapahit were clay-based artworks from the Majapahit Kingdom (1350-1389 AD) of Trowulan at Mojokerto, East Java. The name "majapahit" itself refers to the known great kingdom that unite "nusantara" (covering Malay peninsula, Sumatra, Java, Bali, Borneo, Celebes, up North to the Southern of Phillipine). Having exposed to the varieties and high-quality of earthware figurines of Majapahit from the Trowulan site, the study looks into their symbolic shapes and meanings which was known to be heavily influenced by Hinduism. To address this issue, the study applied…

The word café originated from coffee, which is commonly used to describe a place where one drinks coffee, i.e. coffeehouse. Generally, this place is not too large in space providing drinks and snacks, as well as accommodates other activities for use either in the morning or late afternoon. This habit of coffee-drinking is carried out by societies in various countries around the world, including in Indonesia. This research explores cafés that embed to the local context of Bandung as case studies. This is due to the increase number of cafés in Bandung during the early 2000s which demostrate…

Many have tried to explore the unified identity character of an Indonesian, arousing certain tribal cultures to visually represent "Indonesian" on apparent bestowed upon Indonesia as a nation of multi-cultures. This is clearly be seen in advertisements where the expressed visuals represent periods, societal forms, political, and economical situation according to the allotted time and space. Thus, visuals on advertisements may serve as clues to understand the significance of expressions as "Indonesian" out of the memory of how things were and were done and therefore ought to be done. This…

Clothes represent cultural expressions and associate with certain social status. The Javanese societies, as complex as they are, possess unique social stratification according to the hierarchy of their positions, where the king has the tipmost status, followed by the nobles, merchants, farmers, and commoners. Thus, king clothes expresses societal status and cultural heritage of Java. This paper explores varieties of king clothes from the Surakarta and Yogyakarta kingdom on the period of 1755-2005, in order to identify the styles, associated symbolic meanings, and aesthetic values of the…