Culture is the thoughts, concepts, behaviors, customs, habits, representatives formed by a group (it can be a country, a nation, a company, or a family) in a certain period of time, and the overall consciousness of this group All activities radiated out. Chinese culture has experienced five thousand years of development and has formed unique connotations and aesthetic tastes. Especially after the Beijing Olympics, a large number of design works with Chinese characteristics began to spring up in the design world, deepening the recognition of Chinese elements around the world. How to effectively use traditional Chinese elements in design and combine them with modern design to serve modern people has become a topic that cannot be ignored by current design researchers.
The author holds an attitude of learning and discussion, trying to interpret and analyze the impact of traditional Chinese cultural elements and existing experience and information in the human memory system on design from the perspective of cognitive psychology. And the use of the visual image of Chinese elements in modern environmental art design is used to explain its significance in current space design.
1. Cognitive Psychology and Modern Design
1. Relevant concepts of cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology was developed in the mid-1950s A psychological trend that emerged in the West, it studies people's advanced psychological processes, mainly cognitive processes, such as attention, perception, representation, memory, thinking and language, etc. Cognitive psychology can be divided into a broad sense and a narrow sense. In the broad sense, cognitive psychology believes that anything that studies people's cognitive processes belongs to cognitive psychology. At present, cognitive psychology, which is usually referred to in Western psychology circles, refers to cognitive psychology in a narrow sense, which is the so-called information processing psychology. It believes that human cognitive process is the acceptance, encoding, storage, exchange, and operation of information. , the process of retrieval, retrieval and use, and summarize this process into four system modes: perception system, memory system, control system and reaction system. In this system model, the memory system has the closest relationship with design. Memory is the psychological function of retaining information about stimuli, events, images, concepts and other information when the original stimulus no longer exists. It is the individual's recognition, retention, recall or recognition of his or her experience. In the process of recall and recognition of the memory system, there is reorganization and innovation of previous information and experience. Therefore, this process has an important impact on the development of creative thinking in the design process. It also has a major influence on design.
2. The relationship between memory systems and modern design
In his book "Art and Visual Perception", Arnheim once proposed: "The latest we have is Image is an integral part of the large number of images stored in our memory warehouse." Cognitive psychology believes that a person's existing knowledge and knowledge structure play a decisive role in his behavior and current cognitive activities. In other words, in Art Design 1, the new visual images we derive are related to the experiences in our memory system. Through the process of creative thinking, the visual forms of experiences and information in the memory system are copied and reorganized. Therefore, if we look at the application of traditional cultural elements in design from the perspective of cognitive psychology, we can think that during the design process, we extract, reconstruct or reconstruct the element information of different memory categories stored in the memory system. Reorganization, encoding and outputting information through creative thinking, and reflecting it into our design works in the form of products or visual forms. How to reconstruct or reorganize the traditional elements in the memory system? We should first store or understand the traditional elements in order to better control the correct application of traditional elements in design.
2. The application of visual forms of Chinese elements in the context of traditional culture
Culture is an ideology and metaphysical, and in art design, our understanding of traditional culture Application actually materializes this ideology in a visible form, through our creative thinking, and finally expresses it in the form of works of art. Therefore, our use of traditional culture is actually the use of its visual form.
Using the visual forms of traditional Chinese culture for design, the focus is on using certain symbolic visual forms to express certain interests, emotions and thoughts; or innovating traditional elements and incorporating traditional designs into Language penetrates into modern design, creating a new visual form that has the resemblance and charm of traditional elements as well as the meaning and form of modern design, awakening personal and national memories, and then embodying a certain The temperament, spirit and philosophy of the nation. The specific methods are as follows:
1. Copying and imitation. The design uses the visual forms of traditional culture such as colors, shapes and patterns, follows the rhythm, rhythm and order of the original structure, and adopts methods such as "traditional appearance, modern structure" or "modern appearance, traditional structure" to match modern things. Junction A e undergoes reorganization and reconstruction. This method is a borrowing of the visual form of traditional culture. It is not a mechanical copy, but uses modern things as a carrier to combine tradition and modernity to form a new image.
The Chinese limited-edition Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano sports car, carefully designed by the famous contemporary Chinese artist Lu Hao, is the best example of combining tradition and modernity, and the fusion of East and West. Lu Hao used modern creative techniques to apply Chinese classical elements - the open-piece porcelain texture of the Song Dynasty Ge kiln on the car body through hand-painted paint. The words "Start" on the ignition button on the steering wheel and "Zero Ten" on the tachometer are both in Chinese calligraphy. It perfectly combines Chinese elements and Western modern things.
2. Variation and evolution of traditional cultural elements. The extraction, transformation, abstraction and reconstruction of elements are widely used methods in current design. Designers capture and discover beautiful elements in rich cultural traditions, extract applicable materials from these elements, and make them the materials for their own creations; at the same time, they transform and abstract these extracted elements, and combine them with modernity according to the composition of the image. Constitutive consciousness reconstructs traditional Chinese art. Use modern concepts and aesthetic tastes to reinterpret and explore the essence of tradition, find the juncture of Eastern and Western cultures, and then effectively combine it with design works to form design works with traditional cultural flavor. The design of Shanghai Jinmao Tower, built in 1998, is a typical example of the extraction and transformation of traditional cultural elements: the designer applied the classical "tower-shaped" structure to the architectural design of a modern skyscraper, without using the Chinese tower The shape is bluntly enlarged, but the proportions of the entire building are consistent with the aesthetic proportions and mechanics of the Chinese tower shape. The architect took the traditional Chinese dense-eaves tower as the starting point of the design concept, highly summarized the rhythm, contours and details of the dense-eaves tower, and used "high-tech" design techniques to integrate the spirit of traditional architecture through modern The design concepts and construction methods are reflected.
3. Seek the source of thought through the appearance of cultural elements. Seek the source of ideas from the overall culture of the Chinese nation and innovate. The Qufu Confucius Institute building complex designed by Mr. Wu Liangyong is a successful example of the application of traditional culture and architectural ideas.
The garden design of the Confucius Institute adopts the ancient "academy" method, with exquisite conception and rigorous layout. In the design, the earth is piled on the north side of the building to symbolize sitting on the mountain, and the earth is piled on the south side to symbolize the mountain. At the same time, water is diverted into a canal on the left side of the building to symbolize the green dragon. The Xiaoyi River in front corresponds to the "golden belt surrounded" in Feng Shui. The entire layout embodies It not only conforms to the traditional cultural outlook, but also reconciles the traditional Feng Shui theory which requires that the building should be sited with yin and yang in mind, with a table mountain in front and a mountain sitting on the back. The entire design also uses refined traditional elements, makes full use of metaphors, uses a variety of ancient architectural elements as design prototypes, and mutates them according to modern aesthetics to reinterpret tradition.
3. Conclusion
It is a brand-new perspective to interpret the application of traditional cultural visual forms in modern environmental art design from the perspective of cognitive psychology. The design process is a cognitive process, and similarly, the process of viewers appreciating design works is also a cognitive process. Understanding the occurrence of cognitive processes is of great significance for both creation and aesthetic appreciation.
From the perspective of cognitive psychology, the cultural background and experience existing in our memory system are what motivate us to use traditional culture for design. The cultural context of the society we live in fully activates the traditional culture in the memory system. Through creative thinking, we combine traditional culture with modern design language, reorganize and reconstruct it, so that the works we design have both Chinese cultural characteristics. It is unique without losing the sense of modernity, and it can also conform to the aesthetic psychology of the Chinese people.