RESEARCH  PRACTICE

Timeless Objects: Pause Toward Reset reveals how the aesthetics of time enter into a dialogue with design through history, culture and play. The PhD is an investigation into and a reflection of my creative practice through inhabiting time. Jewish time teaches how to read heritage and tradition and inhabit time.

This research uncovers and considers Jewish time aesthetics as a framework that enables insight into my design practice. The Jewish system and conception of time hidden in the rest day of the Shabbat represents the sanctity of time outside of ordinary time and provides a design approach attentive to inhabiting time through a pause. My research advocates for expanding temporal frames with an appreciation of maintaining tradition, system and cultural consistency in our changing environment. The question leads the research: Considering the distinctiveness of Jewish temporality, how can everyday life aesthetics transform the way in which we inhabit time?

Operating as a trivium, the methodology is an intersection drawing from combining three different threads; the sacred, the play and the semiosis. This exploratory approach through play will establish a theoretical and conceptual design mechanism as a mediator to inhabit time. A propositional temporal design system connects our past and present to reveal the tacit knowledge in the relation between the threads. More specifically, the trivium seeks the sacred dimension of human existence if we learn how to see and give ourselves time to pause.

TEACHING PRACTICE