Author: Yasaman Eskandari

Every human being has a hidden treasure in him/herself. As far as we know, it is not allowed to prejudge a person based on her nationality. But why do numerous misunderstandings happen when different people with different cultural backgrounds meet each other? Why do people need some time to adopt themselves to the new and unknown culture? According to Erin Meyer the author of the book the culture map we need to differentiate between character types such as introvert and extrovert with the cultural background of people. I suppose, an important part of each human being is a product of his society. Cultural values, norms, traditions and people who she faces everyday play an important role in order to shape her behavior. 

Since my childhood, Cultural and anthropological themes have been interesting for me because my parents come from different regions in Iran which are more than 1000 km far from each other. My mother always speaks Turkish with her family. However, we always talked Farsi at home. I was a curious child and eager to know what my mother was talking about with her siblings, so I learned Turkish by listening to her while she was talking with her family. Most of my relatives have been migrated to north America and we as cousins usually speak English with each other. Raising in a multicultural family and living alone for the past five years in the central Europe with a different culture, gave me opportunity to learn more about human beings than I expected. Despite many struggles and challenges that I need to deal with them, the curious child inside me is still alive and eager to treasure hunt middle European cultural beliefs.

Culture can influence different aspects of life. But if you ask me if culture comes first, I would say no. I think, there is one step before culture, which is language and literature. It is fascinating for me that there is an opportunity to decode a culture by decoding its language rules. Before getting into deeper examples I need to remind you that this assumption is personal and not scientifically proven yet. German language is heavily based on clear grammar and there is almost an exact word for every object. If you see the houses or the architecture, design and arts, cities or villages you easily see the clean and clear grammar in everything. If you offer people something, like food, they can say yes or no, based on what they need at that specific moment. Now let’s take a look at Farsi, which is an Indo-European language. Farsi is an open and visual language. People use an indirect language and if you ask them if they want to have some food, they always answer with no. It is considered that you need to ask them three times and if they say no after three times, then it really means no. Because accepting something straightforward is considered as impoliteness. It was a hard challenge for me to give direct answers in Austria and is still a challenge. 

There are numerous different cultural aspects and objects that could be investigated. I have chosen a well-known object that everybody around the world has it or has seen it during his life. The window. Windows are vanishing points of our daily lives. You can look through yourself or travel in your thoughts and inner self by looking outside through the window. It is impossible to live, study or work in a room without them. I would suggest to think about it as a prayer spot for the soul. Or let me change the prayer spot to flying spot. Human beings always dreamed about flying. Window is the starting point for the flying thoughts and imagination. 

From the visual point of view, windows have usually a uniform quarter shape around the world. Well, this sentence is very general. If you take a deeper look into the details, you will notice significant differences. For example, windows are usually placed all around the façade of the building in the Europe. People open windows and it is very normal. It was not like this in Iran before the beginning of the modern architecture. Windows always faced inner yard in private houses in Iran. Since 60s and 70s Iranian started living more in apartments that are covered with windows like in west. After the year 1979 and the beginning of Islamic revolution and the lack of freedom people started consuming curtains to cover their private lives and have parties and fun because due to the regime it is not allowed and even considered as a criminal act. Now after more than 40 years of an Islamic ideological government, curtains became a crucial decoration element in Iranian houses. It started with hiding the reality from the religion police and now is an important symbol of wealth and social milieu. I was informed last week about a surprising research that says, from the beginning of corona and lockdown people buy more heavy curtains in Austria to cover their windows. 

There are thousands of daily objects that we interact with them during our lives. Each of them has its own story and perception in different geographical areas. 

You can look through a window from inside or outside and every time you get a different cognition. It pictures my own life, my background and the journey that I have started.

Bibliography

Meyer, Erin. n.d. The Culture Map.

This blog post is about windows, their formation and meaning in pre-islam and islamic Iran. Orsi windows are one of the symbols of Zoroastrianism and Islamic architecture.

The most historical complete form of coloured windows are sash windows. They are large wooden windows that are covered with coloured glass with sliding openings. The golden era of Orsi windows come back to the Safavid and Qajar epoch, however the oldest coloured windows in Iran are in Choghazanbil Building (1275–1240 v. Chr.)

The reason and philosophy of these windows are briefly listed as:

1. Supply of light for inner space 

2. Exposure of outer space 

3. Reduction of sunlight and heat intensity 

4. Creation of beauty in building facades 

5. Privacy and confidentiality of outer space 

6. Ward off pesky insects (Stained glass of sash windows creates colorful light and makes the pesky insects out of the Orosi rooms).

The colours that are mostly used in these buildings are white, blue and green.

Spiritual perception of Orosi windows are based on the geometrical shapes and their number which have a strong connection with religious beliefs. According to studies, they form chawed to sash windows, because at that time the purity and importance of islamic and traditional architecture was less and the government was fascinated by European design and architecture. There was a case study at Uraman village (an old ancient village in Iran, where is a cultural-historical intact rural area colored glass was used due to the orders of Zoroastrianism) that shows that the main coolers used in these windows where white green and blue that are mainly by the orders of Zoroastrianism.

If you contemplate the movement of sun in 24 hours, it has color alteration at three points, when the sun is about to rise (which is the time for early morning prayer in both Islam and Zoroastrianism), when the sun at the middle of sky and gives yellow or white light (which is the noon prayer time in both Islam and Zoroastrianism) and at night when the sun is reflected through moon but it is not as Maghrib prayers because the sun releases the same light as sunrise so it shows 4 times that we can read 5-fold prayers (we can read evening prayer with noon prayer or at a time near to that, so totally are 5 prayers). Now these lights are analyzed with their filtering through coloured glass:

First mood: It is the time when sun is about to rise, commonly called a dawn. At this situation a soft blue light spreads in the sky and subsequently comes to the Earth. If this light is filtered by blue glass, along with green and white glass produces more blue color that properly shows the morning prayer time and makes people aware of it. This mood, dawn, is just as the setting sun and is maghrib prayer time. In fact, this type of glass shows two prayer times. 

Second mood: It is the time when sun is in the middle of the sky and produces the greatest amount of white or yellow light. This type of color is passed through white glass as its early color (without filtering) and has the most color among blue and green colors. White glass makes people understand the noon prayer time and do their divine duty. 

Third and the last mood: It is after sunset mood and sun reflects its light just through moon. In fact, the light produced by the moon is the sun light which is slightly yellow. So here we have two types of light: 

1. The light of sky at night which is dark blue. 

2. The moonlight which is reflection of sunlight and is slightly yellow. 

The combination of these two colors is green which is exactly the same color as the third glass, which is green. At this time, the green light is produced by this glass more than others so people can understand the time of Maghrib and night prayers and pray them too. 

Bibliography

Hashemian, Mohammad & Takallouie, Mohammad Reza & Mafakher, Farshad. (2018). The creation philosophy of colored Windows and Orosi Windows in Islamic Architecture.

Author: Vahid Mortezaei 

Year of Publication: 2020 

Department: Department of Media, Aalto University, the School of Arts, Design and Architecture

Degree programme: Visual Communication Design 

Title: Is Food a (Cross-cultural/Interpersonal) Communication Medium? 

Type of Work: Master’s Thesis 

Language: English 

Number of pages: 185 

Key Words: Food Design, Communication Medium, Intercultural Communication, Cross-cultural, Gastronomy, Multisensory Experience, Storytelling 

This master thesis tries to find an answer, whether food is a cross-cultural or interpersonal communication medium. Another aim of this master thesis is to decode food design. It has been chosen to get analyzed because it is written by an Iranian student in Europe, Helsinki with an Iranian cultural background, in addition he has chosen one medium “Food” to case-study different societies. My master thesis topic is also about intercultural communications, choosing one medium then make comparisons in different cultures, as a result getting information about different or similar perceptions in distinctive cultural areas.

This master thesis starts with the main question for the writer that is an identity doubt “Lost in Translation” of an Iranian designer in Finland. He tries to answer this identity question using food as medium. Because food makes participation of our all 5 different senses. It is mentioned that food is not only a medium to communicate, but it could also be the communication itself. Afterwards, he tries to decode food design as well as gastronomy design and provides a framework to show that food is a very strong communication medium that can overcome cultural and lingual barriers.

The second chapter is about the research method that has been used in this master thesis, it is explained that food is a complex and multidisciplinary topic and finding right resources could be challengeable. The method used in this work is “Constructive Design Research”.

The third chapter is about “Who are the food designers?” Chefs, artists, stylists? After 1950s and the emerge of mass production, many new job titles have appeared at the same time, numerous firm old jobs have been vanished. Food Design is a very complex and ancient matter, however food design for communication aim is certainly a new criteria. A chef can call herself a food designer as well as a communication designer who can also use food as a medium to transmit a message.

The next chapter is about finding the answer for “What food is” from a holistic perspective. As far as we know, our perspective towards food has been changed. Food is not a survival matter for us anymore, with mass consumption many perceptions toward different matters have changed.

Food as a communication medium: This chapter is based on Leeds-Hurwitz ideas. Food is analyzed in macro-level, which means that food is not only an artifact on the plate, however it is a mixture of different things that connects people together. Another analyzation is micro-level that explains how food works in transmitting a message. Different intercultural matters are also investigated in culinary communication.

Food as a multi sensory communication medium: Following, food will be studied as a multisensory communication matter. Food takes different feelings in action and can create memories and the concept of time.

Modernizing the cuisine: Making radical Changes in culinary culture is quite impossible. This area has remained surprisingly very conservative. It could be possible to only have subtle changes. However there are some chefs and designers, who try to discover the capability of food on the other side of its nutritional value.

Men think, dream and act according to what they eat and drink.

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

The Case Studies: In this chapter there are two case studies discussed. The first case study was a traditional approach to food as a medium for gathering people around and socializing them. It was about finding right participants with different social and cultural backgrounds. Participants were asked to bring a recipe from their childhood or something that they had memory with. The recipes were collected. During the pre-workshops, the participants talked about their recipes and some of the overall recipes were chosen to get cooked together. During the day of workshop, people started cooking together and later on eating together while socializing. Verbal conversations and sessions were documented as photos.

In the second case study, food is an active storytelling mean. The writer established a platform “Persikka”. It is a platform that allows many Iranians to share their stories as a misunderstood nation. He used food as a bridge to share Iranian culture and heritage. Persikka is his way to answer the question “where am I from” to the one of the most heard but not seen countries in the world. It is an undeniable fact that being an Iranian means carrying a terrorist label wherever you go. All over 7000 years of history and culture is hidden under a distorted image of the currupted politics at the moment.

Conclusion: Food is a crucial fact of human lives, which shapes their beliefs, thoughts, culture etc. We as human beings actively shape our surroundings and communicate with diverse means for example using our multisensory feeling via food in order to transmit a message. This topic is very multidisciplinary and is not investigated yet. This master thesis took 6 years to finalize and is a beginning to research more in this area.

Bibliography: This master thesis includes a very interesting and diverse list of resources, despite the fact that this topic has not been thoroughly investigated yet. It contains 41 recourses.

There is also a glossary at the end that defines different terms used in this thesis.

This Blog post is about some parts of the “Handbook of intercultural communications and cooperation” written by Alexander Thomas. It begins with an interesting conversation between two colleagues, discussing about whether to read a book about to do’s and not do do’s with Chinese people. One of them is convinced with the idea that people are all the same and these books are unnecessary and another person claims that cultures can differentiate people from each other. 

Firstly, it is good to describe the meaning of culture. Cultures could be described as different human interaction developments in different countries. These rules are nonnegotiable and applying wrong rules in the host country, can cause big misunderstandings. Kroeber and Kluckhorn found more than 150 different cultures in the year 1952 (Schroll-Machl, Thomas and Kinast, 2018).

Different researchers and psychologists agree with this term that cultures can cover vast area of important humanist factors in different places such as, language, philosophy, values and different interactions between subjects and objects (Schroll-Machl, Thomas and Kinast, 2018). 

If an individual’s life is under a “normal” circumstance, which means that the individual has kind of grown up in a society that the norms are taught in everyday life and understood with other members of the society in addition, they are interacted with other people. On the one hand, appropriate behavior can lead to an acknowledgment on the other hand, inappropriate behavior can be a failure in the society. However, when two individuals with two dissimilar cultural backgrounds interact with each other, it can happen that their actions seem alien and unknown for the other individual and cause unexpected behaviors and unknown situations (Schroll-Machl, Thomas and Kinast, 2018). From my point of view, this situation is called as a culture shock. 

Research and witnessing of German-American work group (Zeutschel, 1999), has found five different cultural indicator standards, that are almost similar in different places (Schroll-Machl, Thomas and Kinast, 2018). The majority of the society members share a similar pattern that could be seen in the way they think, judge, communicate, interact and percept, which are normal and typical behaviors in that specific area. 

• Native or unfamiliar behavior is judged by the native cultural patterns.
• Using cultural standard provides us a mastering and regulating behavioral pattern to deal with different people in different situations.
• Personal or group cultural standards within a group can only fluctuate in a range of tolerance.
• Different cultural patterns out of the standard form cannot be accepted.

When two different cultures meet each other and in some cases it leads to misunderstanding or difficult situation, better to say when a cultural overlap happens, they have to build a third culture to enhance their way of interaction (Breitenbach, 1975).

Schroll-Machl, S., Thomas, A. and Kinast, E., 2018. Handbook of Intercultural Communication and Cooperation (Handbook of Intercultural Communication and Cooperation). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Persian Gardens or Persian Windows?

You can experience the paradise-like feeling of the garden when being under the scorching sun for some time. As soon as you cross the gate and pass the garden walls, you will notice the freshness of air, cool temperature under the shade, loving touch of the green and pleasant and gentle sound of water. No wonder Persian Garden represents Paradise (Sabetian, 2021).

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The term pairidaēza which comes from Avesta, the holy book of Zoroastrian people, means garden. The same word has traveled through time and place to become the word Paradise in English, Paradies in German and paradis in French (Sabetian, 2021).

In fact this word is tied to the meaning of Garden of Eden and also the highest level of heaven in muslim belief, Firdause; both are gardens irrigated with 4 rivers or one river divided to four. Same description applies to definition of Persian Garden, a surrounded land divided to four sections (Char-bagh) by four aqueducts (Sabetian, 2021).

Gradens and Gardening is an old art in Iranian culture. Gardens have same map as carpets as well as Minakari. Carpets are the gardens at home, where you can see the garden from above. 

The purpose of Persian garden was to provide physical and spiritual relaxation. So, it is true to say that it was during the Achaemenid Empire that the idea of an earthly paradise came into reality. Later, the Sassanid created Persian gardens inspired by Zoroastrianism. Gardens are personal heavens that are separated from fruit and vegetable gardens, they are private places for leisure and meeting friends. 

Four elements including land, water, plants, and space are the important elements of an Iranian garden. Along with each other, these elements in a mental framework of Iranian architecture form the Iranian garden. 

The idea of having gardens reminds me of windows in Iranian culture. There is a strong border separating private and social life. The art of Persian gardening found its way to Europe during the history. 

After this introduction of gardening and private life art and culture in Iran, I would like to talk about modern artists that combined this style into their works.

One of these artists is Daniel Mirzapour, who combined “Negargari” (traditional painting) with collages for fashion design. There is an interesting question in his interview with the Tehran Times:

How did you experience your time at L’Ecole Bleu as an Iranian student studying in Paris? How has that influenced your Iranian identity?

I think, the first thing I noticed when I got at L’Ecole Bleue is that the French are not only a head of the time in terms of design, but that they are also very connected to their history and have a great deal of respect for their heritage. So automatically, this aspect of looking back at your culture and renewing it for its continuity resonated with me- naturally inspiring me to do the same with my Iranian background.

Daniel Mirzapour

The second artist that I am inspired by his works is Sassan Behnam Bakhtiar. He created a bridge between Persian and western arts. He already used the patterns of Iranian gardens and life borders into his modern works and demonstrated the borders in contemporary people. Robert Musil mentioned it as a modern human being how lives in towers and love and family and feelings are all mixed in these big modern cities, we leave our own homes to reach our purposes that are planned for a short period of time, however the life is too short. Our happiness is not caused by what we want, but what we achieve. He also used a nice metaphor, what if we were in a train and we could take the train of the monarchy epoch in Austria and travel back home. It is not true that you can define a country with the character of its citizens, because every citizen has at least nine characters, for instance, worker, national, city, class, geography, sexuality, aware, unaware and maybe one privat characteristic. These are smoothly mixed together.

“To describe Sassan Behnam Bakhtiar’s artwork is to describe the country he belongs to and so passionately and justifiably champions: Iran. Multi-layered, complex, thoughtful, deeply historical yet utterly contemporary, colorful, positive, creative, unique. Viewing the world through the prism of Sassan’s carefully crafted compositions gives us a sense of his profound compassion for humanity.”

Janet Rady, Curator and Art Consultant, 2016

Sabetian, F., 2021. Persian Gardens – The Beauty of Traditional Iranian Architecture. [online] SURFIRAN. Available at: <https://surfiran.com/persian-gardens-iranian-architecture/> [Accessed 1 June 2021].

TIMES, T. and TIMES, T., 2021. SASSAN BEHNAM BAKHTIAR – THE ART OF CREATING BRIDGES AND BREAKING THE MOLD – THE TEHRAN TIMES. [online] THE TEHRAN TIMES. Available at: <https://thetehrantimes.com/sassan-behnam-bakhtiar-art-creating-bridges-breaking-mold/> [Accessed 17 June 2021].

Musil, R., 2021. Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften. Chicago: Otbebookpublishing.

The power of seeing the colours and distinguishing them has changed people lives and their beliefs. During the history it caused people discovering more colours and bring them into their handicrafts, religion, science and many other aspects. Human beings have been always curious and creative, so they started creating colours, one of these colours which has a strong connection with my childhood and identity is Persian blue. 

The color of Persian blue is a representation of the color of lapis lazuli which has been mined in Iran and Afghanistan since ancient times. The scarcity of the blue mineral lapis lazuli drove the earliest adopters to seek new ways of producing blue through chemistry. Because it was a rare and expensive mineral to acquire up until the dawn of the Industrial Age, it’s often associated with royalty and divinity, which is partly why it is widely a favourite color today. Blue can have a variety of meanings and symbolize a diverse range of ideals depending upon a culture’s beliefs. Largely, the color blue is considered beneficial to the mind and body. It is believed that it slows human metabolism, which produces a calming effect. Light blue is associated with health, healing, and tranquility while dark blue represents a more powerful, serious, but sometimes melancholic nature.

One of the most famous examples of using blue colour in the European arts, is the Starry night by Van Gogh. This works represents a melancholic and mysterious night. The most important point is that the blue is showing the sky and the relationship that the artist build with this meanings. As a contrast, there is a roof of a famous mosque in Iran, Masjed Shah, which has been also designed with blue color, but it shows the melancholy of the sky in a different way using abstract forms as well. This ceiling is also mentioning the sky however in a different way.

Blue has mostly the meaning of innocence and heaven in Iranian culture. The roof of mosques are mostly made from mosaics with blue color. As contrast for example in English language people say you seem blue, which means feeling sad or melancholic. I suppose, middle eastern people are also a little bit melancholic but in a different way, specially in iran, literature and poetry have melancholic meanings that could be connected with happiness as well as sadness and being away from the lover. 

There is another art in Iran, which is very similar with architecture and using blue color, this art is more than 2500 years old and is called as Minakari. Minakara is about adding details and designing mugs, plates and jewelleries. It found its way during the Byzantine Empire through Europe. 

This Blog Post is about finding daily details in Austrian and Iranian lives and how they have designed in different cultures. I suppose the book “die eigenen vier Wände” from Gert Selle has a significant influence on writing this post. This book is about analyzing houses, doors, walls, windows and some other factors and their meanings. For example, doors play a role as a border between two different spaces. People always go through doors and do not make a long pause there. When you enter your home and you close the main door, you enter to a new environment, where could have a total different vibe as outside. In one house, they can also separate different environments from one another and play a border roll. There are some pictures from doors in Iran and Austria placed next to each other for a very simple design and meaning comparison.

As you see in these traditional pictures, the main form and purpose of these doors are the same, however the way they have designed and how people interacted with details differ significantly in both cultures.

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Windows are a view to the outside world. People can stand by a window and observe the outside world meanwhile they are physically inside their own world, better to say, inside the safe area of their homes. One of the most surprising experiences for me was that people in the western world, open their windows and they do not have a fear of getting noticed from people outside in addition, privacy has a total different meaning. As you can see in the right picture from an Iranian window from Qajar historical period, they are closed and just play a small role bringing a little light inside, however these windows also only existed in the inside small garden and not on the street. I can relate this matter to islamic believes and not to let women and family getting seen from the outside. Nowadays we have wider windows and this topic has been changed a lot, but still every apartment has a curtain and people do not open their windows as often as in Europe.

During the search about details, I found an animation movie about two houses. I found the story and technic very nice and the way two houses from two different cities become best friends. This animation demonstrates the concept of the similarity between houses and human beings in a very beautiful way as well as making questions about feeling at home or are we the houses?

The challenge learning European names and remembering them was not easy for me at the beginning. However still it is not easy for European people understanding and saying my name. I found a very interesting Austrian animation that also is about the names. Watching these animation, gave me the idea about writing this blog post and have a quick thought about the importance of the names. The story is about a man who is not satisfied with his name and he wants to change his name. It is a short animation which has been made very interesting with a very nice design.

This animation has been made by Benjamin Swiczinsky. He studied at Filmakademie_Baden-Württemberg in Ludwigsburg. The technic and character design is very inspiring for me. The music suits the animation very well.

Poeple’s names also differ in different cultures. There are different trends for naming new born children from time to time which also could be a possibility getting more information about the society. I have found an interesting list about Austrian names. Almost no body has these names in Iran, however I am very happy that I know most of these names now.

Iranians have very old names. However after entering Islam, people started naming their children islamic names as well as old Persian names. Nowadays people mostly use old Iranian names showing the concept of “getting back to the roots”. There is also even a historical name changing. On the Nowruz of 1935, Reza Shah asked foreign delegates to use the Persian term Iran (meaning the land of Aryans in Persian), the endonym of the country, in formal correspondence. Subsequently, the common adjective for citizens of Iran changed from Persian to Iranian. Another example are these names with their meanings that I have found from Disney website.

Transformation of acculturation during the second half 20th century and the beginning of 21st century

Acculturation means, assimilation to a new and different culture which happens mostly with the dominant culture. It may also impact social and psychological well-being.

Since the beginning of the 90s the approach to acculturation studies, has been revised, which happened due to untied Germany. “…Two generations of Germans, brought up in different socio- cultural environments, and having very little opportunity to communicate with each other, after the unification of Germany had to face problems of acculturation” (Ushanova 2001: 4- 5). Russian speaking scientists have been facing different problems studying acculturation themes, due to the insufficient scientific/theoretical development of the acculturation concept.

Along similar models to Berry, Natalia Vladislavovna Yankina examines the matter of tolerance in intercultural communications. Yankina describes acculturation as

“the process and result of the mutual influence of different cultures in which all or a part of the representatives of one culture (the recipient) adopt the norms, values and traditions of the other (donor)”.

Acculturation is a crucial factor in order to retain cultural identity while being (or becoming) engaged in another culture.

Researchers are studying various acculturation matters such as:

• Linguistic acculturation: During this process, the person masters a new language so that the new language changes his/her culture. The person uses the new language instead of his/her mother tongue communicating, living and fulfill the basic needs (Ushanova 2003, Perez 2011).
• Legal acculturation: interaction between legal cultures of different societies (Rulan 1988, Sokolsky 2014).
• Religious acculturation: interaction between religious cultures (Sobolev 2003, Awad 2010).
• Ethnic acculturation: interaction between ethnicities (Avdeeva & Bolotin 2016, Mashau 2012).
• Online acculturation: It is an intercultural interaction between people in the online platform, which has even created the new online culture. Online Platforms are vast area so that different people with different backgrounds can communicate with one another (Kosik2015).
• Psychological acculturation: interaction of an individual with another sociocultural environment (Graves 1967, Bochner 1982).
• Political acculturation: The changes of the political ideations and beliefs of a group while interacting or participating with different groups (Berry & Annis 1988, Iovan 2015).

“As a theoretical scientific category, acculturation research goes beyond academic discourse and is increasingly taken into account in political debates. Acculturation is becoming a reality that needs consideration in many political decisions. The present global social space is a world of worlds, where each component has its own cultural, ethnic, religious, and political peculiarities. Analysis of any specific form or model of acculturation involves further, specialized research”.

Ludmila Sokolskaya, Arturas Valentonis

In this post I would like to talk about an Austrian animation, analyzing its technique and compare it with my previous post of an Iranian animation. They are both done around 7 years ago roughly at the same time.

brats (Extended Play) | Alexander Hengl | 00:10:00 | 2013

From the website http://www.asifa.at/bestaustriananimation/

The „brats“ seem like a tribe of excited and sexless creatures connected through a collective spirit. Instead of using the classic storytelling format, artist/musician Alexander Hengl, member of „theclosing“, offers impressions that trigger subliminal emotions with this music-driven short.

Animation, Music, Editing: Alexander Hengl
Produced at: Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna – www.akbild.ac.at 
http://alexanderhengl.theclosing.net | www.lichenisierung.net

The philosophy about thinking and analyzing individuals comes from the Europe. Austria is specially famous for it due to its famous psychologist Freud.

As a middle eastern, it was also a big culture shock for me to see how people analyze individuals specially themselves. In the middle eastern culture it is not common to say the word “I” or use the sentence “I want something” very often. It is mostly said through a group or asking the others if they also want the same thing, and out of the result we say “We wanted”or some times “I wanted”.

This animation also focuses on individuals and showing them in a group and again individuals, their feeling, fears, characters etc.

However previous Iranian animation was mostly based on a narrative about a family and how dependent the members are on one another. It did not analyze every individual very exactly.

In the Iranian animation, the grey color was also used but in combination with red, blue and other lively traditional colours which are also used in the Persian carpet. Sound design was mostly dependent on traditional Kurdish music.

Both these animations are dealing with personal questions, relationships among people in the society, different happenings and their effect on people, however in two very different styles. We as the audience can understand the message behind both of them and learn something new about the new culture and their way of thinking and perception of arts and life.