The path to immigration is associated with cultural adjustment to the new setting as a process of emotional fluctuation over time. The goal of this thesis project was to visualize the experience of cultural adjustment process of a sample group of Persian immigrants in Canada according to the visual language of the Persian rug. Since the Persian rug, as a cultural object, has the potential to narrate peoples's lives, feelings and experiences, it is an appropriate information system through which to visualize the experience of immigration. The outcomes of this study are innovative forms of the Persian rug as a visual representation of a sign system which enables viewers to observe the visual narrative of the emotional life of Persian immigrants in Canada as semiotic phenomena. In this study, emotional reactions of sample participants throughout their cultural adjustment process were examined through a questionnaire. Subsequently, the data gathered was visualized to create a motif for each participant through a specific system. The motifs were arranged according to the traditional set-structure of Persian rug design. Three modalities of data visualization were chosen for the outcomes of this study: sculpture, animation, and sound. The attempt to superimpose the Persian rug with information that represents the story of immigration experience provided a context for me to express my creative role as a designer to move flexibly from one subject sphere to another, shape old things by relating them to something new, and work to the limits and transmit information in both effective and affective ways.

Design a Rug Cartoon

Initially, in order to narrate the immigration experience phenomenon in form of a Persian rug and to make a connection between these two diverse spheres, I established an arbitrary system which resulted in designing a rug cartoon based on the traditional set structure of Persian rug design techniques and the principle of semiotic theory through which I was able to represent the data gathered from overall well-being and emotional reactions of each individual participants of my sample group both prior to and after their immigration to Canada in form of a rug. Designing a system that can simultaneously complies the traditional set structure of Persian rug design techniques and comprises aesthetic qualities of the Persian rugs, whilst also signifies the immigration experience phenomenon challenged me as a designer to find constraints and alternatives to work with potentialities of Persian rug design to embody an abstract participatory data-driven phenomenon.

DATA VISUALIZATION

Subsequently, I investigated the ways of how the design elements of the Persian rug cartoon can be adopted differently on various modalities of data visualization such as sculpture, animation, and sound in order to represent the final outcomes of this study in innovative ways. Indeed, something familiar such as rug can act as a metaphor when it is demonstrated in innovative ways and beyond its traditional common forms. It could introduce meaningful insight and perception to my viewers while posing questions for them when looking for similarities and differences between its traditional woven forms and innovative outcomes of this study which, I feel, is my vital role as a designer to make it possible. Within various modalities of data visualization, I tried to discover new ways to represent different angles of the story I was narrating. This attempt gave me the opportunity to focus on different factors of the immigration experience phenomenon.

Sculpture

Physical affordances of this final three-dimensional rug have the potential to augment insight discovery and sense making. In fact, creating a three-dimensional Persian rug rather than sacrificing the dimensionality to its traditional woven forms gives the viewers the ability to walk around, explore its physical reality, and facilitates the discovery of information through its external physical form. Data sculptures consist of separate parts which when collected together, the whole reveals more than the parts alone. The sculpture outcome of this study comprises of about five thousand separate pieces that collectively make up a unique three-dimensional shape. The height of each piece is the representation of one unit of the average well-being score of the three tests in each stage of the cultural adjustment process of the associated participant. When put on each other, the height of the pieces together in the three-dimensional figure illustrates the whole average wellbeing score of the participant in each stage. Differences in the average well-being scores of the participants in each stage result in a different height of the layers of the final motifs which make comparison easier between individual motifs and in the rug as a whole. In fact, the collections of all pieces relate to each other in form of a three-dimensional rug reveals the behavioral relationships of data that one would not see through two-dimensional traditional Persian rugs woven forms.

Animation and Sound

In order to focus on the time factor of immigration experience and to reveal the similarities and differences of the duration of each stage of cultural adjustment process of my sample group, animation modality was chosen as one of the results of this study. Accompanying the animation is a composition of four piano notes which were composed based on the median duration of each stage of cultural adjustment process of the whole sample group. When the sound outcome is added to the animation outcome, it accompanies the simultaneous formation process of the medallion motif which is the representation of the median of the whole sample group cultural adjustment process. In order to harmonize the visual forms of the animation with the sound being played aesthetically, I applied some audio effects on the notes in the GarageBand software. Combining sound and animation outcomes together prepares a better context for comparison between each participant’s cultural adjustment process duration and the median duration of the whole sample group process. It provides an opportunity for the viewers to experience the time factor in two different ways.

PERSONAL EXPRESSION

In any creative design practice, there must be a time for experimentation and a time for exploring new horizons and new viewing perspectives without restrictions and regulations which could provide designers an opportunity to be open to unexpected results, find and develop their own personal voice, and advanced their ideas towards attainment and development of self-authorship and through their own design practice. Correspondingly, I conducted some visual explorations without limiting my self to any restrictions and regulations and free from my rule-governed system through the modification of the final rug design of this study which was in fact the intentional abstraction and distortion of my system. In my attempt to experiment creative freedom, I pushed the final rug design of this study into new and unexpected direction to experiment and discover innovative shapes and forms. Although in the initial stages, there were some indications of the final rug design of this study in my experimentations, but as I continued my experiments the new outcomes became more simplified, abstract, and free from their original context. Ultimately, in order to explore my personal expression of the immigration experience, I chose the most simplified outcome of my experiments to be reconstructed. I separated its abstract shapes and juxtaposed them based on my own manifestation into four different designs and then combined all of them into one final design which is the representation of the whole immigration experience.