Umbrellas. We all have them. We all use them. But to really appreciate it like I do, you must come along with me on this research journey.

Let’s start off with the famous superstition that it’s bad luck to open an umbrella inside.

An explanation of this superstition is that both umbrellas and buildings protect you from rain, by opening an umbrella inside, it’s almost as if you are saying to the building that you are not good enough for me. And this apparently angers the household spirits. So don’t do it, folks!

Superstitions differ from culture to culture, so we naturally arrive in Kyoto, Japan for a different kind of umbrella.

Kyoto is the heart of Japan’s geisha world. A common prop used by Geisha is the oil paper umbrella, however, they originate in China. They can even be seen on top of the terracotta warrior carriages.

These umbrellas are stronger than the modern umbrellas but they also require more care and proper storage. Traditional handmade umbrellas require 90 to 120 different steps, however, nowadays there’s fewer and fewer craftsman who can make oil paper umbrellas from start to finish.

Here’s the animation that I made showing the different uses of umbrellas at different ages…

Why aren’t there more people willing to learn how to makes these beautiful umbrellas you ask? Find out in the next assessment! (Hopefully)

During the making of the small project, the most time-consuming task was illustrating the oil paper umbrellas as I had no access to it in real life. I noticed this when collecting the material necessary to craft the blog post. The connection to oil paper umbrellas was generated through network thinking as suggested by Ingold, but I realised during development that ideas that I come up with should be somewhat tangible and have access to ensure that media can be made easier. I can purchase it in Australia but it takes a month for it to arrive, making it impossible to obtain footage in time.

Also, I’ve encountered the issue where some of the footage I took did not directly relate to the small project and had to be cut. While making a draft of the blog post, I realised that there wasn’t a clear connection between the ideas and meaningful placement of media was not possible. I felt that the movement of my blog post was downwards, and therefore a logical progression of thought was required, as such, I chose not include videos and/ or photos that are overlapping in meaning. In a similar way, the reading suggests that organisms “extend along the multiple pathways of their involvement in the world.” (Ingold, 2011) In my case, my thoughts “thread their own paths” through its relations and arrives a spot where further investigation is required. Subsequently, in assessment two I would like to plan out the blog post beforehand so I will not waste media materials to use.

Therefore, in the future, I would like to explore ideas that I felt was too complex to explain in this project, namely the superstitions surrounding household objects and the decline in traditional craftsmanship in China. In terms of format, I like the research journey style that I used in this assessment, but it can change depending on the media I make for it.

The idea of entanglement initially seems fundamental to one’s thinking process, but its importance was made apparent through the reading by Tim Ingold. To him, an organism does not exist in isolation but are affected by all the elements that surround it (the environment). Therefore, any discussion of an object, idea or thing must incorporate its relations, effectively making the environment a “domain of entanglement.”(Ingold, 2011) Personally, I have noticed this happening when it comes to the development segment of any project. Some ideas are inevitably tied to an idea, resulting in further research. the same thing happened with the small project.

To me, I find that umbrellas are strongly tied to superstitions: I began the process by opening up my umbrella indoors and started to take photos and short videos. Doing so immediately caused a friend of mine saying that it is bad luck to open umbrellas inside; a commonly held superstition by many claims that this act provokes the household spirits and leaves you unprotected. Afterwards, I headed outside and noticed that the sun was setting so I took another video of me opening my umbrella under the sun. While doing this, it is obvious that no one else is using the umbrella to block out the sun, people are perhaps unaccustomed to this act. A more popular solution would be to use sunscreen. This difference in culture prompts me to think of other kinds of umbrellas in Asia such as the oil paper umbrella along with the more comedic umbrella hat for children.

After a quick google search of oil paper umbrella, the inquiry quickly leads me to the craftsmanship of these umbrellas. From segments of documentaries, I discovered that there are 92 to 120 different processes required to make a single oil paper umbrella from start to finish.

I would like to explore more of this process of making oil paper umbrellas and the fact that there are less and less people who know how to craft them. The craft is being lost due to less and less young people having in interest in learning the craft being passed down from their parents. This is a common occurrence happening in China, the countryside with many types of cultural properties are in a crisis where there are no more people learning the craft. The younger generation are forced to find education and jobs in the cities. This reflects on the larger societal pressures on the younger generation in China, where in their pursuit of wealth and stability, traditional crafts are forgotten.

Through the narrative exercise I was able to identify another knot of entanglement in the uses of an umbrella. This I explored in the short animation clip I produced which features umbrellas being used at different ages, environments and purposes. I was also planning on including the use of black umbrellas during funerals as a part of the animation but the somber atmosphere was a little too much for this, therefore I decided to not include it.