Project 1: looking at masculating cooking utensils through the lens of fetishism...(the anthropological scene of the word)

ok I just read this interview in a book that Wonhee has let me barrow.
The book is titled I Miss My Pencil by Martin Bone and Kara Johnson

(I just ordered it from Amazon)

The article talked about how Fetishism affects design. And I mean fetishism in the pre-Freud anthropological scenes of the term…so not sexual,… well directly anyway. Fetishism as in: the association objects with special meaning, magical powers, objects as a god or a conduit of a god.

There are 2 quotes that I really love in this article from Morgana Maye:

“One of my favorite current uses of the term Fetish actually is in gamming. There are a series of video games that have fetishes as weapons with magical powers.”

“….. I am talking about the way in which textures and tastes and smells and the visceral experience of an object are connected in the way the object itself is sold.”

I really love that last quote.

This will help me in thinking about how I will approach designing the cooking utensils.

I talked with Wonhee today and she gave me a bit of a push so that I will have a bit of head start with ideas for the forms and what visual language I will use. She wants me to play around in Photoshop merging power tools and sports equipment with cooking utensils to get an idea of what an end product will look like.

I am also going to look at the Black&Decker line of kitchen appliances to see what they did.