Characteristics Of The Dongba Visual Art Symbols In Modern Design Applied Research

As the visual medias of folk culture, Dongba visual art-symbols mainly include totem-symbol, dance chart, pictograph and painting. The application and study of Dongba visual art-symbols which can meet people's pursuing for simple and unsophisticated life style for their blur characters, interesting forms, aboriginal cultural and aesthetic meanings, have become one of the hot points in the tide of modern design development.Based on this context, this paper presents a clear purpose, which includes systematically seeking after the sign rulers, aesthetic characters, text characters, unitary structure characters and movement characters in the Dongba visual art semiosphere. Based on these, the methods of applying Dongba visual art symbols in modern design will be acquired combined with the theory of design semiotics and semiosphere. Then Dongba culture and arts will be developed coupled with the innovation of artistic life-styles.Based on collecting abundant of data and synthetically applying the research methods of introspective study, extroverted study, iconology and system theory, Dongba pictograph have been systematically analyzed, which have contributed to a lot of results. Firstly, the systematic exploring has presented the basic structural rules, such as unitary imitating, character representing, dynamic and scene describing, symbolizing, etc. Secondly, the systematic exploring has presented the expanded structural rules, such as form complicating and predigesting, shape transforming, etc. Thirdly, the systematic exploring has presented the aesthetic characters, such as objective and inornate nature beauty, scene beauty focused on living circumstance, form beauty expressed with dynamic beauty, unitary beauty, character beauty, orderliness beauty and so on.The expressive fashion and aesthetic characters of Dongba totem-symbol have been explored, which have contributed to a lot of results, such as nature beauty characterized with nature worship and primal nature harmony, and jinn beauty and humanity beauty characterized with integration of 'human' and 'jinn'. Then, the expressive fashion and aesthetic characters of Dongba dance-charts have been explored, which have contributed to a lot of results, such as jinn beauty characterized with feting divinity, amusing divinity, and inter-growing harmoniously among "human- divinity-nature", life beauty characterized with collective self-amusement and reappearance of unreligious life scene, form beauty expressed mainly with dynamic beauty, painting and calligraphy beauty. At last, the expressive fashion and aesthetic characters of Dongba paintings have been explored, which have contributed to a lot of results, such as particular jinn beauty, mythological and realistic scene beauty, primal and unsophisticated form beauty, and primal and haggard nature beauty.Based on the symbolic structure and aesthetic meaning of Dongba visual art-symbols, Dongba visual art-symbol-sphere are built by combining with Lotman's culture semiosphere. Then, the multi-sign and complexity of test, multi-culture and unitary structure of aesthetic culture have been analyzed and the system of aesthetic culture have been constructed in Dongba visual art semiosphere. Then the structure characters of Dongba visual art semiosphere has been analyzed, which have contributed to a lot of results, such as heterogeneity, asymmetry and boundedness, and "margin-center" system of aesthetics culture. Then the motion characters of Dongba visual art semiosphere has been analyzed, which have contributed to a lot of results, such as "margin←�'center" and traversing boundary of symbol motion styles, series-wound, feedback motion, iterative motion and shunt-wound motion of symbol motion relations, and aesthetic continuity, aesthetic reverting, aesthetic amalgamation, and aesthetic intergrowth of aesthetic motion styles.The elements of design semiotics and semiosphere of applying Dongba visual art-symbols in modern design have been analyzed, which include design symbol system and its characters, motion characters and value system of design symbol, symbol system design methods, and intention base, comparability base and otherness base. And the advantages of applying Dongba visual art-symbols in modern design have been analyzed, such as the complexity in Dongba visual art-symbols and agility of Dongba visual art semiosphere. Based on these, this paper presents the system design model and methods of applying Dongba visual art-symbols in modern design, such as correlative Dongba symbol transforming into single design symbol, correlative Dongba symbol transforming into a series design symbols and one single design symbol transforming into a series design symbols, then presents partial design cases.Applying the design methods of applying Dongba visual art-symbols in modern design, a series of domestic ceramics with Dongba visual art-symbols characters of kindred beauty, jinn beauty and scene beauty have been designed by using the classic Dongba pictographs of 'Spring', 'Summer', 'Fall', 'Winter', 'Father', 'Mother', 'Son', 'Daughter', 'Spring ploughing', 'Summer hoeing', 'Autumn planting', 'Winter enjoying', 'Fere' and 'blessing' as correlative symbols. And then a series of VIS of 'The Cultural Academe of Dongba' with the characters of 'Dongba Culture Studying' have been designed by using the totemic symbol of 'Frog' and the classic Dongba pictographs with aniconic meanings of 'Good', 'Dongba', 'Wishful knot', and etc. as correlative symbols.