Transforming Shoes: Storytelling Through Artifacts and Design as Narrative

This project explores the relationship between personal narratives and everyday objects. It aims to gain an understanding of the relationships people have with a specific everyday object: shoes. My research explores how people’s memories are connected to their shoes. The primary aim of this research is to explore the role design can play in transforming people’s ordinary possessions into artifacts that tell stories and convey meaning. The intent throughout has been to encourage people (users and designers) to look deeper into their relationships with everyday objects. As one of the most common things in people’s daily lives, shoes are a means communicate and be expressive. Inspired by people who treat shoes as more than daily objects—sneakerheads who collect, trade, and admire sneakers as a hobby and artists who create provocative artifacts and messages out of converted sneakers — my research aims to use narratives and history to explore different possibilities of shoes’ transformation. I have done this with the intention of addressing the following questions: How might people develop deeper understanding of their relationship with possessions through storytelling? Can designers transform objects into new artifacts based on people’s remembered and shared personal narratives? Through collecting people’s old shoes, documenting stories related to shoes gathered from their owners, and deconstructing shoes, my practice seeks to transform shoes to artifacts that reflect the original stories and convey memories and emotions of the former owners. As a result of this research, multiple artifacts were created from shoes including customized hats and tapestries made with shoe parts. Customized hats and tapestries were also created to explore the notion/used of the souvenir and the collection in relation to design objects. My intent has been to connect and evoke a sense of value to people’s belongings. My practice challenges the notion that shoes as utilitarian products only valued for their physical function (assist in walking) and aesthetic pleasure (to be seen) . I have come to understand making as functioning as a means of realizing and making connections with our own shared and built narratives with everyday objects. The process of making and unmaking can facilitate new relations with objects, where the object is 1) perceived and recognized; 2) conceived as made; 3) understood. Through my work gathering narratives and emotions is validated as an important aspect that is relevant to the creation of artifacts made from previously used objects, in this case shoes. Shoes contain memories and mutual experiences across time that influence thoughts and feelings about both personal experience and the objects that we carry along with us over time. Through my explorations I found that personal narratives can serve as inspirations for designing new/residual objects. The stories gathered and the artifacts created have led to the reflections on self-expression and self-identity among the people who did the initial storytelling and myself as a maker and designer who responded with my own set of story objects in what I call “ design as narratives”.