‘Object and User Performance in Rituals', Book Chapter in ‘Visual and Performance Arts’, 2011 (Part B, Performing the Arts, Chapter 10, pp.131) Edited by Arbury, Andrew Stephen and Georgoulia, Aikaterini. Published by the Athens Institute for Education and Research ISBN: 978-960-9549-65-3

This book publication is a new collection of thirty-four essays written by international art historians, artists, academics and researchers, establishing an international forum for the development of the arts through research. The selected, peer-reviewed contributions aim to push the boundaries among art categories by promoting dialogue among visual and performing arts, art history and education. The book is organised into five parts (chapters): Art History Issues; Performing the Arts; Current Issues in Art Education; Digital Culture. The book contribution by dr. Adriana Ionascu (‘Object and User Performance in Rituals’ p.131) explores the social role of design using a cultural analysis-based methodology. It investigates the western design and use of domestic tableware in the 18th and 19th century, exploring the ways in which domestic products become subjected to cultural and social patterns, mediating a whole register of symbolic exchanges between society, people and culture. Being related to preset norms of sociability and communal sensorial experiences, such everyday objects enable multi-layered encounters and interactions developed in everyday handling. This particular contribution views design as an agent of social change: by re-configuring social practices and forms of living, the ordinary elements of the domestic milieu re-fashion the material, cultural and social worlds. This contribution continues scholarly research into user user-product interaction/ experience presented in the conference paper ‘Framing Design Narratives: Forms of Collecting’ at ‘Writing Design: Object, Process, Discourse, Translation’ Design History Society Annual International Conference (Hertfordshire University, 2009); and continued in the conference paper ‘Design at Play: Immaterial Forms of Consumption’ presented at the 3rd NORDES International Design Conference ‘Engaging Artefacts’, Oslo School of Architecture and Design, 2009. This critical analysis of use-objects was further developed in the Group Exhibition ‘Food Objects as Models of Cultural Evolution’ presented at London Metropolitan University for the first International Conference on Designing Food in 2012.