THE REVOLUTIONARY 21ST CENTURY SCOTTISH TARTAN : STARTAN |
||
STARBURST TARTAN
- STARTAN
ANDREW HENNESSEY
Traditional Tartan can be many colours, shades, colour palettes and designs. It can be woven of many fabrics. It
can also be made into colourful patchwork and artistically integrated
with other textures and textiles in clothing. Traditionally, there have
been some very beautiful examples of that from Clothing and Costume Designers. As a fabric though Tartan tends to be box-like or grid-like and as such it either fits into our feeling of formality or regularity with its colourful building blocks and girders or not.
The
weave of a tartan with its criss-cross and ratios [Sett] of colourful
lines give it its traditional multicoloured square effect. What
if instead, however, this interweave of colourful lines still took place,
but in an irregular manner that integrated a greater element of design
? Perhaps Tartan can be given a more informal appeal.
Tartan
has a healthy and proven global market and in this context Starburst tartan
or Startan is a revolutionary and new idea.
Sunburst
Tartan, or ‘Startan’ can be defined as; ‘An asymmetric interweave of the multicoloured stripes of a Tartan Sett. These Sett colours radiate, thicken and expand in proportion from some point or origin within various geometric many sided (polygonal) objects as they reach the circumference of the design object. When overlapped with other similar or different polygonal design objects these overlap areas form a tartan criss-cross comprised of irregularly shaped coloured polygons and design structures. i.e. A variously obtuse and irregular or [non-Traditional/ ‘non-square’ or ‘non-rectangular’], symmetrical or asymmetrical tartan weave. The
limitless combinations or recombinations of tartan setts within limitlessly
overlapping and interacting geometric shapes is named Starburst Tartan
or Startan [acronym]. Suppose
that from a central point in a for example;
circular, triangular, hexagonal, stellate, crescent
or other geometric design, regular or irregular; the colourful
threads of the tartan Sett could radiate as if the rays of the sun to
merge and interweave and overlap with other rays from other ‘starbursts’
at irregular angles. The
overlap areas, i.e. the Startan
areas, of these design objects could be highly designed to be any shape.
The
physical weaving of it can be simplified for example if the area where
the cluster of threads that would be radiating from a central point were
to be occupied in the design by a shape such as star or circle The
overall tartan itself becomes a combination of radiating and overlapping
design objects, and their outreaching coloured tartan Sett threads. Within
the overlap areas; which could be highly designed to be any shape whatsoever
would be the asymmetric tartan or ‘Startan’ If
the lengths of the overlapping and outreaching and intertwining asymmetric
sunburst threads were themselves designed to form e.g. polygonal blocks
of asymmetric tartan, or indeed other design shapes, with careful colour
palette co-ordination tartan design could progress into a more informal
idiom. The
busy-ness of such a design could be controlled. By
omission of some Sett colours from some of the non-overlapping areas of
the design objects the end product does not have to look like a riot of
radiating lines. Startan areas in design object overlaps could be carefully
sculpted and blended into a bigger less busy pattern. The
central suns of those sunbursts do not necessarily have to espouse some
cultural logo or inclusion but could merely be islands of blending colour
from the same overall palette as the tartan threads themselves. The
colour ratios of the threads or Setts in these tartans however are intrinsically
preserved. Startan
as a new artform and clothing idea can be seen as a complement to the
more traditional and regular tartan designs.
The traditional Scottish patriarch may well disagree with the design virtues of Starburst tartan … but then after centuries of opportunity to produce his own informal revisions - he still doesn't seem to appreciate the gentle side of disorder. The box girder approach to fashion and social design is maybe good for the many male engineers that Scotland is so proud of - but then women don't always want to look like they are wearing the draft design for one of the many block houses that Scottish architects regularly turn out. Starburst tartan provides
a new vehicle for a more Universal use of tartan in every kind of fashion
setting.
Startan
was invented on the 10th of October, 2007AD by Andrew Hennessey
of Outshore Multimedia, Edinburgh and an announcement was posted on UFONEWSWIRE
on Yahoo Internet Groups that month. ANDREW
HENNESSEY OUTSHORE
MULTIMEDIA PO
BOX 28823 EDINBURGH
EH15 3WU TEL.
0131 657 3063 EML.
contact andrew hennessey
- startan inventor
It seems that if life on
Earth is anything to go by, the Universe is a place absolutely teeming
with life. The early 1990's DNA-for-nothing models by Stuart Kauffman
at the Santa Fe Institute do suggest what the Mayans already had models
for in their 'Loom of Maya' thousands BC that Life naturally emerges out
of chaos. The pattern of an individual
tartan is usually called a 'sett'. Tartan wearing Scots have
been found reposing in Stone Age Dolmens from about 2000 BC in Northern
China, but that does seem to suggest for men of good taste, that the infamous
Scottish diet hasn't improved over the millennia. Although 'bought and sold
for English gold' because there was; 'sic a parcel O rogues in the Nation':
the Scots flew their colours into battle with the sentiments; 'lay the
proud usurper low, tyrants fall in every foe, liberty's in every blow,
let us do or die' [Burns, R]. Tartan therefore has a provenance
in Scotland steeped in the 'Romance' of endless warfare and bloodshed
and was used to signify one's roots. Tartan is however, part
of the landscape, part of the mountains and glens, part of the waterfalls
and the ferns, the bracken and the heather, the deer and the eagle, the
salmon and the herring gulls, the spirit of the sea and the solan goose. Tartan is a resistance to
banned surnames such as Macgregor, it is a resistance to banned bagpipes
and banned tartan, it is a resistance to oppression, it is a statement
of unique identity and a commitment to a family and a commune, it is a
social statement, its wearing is to be the custodian of history and heritage,
it is of the provenance of protector of the family and the weak. Having said that, the MacDonald's
got their revenge after the massacre of Glencoe by the Campbell's of Argyll
because once they were all eventually cleared out to make way for the
sheep - they went over to America and invented the Big Mac. After the unpopular Act
of Union with England in 1707AD which forbade there to be taxes levied
unequally in any part of the Union, there was a great 'wearing of the
tartan' as an act of protest, even in Edinburgh, but by the time Margaret
Thatcher had introduced the 'poll tax' only in Scotland in the 1980's,
there was only late opening and Tartan Special lager in the National 'unconsciousness'. In these new tartan fusions,
there are elements of geography and culture and their components and a
celebration of our local origins. These ingredients go to make the act
of creating a tartan a display of cultural strength and unity. So much for Mankind therefore, but what if Extra Terrestrial Civilisations wanted their own tartans too ? It became apparent in North
Leith, Edinburgh, Scotland in 1993 AD during a series of interstellar
contacts that Extra Terrestrial Civilisations had a lot in common with
what it took to be Scottish. Well, maybe Interstellar Civilisations needed to re-enforce their reason for being by making a statement of social pride and intent, and to make a point of celebrating their identity. Perhaps they needed to incorporate the Scottish tradition of tartan. We should use some system to analyse an interstellar society, its families and social groups, its geography, its culture and its history and then link the way they have developed and persisted within their solar system geography etc to a colour index we could have the basis for some kind of system. We could allocate numerical and colour judgements about the persistence of what we thought was good and bad. That which had relative social integrity within each social context could be assessed on a numerical scale that was teamed up with a colour palette. We would use a value system that reflected our highest ideals in each social virtue e.g. democracy, industry, technological evolution, spiritual Christianity, defence etc and our merits in these things would be our brightest colours. Where we have failed e.g. in governance or industry or social integration to evolve or adapt for long periods this would add in increasing amounts of black, and lower frequency colours to our tartan. The central part of the
tartan, 'the pivot', would be the main theme or keynote of our society
and the success with which it has up till now organised its life essences.
e.g. a long time immersed in 'nature red in tooth and claw' biology before
leaping into freely-sustaining mode would give the tartan a darker and
more muted feel. The equivalent of the Scottish 'ancient'. The colours dark or bright
do not though reflect judgements of good and evil, rather, periods of
immersion in certain social themes. Biology is not the only
type of reality in the Cosmos, as was written of by the Reverend Robert
Kirk in 1697AD in Aberfoyle, Scotland. Beyond that rut and dark
vision though there is the True Vine of Christ's love and an endless supply
of the waters of life. John 15. Beyond the daily grind of biology, therefore, is a whole Multiverse of happy high-energy life-forms perpetuating social structures. The central theme colour of the pivot in an interstellar tartan therefore would be arrived at by evaluating our soul group's performance within some time scale in which we have all agreed to participate, and how much of that timescale we have spent being predominately biological. The other structural colours
of a tartan, are the bands of colour around the central pivot in the tartan
design. With the central pivot colours
indicative of the history of evolution within biological and spiritual
form, and the main structural support colours within that tartan design
pertinent to the social reality of evolution and transformation within
the species, the highlight colours of that particular tartan, usually
the narrow band of colour that provides a relatively sparse contrasting
thread, could pertain to the cultural product of the society and soul
group. Scottish tartan has bands
of colour of various widths and symmetries within its structure. The creation of an Interstellar Tartan Database by a think tank of interstellar scholars who could make evaluations about social history relative to some scale may eventually produce a software with which one can calculate and register ones own social tartan for such things as; tribal group or clan or dynasty or species groupings, stellar regions, merchants, regiments and space navies, soul types and cosmic origins etc There is absolutely no reason
therefore for Tartan to ever end in Bonnie Scotland in an era of mankind
that may at some point be submerged beneath a deluge of geological cataclysm
and a deep cold sea.
|