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Paper short abstract

This paper uses semiotics as an analytical tool to examine how Chadō’s ritual sequence is re-signified in contemporary contexts. It identifies recurring patterns of meaning shift across architecture, ceramics, and XR-based media, showing how Chadō’s signs are simplified, translated, or reactivated.

Paper long abstract

Chadō, the Japanese tea practice, is a culturally situated system whose meanings are continually re-signified in response to social change. This paper explores Chadō as a structured system of space, gesture, and objects that produces meaning through participation. The analysis treats spatial organisation, choreographed gestures, temporal pacing, and utensils as interdependent sign systems. It uses a semiotic approach as both an analytical and diagnostic tool. Drawing on Ferdinand de Saussure’s distinction between signifier and signified, and Charles Sanders Peirce’s triadic relation of sign, object, and interpretant, the paper analyses traditional tea practice and its contemporary reinterpretations, revealing shifts in meaning as Chadō is shaped by processes of modernisation, globalisation, and cultural mediation. The analysis focuses on specific case studies in contemporary architecture, ceramics, and XR media, examining how signs are translated outside of their original contexts. These translations may reduce, transform, or complement the original meanings of the practice. The paper asks under what conditions contemporary reinterpretations instrumentalise the practice’s signs, and under what conditions they support meaningful cultural translation.

The presentation will discuss design-oriented principles for reinterpreting Chadō across the case studies presented, outlining approaches that avoid reducing meaning and instead complement or extend it. By doing so, the paper contributes a comparative framework for designers and cultural practitioners working with ritual heritage across physical and digital media.