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Drawing For Justice
Get PDFA presentation delivered at the Drawing Research Forum held at the Drawing Room Gallery part of a series of presentations and discussions, selected from an open call, providing access to recent research examining critical issues around contemporary drawing
XAIxArts Manifesto: Explainable AI for the Arts
Get PDFExplainable AI (XAI) is concerned with how to make AI models more understandable to people. To date these explanations have predominantly been technocentric- mechanistic or productivity oriented. This paper introduces the Explainable AI for the Arts (XAIxArts) manifesto to provoke new ways of thinking about explainability and AI beyond technocentric discourses. Manifestos offer a means to communicate ideas, amplify unheard voices, and foster reflection on practice. To supports the co-creation and revision of the XAIxArts manifesto we combine a World Café style discussion format with a living manifesto to question four core themes: 1) Empowerment, Inclusion, and Fairness; 2) Valuing Artistic Practice; 3) Hacking and Glitches; and 4) Openness. Through our interactive living manifesto experience we invite participants to actively engage in shaping this XIAxArts vision within the CHI community and beyond
Fanformance Art: The Practice of Making Fanfiction Real
Get PDFThis chapter explores fanfiction’s transformative potentials by rewriting Henry Jenkins’s utopian description of a media fandom working together, as narrated in the opening of “Scribbling in the Margins,” a chapter from his influential book Textual Poachers (1992). Similarly, I suggest that live art can be examined as an active community of consumers and producers who together instrumentalize Francesca Coppa’s description of fanfiction as a “living theatre in the mind” to transform an existing source into something else. The purpose of this chapter is to expose the methods of rewriting/reenactment that live art and fanfiction already share while also foregrounding the kind of active community and impassioned atmosphere so indispensable to live art practice. I build my argument around three examples of my practice-based research: the Fans of Live Art—DIY Workshop (2015), commissioned by the Live Art Development Agency, which included fourteen live art fan participants from across the United Kingdom, and the subsequent fan club (2015) public program and Live!Art fanzine publication (2015) that followed. With reference to these examples, I propose a shift from fan practice as performative and imitative (via Coppa) to fan practice as an embodied “becoming-fan” (via Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari), and as an affective and emergent community
The Development of Corporate Design: Brand Identity, Graphic Design and Professionalism in Post-war Britain
No full textChronicling the emergence of brand consultancy, this book explores how the development and proliferation of brand identity systems transformed the working methods and ideals of practicing graphic designers working in post-war Britain.
Practitioners in Britain were at the forefront of efforts to transform corporate identity design into a recognised practice with its own codified methods. Focussing particularly on the British experience, the book also draws on the influences and developments in this formative era in other countries, including the US and Germany. During this period designers were struggling with two conflicting paradigms - the socially motivated, free spirited artist-designer and the design entrepreneur as corporate agent.
David Preston uses three key design agencies as the springboard to explore this foundational period in the history of graphic design labour practices - the practical rationality of Hans Schleger & Associates, the systematic methods of Henrion Design Associates and the Design Research Unit and their design manual as an instrument of control. These design agencies created some of the most striking and successful brand identities of the era - the KLM logo, the British Rail double arrow, the John Lewis branding of the 1960s, Glenfiddich's iconic triangular bottle, the Post Office's house style, the National Theatre logo and many more. The case studies look at the power at play, how branding became systematic, the struggle between motives and standards, and draws on first-hand interviews with key actors and archival material.
A valuable contribution to our understanding of British post-war graphic design and the history of branding
Failed Seriousness and a Subject Worth Fighting For: Representing Sir Gawain
Get PDFGawain is the subject of many scholarly papers that analyze the figure in relation to issues such as chivalry, masculinity and the development of the Arthurian mythos. That scholarly emphasis has formed a more recent engagement for me with medieval studies and with Gawain’s relevance to a broad audience, informing appropriately a recent publication that deals with visual responses to the poem. However, the figure of Gawain, specifically the Gawain of the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, along with the titular monster, had already had a profound and lasting affect on me during a formative period, returning to me, initially, as a subject explored in my art practice. That encounter in childhood was one of confusion and disappointment, a memorable and subsequently influential nonplussed experience. The narrative of the poem had disappointed my then naïve desire for heroic cliches but as a result I have come to understand the ambiguity of the poem’s themes, and the ambivalence of its figures and landscapes was the reason for its greater impact. I have represented the knight directly in four paintings, in a sculpture, and his presence as a proxy for the viewer is implicated in two large landscapes, in this paper I will discus those works and the approaches to representation I have used in trying to understand Gawain and his symbolic significance
Innovation Funding for UK Fashion and Textiles: An overview of R&D mechanisms to support collaborative, industry-led academic research
Get PDFThis report is the third in a series of four reports based on joint research by the Business of Fashion, Textiles and Technology (BFTT), University of the Arts London and the Future Fashion Factory (FFF), University of Leeds.
BFTT and FFF are part of the Creative Industries Clusters Programme (CICP), an £80 million initiative associated with the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, delivered by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) on behalf of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)
Handcuffed to Andy Warhol, Meeting Madonna at LiveAid, Hell Bent for Leather at Fire Island: Considering Queerness in Rob Halford's “Confess” and “Biblical” Autobiographies
Get PDFUsing a radical and inclusive definition of the genre, this collection explores musicians' autobiographies as articulated in print, on stage, and through various expressive media as a dynamic factor in contemporary culture.
Popular musicians' autobiographies are one of the most important ways that stars create, negotiate and perpetuate the realities and myths of their lived experiences for fans. Autobiographical creations such as Bruce Springsteen's book Born to Run, Kendrick Lamar's lyrics, ABBA's virtual Voyage show, and the reimaginings of Lennon and McCartney's childhood homes have been both critically acclaimed and lucrative, whilst delivering for many fans an apparent insider's understanding of musicians whose work they are invested in. Yet such narratives have many other functions beyond thrilling their consumers with a sense of intimacy. The pop music autobiographies discussed here variously attempt to rewrite social history; to redress gender or racial stereotypes; to question received models of fame; to validate new genres and scenes; to explore complex subjectivities; to justify or atone for transgressive behaviour; and to critique the music industry
Bringing People Into AI
Get PDFThis policy report builds on a series of stakeholder workshops with Creative Industry professionals and practitioners who identified concerns with the use of AI and ways forward for the legislation in this area. The workshops explored the potential value of low-resource AI models and small datasets for music making, which itself has been heavily influenced by recent AI developments. With expert input, this report identifies key issues of using large AI models, highlights ethical and creative concerns, and proposes approaches to address these concerns. Opportunities to apply these recommendations beyond the music industry, for example, in scientific fields, are also introduced.
The report concludes that a small dataset and low-resource AI approach can bring nuance and character into AI-mediated creative practice while allowing creators more control and recognition for their work. This topic is especially timely as AI researchers and creative practitioners are pushing back against the UK Government’s proposed changes to Copyright Law in 2025 to allow for AI model training using copyrighted creative output
Fashion Text as Material
No full textFor IFFTI 2025, Caroline Stevenson and Ruby Hoette presented a workshop - Fashion Text as Material - as part of their collaborative project, Modus.
This workshop drew attention to the location of theory in practice-based fashion education contributing to the growing recognition of the productive relationship between theory and practice in fashion (Gaugele and Titton, 2022). Workshop participants were provided with photocopied pages from a series of 'fashion texts' and were invited to use them to create new blueprints for fashion practice.
We started by asking participants to choose one page from their photocopies, and highlight all of the verbs in the text. We read out the verbs and discussed how different fashion texts create different kinds of calls to action. Then, participants were invited to select sentences, words and phrases from their photocopies and create new texts, explaining their own definitions of fashion.
The workshop demonstrated a practice-based methodology for theoretical engagement
We Are not Designers: Pattern making and garment making as practices of co-design for social change
Get PDFSet within a global context increasingly hostile to women and girls, this doctoral research project investigated how fashion design, and more specifically, the practices of making patterns and garments, can give them tools to enhance their agency and build community resilience. This research aimed to explore how pattern making and garment making can be used to foster social change with a group of women from the margins. The methodology consisted of participatory practice research, comprising the delivery of participatory pattern making and garment making workshops designed to support women in developing their creative practices. This approach was complemented by semistructured interviews with several pattern makers and socially-engaged designers and researchers. Findings from the interviews led to defining a new framework to analyse projects of fashion design for social change. An open and inclusive definition of pattern making and garment making was formulated, and the practice was deconstructed into a set of five core elements, rethinking the field of pattern cutting. Two years of participatory practice research with a group of women in a deprived area of London, revealed that participating in the project fostered skill building, creativity development, community engagement, and the improvement of their wellbeing and self-confidence, leading some of the women to enrol in fashion design education, deliver community workshops and start a social enterprise. By applying the framework, built upon insights from the interviews, to the participatory practice research, this study uncovers how pattern making and garment making can be used to co-design social change with a group of women when employed with a ‘sororalistic’ approach led by empathy. In conclusion, the thesis promotes a more inclusive and open practice of pattern making and garment making, offers an original contribution to the field of fashion design for social change both in theory and practice, and adds to the collective effort towards shaping fairer and more equitable societies