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The super-prison next door
No full textFront cover and feature photography about HMP Millsike, a new super prison in Yorkshire, for FT Weekend Magazine
DeformTune: A Deformable XAI Music Prototype for Non-Musicians
Get PDFMost existing AI music generation tools rely on text prompts, complex interfaces, or instrument-like controls, which may pose barriers for non-musicians. This paper introduces DeformTune, a prototype system that combines a tactile deformable interface with the MeasureVAE model to explore more intuitive, embodied, and explainable AI interaction. We conducted a preliminary study with 11 adult participants without formal musical training to investigate their experience with AI-assisted music creation. Thematic analysis of their feedback revealed recurring challenges—including unclear control mappings, limited expressive range, and the need for guidance throughout use. We discuss several design opportunities for enhancing explainability of AI, including multimodal feedback and progressive interaction support. These findings contribute early insights toward making AI music systems more explainable and empowering for novice users
Medium Wars: Adapting the Film Narrative of Star Wars for Radio
No full textAlthough an increasing amount of attention is paid to the concept of transmedia storytelling, i.e. the spreading of one, all-encompassing narrative across various platforms, the process of adapting a single narrative for a different medium also offers the potential to complement the original text while enriching understandings of it. George Lucas’s Star Wars universe is a case in point. When Brian Daley was tasked with adapting the 1977 film as a thirteen-part serial on National Public Radio in 1981, he took advantage of the extended format to provide fresh perspectives on familiar characters. Not only were deleted scenes reinstated, but new material was written positioning the character of Luke Skywalker more firmly as the central protagonist. This article examines the medium-specific challenges of re-imagining a 116-minute film as a serial over three times that length, applying frameworks usually employed to examine film narrative to argue that, in several key respects, the radio version provides a more classically complete storytelling model than its predecessor, revolving around a fully realised hero character in the form of Luke. By examining the radio serial in relation to the original film text, it facilitates a richer understanding of that long ago galaxy far, far away
Collaborare con l’IA: la dance for the screen per artist* transdisciplinari (Collaborating with AI: screendance for the interdisciplinary artist)
No full textBlack Analogue: Practices in US and UK Experimental Filmmaking as Methodological Approaches for a New Black Aesthetic
No full textBlack Aesthetic filmmaking is best realised through the use of 16mm film. I investigate the veracity of this proposition- that 16mm film is a medium that US and UK Black experimental filmmakers gravitate towards because of the aesthetic qualities and production processes it necessitates. I show that Black experimental filmmakers are entangled in both an inside and outside relationship to modernity, often producing counter culturally. This thesis proposes that 16mm technology is a useful form to express the ways in which movements, communities or identities gather because its contemporary use is also counter cultural.
Where historically, Black Aesthetic manifestos focused on text, theatre and music, and Black film discourse often centres around realism or sociological concerns, this thesis intervenes to centralise aesthetics and its influence on cultural representation. I draw chiefly from the Black experimental filmmaking practices of historic UK and US filmmakers which existed alongside Black power movements in 1970’s US and later 1980’s Black resistance in Thatcherite Britain.
I propose three Black Aesthetic Strategies: dislocation/relocation, Black affect and errantry. By testing these strategies as methodological approaches for film production, I have produced three experimental films, which each address a facet of Afro-Caribbean community in the UK. The first, dislocation/relocation considers the aesthetics of space, the 16mm camera and Caribbean associations in the UK. Secondly, I consider Black affect by using 16mm machines to alter the surface of the emulsion and archival images of a defunct Black arts centre. Thirdly, I consider errantry as a 16mm Black Aesthetic Strategy that errs from aesthetic norms at the spectacle of UK carnivals. By testing the viability of these Black Aesthetic Strategies, I show 16mm as an important practice of present day Black experimental filmmaking. The New Black Aesthetic conclusion I propose centres around labour, relation, sociality and slow, deliberate use
Richard Seifert, Denys Lasdun & the Power of the Press: Critical Responses to the Architects' Building & Their Reputational Impact
No full textThis thesis focuses on critical reactions to the work of post-war British brutalist architects Richard Seifert and Denys Lasdun within the media, particularly architectural journals and national newspapers. The impact of such commentary upon the architects’ reputations is considered in detail, with reference to how this has affected their legacies and assessments of their work within the context of heritage conservation.
While the two architects had much in common, including the experimental use of concrete within expressive forms, attitudes to their buildings remain radically different. The research examines how media commentary helped to define perceptions of their work and played an important role in shaping Seifert’s and Lasdun’s reputations, while taking into account potential influences upon journalists, including questions of perspective, taste, prejudice and bias.
The thesis argues that there is an implicit link between the way that architects are treated by the press and wider perceptions of their work. This has particular relevance to decision-making processes related to questions of listing, adaptive reuse or replacement, with prejudicial press coverage playing an important part in shaping consensus around the architectural value of Seifert’s and Lasdun’s buildings. The methodology adopted throughout offers a way of considering the importance and variability of media commentary over time as a form of ‘evidence’ in making such value judgments, while offering an alternative analytical approach where chronology is a key consideration. As well as providing significant adjustments to readings of the work of the two architects and assessments of their critical reputations, the thesis contributes to current re-evaluations of British brutalist architecture and explores its importance within a diverse urban landscape.
Critical commentaries in historical newspaper archives and the architectural press are central to the research, which concentrates primarily upon eight case-study buildings in London. Other key sources include the Lasdun Archive (RIBA/V&A), audio interviews with the architects themselves (British Library), planning documents in the London Archives and original interviews with critics, conservationists and architects, as well as site visits
Technology and ageing: A person-centred study on the introduction and wellbeing impact of handheld tablets to residents of care homes
Get PDFThis study initially aimed to examine the impact of handheld tablets on the wellbeing of care home residents, specifically regarding connection and social connectedness, with the central research question: How does a handheld tablet intervention impact the wellbeing of older people living in a care home? As the research progressed and complex environmental challenges emerged, the study shifted from mixed methods to primarily ethnographic approaches, leading to the emergence of two additional research questions. One focused on the research design: How can a person-centred approach be used to introduce handheld tablets to older people living in a care home? The other, from autoethnography: How does undertaking person-centred research in a care home affect the researcher? This thesis guides the reader through the origins of the study as part of a larger funded project and details the complexities of conducting technologybased research in a care home setting for both participants and researchers. After a comprehensive review of the literature, data from various sources is presented: journal entries, observation notes, informal discussion notes, interview quotes, and questionnaire responses. Following the thematic analysis, the findings are organised into three sections: a narrative account of the fieldwork; a case series for the six participants and the researcher; and five overarching themes based on the New Economics Foundation’s Five Ways to Wellbeing actions. The study concludes that handheld tablets can enhance the wellbeing of residents who are able and willing to engage, especially in connecting with others and accessing societal services. However, training, hardware, and software must be adapted to meet individual needs. Furthermore, it offers invaluable insights for researchers on the complexities of implementing technological interventions in this environment over an extended period. This thesis presents two outputs: the Gerontechnological Principle Guidelines and the ‘Formula of the Perfect Person’
THD-ALTO
No full textA multi-weight, contemporary utilitarian typeface designed & for engineered by Tim Hutchinson. This quirky typeface has a monospaced metric systems alongside the peculiar nuance of possessing no descenders. This makes for an unusual reading / visual experience for the user when set as headline or as running text
Paula De La Cruz-Fernández, Gendered Capitalism: Sewing Machines and Multinational Business in Spain and Mexico, 1850–1940. Routledge, New York, 2021. xi þ 189 pp., 12 b/w illus. ISBN: 9780367770433(pbk)
Get PDFBook Review: Paula De La Cruz-Fernández, Gendered Capitalism: Sewing Machines and Multinational Business in Spain and Mexico, 1850–1940
An 1890 Spanish postcard depicting a woman in folkloric Spanish dress read: ‘In the humblest corner of the world: where there is a woman, there will be a Singer machine!’ (p. 17). The postcard examined by de la Cruz-Fernandez in the introduction of Gendered Capitalism perfectly condenses the aim and research methods of the book, which is the result of de la Cruz-Fernandez’s doctoral research. Gendered Capitalism reconsiders the unilateral prowess of the American multinational company through the peripheral voices of local sellers and consumers in Singer’s host economies by combining business history with material culture and gender studies. Whilst such a multidisciplinary approach is familiar to Textile History readers, the addition of everyday objects to business records reflects an ongoing disciplinary turn in business history. Gendered Capitalism brings together sewing manuals with visual records and Spanish, Mexican and American archival sources to create an interesting examination of the interchangeable roles between consumers and producers. For de la Cruz-Fernández, this in-between area can be understood by focusing on women’s domestic sewing and embroidery practices in the context of the multinational Singer. Gendered Capitalism aims to incorporate both women and ideas of domesticity into theories of business internationalisation. It builds upon gendered histories of consumption to address a paucity of literature on women’s agency within histories of modern corporations. Gendered Capitalism departs from a discussion of women’s productive consumption of Singer sewing machines to examine how women became marketing experts who shaped, bottom-up, the management and business culture of the American company. Singer grounded its sales strategies in the domestic sphere, which de la Cruz-Fernández theorises as the household’s system of meanings that were culturally constructed at a community level. De la Cruz-Fernández argues that Singer expanded globally through local engagement with consumers and markets. This was most evident in Singer’s first Spanish-speaking markets, Spain and Mexico, where local selling agents and customers interwove Singer’s technology with local customs. In doing so, Gendered Capitalism nuances assumptions around the Americanisation of global culture to reveal how Singer became, in Spain and Mexico, an aspirational national symbol of modernisation. The chronological framework, from 1850 to 1940, allows the author to track from the foundation of the company in 1851, the establishment of operations in Spain (1873) and Mexico (the 1880s), to Singer’s evolving practices through moments of national economic and political turmoil (the Mexican Revolution in 1910–1917 and Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939)