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Disrupting the Impasse in Gender and Development Teaching in University Spaces
Get PDFGender and development (GAD) is coming under increasing scrutiny for its entanglements with hegemonic systems of governance, policy, and knowledge. This article argues that GAD programs and/or development studies programs with teaching provision on gender have not sufficiently responded to the imperatives of race and intersectionality most recently intensified by COVID-19 and the decolonising of the curriculum and Black Lives Matter movements.
The article explores the ways in which GAD frameworks have resisted rather than embraced paradigmatic critiques. We argue that this resistance to the imperatives of intersectionality has resulted in a GAD impasse which is reproduced and perpetuated through pedagogy and teaching, which shapes teaching and learning spaces in the UK. Despite the potentials for teaching to question dominant paradigms and frameworks, the impasse has hindered the field of GAD from adopting an introspective, intersectional, and transformative approach
Remote cultures: using arts activities to support staff working with people with dementia in care homes
Get PDFA chapter within the volume 'Creative Approaches to Wellbeing' which outlines the way in which the Culture Box study addressed this issue using remote methods during the pandemic.The aim of Culture Box was threefold:(1) to alleviate social isolation and loneliness;(2) to provide stimulating activities that enhance social interactions within the care home; and (3) to offer accessible public health information with a focus on reaching those with dementia from diverse communities. Over the course of a year (December 2020–December 2021), a ‘culture box’was delivered to the care homes each month, containing creative and participatory activities and resources. Activities were a mixture of online (music, videos, etc.) and physical resources (colouring, painting, crafting, etc.). The project used a remote working model where most team meetings, interviews and collaborative activities were undertaken over virtual platforms alongside some in-person coordination of packaging and mailing boxes
The Grit in the Glamour: A Qualitative Study of the Well-Being of Fashion Models
No full textFashion models are often assumed to have a glamorous job with limited consideration for their well-being. This study aims to assess the wellbeing of models through semi structured interviews with six professional fashion models and six industry professionals. Thematic analysis revealed that although models experienced improved self-confidence, they also reported heightened anxiety levels, body image issues and negative influence of modelling on their self-esteem. By contrast, industry professionals reported no or minimum concerns about anxious behaviours or the general well-being of fashion models. Being resilient as a model was perceived as an essential attribute to have by both models and industry professionals as they face recurrent rejection in this industry. These results demonstrate a significant gap in the current understanding of the well-being of fashion models between industry professionals and the models themselves. Findings imply that there is an inherent need for change in the modelling industry to promote and enhance their well-being.
Following the success of its 2023 online conference on psychology applied to fashion, London College of Fashion (University of the Arts London) will be hosting its second conference in this field.
This online conference aims to showcase original quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods research which applies psychology in order to understand fashion and the fashion industry.
Dress, the self, and psychological well-being
Dress and culture
Consumer behaviour in a fashion context
Psychology and sustainable fashion
Luxury fashion consumption
Fashion and technology
Impact of fashion industry practices on consumers and the fashion industry workforc
Energy Efficiency Evaluation of Artificial Intelligence Algorithms
Get PDFThis article advances the discourse on sustainable and energy-efficient software by examining the performance and energy efficiency of intelligent algorithms within the framework of green and sustainable computing. Building on previous research, it explores the theoretical implications of Bremermann’s limit on efforts to enhance computer performance through more extensive methods. The study presents an empirical investigation into heuristic methods for search and optimisation, demonstrating the energy efficiency of various algorithms in both simple and complex tasks. It also identifies key factors influencing the energy consumption of algorithms and their potential impact on computational processes. Furthermore, the article discusses cognitive concepts and their interplay with computational intelligence, highlighting the role of cognition in the evolution of intelligent algorithms. The conclusion offers insights into the future directions of research in this area, emphasising the need for continued exploration of energy-efficient computing methodologies
Applying Graph Theory to Conservation Documentation
Get PDFConservation is the management of change (UNESCO et al 2013). Heritage assets—which include tangible and intangible objects and places–are recognised as non-renewable resources. As conservators, we are merely stewards of these shared assets and the notes and records we create contribute to their long-term care and understanding. Therefore, it is imperative these records are both human- and machine-readable. This thesis leverages mathematical graph theory to identify and examine networks captured in conservation documentation. It demonstrates how the use of existing graph-based technologies, such as semantic web technologies (RDF) and property graph (PG) databases, can be used to build and inform computational models for conservation through the creation and analysis of graph-based metamodels and knowledge graphs.
Conservation treatment data provided by The National Archives (UK) was used to develop a labelled property graph model and database that was also convertible to CIDOC CRM-mapped RDF triples. To further inform the development, investigations were conducted on existing conservation graphs, including the CIDOC CRM RDFS serialisation and RDF graphs produced by the Linked Conservation Data (LCD) project. The modelling decisions and investigations made during this process contributed to a suite of verification, validation and calibration (VVC) practices for graph model creation, assessment, and refinement, including the use of graph theoretic algorithms. The outcome is a graph representation method for conservation data which includes modelling principles to aid queryabillity and avoid common modelling pitfalls.
Of the graph theoretic measures employed, leaf node detection, triangle count, motif frequency, diameter and eigenvector centrality measures were found to be diagnostic for comparing or contrasting data collection practices as evidenced in the datasets across institutions. Eigenvector centrality is also a strong candidate for systematic model validation due to its usefulness in identifying modelling errors. Furthermore, results demonstrate that the conservation graphs from each study case exhibit recurrent bipartite (k3,3 ) subgraphs, an indicator of non-planarity. This higher dimensionality speaks to an intrinsic characteristic of conservation data and may explain why tabular and traditional relational data models, while able to capture facets of conservation, have been so difficult to use to capture and model across conservation’s more complex nature. These results signal a promising new means for conservation to capture, encode, study, and discuss complex conservation events and practices
Transnational Fashion on the Frontier: Migration and Modernities in the Brazilian Amazon
No full textIn 1910, on the cusp of the rubber fever that gripped South America, New York photographer Dana Merrill was hired to document the transnational construction of the Madeira-Mamoré railroad, built deep in the Brazilian Amazon. His camera acted both as witness to, and abettor in, this imperial project of US capitalist expansion and exploitation of South America. Although Merrill was not employed to document the transnational clothing culture of the transient frontier society that sprang up around the construction of the railroad, his commissioned photographs overflow with visual information on dress: what people wore, and how they wore it, documented in extraordinary detail. Turning to fashion offers a revised lens into how Merrill’s predominantly male subjects, who had journeyed to the Amazon from over 52 nations, used clothing to construct their identities and position themselves in relation to one another in the remote and uninviting location.
Merrill’s archive provides an unusual case study for the historian to critically evaluate the colonial and neocolonial devaluation of labour upon which early-twentieth century projects of industrial modernity such as the Madeira-Mamoré railroad were predicated. In bridging the visual and sensory aspects of fashion – by bringing photographs together with physical items of clothing, as well as poetry, diaries and memoirs – this paper proposes a method to overcome the absences that underpin Merrill’s archive. Grounded in the visual analysis of fashion, it builds upon feminist philosopher Saidiya Hartman’s revisionist method of ‘critical fabulation’, which deviates from traditional historiography in its efforts to overcome significant acts of erasure within the historical record. Merrill’s photographs constitute an unexplored primary source through which to investigate the very nature of fashion beyond the epistemological frontiers of the ‘West’, by using dress as a method to reconstruct the undocumented lives of commodified migrant labour who coalesced on the Madeira-Mamoré railroad
Technologies of Romance
Get PDFThe newest technologies may have us wrapped around them in seemingly intractable ways. But perhaps we can search for strategies by means of which to create or keep open some anachronistic, less trending possibilities.
Contending with new technologies that crave and claw at our constant attention, we need to open a metaphorical umbrella to protect us from the torrent of unsolicited information raining down.
This might already suggest a romantic image of an isolated persona, contending with the technologized elements; heroic, brave, well connected, and yet more isolated than ever before; truly “alone but not lonely”
I am Not and Never Have I Ever Been
No full textArtist publication. Print on paper. Unlimited, 300 x 100 mm.
On the week of the UK release of Sebastián Silva’s gay comedy thriller Rotting in the Sun (2023) I received several messages from friends urging me to watch the film. This publication forms out of a series of coincidences that kept leading me to my alleged doppelgänger. A movie review that never quite gets to the movie. Auto-theory but really just a self-insert fanfiction. As we turn ourselves into virtual brands, watch as deep fakes proliferate and whole nations flip from democracy to something far more sinister, it asks how do we negotiate the demands to be seen with the shady doublings that persist in this surreal moment in history?
Created on the occasion of OffPrint London 2024 at Tate Modern presented alongside publications by students and colleagues on MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, UAL.
More info: https://www.offprint.org
Agents of Deterioration
Get PDFWhen applying risk management strategies to museum collections, risk is broken down according to ten agents of deterioration that pose threats to collections. Nine of these risks are physical (physical forces, fire, water, criminals, pests, pollutants, light, incorrect temperature, and incorrect humidity) and the tenth is custodial neglect, for example where a collection item may be disassociated from provenance. Museums generally suspend objects from use, touch and intervention in order to freeze or hold things in a state of torpor, preventing interactions in order to preserve. Many Indigenous peoples challenge the idea of preservation as a greater good, instead affirming the right to renew and use, enliven and care for objects as part of community life.
The Prisoners of Love (PoL) project aims to connect UK collection items with their trans-national home peoples and bring emerging artists from in the UK, curators and researchers into conversation, to work responsively with complex histories and material practices. The group have been working with the Economic Botany Collection at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew; Horniman Museum and Gardens and Compound 13 Lab in Mumbai; India; Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford and the Department of Archaeology at the University of Ghana in Accra; Hastings Museum and Art Gallery and the Mootookakio’ssin project on Blackfoot homelands at the ULethbridge, Alberta, Canada.
In September this year UK project participants shared a residency at OPENing, the Art Programme artist-led space in Bank. The OST residency exhibition was documented as a 25min video by Helen Robertson and produced OSTzine with essays by Lennon Mhishi and Esi Eshun.
Work developed at OPENing was subsequently exhibited at the Hess Gallery, University of Lethbridge, Canada. The exhibition Mootookakio’ssin: Creating in Spacetime, was developed in partnership with the Indigenous Art Program at UoL.
This current exhibition invited contributions from all project participants
Why aren’t we talking about the Beano?
Get PDFThis article will attempt to answer the question ‘Why aren’t we talking about the Beano?’ by first of all explaining what The Beano is, who ‘we’ are, and why there is a popular perception, in the UK at least, that the latter should be discussing the former. It will then provide empirical evidence that we are not talking about The Beano and offer a number of explanations for why this might be before finally demonstrating why any of it matters