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A Review: Unveiling the Environmental Saga of Silicones in Cosmetics
No full textAt a time when environmental sustainability and health implications are at the forefront of the cosmetic industry's concerns, the use of silicones in beauty products is undergoing critical examination. This review explores the complex lifecycle of silicones, from their development and application in cosmetics and personal care products to their environmental journey, focusing particularly on their processing in wastewater treatment plants and the resulting degradation products
After Mallarmé
No full textThree rolling exhibitions will trace aspects of the legacy of the poet Stéphane Mallarmé in contemporary art, drawing on his poem 'A throw of the dice will never abolish chance' and his posthumously published notes towards a 'book performance'. Mallarmé has had a great influence on visual art, ranging from text and newspaper collage in Cubism, through Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, to Marcel Broodthaers. Rather than direct influence, these exhibitions will 'read' the work of certain contemporary artists through Mallarmé.
The exhibitions will open with an exploration of the page as a place and the place, including the gallery, as a page, on which and in which the work of art becomes an event and a journey. Could these 'pages' form a book, and what, then, would be the relation between book and world.
Contingency is a state of potential, where things could turn out otherwise. Chance may be the outcome of a procedure, like throwing dice. The work of art becomes an 'operation'. During Mallarmé's speculative book performance, an 'operator' was to place pages at random on the shelves of a lacquer cabinet. Might the art work achieve a condition of necessity without abolishing chance?'
A throw of the dice' moves from shipwreck in a stormy sea to a constellation where the stars in the night sky are reflected by the letters on the page. The reading of the constellation follows catastrophe, the experience of nothingness and the abyss. It asks the question of how we find meaning in the face of disaster, of the past, and to come. As in Mallarmé's book performance, art takes place as the 'entr'acte' between world and cosmos.
After Mallarmé is curated by Michael Newman
Seeing the xenomorph, Giger’s alien in the context of machinic modernism
Get PDFThis article contextualizes H. R. Giger’s influential alien designs and the extended Alien mythos, represented by the popular films, with what has been called machinic modernism. That twentieth-century aesthetic is examined here in fine artworks and related literature by artists with distinct relations to so-called desired dehumanization, including Wyndham Lewis, Jacob Epstein and Michael Ayrton. The research outlines the ways in which particular social forces cohere to influence common aesthetic decisions evidenced in the art practices discussed. The analysis indicates that an anti-humanist position is incubated in the alien designs and in the extended mythos, and how this is politicized in relation to ideas of heroism, leadership and social organization as proto-fascistic. The designation ‘proto-fascist’ in this article is not intended to defame the creatives involved in the creation of the Alien mythos, or the audiences that have enjoyed and engaged with it – of which the author is a part – rather, it is used to describe a common world-view, and a type of fantasy operational in many nationalistic narratives and aesthetics, and widely consumed by the public. It is an aim of the research, in exploring the problematic but compelling aspects of the Alien mythos, that what is later described as fealty to primitive and atavistic patterns in popular culture can be resisted in the name of a reflexive and complex subjectivity
Tableaux II: Painting as Stage
Get PDFEngram Ply 1, 2014, Engram 20, 2011 & Engram 23, 2012 shown in the group show:
Tableaux II: Painting as Stage
Presented by Rebecca Scott and Mark Woods
Curated by Dereck Harris
Talk Event: Thurs 2nd May (6-9pm)
With artists: Emilly Allchurch (TBC), Peter Ashton Jones, Louise Bristow, Chris Bucklow, Noemi Conan, Dan Coombs, Mick Finch, Dereck Harris, Glenys Johnson, Alison Jones, Neil Tait, Stella Whalle
Traveling Arts x HCI Sketchbook: Exploring the Intersection Between Artistic Expression and Human-Computer Interaction
Get PDFWhen thinking of arts in HCI, one might be tempted to keep one’s eyes focused on prominent realms such as sketching for UX Design and design probes from participants. A closer look shows that practices go beyond this, involving a variety of arts-based expressions by researchers, the researched and third parties, e.g. graphic facilitators. Inspired by Toselli’s Sketchnote Army Travelling Sketchbook, researchers and artists contributed to a ’Travelling Sketchbook for Arts in HCI’, showcasing their arts-based practice in HCI. The resulting sketchbook explores the intersection between HCI and artistic expression, illuminating what it means to use art in HCI. It shows the breadth of Arts in HCI, illustrating the many fruitful possibilities for extending existing research and dissemination methods in HCI. It also calls into question current practices, which often do not recognise the significance of artist attribution, and, in turn, advocates for equal authorship between principal researchers and contributing artists
Retail futures: Customer experience, Phygital retailing, and the Experiential Retail Territories perspective
Get PDFThis paper contributes to the existing literature on the evolution of the physical retail space and its effect on customer experience (CX). Reflecting on previous research in the retail CX field, we explore the impact of accelerated change on the role of physical stores and the likely progression of CX management in the context of integrated physical and digital channels in the fashion retail domain. Qualitative exploratory research was conducted with industry experts using semi-structured interviews to reveal insights and projections regarding phygital retail and CX evolution. The Experiential Retail Territories (ERT) framework is introduced as a new perspective on the future of fashion retailing
The Role of Immersive Spaces on the Customer Experience: An Exploration of Fashion Metaverses
Get PDFThis study explores the impact of immersive spaces, such as the metaverse, on the customer experience. The research examines consumers’ motivations to use metaverse spaces and analyses how various dimensions of virtual environments and the associated pain points affect the overall customer experience, including cognitive, affective, behavioural, and social outcomes. It also investigates whether consumers perceive differences between brands’ metaverse and physical spaces. The fashion industry, as an early adopter of the metaverse, serves as the context. A qualitative research design, including consumer diaries and focus groups, is conducted. Findings reveal five motivations for using metaverse environments: freedom of expression, creativity, exploration, entertainment, and productivity. We identify several pain points that impact the overall customer experience that should be overcome to realise the metaverse's potential. This study highlights implications for theory and practice related to immersive spaces and the customer experience, benefiting metaverse designers and customers alike, and influencing brands’ marketing strategies that increasingly focus on incorporating immersive spaces. As the field of omniverse marketing remains underdeveloped, our research advances knowledge by extending the customer experience framework into the context of immersive spaces and contributes to the body of knowledge on consumer psychology and marketing
Unconscious Music: Listening to the Background Sound of Motown
No full textA listening session and talk hosted by Dr Louis Moreno and UCLs Urban Laboratory with invited guest speaker Dr Rachael Finney playing a selection of Motown Records from the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Drawing on Finney's research into the aural archives of Motown's background singers, the session will listen closely to the extraordinary vocal work of the Andantes and the Blossoms asking 'what work has to be rendered unconscious in order for a song to become a hit record?'.
Thinking about how the relationship between memory and the city, people and history is spatially produced and musically repressed, listening to the Andantes and the Blossoms opens up a mode of phonographic occlusion -- what Finney calls the sound space of the ‘back/ing/ground’
Re-Post
No full text‘The city itself is the anonymous and multiple author of the images they collect and exhibit as artworks’ - Nicolas Bourriaud
Re-Post presents a series of paintings by Tom Cardwell which document and respond to found ‘compositions’ from the streets of Helsinki. Multiple authors use fly-posters, stickers and graffiti to create these ad hoc tableaux. Spaces in the city become informal message boards, where various agendas are promoted, and discourses negotiated. Often, these take place on the housings for electrical junction boxes, municipal signs or building hoardings.
Such examples, often organised within small, regularly shaped areas, relate visually to the canvas painting formats that delineate compositions, and balance the dynamic, even chaotic, styles at play within formal edges.
An initial ‘posting’ (either a small graffito, a sticker or fly-poster) begins the use of a particular site which others then add to. The nature of the postings can be diverse, from the political or religious to the profane or absurd. Thus, these sites are examples of discourses created by multiple authors across various platforms within the urban space.
Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas (1927-1929) was an unfinished series of interconnected image maps that attempted to show how symbols and images from antiquity re-emerge in later contexts. In a related way, the public space of the street proclaims through the haphazard juxtaposition of diverse images and texts the complex and shifting narratives of contemporary life. In both spheres, the role of the larger artwork as a vessel to collect and contain a multitude of individual images is paramount.
These paintings invite deeper consideration of these apparent ephemera and connections with the enduring themes and motifs of art history.
The artworks were made during Cardwell’s Kone Fellowship in the Arts, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies 2022-23.
The exhibition is supported by Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinnki, and the Kone Foundation
Mobile Subjects in Linked Open Data: Biases and Gaps in Identity and Representation
No full textMobile Subjects, Contrapuntal Modernisms investigates the circulation of artists from the decolonizing world through the colonial and artistic capitals of London and Paris. It examines and compares London and Paris as contrapuntal capitals of decolonizing empires that functioned as critical meeting places, anti-colonial hubs, and sites of exchange after WWII due to postwar mass migration. The project addresses the invisibility of overseas artists in histories of art through computational methods revealing their connections and intersections.
The relational database built for this project has been modeled upon CIDOC CRM ontology and establishes an event-based schema that connects people (or actors as defined by the CRM) to each other and defines their identities and social relationships, including racial identity, citizenship, gender, social class, political affiliations, language(s) used, and belonging to artistic groups. We decided to adopt an “universally” recognised ontology for the benefits of data integration and exchange with GLAM institutions and other art history projects. However, we are increasingly aware of the epistemological biases and knowledge gaps present in the CIDOC CRM. In this lightning talk we will discuss our work, focusing on the classes and properties that need to be addressed to better represent the identities of artists, and review existing efforts to tackle elements of this issue in other ontologies and CIDOC CRM extensions