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Standing Ground: Re-thinking the painted British Landscape
Get PDFIn 2024 Raksha co-curated Standing Ground - Re-thinking the painted British Landscape at Thames-Side Studio Gallery, London, September 2024. The exhibition showed 12 painters who investigate what the British landscape is today by challenging traditional notions of the rural idyll and English landscape painting and its connection to identity and nationhood.
"Landscape painting is a particularly freighted artistic genre, deeply connected to ideas of national identity. This is especially the case in Britain, where landscape painting is often regarded as the most significant historical national artistic achievement, and the landscapes of Gainsborough, Constable and Turner are sometimes seen as synonymous with British art altogether. Landscape painting is thus fundamental to narratives of British cultural identity, with the latter also fluid like paint itself. Its slippery and not always controllable quality takes on its own forms on the canvas – echoing humans’ failed attempts to subdue the natural world". (Dr Kate Nichols, Standing Ground catalogue essay, 2024).
The exhibiting artists were Madi Acharya-Baskerville, Said Adrus, Bhajan Hunjan, Frank Bowling, Trevor Burgess, Jai Chuhan, Jasmir Creed, Kimathi Donkor, Grant Foster, Bruno Grad, Azraa Motala and Raksha Patel. The exhibition is curated by Raksha Patel and Trevor Burgess
Vibrotactile Warnings Design for Improving Risks Awareness in Construction Environment
Get PDFConstruction workers have difficulty identifying potential risks in harsh environments because traditional visual and acoustical alerts are inefficient. This study investigated a new communication method with a wearable tactile-based system to improve worker’s hazard perception. Three experiments are reported in relation to this system. The first experiment exploited VR as an experimental tool to compare auditory and vibrotactile warning signals as well as their combination in a simulated construction working environment. Findings demonstrated that the vibrotactile cues induced faster response times and higher affective ratings than auditory alarms, and their combination provided the shortest reaction time. The second experiment compared 7 different vibrotactile patterns varying in intensity, duration, and interval, to identify configurations that led to a higher degree of awareness. The third experiment validated the effectiveness of three selected tactons for delivering information on 3 hazard levels, finding that subjects could identify three-parameter signals with relatively low error. Our findings provide guidelines for designing tactile warning signals, which could help improve hazard recognition and risk perception, especially in construction sites
Dual-function Interfaces: the traditional musical instrument and/as samplers
Get PDF‘Sampler/Instrument’ is a collaboration between composers Olly Sellwood and Jamie Howell which uses mostly ‘off-the-shelf’ technologies to create dual-function devices that embed live sampling capabilities into traditional musical instruments. Extending musical instruments into sampling devices increases the capacities of both how we perform and perceive these familiar instruments, opening up creative possibilities. The technology forms a system for music composition and performance which engages with both of the composers’ research interests: live sampling; notated and open score approaches; and the extension, transformation, and adaptation of how traditional musical instruments are experienced by audiences and performers. The aim of this fifteen-minute presentation and subsequent fifteen-minute performance is to describe the technology, discuss the broader implications and contexts for our work, explain what makes it unique, and demonstrate pieces created within the project.
Our work repurposes traditional musical instruments as dual-function interfaces: 1) the unaltered instrument, and 2) as live sample capture and playback devices. Through this practice, we are interested in extending the capabilities of traditional musical instruments by adapting the sounds they make without altering how the instruments are played. As such, the intervention in this relationship occurs at the ‘sounding’ point of the output of the instruments; for example, the piano produces piano notes but also controls the sampling and playback of live sounds taken from other instruments involved in the same performance; in this model, the piano is both instrument and sampler.
Live sampling is an established practice in the worlds of EDM, Improvised music, and Contemporary Experimental music; for example, Bernhard Lang’s Loop Generator, Pauline Oliveros’s Expanded Instrument System, and work at the IRCAM in France. Triggering sample playback from traditional instruments is also a common practice, but live sampling controlled by musical instrument triggers is a less developed area with rich possibilities. In addition to extending some of these established practices, our research provides examples which can help to interrogate the relationship between traditional musical instruments and digital controllers, introduced by Thor Magnusson through the discussion of ergomimetic properties of digital musical instruments (2019). Our work can also be helpfully contextualised by frameworks established by Mark Butler in his research on live improvised laptop performance (2014). His ideas concerning the importance of ‘hands-on’ controllers for electronic music, and his ‘text, work, performance’ model of open works which use recorded material in performance illuminate some of the issues raised by our research.
The technology we are using can be seen as a systematic approach to performance and composition and, as it involves modest interventions in existing technologies, has the possibility of being adopted by others for the purpose of creating future works. This project was originally aimed at ourselves as composers and performers, but we have begun to expand to include other artists - an example of which we would like to perform in addition to our presentation. We are excited at the possibility that the ideas we have produced may have a life of their own outside our own work
We (Still) Profess
No full textWomen's Design + Research Unit (WD+RU) poster selected for touring group exhibition, 'I Profess: the graphic design manifesto', 20th Anniversary Traveling Juried Exhibition.
How do graphic designers visualize their teaching philosophies, their pedagogical beliefs that are in constant dialogue with other cultural, philosophical, and disciplinary values and practices?
Thirty design educators respond with 23 peer-reviewed posters.
WD+RU were included in the first 'I Profess' exhibition in 2004 and this poster is an updated version of the original
Divining the Sewer
Get PDFIf divining is discerning, what might the divination of the sewer reveal? Alongside trickling waters and the fluid movements of bodies, sewers contain our digital data flowing through fiber optic cables. This confluence of excremental matter and digital activity, of base materialism meets incomputable immateriality, circulates a collective body of life and living—of dietary practices, pharmacological habits, distractions, dalliances—and our subconscious desires traced through cookie trails and microbiota alike. Once those traces of movement have been detected, the divination of the sewer may offer a glimpse of a circulating social body—and its strangeness—that would otherwise remain repressed or obscured. This essay addresses the movement of our collective body through its material and immaterial flows, in order to divine how belief systems are entangled with both embodied practices as well as digital activities. What is the social imaginary that resides in the sewer? Perhaps the act of divining is more revelatory of the circulation of beliefs than the movement of submerged waters
Taking ownership – exploring the need for a blockchain based intellectual property system for fashion designs
No full textThis paper investigates the integration of blockchain at the design stage of garment manufacture and the positive effects its application can garner, including IP protection, opportunities in the digital realm, and better management of designs. This exploratory research uses a multi-method qualitative methodology formed from semi-structured interviews with industry professionals working on blockchain based start-up companies in the UK and focus groups with UK-based emerging fashion designers. This research demonstrates the varied opportunities for emerging designers which exist outside traditional wholesale and adherence to the fashion calendar model. It also evidences the potential for strengthened copyright protection from blockchain.
The numerous benefits of this strategy are shown alongside an analysis of the potential barriers against application. Each designer was able to foresee the rewards of improved IP protection and management, but some demonstrated concern for the actual integration of blockchain into existing design and development processes. As such, this research revealed two things: firstly, a clear need for blockchain to be shown as an adaptable technology which can seamlessly integrate into pre-existing design structures; and a further need for a simple implementation strategy which can be offered to designers working in the fashion industry
Cathedrals of sound: Predictors of the sublime and the beautiful in music, images, and music with images
Get PDFThe separate aesthetic responses of sublimity and beauty have been distinguished by philosophers (e.g., Burke, 1759/2008) and explored in recent psychological studies using visual images (e.g., Hur et al., 2022). In these works, sublimity, an experience involving astonishment or grandeur, has been contrasted with beauty, which is often associated with prettiness or cuteness. However, empirical studies of sublimity and beauty in music are rare, as are aesthetic responses to stimuli of mixed visual and musical components. The present article examines two questions. Firstly, what are the musical factors that predict sublimity and beauty in musical stimuli? Specifically, what are the contributions of style (Bach vs. Chopin vs. Schoenberg), mode type (major key vs. minor key vs. atonal), and tempo (slow vs. fast)? Secondly, what are the contributions of the visual and musical components in predicting the sublimity and beauty of mixed visual–musical stimuli? For music, mode type was the predominant predictor, with sublimity predicted by the minor key, and beauty by the major key. In the evaluation of mixed visual–musical stimuli, the influence of the sublimity and beauty of the visual component was up to three times as strong as that of the musical component. There was also judgment-type selectivity; the sublimity levels of visual–musical stimuli were predicted by the sublimity levels of the visual and musical components, but not by the beauty levels of the visual and musical components (and vice versa). While sublimity and beauty may be related aesthetic experiences, the present results demonstrate that sublimity and beauty may also operate through different mechanisms
Fashion psychology: The predictors of everyday clothing preference among UK and USA participants
Get PDFFashion is one of the most common and accessible (aesthetic) activities in everyday life, yet still missing in the literature is a systematic study on clothing preference. Two studies explored whether a preference structure of clothing style can be established and whether this clothing preference structure can be further understood through individual differences. The first study – published in Empirical Studies of the Arts (Hur, Etcoff, & Silva, 2023) – was based on an online survey consisting of 500 participants living in the UK. Factor analyses revealed a four-factor preference structure, the Everyday Clothing Preference Factors (ECPF). The preference structure consisted of Feminine, Essential, Comfortable, and Trendy styles. The findings further revealed that the preference for each of these clothing styles was correlated with certain individual difference variables (e.g. personality & demographics). The second study aimed to replicate and expand the ECPF, employing gender-balanced samples from the UK (N = 402) and the USA (N = 400). The work further explored the predictors of the ECPF through path analyses, incorporating a wide range of individual differences (e.g. fashion expertise, fashion attitude, etc.). Analyses revealed that while the ECPF was replicated among UK participants in its original four-factor structure, the ECPF could be expanded into five (Feminine/Pretty, Sporty/Trendy, Formal/Elegant, Classic, and Sporty) or six factors (adding Hip/Unique), depending on the sample. Overall, notable overlaps were found between the UK and USA ECPF structures. The path analyses identified extraversion, gender, and age as important predictors of fashion behaviors in both samples. These findings provide a theoretical basis for understanding how people choose and like certain styles of clothes. The studies' insights could inform retail marketing strategies and sustainable fashion, enhancing the understanding of fashion consumption mechanisms
Weaving Complex Historical Narratives Through Sonic & Visual Artistic Practice
Get PDFThis presentation, explores the interdisciplinary research collaboration on Drunk? Adventures in 16th Century Brewing, a practice-research based film engaging food historians, archaeologists, craftspeople, visual and sonic artists in documenting the experimental archaeological process to recreate and analyse the components of 16th century beer. Funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the EU’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme, this project is part of a wider study, FoodCult, exploring the period 1550-1650, one of major economic development and intercultural contact, but also of conquest, colonisation, and war. It focused on Ireland as a case-study for understanding the role of food and drink in as a site for the development of emergent ‘national’ food cultures. With unprecedented access to recent archaeological discoveries and evidence, the project developed a ground-breaking interdisciplinary approach, merging micro-historical analytical techniques with science, culinary history, experimental archaeology and creative filmmaking, to examine the consumption and exchange of food and drink, at a level of detail deemed impossible for Irish history, and moving well beyond the colonial narrative of Irish social and economic development. Behind the lens, the film crew themselves were drawn into the manuscripts, landscape, archaeology, crops, harvesting, brewing, beer tasting, adapting to the challenges of filming and communicating complex historical discoveries, and processes through film, sound design, animation and an original score. With a focus on meaning rather than measurement from the creative practice approach, this co-designed study demonstrates the benefits of ‘radical interdisciplinarity’. From untapped manuscripts, sourcing ingredients, building a brewhouse, to studying the results and challenging myths around drink culture, the speculative design approach of sonic and visual artistic practice foregrounded rigour, creativity and storytelling in weaving together theory and practice
Foreword
Get PDFlumbung one entered the apparatus of documenta to fold it in on itself, and unsettled even the expectations of documenta fifteen being a ‘Global South’ exhibition. In this regard, one of the most common and unreflected statements about ruangrupa’s project was expressed through the question where is the art? And yet, among the evident and profusely palpable ecosystemic experiments – ruangrupa defining ecosystem or, in Bahasa Indonesia ekosistem, as the ‘collaborative network structures through which knowledge, resources, ideas, and programs are shared and linked’ – and the unfolding of the project as one foregrounding collectivity, sociality and decentralised organisation, it is also the quality, diversity and amount of artworks that stood out. We feel that the specificity of some of these works has rarely been addressed, the art press, both commercial and academic, focussing mostly on either the overarching concept of lumbung or the stigmatisation of ruangrupa. Even if some of the projects presented in Kassel were able to become independent from the event as a whole, this was only thanks to an acceptance of the loss of control built-in in lumbung. In this regard, the present issue is premised on the intention to examine some of the collectives included in lumbung one and their work with the attention we deem they deserve but have not been given yet. If only three of the nine contributions in this issue directly engage with projects in lumbung one, the escalation of the attacks and destruction of Gaza since October 2023 have magnified, retrospectively and in horrific ways, the West’s resistance to, if not its attempts to suppress subaltern and Global South worldviews that had played out in Kassel. Following lumbung one’s cascading logic, this issue then branches out, on the one hand, towards further engagements with Palestinian art and visual culture as a way to fend off ongoing erasure and, on the other, towards new understandings of geographies of art practices and histories