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South Korea's public diplomacy actors in Uzbekistan
Get PDFDuring the last decade, there has been growing academic interest in new public diplomacy, which anticipates a more collaborative approach to international relations and contributes to mutual understanding among nations and foreign publics. One of the central debates in recent public diplomacy research concerns the role and place of the new public diplomacy actors. This study aims to identify public diplomacy actors and their role in South Korea’s public diplomacy strategies in Uzbekistan, thereby providing additional insight into the implementation and development of public diplomacy mechanisms. Furthermore, the article explores and analyses the relationship between state and non-state actors to examine how these networks collaborate to promote South Korea’s national image. The findings show that South Korea has actively used cultural organizations, educational institutions, hospitals, and businesses as public diplomacy tools in Uzbekistan. The study also found that Koryŏin, or the local Korean diaspora, takes a special place in South Korea’s strategies
"Ghosts of past reentering the stage": the transient attributes of Izmir’s persistent objects
No full text100 years after the great fire of Izmir, idealised narratives of a “Paradise Lost” (Milton Giles, 2008) hardly provide a complete picture of Ottoman Izmir. For design historians, Smyrna is telltale through its surviving material heritage. What can the transient attributes of Izmir’s persistent objects tells us about the city’s former and contemporary design rhetoric? To unpack this, the study focuses on a particular architectural fitting; a cast iron bracket supporting a vernacular architectural element, the oriel (cumba). The bracket is ubiquitous in Southwestern Turkish cities and in Northern Greek islands, particularly associated with late nineteenth-century modern houses of Rum (from Romanoi, referring to the Greek Orthodox communities of the empire) neighborhoods.
As a designed object, mediating Orthodox Greek identity in the highly segregated urban fabric of Ottoman built environment, it is worth visiting this design rhetoric in the 200th anniversary of the Greek revolution and 100 years after the great fire of Izmir. Following the enslavement and domination rhetoric of Greek nationalism, the bracket may as well be an enslaved Greek cultural artefact that lives in captivity in the host society, the Turkish nation-state. Indeed, as Igor Kopytoff (1986) argues, mass-produced commodities are like slaves placed forcefully out of context without their consent; yet, often the experience of the slave in the new context is overlooked. Similarly, a commodity might assume subsequent transient life cycles that shape its biography.
Indeed, the bracket and the oriel have recently been enjoying a revival in Turkey’s design rhetoric; replicated in contemporary formulations of vernacular architecture, or reproduced as mass-mediated graphic elements on branding works and souvenir paraphernalia. This local vernacularism with Izmir at its centre connotes ideas of leisure, escapism and a connection with Mediterranean universalism in contrast with Turkey’s rising authoritarian cultural politics, as the study will demonstrate
The role of social factors in purchase journey in the social commerce era
Get PDFThis research examines the influence of information sharing amongst consumers on e-commerce platforms. On this basis, we develop a model for predicting consumers' purchase decisions on social commerce platforms. We use PLS-SEM to analyse online and paper surveys from 310 consumers. The findings suggest that social commerce information sharing increases consumer perceptions of familiarity, perceived ease of use, and perceived usefulness of social commerce platforms. Consumer learning and training of social commerce systems also increased their stated intention to purchase using the platform. We theorise the rise of the hyper-informed consumer that conducts pre-purchase product and shopping platform research to improve purchasing outcomes and as a form of socialising. The authors explain the theoretical contributions and practical implications at the end of the paper
INTER/her: an immersive journey inside the female body - experience reflections
No full textINTER/her is an immersive installation and Virtual Reality artwork highlighting (post)reproductive diseases that women over 30 frequently experience, including: endometriosis, fibroids, polyps, ovarian and other cysts and growths, as well as more the serious cervical, ovarian, uterine and endometrial cancers. The artwork presents an abstract, intimate immersive journey within the inner world of women’s bodies, exposing the diseases they can suffer. INTER/her is intended as a personal exploration, conversation starter, and community builder.
This article discusses the development experience, exhibition and discoveries from INTER/her since its inception to the present. It explores the nature, staging and significance of the piece, and what is implicated for future work in this area for art, design and research. It reveals the design process, visual and narrative elements made to represent, convey, and understand the emotional and bodily/sensorial experience intended for visitors, as well as the visual metaphors representing the different organs and ailments. It covers the collaborative approach of the design team, using various technologies and the storytelling techniques used in the work during the lockdowns of the COVID pandemic, from autumn 2020 to May 2021
Artists shaping policies through higher art education: how visual artists develop policies that affect their lives, practices, and careers
Get PDFThis paper centralises visual artists in policymaking processes. It foregrounds the ways artists influence and determine the policies that affect their lives, practices, and careers through their higher art education in London (UK) art schools between 1986-2016. The uninvited and indirect processes by which artists are shaping policies using their education is captured through arts-based/informed methods developed for listening, analysing, and interpreting alongside grounded theory methodology. The practitioner-led approach is key to noticing and raising the subtle agitations in the actions and inactions that underscore artists’ role as policy progenitors. Artists’ relationships with professional development and their experiences of structureless pedagogies, which are aligned to artistic myth are foregrounded. Their acceptances, rejections, and reframing of their fine art curricula is where their influence in shaping policy sits
Videogames and the Gothic
No full textThis book explores the many ways Gothic literature and media have informed videogame design. Through a series of detailed case studies, I illustrate the ways particular tropes of Gothic culture – neo-medieval aesthetics, secret-filled labyrinthine spaces, the sense of a dark past impacting upon the present – have been appropriated by and transformed within digital games.
Moving beyond studies of the generic influences of horror on digital gaming, I focus in on the Gothic, a less visceral mode tending towards the unsettling, the uncertain and the uncanny. I explore how imagery, storylines and narrative preoccupations taken from Gothic fiction facilitate the affordances and limitations of the videogame medium, and contend that, irrespective of narrative or aesthetic qualities, videogames have developed as an inherently Gothic form of popular entertainment.
Arguing for close proximity between Gothic culture and the videogame medium itself, this book is a key contribution to both Gothic and digital game scholarship; as such, it will have resonance with scholars and students in both fields, as well as those interested in Gothic novels, media and popular culture, digital games and interactive fiction
Meadows of Farnham Enclosures
Get PDFMapping Enclosures is a moving image and sound artefact exploring the history of land tenure of meadows from the 17th century to the present in the vicinity of the small town of Farnham, Surrey. Using diverse visual sources – 17th century estate maps and contemporary drone footage - the work explores the palimpsest of representations of space and social relationships that shape this material environment. It aims to recover the traces of the remaking and dispossession of the natural resources of Surrey from farmers to property ownership. This project is a collaboration between researchers at the UCA Farnham and the Museum of Farnham.
The sonic element of the project will approach the site and space through field recordings and a creative reworking of the aural processes and cycles that comprise the labour and material processes of agricultural production on the land. These sites of ecological conservation – a chain of natural meadows adjacent to the River Wey near Farnham - are re-framed by the project as sites of historic human sustenance and economic relationships. An aspect of the dispossession of land is re-acted in the form of surveying in the work.
Within the acoustic area, there are topic links with the work of Barry Truax (albeit the creative processes and project aims are quite different) (Truax, 2022). This work continues the practice of Spatial Cinema of the PI (Connolly 2020) and audio design work of James Edward Armstrong (2018).
The presentation of this work in progress will feature audio-visual clips and examples of the media as well as an exploration of the project context – this is a UCA Knowledge Exchange funded project
Sustainability, cricket gear, clothing and apparel: cricket clothing
Get PDFReport on sustainability challenges and opportunities related to cricket clothing (PASIC). The research was funded by Research England Strategic Priorities Fund
Sustainability, cricket gear, clothing and apparel: components, materials and innovation
Get PDFReport on sustainable innovation opportunities related to components and materials of selected cricket gear (PASIC). The research was funded by Research England Strategic Priorities Fund
REV-OPOLY: a study on educational board game with web-based augmented reality
Get PDFThe use of technology in education is believed to enhance students' learning experience. Technology such as Augmented Reality (AR) is increasingly used in the classroom through the use of gamification. This study aims to examine students' experience in using a board game with web-based Augmented Reality named REV-OPOLY in their learning. REV-OPOLY's theme is on the emerging technology revolution concepts where in this board game, players can buy, rent and sell technologies through question cards to gain the opportunity to own the technology. AR is implemented into the game as the play pieces and part of the play cards. The respondents are the undergraduate students enrolled in Computer Application in Management course in Universiti Utara Malaysia. In this qualitative study, respondents will be tested through pre-test and post-test to compare the effectiveness and efficacy of REV-OPOLY compared to traditional methods of self-revision. The findings showed that 98.8% of the respondents are interest-ed in using REV-OPOLY in learning and 86.1% of them are satisfied with the structure of the game, mainly the multiplayer aspects of it (95.3%) which enforce interaction and discussion among the players (89.5%) and 93.0% agreed that they can learn better through the game as an informal learning medium. In this study, REV-OPOLY has shown to have received positive feedback from the respondents. Further research is required to assess the students' learning outcomes and experience of REV-OPOLY
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