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The bridge: experiments in science and art
Get PDFThe output is a creative project co-authored with volcanologist, Jill Shipman. Chalmers’ contribution comprises the visual design of the creatures and environments. Research process: The SciArt Center provided a virtual space to record and showcase the process and products of the collaboration. The work was facilitated by bi-weekly Skype calls and documented in weekly blog posts. The approach was based on speculative biology, for example by asking how echolocation would work in fish-based creatures and how can these adaptations be made external to create a more visually interesting creature design while still remaining believable? These were explored through playing with the idea of setting the narrative around planetary exploration and therefore a speculative world and its flora and fauna will need to be visualised through concept art. Chalmers researched other Creature Designers that have created believable worlds, including Terryl Whitlatch, Bobby Rebholz and Brynn Metheney. Research insights:
Through testing ways to synthesize volcanic phenomena and creatures it was discovered that there were four approaches for incorporating volcanic features into creature design: volcanic phenomena can be directly applied to a part of the creature’s body, volcanic phenomena patterns can be overlaid on the creature creating unexpected forms on the surface, volcanic phenomena can provide inspiration for heat resistant adaptations from real-world animals and, finally, more imaginative and surreal methods can be used to personify the volcanic phenomena. Further insights gained addressed the cyclical process of collaboration; the art-science interface as a method to stimulate the mind, stir the emotions, and promote action in geoscience stewardship; and the experience of an artistic approach to science communication to create immersive, interactive worlds that engage wider audiences. Dissemination: The project was developed through ‘The Bridge’ four-month virtual residency with SciArt, September - December 2017, and was disseminated via conference paper and online
Expanding communities of sustainable practice: 15 October 2016: symposium proceedings
Get PDFDuring this one-day symposium, we focused on the importance of collaboration and networks in creating art and design practices that contribute to eco-social sustainability. We were especially interested in complicating as well as expanding the notions of sustainability within art and design education and how they contribute to engaging the public in sustainable and progressively transformative eco-social practices. We are convinced that sustainability is also about meshing up and intersecting practice and theory, thus the day encompassed theoretical and practical engagements with sustainability – always with a focus on making this day productive in terms of building alliances, projects and shared commitments between the people attending
Walking in Urbana
Get PDFThe output is an exhibition, a series of 20 intermedial images and written narratives taken during an international research trip to Urbana, Illinois (2016). Tobias-Green used a camera-phone to document an urban walk during an interstitial moment. The series of images is understood as an unfolding visual narrative. Research Process: In a research context, walking is associated with a freedom of thought which assumes the freedom of the walking subject (Paterson, 2016) but walking is not universally available and risk free (Heddon, 2016). Walking comes with choices (one path travelled is another less travelled). Walking becomes research by first making space for the sharing of intimate, active exchanges between the human and the non-human. The walk and photographs challenge what Judith Butler calls ‘the subversion of an authority that grounds itself in what may not be questioned’ (1997). Research Insights: Tobias-Green discovered how the process of walking can be a practice-led research inquiry, rebuilding, reviewing and replenishing lost histories, stories of the ‘then’, the ‘now’ and the ‘possible’. The images show the walk across town, during which Tobias-Green’s humanist sense of self gradually receded into a post humanist awareness of a vitally connected world out there, enhanced by what Jones and Hoskins call 'thingly power' (2016), the agency of the land, feet, the camera, the sun, the vastness of past and present. The narrative gives textual voice to this through the sometimes treacherous landscape of the sentence. Dissemination: These images and their accompanying narratives were exhibited at Leeds Arts University in 2017. The peer-review led to a more focused approach so that the exhibition became a walk itself. The project was exhibited at Walking Women, Somerset House, 2016. Tobias-Green has subsequently used the project to explore lines of enquiry at both postgraduate and undergraduate level demonstrating impact on teaching
Dawn chorus
No full textThe output is a creative project involving a light projection titled “Dawn Chorus” exploring environmental impact and consumerism. The five-minute looped, spectacular narrative and sound track used fantastical found footage to explore human relationships with the natural world using digital film and animation. Research process: Twelve separate films were projected onto the side of twenty screened windows using twelve synchronised projectors to create a single film across a whole building when viewed from the street outside. Intensive experimentation, planning and negotiation was needed not only as the work was within a listed museum, but the commissioned digital projection company, Lumen, had never before attempted such work. Research insights: This opened up new opportunities and ways of thinking about the transformation of urban environments using digital projection. The technique has rarely been attempted before on such a large scale and enabled a re-think around the way one encounters a building. The work proved a means of engaging a family audience in exploring the relationship and contradiction between human and animal life. Dissemination: ‘Dawn Chorus’ was exhibited in The Judges Lodges as part of Light Up Lancaster on 4-5 November 2017. The event attracted national media attention and was visited by over 40,000 people
Fully awake (Garry Barker)
Get PDFAn exhibition that was focused on the legacy of Fine Art painting teaching. Although this exhibition was painting focused, because Barker's work has for many years been centred on image development he was chosen for his contribution to an understanding of the processes behind image generation, in particular his contribution to an understanding of how narrative can be moved from a sequential storyline into a visual simultaneity. In this exhibition Barker was represented as one of an older generation of art tutors. He was chosen by Steve Carrick, now Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Chester, as an important influence on his own practice, he in turn chose one of his students, Samantha Cordery, as someone he would single out that could carry the baton onwards
Simple tools make the task easier
Get PDFAn artists’ book exploring the co-evolution of language and tool use. Commissioned by South Square Gallery, Thornton, and taking inspiration from the collections of Cliffe Castle, Keighley
Kerrang! magazine and the representation of heavy metal’s masculinity: A content analysis of Kerrang! cover images from 1981-1995.
Get PDFKerrang! magazine is Britain’s longest running and most popular alternative music publication. The weekly magazine serves the UK rock and metal community and encapsulates a broad collection of sub-genres within rock and metal. Rock and (especially) heavy metal culture has been cited (Walser, 1993; Coates, 1997; Hill, 2011; Vasan, 2011) as being overtly masculinised and patriarchal and as such sustaining the same gender inequalities as mainstream culture (Schippers, 2002) yet the ways in which this masculinity is expressed through style and image is in many ways different to that of the mainstream. This content analysis explores images featured on the cover pages (a cross section) of Kerrang! magazine from 1981-1995 identifying the stylistic and performative features of masculinity within heavy metal culture as represented in Kerrang! magazine. Further analysis compares and contrasts these features with those presented in “mainstream” lifestyle and music publications of the time. The data presented reflects what Brown (2007) described as “everything louder than everything else” as being an identifying principle of heavy metal culture. In this sense “everything louder than everything else” also becomes a characteristic if heavy metal masculinity. The concluding discussion situates Kerrang! as being an influential force in the rock and metal lifestyle and through the beginnings of its operation (at the end of the 20th Century) has provided and continually enforced a model for the expression of masculine practices within the scene
Ann O'Donnell modernist jeweller
Get PDFThe output is a curatorial project exhibiting the work of Ann O’Donnell (1933 – 2019), a jewellery artist-maker from the North of England. The project was a collaboration between Broadhead and Norton. Both contributors were equal originators of the work, taking joint responsibility for the project design, research findings and dissemination. Research Process: Interviews were undertaken with O’Donnell in her workshop and with her archive of jewellery-related materials. Additional interviews were undertaken with O’Donnell and her pieces of jewellery. A transcript was made from this material, which was the basis for constructing a film that captured O’Donnell’s significance to the jewellery-making world. This was developed into a rationale for selecting works for a jewellery exhibition. This showed O’Donnell’s working methods, research notebooks and jewellery illustrations. Work was arranged in themes that referred to O’Donnell’s interests rather than chronologically. Research Insights: O’Donnell was found to be an artist-maker of international significance through achieving international awards, establishing a retail and gallery for ‘the new jewellery’ and showcasing international artist-makers. Her own work came from her art school background and was about the materiality of gold, silver, stones, fossils and ancient artefacts. Both narrative and formalist concerns can be seen in her work. Her position as a woman artist-maker in the 1960s and 1970s often meant that she was positioned through women’s magazines within a domestic space, rather than a professional one. This exhibition revealed the breadth and depth of her creative outputs. It also drew attention to an artist-maker with an international profile who was not based in London. Dissemination: The curatorial project was exhibited at the Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds Arts University between 11 May and 27 July 2017. The show was also screened on Made in Leeds
Drawing as a tool for shaping community experience into collective allegory
No full textThis chapter offers an account of an artist using drawing to develop images of allegorical significance within an inner-city community. It highlights the ways in which a variety of drawing methodologies can be used to respond to different community concerns, considering drawings as a visualisation tool, analogy, invention, narrative and visual allegory. Barker believes that drawing can be used to develop a deeper understanding of difference and of mutual interests of various residents within a multi-cultural community. He also argues that drawing can act as a catalyst to help the wider community approach issues of contemporary urban life and associated political and social issues
Voices from the strike
No full textThis book chapter draws upon original audio–visual research undertaken by Esther Johnson and Deborah Ballin as part of a project titled Echoes of Protest. This research investigates the legacy of being involved in significant protest movements from a child’s perspective and aims to understand the role protest can play in the lives of children, and to explore its aftermath.
The project included the collection of oral history testimonies and photography from those involved in the 1984–85 Miners’ Strike. The chapter highlights a perspective of the strike that has seldom been explored. Stories collected are from adults remembering what it was like to grow up as a child during the strike. Contributors articulate their experience with a maturity they may have been unable to express as a child. The text follows our methodology and findings, and discusses our editing process.
The audio–visual research was presented in an exhibition titled A share of a pensioner’s Christmas ‘Bonus’ presented at The People’s History Museum, Manchester, from December 2015–January 2016; and the National Coalmining Museum, Wakefield, November 2016–January 2017. Both exhibitions included a curated selection of artefacts from the Hilary Wainwright collection held at People’s History Museum