Arts University Bournemouth
AUBREI - Arts University Bournemouth Research Excellence and ImpactNot a member yet
342 research outputs found
Sort by
Integrating Bespoke Avatars into Digital Fitting Methods to Improve Fit - 24.46
Full text linkWith the increasing reliance on digital technology globally, the adoption of industry 4.0 within the fashion industry has accelerated. The full 3D digital production process is at the forefront of fashion innovation, however legacy issues such as traditional size charts persist.
Inclusivity of diverse body shapes is a major issue for the fashion industry. By adopting a new approach, this research introduces a new process that has the potential to improve customer satisfaction and reduce waste.
This study evaluates the traditional size chart by comparing the industry standard to 3D body scan data from participants, focusing on the use of avatars and body scanning to improve the fit process and challenge the existing sizing system implemented throughout the fashion industry. This provides the foundation for a pilot study of a novel virtual fitting room which explores digital process as an alternative to the traditional size charts.
The result of this research is a prototype for the avatar library 'fitting room', that contains the 'real women' avatars from body scans. 3D avatars can be beneficial in both improving fit and reducing waste within the fashion industry. Further development of the avatar fit library will be available for industry to utilise in the fit process from design through to sampling and production stages. This prototype demonstrates a means to disseminate this research in an innovative and engaging way
Mending and repairing
No full textLargely ignored by scholars of fashion and clothing, an investigation of the history of garment repair and maintenance reveals a series of fascinating discourses that can be utilized to critique the development of the fashion industry. The aim of this chapter, therefore, is not only to map out manifestations of clothing mending and repair activities between 1800 and the present day, but to further consider the social and economic value of those practices and their relevance to the fashion system of the twenty-first century. In doing so, this chapter presents a complex picture of mending in which gender, class, economics, and aesthetics interweave with the evolution of the problematic global fashion system that we have today. The subject is approached by initially addressing some key issues around researching the subject and then moves chronologically through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, before considering mending in its contemporary contexts. While historically, mending has typically been perceived as a domestic, feminine activity of low cultural value that carries connotations of material deprivation, today it can be understood as a cultural phenomenon that holds both social significance and potential solutions to the practical problems of the fashion industry
Plastics: What are they good for?
No full textIn order to understand the relationships individuals have with plastics today, it is useful to understand how people related to those materials in the past. After the restrictions of the Second World War with rationing touching many aspects of consumption, society of the 1950s was encouraged to consume products to aid economic growth, to maintain jobs, and improve lifestyles (Hine, 2010). Disposability and the notion of using something once and then throwing it away grew to become a sign of wealth and cleanliness, consumers were encouraged to use disposable products for their efficiency and to avoid contamination. The ideas of purification and convenience encouraged the development of ethical justifications for the use of disposable items (Hawkins, 2006). The link between cleanliness and single-use packaging is strengthened by the act of throwing away the wrapper (Lucas, 2002); the ecological consequences were not, at that time, contemplated (Fiell and Fiell, 2009). The popular understanding that plastics are low value and therefore disposable has been built up over a history of misuse of long-lived materials for short-lived products. This paper will explore the value placed on plastics through and exploration of their uses and misuses, their consumption and significantly their conspicuous non-consumption, and how we deal with them at the end of their useful life
Personal Ecologies: The Community Gardener
No full textPersonal Ecologies: The Community Gardener is an exhibition exploring the imagination of an ecosystem. In response to the conditions of global warming, there is a call to all for ‘Climate Action’. The video game, commentary and sculpture in this exhibition respond to this call through partnership between art and the ecological practice of a community gardener. Through an interactive game environment, you are invited to explore entanglements of people, plants, animals and machines. As these characters spill from the screen into the gallery’s ecosystem, novel narrative imaginaries render us as actors in a new ecology
When Lives Collide 2023
No full textThe 'When Lives Collide 2023' exhibition depicts the real-life horror of road collisions as described by those involved and aims to raise awareness of the risks we all face on a daily basis as road users.
Taken by renowned photographer Paul Wenham-Clarke, a Professor of Photography at Arts University Bournemouth, the images are being exhibited to mark the 30th anniversary of RoadPeace, the road victims' charity. The RoadPeace provides information and support services to people bereaved or seriously injured in road crashes and engages in evidence-based policy and campaigning work to fight for justice for victims and reduce road danger.
Every single day on the UK's roads, on average five people are killed, 84 are seriously injured yet despite this, the public is largely unaware that so many people are affected by crashes. Many people don’t believe that they or their loved ones will be affected by a collision. But the exhibition shows that crashes affect everybody whatever their age or gender and wherever they live.
The images serve as a window into the soul of people who have experienced everyone’s worst nightmare and address the senseless loss of life that our society so easily seems to accept. "Some of the portraits capture raw emotions as they surge and flow through the participants, from grief-stricken crying, to fighting back the tears to smile, as they remember their lost one. In British culture, we shy away from crying in front of others, or even watching others cry, but these images allow a prolonged examination of a range of visceral emotions and will evoke a strong response in anyone who sees them.
Nick Simmons, CEO of RoadPeace, said: “When Lives Collide 2023 takes an artistic approach to explore the impact of road harm from the point of view of those directly impacted by it. Paul’s work so cleverly and creatively documents the lives of crash victims and acts as a call to work together to end road death and injury. If this exhibition makes just a few people think about their actions next time they get behind the wheel and turn off their phone before they drive, or decline that alcoholic drink then it will be a great achievement.
Creative parameters: Reimagining film practice
Full text linkThe global pandemic forced the film industry to adapt its practices. The primary driver of these changes was the economic imperative for production to continue. Similarly, film production courses had to deploy new methods to enable student films to be produced. Through this process new and often creative working methods were devised. This necessity for change also allowed for a critical reassessment of standardised industrial filmmaking - this emphasised that until this point there had been a general unwillingness to reflect upon the industrial production and educational norm, with its ecological unsustainability, exclusive practices and embedded hierarchies. So, the imposing of ‘restrictions’ in fact became an opportunity for creative discovery and to rethink practice related possibilities.
In this paper the authors will draw on their experience of teaching MA Film Practice, at Arts University Bournemouth, and the need to reimagine disciplinary engagement and devise new curriculum components. This process transformed restrictions into ‘creative parameters’. It also focused the course’s practice based research ethos and enhanced the student reflexive and reflective development. These innovations are now embedded in the course’s structure and have facilitated a departmental debate concerning ‘standardised’ working methods (copying historical normative models), and how we can foster a more inclusive and inventive learning environment.
Further to this, the graduating students, now emerging reflective practitioners – more socially, ethically and conceptually aware – can potentially affect new standards and approaches to film production, and in doing so promote original and diverse work, as well as embracing inclusive and ecologically sustainable methodologies. This paper will consider the instructiveness of this academic innovation and its potential to inform future film practice
'Don’t Push Me Around': An Enquiry into the Origins, Function and Continuing Impact of Illustrated Graphics within 1980’s Skateboard Culture
Full text linkThis paper will expand on insights unearthed during a practice-led PhD recently undertaken by the author at University of the Arts, London. The research project is investigating illustrated skateboard deck artwork in order to identify the distinct visual aura the skateboarder conjures within popular culture. Skateboard deck artwork is a kind of illustrated vernacular, principally developed in California during the 1970s and 1980s, to market skateboard products. The imagery is distinguished by thematic concerns aimed at young adult skateboarders. A practice-led investigation will reveal the origins and function of this persistent illustrated language. This approach will rely upon the author’s prior experience as a professional illustrator and arts educator to illuminate the significance of visual aesthetics, thereby offering a new lens to survey skateboard’s resilient visual culture
Curation of GENIUS LOCI contemporary art group exhibition for Bridport Arts Centre Gallery
Full text linkThe Genius Loci exhibition asks how ten artists can explore sensations of landscape, how are experiences of sensing the character of a landscape transformed into a painted surface or a sonic action? How does each person’s diverse knowledge of that place inform the artwork? Katie Barons is an artist who investigates sensations felt when immersing herself in nature and capturing these sensations using paint. The series of paintings in this exhibition are derived from Hengistbury Head, a headland which wraps around Christchurch Harbour not far from Bournemouth. Luke Mintowt-Czyz’s uses the physicality of paint to explore competing physical tensions on Bournemouth beach where the polarities of young and old, rich and poor, lonely and connected, healthy and ill, extrovert and introvert, coalesce on the seashore each summer in a writhing bodily mass. Sonic Camouflage is a series of collaborative improvisational sound workshops which asks how an ancient Greek whistling language called Sfyria can be used to provoke the creation of contemporary collective artworks
Internalizing the Present in the Articulation of the Future: Masculinity, Inequality, and Trying On New Possible Selves
Full text linkYoung men, especially from working-class backgrounds, often lack the space, capacity, or opportunity to reflect upon masculinities and their role in shaping future trajectories. By devising mechanisms to engage young men differently in creative activities, participants in our project were supported to think beyond assumed futures and explore new possibilities. Mobilizing the theory of possible selves, this article draws on data across three creative university outreach workshops in England with 18 participants who were given the opportunity to explore masculinities using creative writing, photography, and dance/movement. Combining artifact analysis and semi-structured interviews, the article argues that these workshops created safe spaces for young men to articulate their concerns and fears about harm and risk in everyday life while facilitating an exploration of alternative possible selves
Process as prototype: exploring complex knowledge exchange in the production of low-cost buoyancy aids in Zanzibar through the participatory design of a ‘workflow system’
Full text linkThis paper reports on an investigation into the role of experiential knowledge in growing capacity for producing low-cost buoyancy aids with soft goods manufacturers – tailors – in Zanzibar, set within complex knowledge exchange collaborations under academic-industry partnerships. In this study, the makers' practice of tailoring and their local environment knowledge had a formative role in designing a prototype ‘workflow system’ for local, small-batch production of low-cost rescue throwlines as part of a wider community-led water safety programme.
The study builds on a previous phase of the research that identified limitations with a human-centred design (HCD) approach to the creation of opensource instruction manuals for low volume production of rescue throwlines. We propose that the previously incumbent HCD approach through its problem-solving procedures obscured the importance of the local makers’ participation in the problematisation of the manufacturing process. By foregrounding the local makers’ knowledge of the whole manufacturing process, from sourcing materials in the market to making and testing the products, this study aimed to investigate how the local makers would devise and develop their own methodological approach to making the rescue throwline, examine what the findings would suggest for the design of the throwline, and explore how this knowledge might be exchanged with other collaborators in the project. A further and longer-term aim is to support the development and impact of local capacity building in end-to-end drowning prevention management by demonstrating the importance of experiential knowledge in existing local communities of makers.
A participatory making approach informed by design thinking underpinned the design of the study. An experimental participant-led approach to the generation of data draws attention to the different positions and types of knowledge negotiated. The study elucidates some of the barriers for exchanging this critical experiential knowledge with collaborators and exposes challenges for creating new social infrastructure within the community concerning drowning prevention. It concludes that managing complex knowledge exchange in prototyping in the Zanzibar context requires an iterative methodological approach to the co-construction of knowledge centred around the experiential knowledge and skills of the users of the ‘workflow system’