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Realist Collage: Non-fiction Film Practice Addressing the History and Identity of ‘Welsh Wales’ through Critical Realism, Found Footage and Animation
No full textIn the early 20th century, the techniques of collage and film montage were linked with the cultural production of political radicalism. The assemblage of new wholes from existing parts established a critical method for negotiating the social world. Driven by technological and cultural developments, the practice of combining separate images is now applied within a broad range of art and media forms. Through its assimilation and concealment within the popular and commercial, collage has been detached from its political origins.
This practice led project lies at the intersection of documentary, archive film, animation and history. It’s philosophical framework is critical realism, a position that sees reality as a plurality of interdependent structures and mechanisms operating in stratified systems. The research deploys collage as a practical form of critical realism to explore the history of ‘Welsh Wales’ (Balsom,1985), along with the region’s political, cultural and social identity. The investigation is conducted
through engagement with film collection of the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales.
Theories of Welsh history and identity are used in the analysis, interpretation and composition of the archive materials as evidence of a complex and layered culture.
In the creative mediation of factual material, realist collage addresses the non-physical levels of reality that are not directly visible in the archive film. This is done through using temporal and spatial juxtaposition as a method of realist inference to represent the causally generative domain that determines actual events. An imaginative sense of a non-empirical, complex whole is inferred through the temporal and spatial composition of image parts.
The originality of the research is in development of collage as a visual and practical research method that offers a novel form of critical realist inquiry. The thesis will reflect on the political implications of the practice, advance critical theory of collage, and provide new insights into the function of collage processes in non-fiction film
Art for Climate Action: Community Project
No full textArt for Climate Action is a programme that explores the role that art has to play in encouraging people to connect with environmental issues and bring about meaningful change in perceptions and behaviours, leading to climate action and climate solutions. Art has the power to make change and encourage radical thinking, enabling us to imagine and build a better future together.
Art for Climate Action: Community Projects is an exhibition by artist Harry Meadows. This exhibition showcases the artist's practice and project that deals directly with environmental concerns. Harry’s practice explores how we make sense of our environment by extending our human senses with digital tools and plant life. His weather station sculptures are on display in the Barker-Mill Project Space, contorted frameworks that explored combinations of digital climate sensors, we use to sense our climate
The development of a Modular Accessible Musical Instrument Technology Toolkit using action research
Get PDFWithin the field of digital musical instruments, there have been a growing number of technological developments aimed at addressing the issue of accessibility to music-making for disabled people. This study summarizes the development of one such technological system—The Modular Accessible Musical Instrument Technology Toolkit (MAMI Tech Toolkit). The four tools in the toolkit and accompanying software were developed over 5 years using an action research methodology. A range of stakeholders across four research sites were involved in the development. This study outlines the methodological process, the stakeholder involvement, and how the data were used to inform the design of the toolkit. The accessibility of the toolkit is also discussed alongside findings that have emerged from the process. This study adds to the established canon of research around accessible digital musical instruments by documenting the creation of an accessible toolkit grounded in both theory and practical application of third-wave human–computer interaction methods. This study contributes to the discourse around the use of participatory and iterative methods to explore issues with, and barriers to, active music-making with music technology. Outlined is the development of each of the novel tools in the toolkit, the functionality they offer, as well as the accessibility issues they address. The study advances knowledge around active music-making using music technology, as well as in working with diverse users to create these new types of systems
Making Textiles Together
Get PDFMaking textiles with others is an exciting and unconventional way of doing research. It has developed from the discipline of textiles practice, but can be readily adapted within other disciplines, bringing arts-based research approaches into conversation with social science research. Textile-making activities can include knitting, sewing, crochet, weaving, dyeing, braiding and embroidery; we consider ‘making’ to also include related activities such as handling textiles or playing with clothes. There are many ways of Making Textiles Together: it should be thought of as an approach rather than a single method.
Making together is the key element of this approach. Activities can be highly diverse in terms of context, format and intention, from drop-in workshops to open-ended creative projects that might extend for months, or even years. They might be synchronous or asynchronous and might take place in person or online. Participants might contribute to one shared piece of work or work on individual textile pieces side by side.
These activities can be used to generate rich data of multiple types. Data might take form in the creative work itself or data might be generated alongside the things being made, for example in the form of audio recordings of discussions, observational notes, or video footage of gestures and interactions. Data can be generated by the researcher, by the participants, or both.
Making Textiles Together offers flexibility in terms of research questions. The approach can be used to investigate something that is closely linked to the act of making, such as how people with different cultural backgrounds learn hand-crafting skills. Alternatively, it can be used to research a completely different topic. For instance, the research focus might be to explore people’s coping strategies when grieving and the researcher might choose a textile making activity to create the desired environment for sharing these personal and sensitive stories. A third possibility is an action research approach that uses making to address and solve problems or create items that can be used directly by the participant group, such as mending garments or creating objects to meet specific needs
La photographie documentarie de Franca Donda: Un espace pour les femmes en Amérique Latine
Get PDFFranca Donda (Italie, 1933-2017) s’est initiée à la photographie avec le photographe américain Paul Strand et s’est impliquée dans les cercles culturels de la gauche italienne. Si elle et son mari, le photographe Paolo Gasparini ont vécu quatre ans dans la Cuba révolutionnaire, c’est à Caracas que Donda a passé la majeure partie de sa vie. Avec d’autres femmes engagées, Donda y a contribué à la diffusion des idées féministes en créant de nouveaux récits filmiques et photographiques. Ses photos représentent aussi bien la lutte des féministes latino-américaines que la vie quotidienne des femmes de la classe ouvrière et des communautés indigènes, dans divers pays d’Amérique latine. Elles constituent des archives absolument uniques et pratiquement inédites qui peuvent être versées à l’histoire des femmes au Venezuela
et à l’histoire du féminisme en Amérique latine
Cosmic Zoom, Powers of Ten and the Contested Politics of Sense
Get PDFThis article develops a comparative analysis of Charles and Ray Eames’ Powers of Ten, and Eva Szasz and Robert Verrall’s Cosmic Zoom, seen through the lenses of Bergsonian and Deleuzo- Guttarian philosophy. The author claims that, despite similarities with respect to their subject matter and modes of production, there are significant stylistic differences between these films that are suggestive of divergent ontological, epistemological and political commitments. Of particular importance is the foregrounding of objectivity in the case of Powers of Ten and subjectivity in the case of Cosmic Zoom – a distinction that is reflected in their respectively quasi-indexical and expressive modes of representation. This fundamental tension similarly conditions their differently inflected approaches to time, space and measure, drawing attention to the strange intertwining of representation, abstraction and affect that is characteristic of much animated film. Ultimately, it is proposed that, in the context of Powers of Ten and Cosmic Zoom, animation’s capacities for abstraction and expression are differently distributed, resulting in a cosmopolitical opposition which can be aligned with the Deleuzo–Guattarian distinctions between major and minor language, and royal and nomadic science
The Art of Creative Research
No full text'The Art of Creative Research Exhibition' held to overlap with Singapore Art Week 2023, which brings together contemporary creative research from Hong Kong, Singapore, and the UK.
Featuring 15 practice-based researchers in the visual arts from the Royal College of Art, University of Cambridge, University College London, Arts University Bournemouth, the Education University of Hong Kong, and the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore
Textual perspectives: Screenwriting styles, modes and languages ISSN: 1759-7137 E-ISSN: 1759-7145
No full textWhile addressing the question of screenplay textuality, this Special Issue takes a close interest in the ‘media thickness’ of the screenplay in its textual form. In doing so, we wish to contribute to the exploration and affirmation of scenaristic processes as both cultural and intermedial practices, as in general, screenwriting and screenplays are indeed to be considered at the crossroads of different artistic, mediatic and social fields. This is a flexible editorial posture and assumed as such, one which above all aims to consider the constitutive plurality of given textual practices, not only in terms of conceptual and social anchoring, but also of styles, modes and languages
Flotsam and Jetsam: British coastal songs of jettison, discovery, and retrieval (1984-2021)
No full textIn this chapter I look at a cross-section of songs that emerged from the British ‘Indie’ music scene and Counterculture of the 80s (and its evolution into the 21st century) – songs evoke an eco-conscious awareness through their use of imagery and ambience. As an island nation it is no surprise that the surrounding seas and wider ocean have influenced and defined the collective ‘British Isles’ for millennia. One pervasive example of this is in the way it has manifested in the pop song (a 20th Century iteration of a long-running tradition of sea-inspired ballads and sea shanties – and one that has come full circle in the recent number one by the Scottish postman TikTok sensation, Nathan Evans). Focusing on three main ‘waves’ or creative approaches, we’ll consider the personal lyric, the political, and the ecological. Starting this tripartite survey, we’ll look at The Waterboys’ song, ‘All The Things She Gave Me’ (1984), which describes a journey to the docks to discard all the physical associations of a failed relationship. Other songwriters who have adopted this personal, lyrical approach will include Martha Tilston, with her album, ‘The Sea’ (2014); and Johnny Flynn, with ‘Country Mile’ (2013). We’ll then move into more explicit political waters with The Levellers’ apocalyptic song, ‘On the Beach’ (2008), and equivalent acts of the more radical protest scene, including Seize the Day. In the third section we’ll look at more explicitly ecological songs, specifically ones with a potentially redemptive message – in particular, the song ‘In the Anthropocene’ by Nick Mulvey (2019), which raised money for Surfers Against Sewage. Whileas some of these examples will be seen as very contemporary, it will be argued that such songs of solastalgia (Glenn Albrecht) draw upon a long tradition of folksongs that explore liminality and longing, songs such as ‘Carrick Fergus’, ‘Donal Og’ and the ‘Skye Boat Song’ – the Hebridean tradition of the ‘cianalas’, which eco-songwriters are bringing into the modern age
Textual perspectives: Screenwriting styles, modes and languages, Journal of Screenwriting Special Issue, 13:3, Nov 2022. ISSN: 1759-7137 E-ISSN: 1759-7145
No full textWhile addressing the question of screenplay textuality, this Special Issue takes a close interest in the ‘media thickness’ of the screenplay in its textual form. In doing so, we wish to contribute to the exploration and affirmation of scenaristic processes as both cultural and intermedial practices, as in general, screenwriting and screenplays are indeed to be considered at the crossroads of different artistic, mediatic and social fields. This is a flexible editorial posture and assumed as such, one which above all aims to consider the constitutive plurality of given textual practices, not only in terms of conceptual and social anchoring, but also of styles, modes and languages