3983 research outputs found
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ReWilding AI : Weather spores
No full textReWilding AI leads you into stunningly immersive, curious and paradoxical ecologies of AI through an immersive game-based experience called Weather Spores. Through a multi-dimensional maze of five immersive portals, you will encounter the symbiotic interspecies intelligence of mycelium, birds and trees, cross expanded geographies of urban AI data systems, and witness present-tense archaeologies of the supply chains that deliver AI. You will play with carbon and blow straws and ‘sticky encounters’ via the strange and wild worlds of ‘emergence’ and ‘indeterminacy’, and explore how the very fundamentals of linear and non-linear thinking and creating triangulate with the political, the cultural and ethical to encourage different forms of individual and collective agency. In ReWilding Ai, we move away from probability and randomness towards indeterminacy, emergence and entanglement. Here we find critical, urgent new ways to query the temporalities and geo-politics of AI, rethinking immersive generative AI through art-led practice from the ground up and for the common good. Principal Research Leads: Johnny Golding and Tom Simmons Senior, Post-Doctoral and Technical Research Associates: Samuele Albani, Sonia Bernac, Jonathan Boyd, Jeremy Keenan, Manu Luksch, Mukul Patel, Maggie Roberts, Rian Stephens, Shira Wachsmann, John Wild, Tao Xi
An uncommon thread
No full text‘An Uncommon Thread’ features 10 contemporary artists living and working in the UK. The group exhibition highlights the transformative power of unconventional mediums in evoking personal and collective memories. Each artist demonstrates an unwavering commitment to the integral role materials and techniques play in their creative process; employing unexpected painting surfaces, adapting formal craft traditions and repurposing discarded products into compelling works. Through individual investigations of identity, tradition, nature, fantasy and the environment, the artists invite viewers to engage with the rich stories woven into each work. Tai Shani weaves a cosmic realm in a new installation that continues to reimagine female otherness as a perfect totality. Shani’s cacophony of color, pattern and organic form immerse the viewer in an act of world-building in which feminism, the sublime and mythology merge
Beyond dust: Amplifying microbial temporalities as an archive of spatialized time and temporalized space
Full text linkThis paper explores dust as a living, nonhuman archive that resists containment within traditional archival systems. Through the practice of un-cleaning, we engage with microbial temporalities via dust collection, culturing, immersive sound, and virtual reality. Set in the Royal College of Art’s Kensington Library, the project unfolds as an embodied VR experience–a speculative journey through the temporal rhythms of dust. Sound operates as a temporal contaminant: ambient, layered, and distorted, it amplifies microbial patterns beyond human perception. Dust emerges as a parallel archive–ambient, persistent, and speculative–inviting participants to drift through more-than-human temporalities and imagine alternative modes of sensing, memory, and design
Design thinking: Why fund the arts & humanities?: Workshop report
No full textThis day-long workshop was part of the AHRC-funded project – ‘Equality, Diversity, Inclusion: Informing technē Doctoral Training Partnership Action Plan’ (2023-2025) – led by Dr Melissa Jogie (Director of Research Culture, Impact and Early Career Development at the University of Roehampton). The vision was to bring together a diverse group of stakeholders from across the Arts & Humanities to foster dialogue and scope pathways for raising the value of Arts & Humanities research and PhD graduates
The fifth industrial regenerative revolution (5IRR)—: Ontological, pedagogical and entrepreneurial approaches
No full textIn response to growing ecological and social crises, this paper explores how existing design approaches and ideas of industrialisation can be reimagined to support a regenerative future. Shifting away from extractive and degenerative systems, regeneration moves beyond conventional sustainability to actively restoring and enhancing ecological and social well-being. A key aspect of this shift is rethinking design’s role as a caring, place-based relational practice embedded within more-than-human worlds. In response to the conference call ‘Design Intelligence and the Fifth Industrial Revolution (5IR)’, we frame this transitional moment as the Fifth Industrial Regenerative Revolution (5IRR). This demands a fundamental reassessment of the principles underpinning design and production, the embrace of ecological stewardship, as well as our role as humans and designers within the broader web of life. Drawing on insights Becoming Regenerative (B-Regen), a UKRI-funded research project, the paper examines what might be required ontologically, operationally, and pedagogically for this revolution to happen. By investigating design education in London, through a series of case studies, it examines how regenerative design will require more than simply replacing conventional materials with more ecological alternatives; it necessitates a complete reimagining of production - considering more than human externalities, locality, suitable scaling and collaborative practices. This paper highlights essential areas across the regenerative design process - from rethinking design education to the development of a revitalising design economy. The discussion will address critical challenges to implementing regenerative practices, including integrating within existing infrastructures, navigating legislation and certification requirements, and building legitimacy through impact metrics. To conclude, we bring these challenges into conversation with design pedagogy as we ask how art and design universities can cultivate both regenerative imaginations crucial to imagining better futures and the pragmatic skillsets needed to implement within current constraints. We suggest that art and design schools can and should prepare students to develop a regenerative imagination, equip them for the challenges of designing for a regenerative economy by teaching practical systems design strategies and instil a distinctive regenerative ethos to guide their decision-making
Cosmic caesious, cosmic zinnober, cosmic celadon, cosmic virescent
No full textEssays that trace connections between the work of Turner Prize-winning artist Tai Shani and the intellectual legacy of Charles Jencks, one of postmodernism's most playful architectural thinkers. In this newly edited collection of essays, leading writers trace connections between the unique work of Turner Prize-winning multi-media artist Tain Shani, and the intellectual legacy of Charles Jencks, one of postmodernism's most playful architectural thinkers. Catalysed by Shani's exhibition The World To Me Was A Secret: Caesious, Zinnober, Celadon, And Virescent, developed for The Cosmic House in 2024, this far-reaching book draws upon the various mythologies metabolised by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. A surrealist exquisite corpse made real, the writings gathered here reanimate Frankenstein's Monster within Jencks' definition of Ad-Hocism, whereby the use of materials and objects for unintended purposes, might yield surreal results. A collaboration between The Cosmic House and Strange Attractor Press, Cosmic Caesious, Cosmic Zinnober, Cosmic Celadon, Cosmic Virescent includes newly commissioned works by Anne Boyer, Annabel Frearson, Emily LaBarge, Bassem Saad, and Taylor Le Melle that explore themes of anthropomorphism, the tangled legacies of surrealism, and the Promethean impulse. The book also includes a foreword by Eszter Steierhoffer, Director of The Jencks Foundation, and an introduction and original text by artist Tai Shani
Embracing remote data collection methods (RDCM) for codesign
No full textThis special issue emerged from our own situated experiences as design researchers and practitioners navigating the methodological and ethical uncertainties of fieldwork disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. As co-editors, we felt an urgent need to reconsider long-standing assumptions within codesign, particularly its reliance on face-to-face engagement as a foundation for building trust, empathy, and collaboration. Historically, codesign has drawn heavily from ethnographic and participatory traditions (Ehn Citation2008), focusing on in-situ interactions that allow for first-person observation and immersion in participants’ lived realities (Mattelmäki Citation2008; Mattelmäki, Vaajakallio, and Koskinen Citation2014). Yet, the rapid transition to remote modes of interaction during the pandemic revealed new opportunities and challenges for design research. What initially appeared as constraints, through the process unfolded into opportunities to critically reimagine how codesign research could evolve when shaped by remote data collection methods (RDCM). Our own fieldwork immersed in socially embedded and often technologically constrained contexts raised urgent questions about trust-building, empathy, participation, and representation in digital spaces. We recognised the growing need to document, critique, and share the emerging methodologies, tools, and ethics of conducting codesign research remotely, especially with communities for whom face-to-face interaction had been seen as a prerequisite. This special issue seeks to examine these emergent practices critically, contributing to the evolving methodological possibilities within design research. This special issue comprises two editions; this is the first edition
Fire management in practice: Building and managing charcoal-fired assay furnaces as experimental reconstructions
Full text linkThis article describes a programme of experimental reconstruction, involving the building and firing of a series of charcoal-fired assay furnaces, and the findings generated by this activity. The furnace builds drew from designs described and illustrated in nineteenth-century technical manuals for assayers and two sixteenth- century texts: De Re Metallica by Georgius Agricola and A Treatise on Ores and Assaying by Lazarus Ercker. Comparing the resulting “chimeric” structures’ performance generated insights into how such solid-fuel assay furnaces behaved in practice, what roles specific structural elements described in different primary sources played in their overall function, and the fire management skills needed to operate them. Consequently, it was possible to identify how the designs materialised technological choices that prioritised either responsiveness or long-term operation. The experimental reconstructions also led to a reappraisal of the nature and wider relevance of a selection of the primary sources used in the project
A conversation with Tessa Hughes Freeland
No full textTessa Hughes-Freeland is British-born experimental filmmaker who has used found footage in her work for many years. She studied history of art at University College London, where she aligned herself with the radical performance artist Stuart Brisley. After graduating from UCL, Hughes-Freeland pursued an MA in cinema studies at New York University, where she also completed a course by P. Adam Sitney, working as his teaching assistant at the Cooper Union. Hughes-Freeland has written about film in the East Village Eye, Paper Magazine, and the Underground Film Bulletin. As part of the downtown No Wave scene in the late 1970s, she met people such as the Three Kens, who owned a film club and rented out Super 8 cameras that allowed her to make films. She also collaborated for many years with the Cuban-born, New York-based artist Ela Troyano. In the early 1980s, Hughes-Freeland started programming at a club called LIMBO amongst a growing community of artists who were active in the neighborhood. With Troyano she started the New York Film Festival Downtown in 1984, a three-day festival which ran for five years. Hughes-Freeland also served as President of the Board of Directors of the Film-Makers Co-Operative from 1998 to 2001. Her found footage films have screened internationally in North America, Europe, and Australia, and in prominent museums and galleries, including the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Whitney Museum of American Art (NY), the New Museum of Contemporary Art (NY), and the KW Institute of Contemporary Art (Berlin). She has collaborated on live multi-media projects with musicians like John Zorn and JG Thirlwell