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Negotiating an elite fashion design education: An autoethnographic study
No full textIn this PhD research project, I utilise autobiographical narratives which present my lived experiences as a school pupil, fashion design student, professional designer and academic lecturer. These texts are complemented by library research around key figures and situations relating to the narratives. Fashion education raises issues of power relations and cultural differences in both academic delivery and professional practice. Autoethnography has assisted me in investigating the role of ‘self’ in fashion education at elite institutions and in the fashion industry, offering insights into the experiences of being an Asian student studying art and design at UK universities. The methods that underpin this research are evocative autoethnography and discourse analysis. I have selected a mixed-method approach as this has enabled me to integrate subjective and objective data in order to examine the key issues that arise for Eastern learners experiencing Western fashion design education. The narratives describe critical moments within industry settings and educational learning in higher education studio contexts in London and Taipei. The inclusion of contextual information, primarily from fashion journalism and educational texts, has helped to contextualise these narratives and relate the personal experiences they contain to wider social frames. The analysis is built on two key theoretical concepts: Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital and symbolic violence and Foucault’s concept of power. I have utilised binary frameworks: teaching versus learning, professional versus amateur, and success versus failure in order to draw out some initial insights. This examination leads to the consideration of a key question: what do Asian students need from UK fashion education providers? This reflective exercise explores the implications of the initial interrogations of the autoethnographic narratives and demonstrates the wider relevance of these findings. Finally, the study provides some insights and reflections into the role of the pedagogical practice of power within fashion education and the fashion industry and how the cultural differences identified in the study impact Asian students’ learning in UK fashion education system
Materiality of the book
Get PDFWhen artists and designers approach the book as a medium, they redefine the boundaries of its complex materialities— those inherent in any text and those beyond it. Books provide implicit and explicit embodied and performative experiences, where the smell, print, and differences in paper's fibres bristle against the ridges of one's own fingerprints further developing an intimacy with a reader that creatives utilise to situate and contextualise idea, image and text. Hosted by the Royal College of Art, this one-day symposium; Materiality of the Book unites the interests and concerns of the Artists Publishing Research group (APR) and the Material Engagements Research Cluster (MERC) in a dialogue on the materiality of the book. Accessible to internal and external audiences, the event features keynote speakers whose presentations will provide context for a series of peer-reviewed papers presented by group members and PGR students. The sub-themes will steer discussions on the book as method and object, landscape and the book, and the materiality of language
Life-centred design: Compassion in action
Get PDFCompassion is fundamental to human and planetary survival, continuity and flourishing. Advances in psychology and neuroscience have significantly increased our understanding of compassion as a core human trait with substrates of cooperation, caregiving, altruism, morality and inclusion. Neuroimaging studies investigating physiological characteristics and chemical activity of the brain reveal that neural-correlates of compassion-based thinking and behaviours are specific, traceable and distinct from lab-controlled cruelty trait expression. In simple terms, the brain is wired for compassion and cruelty. This evidence coupled with the growing global worldview of compassion as a core value, attitude and motive in designing for change, inclusion, security, accessibility and dignity, directly calls designers to incorporate compassionate thinking and behaviours in their design endeavours. This in turn, inherently necessitates designers to reach beyond a human-centred approach to a life-centred design approach whereby consideration of the needs, wellbeing, pain-points and systemic place and belonging of all life forms and the planet’s welfare and sustainability are all core considerations of the design process. In this exploratory paper, we treat compassion as the foundation for life-centred design approaches in which diverse perspectives, futures imagination and anticipatory betterment are central to the inclusive design paradigm. We draw on evidence-based neuroscience and psychology underpinning emotive, cognitive and behavioural correlates of compassion, and the human capacity for development and deliberate activation of compassion-based traits in the professional practice of designers. We conclude with a discussion on what this approach could mean and entail for designers, design thinking and design research
Un/Photographierbarkeit des Noh-Theaters
Get PDFNoh-Maske als Objekt, präfotografisch Noh-Maske als Subjektbegegnung, praephotographisch Noh-Maske als Lichtmedium, protophotographisc
Art in orbit: Art objects and spaceflight
No full textArt in Orbit considers orbital space as a site for arts practice, in the era of commercial spaceflight. Drawing on interviews with artists who have deployed work in space, and examples of sculpture, craft, painting, choreography and performance, the book explores potential opportunities for artists to engage in the environment of space and the new considerations that inform these practices. It defines space art as a new field of practice that is shaped, in particular, by microgravity, and observes the extent to which postgravity thinking requires artists to revisit many of the fundamental assumptions and processes on which their practice is founded. The book positions the emerging field of space art in the context of the new commercial space race, the democratisation of spaceflight, and new opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration between the arts and space sectors
The Royal College of Art’s animation collection: Challenges and opportunities of archiving 40 years of student animation
Get PDFThe Royal College of Art is, this year, celebrating 40 years of animation graduates. In that time, more than 800 students have graduated from the animation MA, with an extraordinarily diverse range of work. In this talk I want to share with you some of what my colleagues and I have been doing in the last two years around building a collection of the RCA films from the last 40 years. I want to discuss some of the challenges and opportunities that we have encountered while working on building an animation collection in an art school context, and I hope to offer a glimpse into the wonder, colour, and labour that this collection bursts with
Talk with Hybrid Agents: AI agents as believable characters for meaningful interactive storytelling
Get PDFWith the development of artificial intelligence (AI), especially large language models (LLM), LLM- driven dialogue systems have begun to exhibit powerful intelligence and autonomy. They not only make humans feel as though there are social relationships when communicating with non-human entities, but also blur the boundary between the real world and virtual worlds, especially those related to video games. This thesis presents an innovative exploration into the development and understanding of AI agents as hybrid agents, specifically focusing on LLM-driven conversational agents within interactive story- telling. It aims to bridge the gap between fictional narratives and social interactions in digital spaces, leveraging LLMs to enhance the believability and engagement of these agents. To validate and explore this framework, a series of practice-led studies were conducted. These artifacts—including the Wander chatbot based on real-world map, AI-native game 1001 Nights, the community-integrated chatbot Catherine & David, the creativity support tool ORIBA, the conceptual art installation AI Nu ̈shu, and the final integrated system Hyborg Agency —were evaluated through a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative data with in-depth qualitative analysis. A key finding of this thesis is a more nuanced conceptualization of believability. The studies re- veal that for social agents, believability arises not merely from consistency or friendliness, but from perceived autonomy, which includes the capacity for disobedience and constructive conflict. Further- more, the research shows that hybrid agents create meaningful interactions not by hiding the boundary between worlds, but by crossing it in an explicit and purposeful manner. Overall, these studies provide a comprehensive understanding of how hybrid AI agents can blend fiction and reality, introducing new dimensions and metrics for evaluating AI agents. Specifically, this research proposes two dimensions for hybrid agents: content generation based on user input and their role as actors in real-life contexts. Additionally, it identifies three key metrics for assessing hybrid agents: social expansion, spatial expansion, and language expansion. These findings contribute to the understanding of hybrid AI agents in interactive storytelling and their broader impact across gaming and real-world interactions. The research outcomes have been recognized at top-tier conferences and exhibitions, making an impact in academia, art, and industry
Open form: Exploring queer representation through contemporary performance practice
Get PDFThis practice-led research project speaks to the queer body and its ongoing struggle with representation, a body continually facing or enacting its own disappearance. The term queer emerged in the 80s and 90s as an act of reclamation. It mobilised against its historical meaning as a site of abuse and social exclusion. In part as a consequence of Judith Butler's internal challenge to feminism, which sought to expand its parameters beyond a naturalised concept of woman, the term came to represent both a positive and negative force in relation to LGBT+ identity. It came to stand for a politics of permanent self-critique. Whereas some LGBT+ rights movements called for visibility and inclusion, seeking rights and assimilation, queer movements troubled these demands. Inviting cohesion while aiming to remain provisional, the term became a 'necessary error' (Butler, 1995). Most critically, its meaning lay in its movement; both in its use as a verb and in the sense that, in being open to permanent contest, it would also need to remain open to permanent transformation. This project responds to this sense of paradox in the context of contemporary art, exploring the competing demands of visibility and resistance through performance practice. It speaks to an art industry that so often appears incongruous with queer politics and responds to the way in which these politics pressure the industry's normative operations; its normalised exclusivity and exclusions. In doing so, the project asks how art can be otherwise and responds through a series of artworks that lean towards the domain of life. These begin as performances in the exhibition space but unfold into writing, through which the project re-imagines the parameters of performance art and explores the body as a site of representation and reflexivity. These performances situate the dynamic of visibility and invisibility, central to queer thought, within the dynamic of art and life, exploring the former in material and embodied terms. Further, the project uses this investigation to speak back to queer theory in its recent turn to the body, contributing a speculative proposition for how life and language can meet. In order to consolidate the chronology through which this project evolved, the thesis moves backwards in time, initially situating the problems to which my practice speaks, then unfolding this practice as a response. The first chapter, No Single Theory, examines a history of queer thought in order to situate the problems of visibility and representation for queer identity today. The second, Impossible Bodies, briefly ties this to parallel problems in contemporary art, and performance practice more specifically. The third, brief, chapter-interlude, Typologies, shows the way in which my artworks make attempts to take on discursive form, while the last chapter unfolds these artworks in writing. Through this process, the project examines the political legacies of contemporary art and attempts to draw on these to imagine novel ways in which art can be lived. In doing so, it seeks to hold on to these legacies as an important resource for queer art and activism, opening a dialogue between the shared political urgencies of aesthetic and queer theories today, both of which question the nature of value and seek to transform it
The state we're in
No full textWe commissioned the following text to the two authors of the book Trans Femme Futures: Abolitionist Ethics for Transfeminist Worlds (2024), Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift. It describes the ongoing transphobic reaction in Britain, particularly crystallized by the British Supreme Court’s April 2025 ruling. Against this, trans communities and allies forge practices of solidarity, care, and abolition feminism, resisting state violence and cultivating collective safety