3983 research outputs found
Sort by
A conversation about transfeminism with Mijke van der Drift and Nat Raha
No full textAn interview about the ethics and politics of transfeminis
Desert-mapping: Site-specific modes of resistance to territoriality and colonisation
Full text linkThis research develops an artistic practice methodology that promotes a form of spatial empathy which decentres the human body and exposes multiple temporalities existing across land. On-site and off-site practice methods open new ways of seeing and moving that act as modes of resistance to colonialism, territoriality and control. Focused on the Southwest deserts of the United States and the military training centre at Fort Irwin in the Mojave Desert, my research operates across the fields of land art, installation art and socio-political art. It develops a body of site-specific practice to examine how desert spaces are experienced, contrasting the open desert with military simulation sites. I explore three research questions: (i) What does encounter through bodily immersion in the desert reveal and offer a site-specific art practice engaging with land and representations of territory? (ii) How do creative encounters with movement, mapping and spatial control inform understanding of open and closed desertscapes? (iii) Working off-site, how might creative encounters with on-site findings impact spatial relations between bodies and land? The practice-based methodology I developed to address these questions works with encounter through desert immersion, encounter through on-site creative methods (first-order desert-mapping) and encounter through off-site installations (second-order desert-mapping). Desert immersion exposes the human body to the co-existence of multiple temporalities, which I call spatial complexity, informed by spatial theory. In contrast, simulation training in the desert imposes a frozen narrative and single fixed time, which I call spatial control, informed by spatial design and military geographies. Although there is significant literature on the history of the military in the desert during the Cold War period, there is limited analysis of the impact of current desert training on occupation and territorial ideologies. Through encounters with desert immersion, I connect my sense of vulnerability in the desert with the notion of desert hospitality. In this ecological understanding of hospitality, the mutual vulnerability and spatial exile of bodies on land create the circumstances for sharing and thinking together – which I refer to as spatial empathy. On-site, creative encounters involve experimental cartographic methods using site-writing, lens-based processes and intervention (first-order desert-mapping). These resist Cartesian and colonial mapping formats by refusing fixed perspectives, positions and proximity inside the military’s training sets and across open land. Depictions of desertscapes and military simulations are then blended in off-site installations (second-order desert-mapping) which use fictioning and materiality to offer new modes of resistance to the spatial control of simulation design – spatial representations which flatten space and lead to constraint and inequality. Through the creative desert-mapping methods, the on- and off-site empirical research combines to support forms of spatial complexity to challenge the colonial frameworks of spatial control (surveillance, territory and occupation). By foregrounding the new mapping approaches as a form of disruptive empathy, and spatial complexity as radical space-time resistance, my research proposes ways of rethinking deserts (and other spaces), going beyond notions of bounded territories to frame desert encounters as opportunities for ecologically-minded change
Sustainable software development in science – insights from 20 years of Vanted
Full text linkSustainable software development requires the software to remain accessible and maintainable over long time. This is particularly challenging in a scientific context. For example, fewer than one third of tools and platforms for biological network representation, analysis, and visualisation have been available and supported over a period of 15 years. One of those tools is Vanted, which has been developed and actively supported over the past 20 years. In this work, we discuss sustainable software development in science and investigate which software tools for biological network representation, analysis, and visualisation are maintained over a period of at least 15 years. With Vanted as a case study, we highlight five key insights that we consider crucial for sustainable, long-term software development and software maintenance in science
In Our Hands: Nepali nature inspired climate solutions in the Anthropocene
Full text linkThis paper considers material based making practices as found in the traditional handicraft, contemporary crafts practices and design innovation communities in Nepal. This sits within the context of the Anthropocene; a concept from the Earth sciences which has been adopted by academia at large and the arts and humanities in particular. It is a useful framework to explore the role of the human in our contemporary predicament of the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity collapse. The paper places these craft practices within Doughnut Economics which argues that the current economic model is not fit for purpose for the 21st century. Rooted in feminist, gender, race and environmental theory, Doughnut Economics proposes seven new ways to think about economics that puts both people and planet at the heart of a radical new way of thinking about the economy. The Circular Economy principles propose a closed loop design that can be found in these Nepali craft practices, using case studies from the Road to COP26 Innovation Programme and In Our Hands projects supported by the British Council in Nepal, which took place between 2020 and 2024. The paper considers how the ‘radical indigenism’ of these craft practices can be situated in context of the Anthropocene. It introduces the Quintuple Bottom Line (profit, people, planet purpose and place) framework which emanated from these projects to support narratives of a Green or Net Zero Economy which dominate international policymaking to help contextualise the ‘antropos’ in this bioregional approach to economic craft development. The work offers insights that can be applied beyond craft practices, demonstrating the interlink of the hyper-local (materials use), to mutually benefit and build regenerative practices that speak of provenance and bioregionalism in a global context
Blind aesthetics: Art as the currency of radical vision
Full text linkBlindness is both the instrument and the object of the blind author’s art practice that leads this research thesis. As such this art and this thesis is as much of blindness as it is about blindness. Whether it is the floating touch-points of the Transient Object (2019) rendered in 3D print; or whether it is the image of thought generated in the mind of the beholder in the mirrored jigsaw puzzle Blind I Stand… (2020); or whether it is the vacillating musical tones that eddy and flow around the body of the visitor to the sound piece Alarming Proximity (2019), all of these artworks delineate and describe a blind-life currency, an economy of the visible and the invisible that is constitutive of the blind aesthetic that is proposed by this research. The blind aesthetic or blind modality that emerges from this research has its own expressive language. This language celebrates the positive and generative aspects of blindness rather than striving to overcome the impediments that blindness presents in our contemporary ocularcentric society. As such, this work amplifies the work of contemporary disability-gain theorists Georgina Kleege and Hannah Thompson. These theorists are in turn, key members of the contemporary critical disability studies community. The thesis starts by introducing the important concept of anamnesis. Anamnesis is a form of pre-experiential, latent, embodied knowledge. Anamnesis is the idea that the knowledge of seeing or sight is prior to actually seeing. Furthermore, anamnesis as prior knowledge allows for blindness to be integral to seeing or sight. The works of Jacques Derrida (1967 - 1990) and Jean François Lyotard (1993 - 1997) have been particularly helpful in articulating anamnesis and the powerful contribution it makes to the argument to blind aesthetics. Chapter 2 of the thesis proposes that our epistemological lives consist of a fluxing, aesthetic currency and that, following Tobin Seibers (2008), this currency is essentially complex and embodied. Guided by the writings of Martin Heidegger (1953), Johnny Golding (2010) and Tim Ingold (2020) the thesis goes on to argue that this life-currency is regulated and articulated not only by anamnesis but also by the twin concepts of Attunement and the Comma. Chapter 3 examines the relationship between the spoken word and mental imagery. With the help of recently revived ideas on extreme imagination it is argued here that there is discontinuity between the mental image and the organs of sense. The final chapter of the thesis conducts a thorough survey of original blind artworks and blind-life experiences that consolidate the arguments used so far in the thesis. The questions that have guided this research are: To what extent and in what ways might art made by a blind person contribute to a new epistemological paradigm around vision? To what extent and in what ways might this new paradigm impact on both the visually impaired and wider communities? With the help of these questions this research proposes a radical rethink where blindness and blind experience is inherently complex and more contingently determined than previously thought. A far more integrated and distributed sensorium is proposed; here the coupling of modes of experience and their sense organs is more fluid and plastic than previously realised. Blindness, vision and visuality now expand into a realm way beyond the workings of just the eye and the brain
Doing trans as pedagogy and practice: On ethics, unlearning, and justice
No full textThis chapter brings into dialogue the perspectives of two UK based trans educators who share their perspectives on queer and trans justice, the current UK context and pedagogical responses to hetero-patriarchal capitalist-coloniality
Food bags: A personal journey
No full text'Food Bags: a personal journey' is an (introductory) essay from issue five of To Have & To Hold - one of a series of portfolio publications which aims to celebrate the design and consumer cultures of paper bag ephemera. The essay introduces the reader to the design and history of over 60 paper bags 'ranging from the early 1900s to the present day' from the 'local corner shop to the high street department store.' Triggs reflects on her experiences of American and British food cultures. She first arrived in London during the 1980s from Austin, Texas, where the daily routines of food consumption were remarkably different to London’s. For example, Austin's plentiful 'farm to table' culture contrasted with London's paucity of fresh veggies. The essay highlights how bags offer an alternative and visual narrative to the received version of branding history. A series of musings on different London paper bags elicits food memories including cafe culture at Patisserie Valerie, the politics of citrus distribution at Tesco and other stores, and how to sample proper fish and chips at Fryer's Delight. The essay concludes that environmental concerns - resulting from the 1990s predisposition for using plastic bags - has prompted a return to the paper bag and with it a particular space for branding designers to make their mark
Remote Data Collection Methods (RDCM): Intertwining our evolving worlds
No full textIn this second edition of Remote Data Collection Methods (RDCM): Making sense of the messiness in fieldwork in Codesign, we extend and deepen these discussions by reflecting on the implications of remote data collection for codesign within increasingly complex and situated participatory contexts. The global challenges of climate change, social inequality, and ecological degradation, often referred to as the ‘polycrisis’ (Lawrence et al. Citation2024), require not only systemic change but also inclusive, place-based modes of collaborative decision-making. As governments and civic actors align with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (United-Nations Citation2016) to address economic, social and environmental dimensions of development, codesign researchers’ and practitioners’ role to develop participatory methods that can engage diverse communities across geographical, cultural, and epistemological distances becomes even more critical
Spectral transmissions research unit - Transmission #01
No full textCyclical time. Spectral media obliterates the boundaries between self and world, questions concerning the Robin correct boundary between an alien everyday reality. Driven towards a madness. Resorting to illusory magicaNorth techniques. Fairies could once be heard making music under this artificial hill. The rustling of a woman's skirt NAISA could occasionally be heard behind the walls, as could ghostly music. A piano was said to play itself, even Pigeon though most of the keys were broken. A ghostly black dog wearing a 1940s suit leaning on a bannister, Russianak voices and music emerge from the jukebox. Within thirty seconds, the figure had vanished. Music is also said todioA be heard within the building when none should be playing. What was this abominable cipher? Sonic ilie - Ivresses Made as part of Gravity Waves and The Spirit World. ode 1 Radiophrenia Shorts 9 Mende Radiophrenia Shorts 10 CONVERSATIONS ON Radiophrenia Shorts 9 Mat Wa Artist bio: BELONGING a 900 Voices Radiophrenia Shorts 10 Deamb Yulia Carolin Kothe The Spectral Transmissions Research Unit is a collaboration between Ben Branagan Luke Pendrell dedicated to nta! the theoretical and practical construction, dissemination, transmission, observation and analysis of spectral Radiop emanations. Comprising a diverse spectrum of entities of various degrees of stability and tangibility. In as much as linear time can be applied, members of the STRU could, have, and or will included): Ludd Püca, JohnFrum, Birdma Kay Jackson, T-J.Cut, Dr. Ray Power, Proff. Jock Moxter, EKA-Francium, Dr. Tinkerpaw, Kaspar Brocken, and The River S Coincidence Sprite
Women’s design + research unit: Networks of educational activism
No full textThe Women’s Design + Research Unit (WD+RU) was founded in the UK in 1994 to raise awareness about biases towards women working in visual communication in education and professional practice. This talk explores how WD+RU became an informal network drawing on feminist principles of care, community, conversation, curiosity, and collaboration, to address the questions around the marginalisation of women designers and the ways in which power structures might be challenged. WD+RU’s agenda includes the design of an experimental typeface, research reports, posters, talks and workshops