Tony Fry and Liam Young: de- and re-futuring the powers of the false

This paper conducts a comparative philosophical analysis of the works of the speculative, design-fictional architect and film maker Liam Young, and the academic design theorist Tony Fry, focusing primarily upon their responses to questions of sustainability in the context of design and architectural practice, and their respective approaches to de- and re-futuring the Earth. Whilst Fry's Design as Politics (2010) aims to highlight the urgency of environmental crisis and the implication of designers in this, its predominantly rational, absolutist and logico-propositional mode of communication distances it from an audience more attuned to affective, emotional, forms of exchange, and to imaginative modes of visualization. It is claimed here, firstly that Young’s project Planet City (2021), a multi-platform, design-fictional response to a very similar set of concerns, is better able to engage Fry’s intended audience, through its rallying of affective and fictional modes of graphical communication, and secondly that Fry’s overly strong commitment to a reality principle, and his call for methodological standardization in the context of design futuring, runs the risk of defuturing the more hubristic, imaginative and speculative responses that are nevertheless important to the process of ontological transformation

The Moving Canvas Project Exhibition

Captivating fusion of dance, art and costume design at The Moving Canvas Project Exhibition. This exhibition showcases the innovation work of Pavillion Dance South West’s adult contemporary company Co-Evo in collaboration with researchers Jenna Hubbard and Adele Keeley from Arts University Bournemouth. In 2023, Co-Evo dancers worked alongside the research team to create a unique performance where movement and drawing intertwined. Though collaborative exploration, the dancers designed their own costumes by drawing and dancing simultaneously, allowing their movement to inspire their artistic expression

Tracing the Archive of Franca Donda and the Venezuelan Film Collectives Cine Urgente/Urgent Cinema and Grupo Feminista Miércoles/Wednesday’s Feminist Group

Franca Donda (Italy, 1933-2017) was an activist, filmmaker, and photographer who lived in Caracas for most part of the second half of the twentieth century. During these decades, she made several short films with the Venezuelan collectives Cine Urgente/Urgent Cinema (1968-1973) and Grupo Feminista Miércoles/Wednesday’s Feminist Group (1979-1988). Throughout her life, she also took thousands of photographs of women across Latin America. However, her work has received little scholarly attention, and her archive has not been properly preserved. This article demonstrates the importance of protecting the legacy of Donda, Cine Urgente, and Grupo Feminista Miércoles. To do so, it explores Donda’s multifaceted identity and outlines the production of the two collectives. It maps, locates, and assesses the conditions of some of the materials that could comprise their archive. And it reflects on issues of positionality and briefly describes the transmedia project that is emerging from this research

AI at the fuzzy front end - creative iteration in design

Artificial intelligence is a transforming design practice. This research explores human-AI interaction in relation to human centred design principles in early stage design projects. Using a qualitative workshop methodology, this empirical study took a multidisciplinary team of participants from a yacht manufacturer through a series of divergent, discover phase activities that were augmented by AI tools. The results demonstrated how the advanced capabilities of AI to rapidly analyse vast quantities of data could be purposefully implemented to enhance engagement. the role off facilitator as an intermediary between the AI and participants allowed the interface between human and AI to be moderated and provided insights into effective effective use of AI during the fuzzy front end

Archiving Economic Afterlife: A Dialogue Between 3D Scanning and Drawing

The chapter explores the afterlife of mass-produced collectibles - Snoopy toys from 1999 McDonald's Happy Meals. Distributed globally, they attracted collectors who believed in their future economic value and fans for whom they held personal significance. Today, after 25 years, these once-coveted Snoopy toys are abandoned and sold in flea markets, car boot sales, and via online marketplaces for second-hand goods. The work is focussed on an artist-made digital archive of 3D scans of these toys acquired from sellers and collectors across Hong Kong, the UK, Russia. The 3D models were reworked through creating custom textures, which attempt to highlight the gaps, mistakes, and absences in the economic environment around these objects and the patchy, changing, irregular, disappearing personal stories behind them. We argue that exclusion of such objects from the mainstream consumerist cycles generates poetic absences that endow these objects with subversive potential. With their existence within an alternative mode of economic circulation, they challenge capitalist consumer behaviours and open up possibilities to reconnect with these objects, re-use them more poetically and more personally, also highlighting the potential of absence, mistake, and glitch in the processes of archive-making

Sensoaesthetics: Introducing alternative embodied material expressions in textile and fashion

Fashion is primarily a visual ontology consisting of definitions, theory, and methods that are based on visual language. The workshop Sensoaesthetics: Introducing alternative embodied material expressions in textile and fashion is a part of a three-year research project, Sonic Fashion (funded by the Swedish Research Council, 2022-2024). The project aims to expand the discourse of fashion by approaching it from a new and very different—sonic—perspective wherein sound is considered not as a negative aspect, but as a potential source of a new theory and facilitator of the evolution of new methods. The proposed workshop aims to (i) introduce participants to experimental inclusive aesthetics and (ii) expand the vocabularies of material definition - analyzing and defining them by using five experiential levels: functional, sensorial, interpretive, affective and performative. The workshop invites participants from a whole host of design fields and people with a visual impairment to co-create together within sensitizing exercises and sonic design prototyping to develop more inclusive ways of designing, defining, and representing textile and fashion artifacts

Materializing Data: A Macramé-Inspired Framework for Evaluating the Effectiveness of Creative Participatory Research

This paper presents the development of a macramé-inspired framework for evaluating the effectiveness of creative participatory research (CPR), addressing gaps in conventional framework models that overlook the complex, multidimensional and experiential nature of these research approaches. The framework was designed to visualize and materialize the evolving nature of CPR, where participant engagement, contextual factors, and the sometimes organic and unpredictable creative activities shape both the research process and its outcomes. To achieve this, we worked with a group of experienced researchers with expertise in participatory textile-making methods in a series of three online workshops. Through these sessions, the research team explored the challenges of evaluating creative participatory approaches to research, critiqued existing evaluation framework models and developed potential alternatives before finalizing the proposed macramé-inspired framework prototype presented here. The resulting framework employs macramé components such cords, interconnecting knots, and anchor points metaphorically to highlight different aspects of creative participatory research processes including the research context, participant engagement levels, project scope and duration, key research activities and participant interactions. In order to support robust evaluation of research effectiveness, we have devised question prompts to encourage shared reflection and discussion between researcher(s) and participants, rather than the one-sided assessment more usually offered by a set of fixed evaluation ‘criteria’, thereby shifting the focus from static metrics to embodied, experiential data. The prototype macramé framework presented here has the potential to be adapted to a diverse range of creative participatory projects beyond its origins in participatory textile-making. We anticipate it to be particularly useful for researchers and practitioners seeking evaluation models that highlight experiential knowledge, contextual nuance, and participant agency experienced ‘live’ in the unpredictable contexts of creative participatory research. Future research plans for this experimental prototype framework will include testing through case studies of real-life contextualized research settings

Screenscape: Immateriality, gesture and alienation in the digital image ecosystem

Despite often being labelled and/or perceived as immaterial, digital photography is no less material than its analogue cousin. Whilst the variety and diversity of material forms once ubiquitous in analogue photography have decreased exponentially, a physical vehicle is still necessary for viewing digital photographic images. Most recently, this is the screen. The screen has become the predominate material form of digital images – in fact, we would not be able to see them without it. Many important issues that have arisen out of digital image culture such as the overabundance of images, the ease of accessibility and appropriation, questions of authorship, ownership, distribution and circulation have all been addressed in scholarship; however, the singular physical environment upon which all these things occur, has not. This article examines the consolidated materiality of the screen; the consolidated imagery and contexts that exists on it; and the physical gestures we use to access that imagery, exploring the effects upon our relationship with images and in turn, our relationship to and perception of the world

Essay Film and Narrative Techniques Screen-writing Non-fiction

Bringing together filmmakers and scholars, this volume unpacks the evolving language of screenwriting in documentary and experimental cinema. Uniting filmmakers and practice-led researchers, Essay Film and Narrative Techniques: Screen-writing Non-fiction explores the evolving language of essay film through various methods of narration, including production diaries, self-critiques, interviews, and theoretical analyses. Including canonical works and unconventional approaches, this collection emphasizes how essay films blur the lines between personal expression and collective storytelling. In this volume, renowned scholars and practitioners unpack the conceptual and contextual dimensions of screenwriting for essay film, considering its role as both a cinematic and research tool. Whether reflecting on the personal camera or hybrid creative methodologies, the essays provide invaluable insights into how essay films are written and realized. With its interdisciplinary scope and innovative approach, this work is a beneficial resource for academics, filmmakers, and students of documentary and experimental cinema, offering a nuanced understanding of how screenwriting shapes nonfiction storytelling

Chimeras in Couture: Hybridity and animality in Leonor Fini’s fashion illustrations for Elsa Schiaparelli

Elsa Schiaparelli was well known for her collaborations with avant-garde artists, particularly those associated with the surrealist movement, however previous research has rarely discussed her relationship with the artist Leonor Fini. Between 1937-1940, Fini produced several designs for Schiaparelli, comprising three fashion illustrations and the bottle for the couturier’s perfume. Focusing on these illustrations, this article examines how Fini’s artistic aesthetic, particularly her use of animal-human hybrids, complemented and amplified the surrealist elements in Schiaparelli’s designs at this time. Capitalizing on the increasing popularity of surrealist imagery in contemporary fashion magazine publication, Fini and Schiaparelli both used the image of the woman-animal hybrid to evoke a sense of unease in contemporary audiences in a way that reflected deeper cultural tensions. These illustrations were a site of exchange between the two women, with a lasting influence on the Schiaparelli brand and on Fini’s ongoing artistic practice