Museum virtual tours as sequences of gaps: The Red Lodge Museum

Museum virtual tours are interfaces of interaction with archival spaces situated at the heart of the debate around the (in)accessibility of archives. Focussing on the case of The Red Lodge Museum in Bristol, we argue that drawing attention to the ‘insignificant’ - the transitional and interstitial spaces of both the virtual and physical tours - bring opportunities for decolonising the representations of history. Drawing from the works of bell hooks, Jack Halberstam, and Sara Ahmed, this paper examines the successes, failures, and strange joys of moving from a virtual tour to a physical space and back again. Genealogically and technologically, a virtual tour inherits the imperialistic and global capitalist undertones of panoramic painting and photography, but discursively presents a well-intended call for accessibility. In the Red Lodge Museum, where the history of the place presents almost entirely a sequence of its possessors, this opens room for questions: how can we make a museum experience continuous, not focussed on these possession-oriented moments in time? How can we capture continuity in the museum context, or alternatively - how can we bring the gaps to the forefront in representing history? The abrupt cuts in the transitions between the hotspots of virtual tours illustrate the gaps in the representation of the place’s history, which are also reflected in the patchwork-like organisation of the physical museum. In our experience of visiting the Red Lodge Museum, both virtually and physically, we wonder, “What happens when 'nothing noteworthy' happens?” Referring to Jussi Parikka and Trevor Paglen’s conceptualisations of surface in 3d spaces, Tim Barringer’s work on panoramic gaze, as well as Annet Dekker’s nuanced approach to the intertwinings of the digital and physical archives, the paper will suggest an artistic approach towards interpreting the gaps in the museum virtual tours

Integrating Bespoke Avatars into Digital Fitting Methods to Improve Fit - 24.46

With the increasing reliance on digital technology globally, the adoption of industry 4.0 within the fashion industry has accelerated. The full 3D digital production process is at the forefront of fashion innovation, however legacy issues such as traditional size charts persist. Inclusivity of diverse body shapes is a major issue for the fashion industry. By adopting a new approach, this research introduces a new process that has the potential to improve customer satisfaction and reduce waste. This study evaluates the traditional size chart by comparing the industry standard to 3D body scan data from participants, focusing on the use of avatars and body scanning to improve the fit process and challenge the existing sizing system implemented throughout the fashion industry. This provides the foundation for a pilot study of a novel virtual fitting room which explores digital process as an alternative to the traditional size charts. The result of this research is a prototype for the avatar library 'fitting room', that contains the 'real women' avatars from body scans. 3D avatars can be beneficial in both improving fit and reducing waste within the fashion industry. Further development of the avatar fit library will be available for industry to utilise in the fit process from design through to sampling and production stages. This prototype demonstrates a means to disseminate this research in an innovative and engaging way

Making it work in practice: how heads of quality negotiate the third space

Recent decades have seen increasingly complex external regulation applied to higher education providers. This has accentuated the role of heads of quality, who require considerable specialist knowledge and insight to ensure that organisational practices align with regulatory expectations. However, while the existing literature recognises that heads of quality do not perform a uniform role, it does not typically discuss the key organisational features which explain the differences in the role or necessarily position of heads of quality as third space professionals. Drawing on a comparative case study of three universities, the article extends our understanding by confirming that heads of quality can legitimately be termed third space professionals and by showing that heads of quality must navigate their environment in different ways according to the degree of access to the third space offered by their organisation. A more structurally situated explanation of third space activity is thus required. The article also reflects on the tendency to discuss a particular group of third space professionals and to characterise their experience as though it were broadly common. It argues for a more nuanced explanation, taking account of organisational structure as a further variable which may help to explain the experience of the third space professional

What is a studio, anyway?

What is a Studio, Anyway? brings together artists, curators, designers, educators and arts professionals across the UK and further afield to share, question and contemplate the idea of the artist’s studio and the role of Higher Education in shaping it. This new publication collates conversations, interviews and musings on the artists' studio, featuring contributions from Amelia Hawk, Andy Harper, Ben Sanderson, Eugenia Popesco, Georgia Gendall, Jane Darke, Joanne Masding, John Wood and Paul Harrison, Jordan Verdes, Leila Galloway, Maria Lalić, Marisol Malatesta, Professor Teal Triggs, Sarah Taylor-Silverwood, Simón Granell, Shen Xin, Stella Kajombo, Tarek Lakhrissi. The project began in early 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic, when access to studio spaces for fine art students was prohibited. As researchers Professor Susan Orr and Dr Alison Shreeve have argued, the studio is central to fine art pedagogy, enabling an expanded means of knowledge production - rather than being, ‘delivered,’ it is, ‘forged’ (Orr and Shreeve, 2018:3) between students and educators. Successive lockdowns significantly disrupted the norm of studio-based practice which has underpinned Fine Art higher education in the UK for many decades. However, as artist and lecturer Kate McLeod has acknowledged, the lack of access to the studio during this time ‘created opportunities to experiment with different approaches, and to gain an appreciation of some of the limitations of the studio’ (McLeod, 2022). One such limitation is the affordability and accessibility of artist studios post-education. Recent research published by ACME studios has found that long-term, secure and affordable artists’ studios are increasingly rare (Acme Studios, 2022:6) and therefore many artists are working outside of, or without a traditional artist’s studio space. These combined factors led us to initiate What is a Studio, Anway? with the central aim of offering students alternative insights, ideas and models, which would expand, challenge and disrupt dominant perceptions and representations of the artists’ studio (both within and beyond higher education). We invited practitioners with a broad range of professional experiences to contribute to our research – from recent BA Fine Art graduates to established artists at the peak of their career. The research follows a qualitative narrative-based enquiry, and participants were asked four key questions: What do you consider to be a studio? Has this changed in the past year? Across your career, have there been points where you have not had a physical space to work, and how have you navigated this? What piece of advice would you give about studio practice? What distinguishes our project from existing studies and research is the breadth of contributors and its specific response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The book sits in contrast to recent large scale survey publications, such as The Artist's Studio: A Century of the Artist's Studio 1920–2020 (Blazwick, 2022), which featured critically acclaimed artists; those often far removed from the experience of an emerging graduate or student – our intended audience. This project offers a unique insight and contribution to the field of alternative ways of conceptualising and re-imagining the artist’s studio. The publication was funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Grant from UCL, 2022

Towards a Cognitivist Understanding of Communication Design

This book demonstrates the relevance and importance of cognitive linguistics when applied to the analysis and practice of graphic design/communication design. Phil Jones brings together a diverse range of theory and organizes it in accordance with different stages in the design process. Using examples from contemporary communication design, as well as more familiar selections from the graphic design canon as case studies, this book provides an account of how meanings are made by users, and suggests new strategies for design practice. It seeks convergences between the ways that graphic/communication designers think and talk about their practice and the theories emerging from cognitive science. This book will be of interest to scholars working in design, graphic design, the philosophy of art and aesthetics, communication studies, and media and film studies

Documentar a las mujeres a través de la fotografía y el cine documental: El ejemplo de Franca Donda en Venezuela

Bajo el título donda-doc: Documenter les Femmes et les Féministes par la photo- graphie documentaire. L’exemple de Franca Donda au Venezuela, este proyecto pretende arrojar luz al legado de Franca Donda a través de la producción de varios artefactos culturales desarrollados a partir de su archivo. En este texto ofrecemos, en primer lugar, una breve biografía de Franca Donda, prestando especial atención a su producción cinematográfica y fotográfica. Y, en segundo lugar, ahondamos en el compromiso feminista de su trabajo fotográfico

Statue (2024)

Three prints were exhibited as part of the 14th annual Loudest Whispers art exhibition, on display at St Pancras Hospital in Camden, London. On Friday 9 February 2024 the North London Mental Health Partnership hosted the launch of Loudest Whispers 2024. The exhibition addressed the historical challenges faced by the LGBTQIA+ community over the centuries with 42 artists sharing diverse perspectives on the theme. The work on display formed part of an ongoing exploration into body-image, physical impairment and queer perspectives on beauty, health and the art of antiquity

Communicating sustainable uses of plastics in a museum setting: the case of the Museum of Design in Plastics

Museums are traditionally places that communicate often complicated ideas and concepts to a wide-ranging audience. They have been seen as places where ‘experts’ (those with the knowledge), for example curators, have imparted wisdom to the public (those without the knowledge). More recently, museums have become places to mediate and to generate conversations, with the acknowledgement that the visiting public are not ‘without knowledge’ but bring important experience to the meaning making process. This chapter covers the role mediation in a museum setting to explore the sustainable use of plastics, a contested material family. It uses the Museum of Design in Plastics as a case study to explore how a deep focus on a single material family can help visitors to understand its value

Microcultures of collaboration: entangled artistic pedagogies for students and educator

This research unearths insights into the entangled pedagogic processes that occurred between students and educator when co-creating during a contemporary art project called Sonic Camouflage. The off-campus project-based learning environment of Sonic Camouflage was shown to boost and intensify learning for all participants, with an integrated re-energising tri-role for the educator to partake in art, education, and research practice. The research discovered that Sonic Camouflage contained intertwined learning processes that I term ‘microcultures of collaboration’. These microcultures are unravelled to reveal new insights surrounding improvisational learning using a cultural instigator as provocation and around individual artistic development. Sonic Camouflage was also shown to react to pervasive segregating media and technology by generating an immersive sense of belonging to a co-supportive learning community that instilled an empowering resilience for participants’ future art practice. Dialogic and collaborative constructivist approaches were integral methods employed to undertake the research

Contact: parts 1 & 2

Contact is a unique configuration of eight artists, which is structured equally across two exhibitions, at New Art Projects, London. These artists work in distinct and interrelated mediums and forms that explore material, temporal and spatial relations working with stil and moving images, analogue and digital practices, human and machine processes. Their distinct approaches and applications produce different, but related, medium engagement, viewing regimes and cross-disciplinary discourse. They are in contact with materials, forms, context, one another, and are part of an ongoing conversation that generates new connections and ideas. Curated by: Andrew Vallance Part 1: 20 July-17 August 2024 Jenny Baines, Sophie Clements, Carali McCali, Cathy Rogers Part 2: 18 January-8 February 2025 Savinder Bual, Jim Hobbs, Simon Payne, Andrew Vallanc