Exhibition catalogue: 'Something Possible Everywhere: Pier 34, NYC 1983-84'

'Something Possible Everywhere: Pier 34, NYC 1983-84' Exhibition at 205 Hudson Street Gallery in New York, 30 September to 20 November 201

An Essay Concerning the Architecture of Conversation

An edited and designed article adapted from a series of informal meetings, emails, notes and a public conversation held between artist Lizzie Ridout and artist/writer/curator Maria Christoforidou. These formed part of Lizzie Ridout's exhibition 'Ways to Talk & Yet Say Nothing, or Ways to Not Talk & Yet Say Everything', bringing together a body of printed works, drawings and objects. Shown at Plymouth University in 2012, this exhibition coincided with the completion of a publication also called 'Ways to Talk & Yet Say Nothing, or Ways to Not Talk & Yet Say Everything'. The publication is the result of a collaboration with Women's Studio Workshop, Rosendale, NY, USA

What’s the point of an MA in design anyway?

An opinion piece on the merits of undertaking a Master's degree in design, centring on the value of developing critical thinking as a means of uncovering the 'hidden curriculum' of previous decades of schooling

Rewind-Play-Fast Forward

This book-chapter examines the works of Ainsley Hillard (UK), Christy Matson (USA), Jane Harris (UK), Barbara Layne (Canada), Janis Jefferies (UK) and Nancy Tilbury (UK) as they as framed by future-facing paradigms of textiles and technologies seeking to incorporate sound and interaction into otherwise visual registers. The writing is subdivided into sections on ephemerality, temporality, transitoriness and fast-forwarding to reflect the future-oriented aesthetic. This book accompanied an exhibition of the same name that I curated at Mykolas Žilinskas Art Gallery, Kaunas, Lithuania (the city’s main gallery). This exhibition comprised five installed works to showcase audio/visual textiles which use new materials and technologies

An Invisible Gorilla: Is It a Matter of Focus of Attention?

How to evaluate users’ attention level in a video task is a challenge. One of the conventional methods is to link users’ focus of attention to their performance under-taken in a video. However, this is not always true in a video environment, as users’ poor performance may be resulted from some other reasons rather than a lack of focus of attention. In this article, we demonstrated our assumption by using an Electroen-cephalography (EEG) sensor, which measured the users’ attention level in a video task. Our results showed one case that some of the users with a poor performance in the video task had the same level of attention compared to those users with a good performance. In particular, an interference object in the video, aimed for distracting the users’ attention, had no impact on some of the users’ focus when they were al-ready involved in the video task

TaleEnders and the Heritage of Welsh Cricket

This project between Glamorgan Cricket and the University of Glamorgan seeks to explore the use of storytelling and technology to populate the new Museum of Welsh Cricket at Sophia Gardens as part of the current £9.6 million redevelopment in advance of hosting an Ashes Tests in 2009. There are 264 cricket clubs, affiliated to the Cricket Board of Wales – the arm of Glamorgan Cricket which oversees the recreational side of the game – many of which have long and diverse histories. This rich heritage lends itself to a major narrative research project to gather stories from players, support staff and spectators from these clubs which can then populate part of the museum. Glamorgan Cricket and their development partners (e.g. CC4 – Cardiff http://www.cc4web.tv/about.html) are keen to explore the use of digital and mobile technologies to deliver the stories to visitors to both the Museum and to the increased programme of matches that are anticipated following the redevelopment and to explore digital storytelling as a way of creating high-quality authentic content. The ground development includes the installation of a large digital screen/scoreboard which might also broadcast digital stories during intervals and rain breaks. This would be an innovative use of the available technology and would place Sophia Gardens as a leader in developing an enhanced visitor experience. The material gathered would also have potential benefit for Glamorgan Cricket, as it develops a range of educational products for use through its recently-appointed Cricket in the Community Officer

The CP-QAE-I: A Video Dataset for Exploring the Effects of Personality and Culture on Perceived Quality and Affect in Multimedia

Perception of quality and affect are subjective, driven by a complex interplay between system and human factors. Is it, however, possible to model these factors to predict subjective perception? To pursue this question, broader collaboration is needed to sample all aspects of personality, culture, and other human factors. Thus, an appropriate dataset is needed to integrate such efforts. Here, the CP-QAE-I is proposed. This is a video dataset containing 144 video sequences based on 12 short movie clips. These vary by: frame rate; frame dimension; bit-rate; and affect. An evaluation by 76 participants drawn from the United Kingdom, Singapore, India, and China suggests adequate distinction between the video sequences in terms of perceived quality as well as positive and negative affect. Nationality also emerged as a significant predictor, supporting the rationale for further study. By sharing the dataset, this paper aims to promote work modeling human factors in multimedia perception

Craft and Technology from a Pragmatic Perspective

This peer reviewed paper was presented within the ‘Craft and Technology’ strand of this international conference. This paper seeks to contextualise work by craftspeople and designer makers who use digital technologies by discussing ways in which technology can be defined and the theoretical frameworks within which these definitions sit. The paper highlights some of the ways in which technology and technological mediation is commonly discussed and relates these views to three broad theoretical characterisations of technology. This includes; a 'conservative' characterisation based on rigidly quantifiable aspects of technology and draws on the tradition of logical positivism, a 'critical' characterisation referencing the work of Martin Heidegger and Tony Fry, and a ‘pragmatic’ characterisation based, to some degree, on the work of John Dewey. The paper argues that the pragmatic characterisation is the most appropriate for discussing technology’s employment within craft practices, and through employing this characterisation a new perspective on the relationship between craft practices and digital technologies can be gained. This includes a recognition of the impact technological mediation has on both the way you engage with the world and your perception of it (i.e. technologies are more than functional tools). In addition, through highlighting the pragmatic belief that theory and practice are bound together in the process of active inquiry, this paper provides a new argument for the worth of holistic activities such as craft

Agile Behaviour Design: A Design Approach for Structuring Game Characters and Interactions

In this paper, a novel design methodology---Agile Behaviour Design---is presented which accommodates the requirements for developing complex game agents suitable for industrial environments. An essential part of the design approach is to supported independent work of both designers and programmers by reducing bottleneck situations. The approach then fosters the creation of more loose and fluid interactions between design and implementation leaving more freedom for creative expression

The vacuum cleaner under the stairs: women, modernity and domestic technology in Britain between the wars

This paper draws on and extends the author’s earlier work on the history of the Daily Mail Ideal Home exhibition and suburban modernity in Britain. It contributes to historical research in material culture studies and design history on modernity and domesticity, drawing on contemporary ethnographic methodologies. It explores the ways in which new domestic technologies helped form modern identities for women as housewives and consumers in the inter-war years in Britain. This paper rejects functionalist critiques of domestic labour-saving technologies by feminists and Modernist design historians. It argues that for many women who lived in the new suburbs the significance of technology was in its symbolism rather than its rational claims to functionalism and efficiency. It posits that although appliances did not necessarily save labour, they enhanced the status of the task, by recognising women’s labour. It argues that domestic appliances were not just valued for their labour-saving potential; they were also valued for the images of modernity that they projected. Moreover, it argues that the motive for the acquisition of appliances could be to participate in a shared sociability