Fashion? Hackers!

The philosophy of hacking has been inspired me ever since I read the autobiographical novel La’mant by Marguerite Duras in my childhood, which may seem to have no connections whatsoever with hacking in a technical sense. However, her way of writing and the story she portraits in her book was unusually beautiful and outrageous. I recognised the story as a hack of love. In this thesis, a comparison of the fashion phenomenon before and after the internet will be discussed for a better understanding of fashion discourse within the information age. On the one hand, fashion itself holds no subversive power, the commodification and incorporation of a subculture usually begin with the fashion style that represented the subculture got adopted by popular culture, subsequently, the whole content of the subculture is isolated from its original meaning. On the other hand, the internet has created a rip in fashion history by breaking the traditional local fashion autonomy and forcing it to adapt to a global platform, where more opportunities are generated, along with risks of losing the original cultural meaning and brand longevity. The practical goal of the thesis is to study the hacker subculture, therefore extract its style, philosophy, and methodology to inspire an innovative way of thinking and doing fashion design. I designed a fashion collection based on the hacker wardrobe items to express my admiration towards the hacker subculture. Code and math have been used on generating the prints, as well as designing the clothing construction. The pattern-making and tailoring process is partially computer-aided, reinforced a streamlined production process. Meanwhile, the spirit of hacking serves as the underlying philosophy of the design and production process. Ideologically, the thesis raised a question mark on the fashion industry which placed in a technological industrialised society context. The question mark may be the answer towards a new way of considering fashion either as a passion or as a career. More broadly, the hacking spirit may inspire a new way of life

The Mill Project

I am exploring bricolage as the primary artistic gesture in the work that supports this thesis, focusing on the history of a single site in West Vancouver, where lies a remark­able subcultural artifact: the Inglewood ‘Mill’ Skatepark - the first skateboard park constructed in Canada in 1977, and subsequently buried in 1984. The skateboard subculture is layered with three other histories: the Shields Shingle Mill (1916-1926), West Vancouver Secondary School (1927-present), and my own lived experience as a suburban skateboarder. The approach of the project has been that of a pseudo-archae­ological ‘excavation’, digging through the layers of the site's historiography, engaging with questions around authorship and authenticity, historical accuracy and objectivity. Through the detournement of archival images (photomontage), an assemblage of site-related constructions, and a series of interventions, surveys, and excavations of the site, histories are subverted and conflated. its material and intellectual capacity - to recompose dominant histories, ideologies, and mythologies. Bricolage is discussed in relation to appropriation, myth, and subcultures (specifically in the way bricolage is manifested in skateboard culture). My investigation is supported, primarily, by the following writers and their theories: on the topic of bricolage, Claude Levi-Strauss and Dick Hebdige; on the topic of subcul­tures, Dick Hebdige and Iain Borden; on the topic of myth, Roland Barthes and Claude Levi-Strauss; and on the topic of appropriation, a whole host of writers and their dis­cussions around postmodernism in the late seventies and eighties. Further examinations of these topics are found in the collage works of Martha Rosler, the pseudo-archaeo­logical site interventions of Mark Dion, the ad-hoc constructions of collaborators Folke Köbberling and Martin Kaltwasser, and in the bricolage-installation, Vancouver School, by the collective Futura Bold

Bricolage Perspective on the Practice of Local Cafeterias Launched in Disaster-stricken Areas

This paper aims to promote understanding of the dynamics of creative support in resource-poor environments for latent victims of disasters. The existing literature provides important insights on the practices of experts during disasters via the notion of improvisation, but also suff ers a lack of systematic discussion of practices outside expert systems. Here case studies are conducted of two local cafeterias launched by private citizens in the aftermath of disasters that took place in Japan recently. From the perspective of bricolage, the idea of “making do with what is at hand”, both the outcomes and processes related to the cafeterias are discussed. By re-imagining the value of material and non-material resources, the cafeteria organizers were able to mobilize a creative disaster response that was beyond the abilities of experts and the existing system. The analysis of the two cases shows the importance of bricolage as a tool of value creation

An examination of 7th-grade composers' strategies and processes and the compositions they created using music technology in a constructionist-oriented learning environment

The purpose of this study was to examine 7th-grade composers’ strategies, processes, and perceptions, and the compositions they created using music technology in a constructionist-oriented learning environment. This embedded multiple case study examined the composition activities of eight 7th-grade students with varied musical backgrounds. During the 10-week data collection period, participants composed music using Hyperscore software underpinned by a constructionist-oriented theoretical framework. Hyperscore facilitates intuitive music composition and enables a composer to notate music with graphic notation without the need for understanding conventional music notation. I found that novice composers with relatively little to no formal musical training or experience creating original music could produce compositions emulating the strategies of professional composers. I also concluded that participants relied on inspiration as do professional composers and were able to intuitively and successfully create compositions including multiple sonic elements with minimal guidance and instruction. Participants exhibited evidence of thinking in and about sound. Findings also alerted future music educators and researchers to the potential of graphic notation software such as Hyperscore to undermine thinking in sound because of its unique sketch-oriented design that might emphasize symbol (i.e., drawing) before sound. I found that technology effectively scaffolded two participants’ processes. Contrastingly, in two cases and possibly more, results showed that participants might have benefited from more situated and responsive scaffolding by the instructor. My study also supported previous researchers’ findings that a balance between freedoms and constraints is essential to a novice composer’s success. Participants expressed general skepticism of themselves as bona fide composers, a desire or need for more time to develop their compositions, and value of agency, originality, and prior experience. Participants conveyed that individual and collaborative composition processes each had advantages and disadvantages; however, overall, they preferred collaboration over individual work. Participants attempted to reconcile their knowledge of traditional notation with graphic notation and drew from prior instrumental experience, familiar music, and their previous compositions to develop their pieces. I also discussed the extent to which and how particular Papertian, Piagetian, and Vygotskian theoretical constructs revealed themselves in my study