Researching children as becoming writers in their first year of school

Young children’s writing activity in English Reception classrooms is framed by a rigid developmental model whereby children are conceived of as ‘becoming’ writers. However, recent postSstructuralist research suggests that writing activity, as an assemblage of objects, bodies, expressions and territories, involves constant change rather than being fixed to particular frameworks. This ethnographic enquiry focussed on six children in one Reception class during one school year. Deleuzoguattarian ideas were ‘plugged into’ a sociocultural, multimodal understanding of young children’s writing and the children were reSconceptualised as ‘becoming’: creating and disrupting multiple connections and relations through their actions as writers and research participants. Narrative observations, field notes, photographs, video and artefacts were analysed rhizomatically and vignettes of data were formed into discursive assemblages. The findings indicate that children’s writing within openSended play in the classroom was a moving, overlapping and connective ensemble, utilising many different modes of expression (drawing, text making, map making, copying, etc.). The writing materials used in these encounters ‘mattered’ to children: their sensorial qualities, the histories associated with them, and the potential they had to be adapted. Writing activity, however, was often organised by adults into regular discreet phonics sessions where the children’s opportunities for material intraSaction, social interaction and links to other writing experiences, were limited. Alongside this, discourses surrounding writing in the classroom were reflective of the curriculum ‘ideal’, and certain modes of expression were privileged. The conclusions suggest that containing young children’s writing within representative acts driven by external outcomes limits the potential of writing to be a sensory, embodied, material, and connected activity. Adults in schools should foster children’s playful writing encounters where these elements exist. Effective practices are needed to encourage young children’s multiple modes of expression, enabling them to build the language associations needed for their writing to be meaningful and desirous

EXPLORING MATERIALITY BY CONSTRUCTING THE VISUAL THROUGH SOUND

This thesis provides an autoethnographic account of my exploration into sound and its capacity to shape the experience of materiality in audiovisual media. I demonstrate through film and installation works how different sound and image combinations facilitate ways of viewing that blur the boundary between seeing and hearing to form imaginative and engaging sensory experiences. The project expands on phenomenological frameworks examining the connection between embodiment and cinematic experiences, by positing how sound materiality is capable of manipulating the processes through which experience is formed. I argue that synchronous sound heightens or skews the experience a viewer has of visual objects, depending on the level of congruence observed between their respective materialities. The project has implications for the development of sound in video and artistic virtual reality works, where scoring techniques are sought to enhance immersion and expressive embodied experience. This project will be of particular interest to creative coders in the Processing and Csound community who seek to incorporate sound or visuals into their art works

EXPLORING MATERIALITY BY CONSTRUCTING THE VISUAL THROUGH SOUND

This thesis provides an autoethnographic account of my exploration into sound and its capacity to shape the experience of materiality in audiovisual media. I demonstrate through film and installation works how different sound and image combinations facilitate ways of viewing that blur the boundary between seeing and hearing to form imaginative and engaging sensory experiences. The project expands on phenomenological frameworks examining the connection between embodiment and cinematic experiences, by positing how sound materiality is capable of manipulating the processes through which experience is formed. I argue that synchronous sound heightens or skews the experience a viewer has of visual objects, depending on the level of congruence observed between their respective materialities. The project has implications for the development of sound in video and artistic virtual reality works, where scoring techniques are sought to enhance immersion and expressive embodied experience. This project will be of particular interest to creative coders in the Processing and Csound community who seek to incorporate sound or visuals into their art works

Towards a fugitive press: materiality and the printed photograph in artists’ books

The aim of my research is to demonstrate how a practice of hand made books based on the materiality of the photographic print and photo-reprography, could engage with notions of touch in the digital age. We take for granted that most artists’ books are made from paper using lithography and bound in the codex form, yet this technology has served neither producer nor reader well. As Hayles (2002:22) observed: We are not generally accustomed to thinking about the book as a material metaphor, but in fact it is an artifact whose physical properties and historical usage structure our interactions with it in ways obvious and subtle. My research examines the discourse surrounding the materiality of the photographic print within artists’ publishing and explores book handling as a research method to identify non-codex forms that invite non-sequential reading, physical interaction and touch. The primary purpose of the practice element of my research is to test disruptive making strategies and fugitive materials, in order to make tacit knowledge explicit in the physical forms of prototypes and finished artists’ books that operate beyond our horizons of expectations. My practice interconnects the separate fields of documentary photography and curating photography and the vernacular together with visual humour and seeks to restore a connection with the ‘thingness’ of photography largely absent in the post-digital age

Exploring Written Artefacts

This collection, presented to Michael Friedrich in honour of his academic career at of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, traces key concepts that scholars associated with the Centre have developed and refined for the systematic study of manuscript cultures. At the same time, the contributions showcase the possibilities of expanding the traditional subject of ‘manuscripts’ to the larger perspective of ‘written artefacts’

Achtzehntes Jahrhundert digital

Digitale Technologien und Methoden haben in den vergangenen Jahren immer mehr Einfluss auf die geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung gewonnen. Dies gilt nicht minder fur das achtzehnte Jahrhundert: In allen einschlagigen Fachbereichen werden seit Jahren Texte, Bilder und Metadaten digital generiert, verarbeitet, analysiert und prasentiert. Ergebnis ist eine bisher nie dagewesene Konfrontation mit quantifizierenden Methoden auch in qualitativ arbeitenden Disziplinen sowie die Notwendigkeit einer Auseinandersetzung mit nationalen und globalen Datenstandards. Diese Standards entscheiden uber die Interoperabilitat - gewissermassen die internationale Anschlussfahigkeit - der Daten und somit uber die Nachhaltigkeit der eigenen Forschung. Die Osterreichische Gesellschaft zur Erforschung des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts widmet ihr 34. Jahrbuch 2019 dem Thema der digitalen Forschung zum 18. Jahrhundert in Zentraleuropa. Die einzelnen vorgestellten Beitrage sind nicht nur Projektberichte, sondern referieren die Ergebnisse digital durchgefuhrter Forschungsarbeit. Sie eroffnen ein Panorama der moglichen methodischen Zugange, von den Bildwissenschaften uber Netzwerkanalyse und -darstellung hin zu digitaler Edition, Korpuslinguistik und digitaler Sprachwissenschaft sowie der Vernetzung von Forschungsdaten mit den Daten von Kulturerbe-Institutionen

Materializing Performance: The Interactions that Enact Inclusions, Exclusions and Arrangements in Charity Social Performance Reports

The accounting concept materiality is theorized then elaborated in two empirical studies. Materiality is theorized as a performative enactment of entangled objects and idealities that in turn influences which objects and idealities come to matter. Theorized in this way, materiality is not understood as judgements of human preparers and auditors, but a material-discursive practice interacting with agentive objects (such as templates and information technologies) and idealities (including professional norms). Inscriptions in accounting systems and public-facing reports are the traces of these interactions, which collectively constitute a text that is itself an entanglement of matter and meaning, and that itself enacts an ongoing becoming of what matters. The theorization of materiality is elaborated in the context of charity reporting on social (mission-related) performance. Materiality in charity reporting is a pressing question in its own right, and a useful context in which to bring visibility to materiality concepts that are taken-for-given in financial accounting contexts. The first study elaborates how things come to matter, and not matter, examining social performance reporting in charity annual accounts from 1865 to 2014. It focuses on the interactions of templates, expertise and printing technology in the inclusions, exclusions and arrangements of performance information in charity annual reports. The second study interrogates the differences in materiality by comparing six reports, each based on the same performance measures from a real charity. It focuses on the interactions of templates and prior inscriptions in the differential materializations. A final essay develops policy recommendations in light of the new theorization of materiality by reconsidering the idea of the reasonable investor and elaborating the concept of the reasonable donor