1,977 research outputs found

    The Craft Hub Journey:Project Catalogue

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    Introducing the Craft Hub project and the International Exhibition ‘Investigating Craft Practices across Europe’, including its journey across Europe, the artistic curation and set-up methodology for a replicable, accessible and sustainable design, adapting to seven unique exhibition spaces and content. The recurring themes, Heritage, Sustainability, Experimentation, Technological Innovation, Empowerment and Social Inclusion create common threads running through the activities and research carried out by each Craft Hub partner

    Southern Adventist University Undergraduate Catalog 2023-2024

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    Southern Adventist University\u27s undergraduate catalog for the academic year 2023-2024.https://knowledge.e.southern.edu/undergrad_catalog/1123/thumbnail.jp

    Chinese Knitwear Brands: The need for creative design to result in global business success

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    Chinese cashmere knitwear companies have become suppliers of international fashion brands because of their technological excellence, advantages of raw materials and competitive prices. However, their in-house brands are steadily declining. In the past 15 years, Chinese cashmere brands have progressively lost their market share to Chinese and Western fashion brands, with a few notable exceptions. Their brands lack differentiation from other Chinese competitors, causing low price competition, which contributes to sustainability issues such as unsold stock and material/manpower waste. The decline is likely to continue as the brands serve only an ageing market, rather than attracting younger generations to their products. Chinese cashmere companies invest little in design, which is a significant limitation for improving the brands’ opportunity to become successful and sustainable businesses. This study looks for solutions from the design perspective. The research aimed to investigate what design can do to help deal with the current problems of the Chinese knitwear brands to improve their prospects for future business success. The objectives of the study were to enquire into the challenges and opportunities facing the Chinese knitwear sector, to evaluate current design practice in knitwear brands, to understand how design and brand management can be integrated to generate a sustainable brand. Research questions were developed to explore the brand and design problems, the role of design and organisational structure, what the barriers and enablers for a thriving design culture were alongside possible solutions for design improvement. A pragmatic philosophy underpinned research design, guiding the adoption of methods in response to research questions. Interviews with stakeholders from both the knitwear industry and design education were undertaken. In addition, a case study using design action research with immersive field research was developed for investigating the knitwear brand issues; furthermore, a knitwear collection was created using western design approaches to demonstrate an exemplar design process for the sector and to illustrate the differences to current Chinese design methods. The study argues the obstacles to design culture enrichment in Chinese knitwear brands was caused by their design context, lack of brand positioning, limited understanding of their consumers and business models that are not fit for purpose. An absence of experienced leadership creates unclear design direction, instead of collections centred around a theme; Chinese brands sell unconnected designs. Brands lack the distinct brand characteristics that distinguish them from their competitors. The contribution to knowledge made by this study includes the identification of the reasons for the decline in Chinese cashmere brands, an understanding of their barriers to design culture to developing good designs and it also highlights the lack of awareness of sustainability issues in the sector. The study sheds new light on the rarely acknowledged issue of how to upgrade these brands as modern business for younger consumers, and how to enrich the design culture for brand business growth within sustainable contexts. The thesis analyses in depth the causes for the decline in these brands and makes recommendations for how design can make a contribution to reversing the brands’ decline and increasing their sustainability

    2023-2024 Catalog

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    The 2023-2024 Governors State University Undergraduate and Graduate Catalog is a comprehensive listing of current information regarding:Degree RequirementsCourse OfferingsUndergraduate and Graduate Rules and Regulation

    The Long Lives of Old Lutes: The Cultural and Material History of the Veneration of Old Musical Instruments

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    This study examines the object biographies of musical instruments and the function of age in the cultural and material history of the lute. It follows the central question of why old instruments were valued more greatly than new ones and what measures had to be executed to adapt the objects to the ever-changing musical style. It traces the lute in its several cultural functions from the 17th to the 19th century: as a musical instrument, as a symbol, as a commodity, and as an object that had to be adapted, repaired, and altered by several generations of lute makers. This interdisciplinary approach uses a broad spectrum of sources from treatises, lute manuals, forewords in printed lute music, and depictions of lutes in literature, poetry, and visual arts to construct a narrative of the appreciation of old musical instruments. It investigates the material changes that were necessary to ensure their continued use by a profound study of more than 100 instruments in public and private collections. The different business models and prices in the trade of lutes are compared and connected to the common knowledge about old instruments and their brand characteristics among lute players. This study employs methods from musicology, organology, material culture studies, acoustics, economics, art history, technology, and digital humanities. This multivalent approach enhances the understanding of the general dynamics of commodities as status symbols, object biographies, and functional objects and connects them to the material and cultural history of objects using the lute as a case study.Die Studie untersucht die Objektbiografien von Musikinstrumenten und die Funktion des Alters fĂŒr die kulturelle und materielle Geschichte von Lauteninstrumenten. Sie geht der zentralen Frage nach, warum alte Instrumente höher geschĂ€tzt wurden als neue und welche Maßnahmen ergriffen werden mussten, um die Objekte an den sich stĂ€ndig verĂ€ndernden Musikstil anzupassen. Sie verfolgt die Laute in ihren verschiedenen kulturellen Funktionen vom 17. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert: als Musikinstrument, als Symbol, als Gebrauchsgegenstand und als Objekt, das von mehreren Generationen von Lautenbauern angepasst, repariert und verĂ€ndert werden musste. Der interdisziplinĂ€re Ansatz nutzt ein breites Spektrum von Quellen wie Traktate, LautenhandbĂŒcher, Vorworte in gedruckter Lautenmusik und Darstellungen von Lauten in Literatur, Poesie und bildender Kunst, um die Geschichte der WertschĂ€tzung alter Musikinstrumente nachzuverfolgen. Anhand einer eingehenden Untersuchung von mehr als 100 Instrumenten in öffentlichen und privaten Sammlungen werden die Eingriffe untersucht, die notwendig waren, um ihre weitere Nutzung zu gewĂ€hrleisten. Die unterschiedlichen GeschĂ€ftsmodelle und Preise im Handel mit Lauten werden verglichen und mit dem Wissensvorrat unter Lautenisten ĂŒber alte Instrumente und deren Markencharakteristiken in Verbindung gebracht. Die Studie verwendet Methoden aus der Musikwissenschaft, der Organologie, der materiellen Kulturwissenschaft, der Akustik, der Ökonomie, der Kunstgeschichte, der Instrumentenbautechnologie und der Digital Humanities. Der multivalente Ansatz verbessert das VerstĂ€ndnis der allgemeinen Dynamik von Waren als Statussymbole, von Objektbiografien funktionaler Objekte und verbindet sie mit der materiellen und kulturellen Geschichte der Objekte am Beispiel der Laute

    Once More, With Feeling: Partnering With Learners to Re-see the College Experience Through Metaphor and Sensory Language

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    This study focuses on better understanding students and their internal worlds through conceptual metaphor theory and sensory language. Using a phenomenological and arts-based approach, I examined students’ metaphorical constructions of their college experiences and the sensory language and information informing those constructions. By engaging participants in a multimodal process to re-see their experience through connoisseurship and criticism, I explored the following research questions: How do students metaphorically structure their college experience? What sensory language do college students use to describe the metaphorical dimensions of their college experience? How does sensory information shape the metaphorical structuring of their college experience? Through conversations centered on participant-generated images and chosen sensory language, I identified five complex metaphors that represented participants’ constructions of their college experience: college is an unwieldy package; college is up, forward, and out; college is current and future nostalgia; college is a prism; and college is a movie and peers are the soundtrack. By considering these themes, it may be possible for educators to better partner with diverse learners to design personally meaningful experiences that support student development and success. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA (https://aura.antioch.edu) and OhioLINK ETD Center (https://etd.ohiolink.edu)

    Pandemic Protagonists: Viral (Re)Actions in Pandemic and Corona Fictions

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    During the first mandatory lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic, citizens worldwide turned to "pandemic fictions" or started to produce their own »Corona Fictions« across different media. These accounts of (previously) experienced or imagined health crises feature a great variety of protagonists and their (re)actions in response to the exceptional circumstances. The contributors to this volume take a closer look at different pandemic protagonists in fictional narratives relating to the Covid-19 pandemic as well as in existing pandemic fictions. Thereby they provide new insights into pandemic narratives from a cultural, literary, and media studies perspective from antiquity to today

    Southern Adventist University Undergraduate Catalog 2022-2023

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    Southern Adventist University\u27s undergraduate catalog for the academic year 2022-2023.https://knowledge.e.southern.edu/undergrad_catalog/1121/thumbnail.jp

    Representing Reactive attachment disorder in contemporary fiction: creating new paths for neurodiverse characters

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    The first element of this work is a novel titled June in the Garden, which follows a neurodiverse protagonist with a diagnosis of reactive attachment disorder. The next section of the exegesis will provide insight into her atypical profile, particularly her traits of social disinhibition, an absence of emotion, affected cognitive processing and reasoning skills, and an inability to initiate and maintain relationships with others. The second element will include two parts: (1) a critical analysis of key diagnostic terms used in the clinical field to describe disorders relating to social-emotional detachment and disengagement, specifically reactive attachment disorder (RAD); (2) discussions on the current depiction of social-emotional detachment and, more broadly, of neurodiversity in contemporary fiction. This second part will argue that the two main pathways to depict a detachment disorder, like RAD, is heterogeneous characterisation, defined by common patterns that are exhibited in the novels selected, and typography, defined by unconventional text arrangement or a presence of visuals on the printed page. Aspects of typography will include deconstruction of the standard print form to allow for creative formatting, such as increased spacing, incomplete sentences, blank pages, and bolding of words. Another aspect will include the addition of specific visuals, such as conceptual word sharks (The Raw Shark Texts, Steven Hall, 2007), black and white photographs (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer, 2005), and mathematical formulas and blueprints (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon, 2003). These two methods, heterogeneous characterisation and typography, will explain my creative process for developing a neurodiverse protagonist, showing connections between my work and the work of other fiction writers. However, primarily this research will convey a new pathway for an atypical protagonist with a disorder relatively unknown in the wider community, to recontextualise the presentation of social-emotional detachment in fiction. I also hope to highlight the gaps in RAD research, particularly at the adult level, and to show how RAD can be portrayed realistically in a contemporary novel, without being too ‘gimmicky’
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