Narratives of Loss

My research revolves around impermanence, loss, and the grief that accompanies loss. My thesis work consists of digital collages interlaced with short stories, an interactive digital media piece, traditionally-made collages, a picture book, art objects, and an assortment of other supporting work. My ultimate aim is to employ both traditional techniques and digital skills to create visual narratives that supply glimpses into my personal history of loss and that speak to life’s brevity

Digital Collage Platform With Reaction Stickers

Users can share media such as images, videos, animations, etc. with each other via social media, content sharing and messaging services. Many such services allow other users to react to such media, e.g., by providing reactions via use of emoji, comments, tags, or other mechanisms. The reactions are typically for the entire content, not on specific portions of the content. This disclosure describes a digital collage sharing platform that allows users to create and share digital collages that can include text, links, images, emoji, videos, animations, etc. Other users can react to such digital collages by providing their reactions in the form of stickers that are applied at specific positions on the digital collage. Reactions from multiple users are automatically grouped together when displaying the digital collage. With permission from the creator, portions of content from a digital collage can be reused in other digital collage creations

Shared: CHECK MATE SQUARED

New digital photobooth interactive work, period original photo-booth analogue collages, drawings, inkjet and ctype prints. Money raised for Macmillan Charity

Blueprints physical to digital: curation of media to support ongoingness

Through describing ‘Blueprints’, a series of fabric collages, we detail a method for translating physical properties of objects into digital materialities of media compilations. This method has emerged within a piece of design research seeking to develop new ways to curate digital media to support ongoingness. The project context centres on working firstly with people who have a life limiting illness, secondly people living with an early stage of dementia and thirdly people who are bereaved. Ongoingness is a theoretical construct denoting an active dialogical component of ‘continued bonds’, which is an approach within bereavement care championing practices that enable a continued sense of connection between someone bereaved and a person who has died. ‘Blueprints’ are fabric collages made from scraps of fabric symbolising digital media (in this case photographs) from 2 people – one bereaved and one now deceased. The physical qualities that result from making the fabric collages (variation in layerings, thicknesses, stitching, fraying) each map onto directions for how the corresponding digital media will be composed in a compilation, and serves as a collaborative method of curating media in new ways. The ‘Blueprints’ method enables us to research if and how physical making of things can serve as a gentle way to engage with the complexities of media curation. It considers the potential value of indirect ways of curating digital media to enable ongoing connections between people through the unexpected compilations that the method creates

Exploring the user experience through collage

We explore the use of collage in requirements elicitation, as a tool to support potential end-users in expressing their impressions, understanding, and emotions regarding a system

Digital libraries for creative communities

Digital library technologies have a great deal to offer to creative, design communities. They can enable large collections of text, images, music, video and other information objects to be organised and accessed in interesting and diverse ways. Ordinary people—people not traditionally viewed as 'creators' or 'designers'—can now conceive, assemble, build, and disseminate new information collections. This paper explores the development rationale behind the Greenstone digital library technology. We also examine three examples of creative new techniques for accessing and presenting information in digital libraries and stress the importance of tailoring information access to support the requirements of the users and application area

Hide and Seek

I see myself as an analyst of my surroundings. I have a predisposition for noticing and appreciating miniscule details in life. Consequently, I take photographs and make digital drawings of found objects that possess textured qualities. Whether walking to class, waiting for the train, even sitting in my kitchen at home, texture is everywhere. My collages are meant to avoid fixity; but most especially, my collages are meant to confront the notion of abstraction and reality. Through digital imaging, I alter reality by manipulating the color, light and detail of an object at close range. To me, abstraction is a complete departure from reality, yet reality requires creative interpretation and expression. I feel that as an artist I put my creative spin on my observations while being true to the source. I want my viewers to think of memories of specific locations when viewing my work; I want my work to be seen as a unique entity to each individual. My intention is to magnify all of the tiny, insignificant details that very often go unnoticed yet still deserve our appreciation