The design of surfaces, between empathy and new figuration

Nowadays design languages seem anew defined through images and figures that appear increasingly distant from abstraction. In the time that we live in, where it is prevailing a dominance of individual needs rather common desires, an abandon of abstraction in favour of new figuration, stimulates the opportunity to investigate a new dyad, ‘Project and Empathy’; these terms could summarize well the expanded modality of physical and psychological interaction between people – as individual – and artefacts, through the increasing role of surfaces. The whole world of postmodern image, especially through the digital technologies, tends to offer hyper realistic aesthetic simulacra, altered nature: this is the current world of extension of feelings and sense, in which we are immersed daily. This condition affect the approaches to design, which require a new thinking around technologies, method and tools from training to practice the activity of design: a new attitude for materiality of things, beyond the immateriality of digital reality

Weaving and architectural structure

None provided

Report on the Office of Naval Research Shallow-Water Acoustic Workshop 1-3 October 1996

The results of an unclassified workshop on Shallow Water Acoustics, jointly sponsored by ONR and DARPA, are presented. The workshop was held on October 1-3, 1996 at the Naval Research Laboratory, Stennis Space Center, and included 83 participants specializing in ocean acoustics, geology and geophysics, physical oceanography, and other disciplines relevant to shallow water research. The goal of the workshop was to help determine the current status of and future directions for shallow water acoustics research. The report summarizes the deliberations and recommendations of the workshop, and includes detailed report from the three working groups (bottom, water column, and modeling and signal processing) as well as from the workshop moderator (Dr. James Lynch, WHOI).Funding was provided by the Office of Naval Research through Contract No. N00014-96-1-1031. Supported by ONR and DARPA

Geology and Structure of the Western and Southern Margins of Twin Sisters Mountain, North Cascades, Washington

Detailed mapping of the Goat Mountain dunite and the western and southern margins of the Twin Sisters dunite indicates that the structural setting of these bodies is dominated by high-angle northwest-trending fault zones. The Goat Mountain dunite overlies rocks of the Chilliwack Group and Yellow Aster Complex as a lowangle, west-dipping slab approximately 2500 feet thick. Cretaceous phyllite west of Goat Mountain overlies Chilliwack Group rocks along a similar low-angle west-dipping fault contact. These structures are both truncated by high-angle fault zones. The timing of faulting is poorly constrained. High-angle faulting is at least post-Eocene through Holocene (?), and may have begun as early as Late Cretaceous. Thrust emplacement of the Cretaceous phyllite over rocks of the Chilliwack Group may or may not have been contemporaneous with dunite emplacement

Educational Experiences in Making Art: An Investigation of Process-Based Learning in the Studio

Educational Experiences in Making Art: An Investigation of Process-Based Learning in the Studio Sarah Elizabeth Lickley Using a combination of practice-led research methods and process-based learning techniques, this thesis explores the possible benefits and limitations of documentation and reflection processes in the learning environment of an artist’s studio. The researcher completed six large scale artworks while practicing rigorous documentation and reflection. An analysis through the visual means of concept mapping revealed multiple insights on the positive effects of process-based learning in the studio, as well as the nuances and difficulties of taking on this type of learning. Over the course of three months of directed studio practice, the researcher identified multiple positive effects of process-based learning. Included in these beneficial outcomes is consistent and continual artistic growth. Sustained self-directed learning is a valuable skill that can aid individual artists and students in pursuing their goals both inside and outside of the traditional education system. Other pertinent outcomes include enhanced understanding of artistic direction, heightened self-understanding and accelerated progress. The limitations of process-based learning became evident when documentation and reflection took over artistic processes, disrupting the flow of thought during the making of an artwork. The researcher emphasizes the necessity of finding balance between intuition and organization within an artistic project to ensure that process-based learning can be integrated seamlessly into an artistic practice. The findings are applied to multiple art education contexts in order to extend their applicability beyond the artist’s studio

The Theatrical Scrapbook

This essay provides a road map for theatre historians, archivists, and librarians interested in understanding theatrical scrapbooks as a genre. It argues for the importance of the ordinary theatrical scrapbook as both archive and medium. As an archive, the theatrical scrapbook is a repository for performance ephemera. As a medium, scrapbooks record how past theatre aficionados merged the stage and the page, image and print, live performances and representations of them. Taking the scrapbook holdings of Ohio State’s Theatre Research Institute, the essay offers a brief history of theatrical scrapbooks; a taxonomy to help scholars navigate and interpret albums; and a sampling of the historical and theoretical questions that scrapbooks inspire and help answer

In Search of the DomoNovus: Speculative Designs for the Computationally-Enhanced Domestic Environment

Edited version embargoed until 01.02.2018 Full version: Access restricted permanently due to 3rd party copyright restrictions. Restriction set on 01.02.2017 by SC, Graduate schoolThe home is a physical place that provides isolation, comfort, access to essential needs on a daily basis, and it has a strong impact on a person’s life. Computational and media technologies (digital and electronic objects, devices, protocols, virtual spaces, telematics, interaction, social media, and cyberspace) become an important and vital part of the home ecology, although they have the ability to transform the domestic experience and the understanding of what a personal space is. For this reason, this work investigates the domestication of computational media technology; how objects, systems, and devices become part of the personal and intimate space of the inhabitants. To better understand the taming process, the home is studied and analysed from a range of perspectives (philosophy, sociology, architecture, art, and technology), and a methodological process is proposed for critically exploring the topic with the development of artworks, designs, and computational systems. The methodology of this research, which consists of five points (Context, Media Layers, Invisible Matter, Diffusion, and Symbiosis), suggests a procedure that is fundamental to the development and critical integration of the computationally enhanced home. Accordingly, the home is observed as an ecological system that contains numerous properties (organic, inorganic, hybrid, virtual, augmented), and is viewed on a range of scales (micro, meso and macro). To identify the “choreographies” that are formed between these properties and scales, case studies have been developed to suggest, provoke, and speculate concepts, ideas, and alternative realities of the home. Part of the speculation proposes the concept of DomoNovus (the “New Home”), where technological ubiquity supports the inhabitants’ awareness, perception, and imagination. DomoNovus intends to challenge our understanding of the domestic environment, and demonstrates a range of possibilities, threats, and limitations in relation to the future of home. This thesis, thus, presents methods, experiments, and speculations that intend to inform and inspire, as well as define creative and imaginative dimensions of the computationally-enhanced home, suggesting directions for the further understanding of the domestic life.Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundatio

Ascending Cadence Gestures: A Historical Survey from the 16th to the Early 19th Century

Cadences are formulaic gestures of closure and temporal articulation in music. Although in the minority, rising melodic figures have a long history in cadences in European music of all genres. This essay documents and analyzes characteristic instances of rising cadential lines from the late 16th century through the 1830s.Musi

Painting as a response to a sense of dislocation in the South African social fabric

My proposal was to produce a series of paintings as a response to a sense of dislocation in the South African social fabric. The body of paintings is entitled Domestic Baggage and consists collectively of paintings on canvas and preliminary works entitled The Grids. Thematically consistent, the works and the accompanying research document emphasize the disturbed and marginalized dimensions of fragmented society. A significant frame of reference is the claustrophobic, persistent presence of increasing violence and loss of life arising from the dislocation ethos. lconographically, a strategy of allusion has been adopted, allowing for the interaction of figurative, gestural and material referents. Dependence on overtly illustrative or purely narrative modes of representation has been deferred. An extensive background essay highlights the appropriately identified specifics of the backdrop against which the series of paintings has been developed. A detailed art historical contextualization foregrounds those precedents most pertinent to the formal and conceptual processes informing the Domestic Baggage series

Landscape Strategies in Architecture

The central question and purpose of the thesis is to understand how landscape as a design concept is changing our understanding of architecture. It explores the ways in which landscape is relevant for design strategies in architecture. Buildings that have been designed like landscapes have become a topic in contemporary architecture and in the recent literature about it. The apparent distinction between architecture and landscape is questioned in exemplary theoretical works and building designs with increasing interest in landscape as a phenomenon of contemporary architecture. To understand this phenomenon this thesis first explores the term of landscape and its design. The introduction focuses on the exploration of the idea of landscape and how it is applicable in architectural design. Strategies of landscape design as they are discussed in contemporary landscape architecture are defined and illustrated with specific examples. This view is contrasted with the idea of nature in architecture. Architecture's concepts of nature reveal some crucial problems that lead to the polarity of 'wild' nature and 'human' architecture. With a critique of these common architectural theories and within the methodological differentiation the thesis reveals the necessity of research through analysis of landscape spatial composition in architecture. The core of this thesis is three case studies of architectural designs that approach a building like a landscape. A selection of analytical techniques is applied to key cases in three central chapters. The main analytical model for landscape architectural composition that Steenbergen and Reh (2003) developed for the European Gardens of the Renaissance, Baroque and Enlightenment is applied as a drawing analysis of the formal composition of three selected contemporary architectural projects in a period from 1992 to 2015. Each of the three building designs is studied with the same four-layer method of design analysis. In conjunction with this comparative analysis, a project specific method that reveals unique aspects of each design has been developed. The first case is OMA's unbuilt Jussieu design for two university libraries in Paris. In 1992 Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his collaborators at OMA proposed the Jussieu project at a turning point of the discipline, where new forms of architecture with landscape design strategies were being explored. Though this project has not been realised, this thesis makes it possible to describe the building in a guided walk-through. This visualisation of the design as it could have looked if built is also the specific analytical method chosen for this example. The second case, the Rolex Learning Centre at EPF Lausanne, has been clearly declared 'landscape' as architecture by its designers. This competition winning design from 2004 and opened in 2010 is the largest scale international building of Japanese Architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA). The specific analytical method used for this case is a visual space analysis of the project using 3D-isovists. The third case is the City of Culture of Galicia in Santiago de Compostela by American architect Peter Eisenman. This project was initially designed in 1999 in a process of layering - in principle, similar to the layer model analysis of this thesis. However, the four tenets of the thesis layer model - ground form, spatial form, metaphorical form and programmatic form - will alter the reading of this project. This execution of the giant public project of "City of Culture" was interrupted half-way in 2015, with great political difficulties fo Galicia. The specific analytical method used for this case is an experiment that uses the ruins of unbuilt architecture as the base for a landscape architectural design. This design of a temporary garden mimics the design principles of architect Peter Eisenman. This experiment shows that landscape strategies developed for the design of a building can be applied in reverse for designed landscapes. In conclusion, this thesis will compare the three case studies of architectural designs with each other. While some design instruments, strategies and methods are specific, others are commonly applied in several or all of the projects. In a broader scope, the analysis is transposed into the greater societal and theoretical realm to explore whether landscape design strategies change architecture. For the discipline of architecture in general, the thesis explores how far landscape could lead the profession further as a new concept to build a sustainable human environment. Evoking potential applications and the reach of landscape in architecture in the perspective of future development, the thesis ultimately discusses unexplored potentials for landscape design strategies in the architectural discipline