Modern-day sustainability: managing the parts or looking beyond to the meaning?

This study looks at ways in which education and practice can find common ground in a concept of visual sustainability. It looks at ways of sifting out the meaning from endless flows of information, to scaffold a theoretical framework from the rhizome-like obstacle of ambiguity and uncertainty. This can be achieved by adjusting our focal length to better see our visual world, and so help better describe the conditions for growth that are so important for sustainable urban development and architectural practice. This study is divided into three parts. Firstly, a declaration of meaning; secondly, how we transact with meaning in everyday assemblages; and lastly, the concept of a spectrum of meaning. It builds on existing discourse around education and practice, with a view to understanding what makes the urban ‘tick’ (Dovey & KTH Media Production, 2017). So that we can discover what makes us ‘tick’ in the urban

A review of the Colloquium «Narrative, Media and Cognition» — a cartography of the borders of narrative

We present an overview and discussion of the Colloquium «Narrative, Media and Cognition», which took place at Porto's Centre of Catholic University of Portugal in July of 2015, under the organization of the Research Centre for Science and Technology of the Arts (CITAR). Several scholars of different areas presented research about the uses and advances in narrative study and practice in a broad range of areas, giving some important insights about the latest developments in Narrative Studies, Ontology of Narrative and the uses of Narrative in Art, Cinema, Performance, Journalism, Marketing and Literature, among other fields. After briefly describing the main points of each presentation in the Colloquium we try to draw some conclusions and possibilities raised by the Colloquium and take a glimpse of future paths that the use of Narrative can end up taking.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Old Town Road of copyright's subject matter and aesthetics

80-91The paper refers to the most discussed and controversial element of the copyright’s legal system: the definition of subject matter and its interpretation. Inspired by some post-modern aesthetics theories, the aim of the paper is to open a discussion in respect to the notion of work in copyright and its impact on art and every-day life. The first part of the paper presents a brief analysis of copyright’s struggles with its subject matter, followed than with an analysis of contemporary trends in aesthetics, in particular the functional and the institutional definition of art. The second part provides examples of manifestations and similarities between legal system and modern aesthetical concepts. Finally, the author considers whether - and if so, to what extent - the implementation of new aesthetic approaches could be helpful in the system of copyright

Panel: Individual and/versus social creativity

The creative act is often thought of as an individual, even lonely, one: the inspiration in the bath, the artist isolated in the garret. The research student has to demonstrate that they found new knowledge and that it was “all their own work”. But how often are these individual acts a realistic model of the creative process? Even if inspiration does come in the bath, how many conversations had taken place before that moment? How much time has the “lonely” artist spent in cafes arguing with other artists about their work? If individual research is so important why do we advise a good student to join a successful research department

Design with a Positive Lens: An affirmative approach to designing information and organizations

Design forms one critical paradigmatic view that pervades organizational studies, management, and information systems research. Building on the discussions in the First Working Conference on Designing Information and Organizations with a Positive Lens, we chart the potential contribution of positive design to the shaping of organizations, work processes, artifacts, communication networks, and information technologies. The figure of speech "Design with a Positive Lens," or in short, "Positive Design," connotes here a distinctive perspective on design that is less focused on the detection of errors associated with gaining control and more concerned with human-centered design associated with the shaping of hopeful organizations and a thriving future. The paper examines how positive design can contribute to the design of information systems and organizations as related to five broad-scale areas: design of high performance work processes; positive design methods and techniques: cooperation and collaboration across boundaries to promote positive change; positive organizational design, and design science and practice. In this paper we aspire to promote the emerging cross-disciplinary discourse between scholars and designers that will foster positive organizational and technological design

Patchworks: The Ontology of the World

Chapter 3 turns to ‘Patchwork ontologies’. Compared to Resilience, Patchwork ontologies shift debate towards affirmation and replace the modernist imaginary of islands with a more open ontology of spatial and temporal becoming. While this remains a relational understanding, Patchwork ontologies are more disruptive, destabilising the ‘solutionist’ or instrumentalising aspects of Resilience; making them more open, less governmentalising and human-centred. This is reflected in the work of the many ‘Patchwork ontologists’, critical thinkers, artists, designers, experimenters and poets who today frequently turn to islands and islander life to draw out how entanglements of relation are never fixed. Patchworks instead attend to disturbances and how islands are powerful ways of expressing processes of world-making. A key figure here is Glissant, and his focus upon ‘giving-on-and-with’ ‘Relation’, which pushes thinking with islands to the point that we can never stand outside and grasp (island) relations, only immerse ourselves in the texture and turbulence of the weave. For patchwork approaches, thinking with islands then becomes a ‘verb’ (Teaiwa) and practice of ‘staying with the trouble’, opening ourselves to relational affects – an immersive process of becoming which is today being developed by a wide engagement with islands and islander life

Measuring the generative power of an organisational routine with design theories: the case of design thinking in a large firm

International audienceThis article studies how a large firm uses Design Thinking (DT) as a core process in specific design and development team whose mission is to bridge the gap between unidentified market needs and business units research & development effort. We analyse two cases where new concepts were developed and promoted to business units for implementation by following DT methodology. Our study shows that the DT routine reveals some generative power to explore the user perspective, yet it appears uncontrolled when it comes to generate a wider variety of ideas and knowledge challenging the design ecosystem ontology omitted and made invariant through user-focus hence it faces difficulties to engage with stakeholders and other organisational routines for an enhanced creativity and organisational change

Nothing Matters: Answering the Question ‘Where’s the Art?’ through Ma and Gen

This research explores the ontology of Gen, or the being of a ‘non-being’, through an examination into the Japanese concept of Ma. Ma is a Japanese word and concept whose English equivalent does not exist but is usually translated as the ‘conscious void/interval’, while Gen (variants: Jen/Zjen/Xen/Zen) describes the experience of becoming such an interval. Using conceptual art as the core method of investigation and cultural pluralism as its philosophical framework, the practice was documented as a series of essays on relevant ideas, beginning with the absolute, aestheticism, authenticity, authorship, and autonomy. The paper builds on the current research on the manifestation and function of Ma by introducing relevant and necessary terms into the discourse, including: Gen, Mu, Ba, Ta, Self/Culture, cognitive (dis)equilibrium, conceptual tipping-point, ontological comfort trap, and self-obliteration. As the concept of Ma has often been associated with ascetic reduction, manifested as simplicity and silence, the paper begins with a study into the use of nothingness and the void in minimalist artworks. It also builds on my MA research and Sachiyo Goda’s study into the intercultural understanding of Ma as an intersubjective phenomenon, by introducing a new concept, Gen, which leads to an enquiry into what it means to become a Ma, a nonbeing. In contrast to the minimalist approach, the study will show that such state of emptiness can be achieved through an alternate method of ‘production’ (as opposed to re-duction) by using an authentically embodied methodology of ‘becoming’ the observed, rather than through mere documentation or representation of the phenomena. The study yields insights of potential interest to artists, philosophers, social theorists, empirical researchers, and indeed any English reader. The paper forms practical and theoretical contributions to the debates on the nature of art by: - enhancing our knowledge of Ma and its function in contemporary art; - introducing such explicitly implicit ontology as Gen; - extending our knowledge of the complex nature of Ma through an investigation into Gen; - offering a new strategy i.e. self-obliteration, in discerning such notions as an alternate to the minimalistic ascetic reduction method; - developing the language of such notions, contextualizing and bridging the Western and Eastern understanding and use of such ontology; - offering a new understanding of research with its interdisciplinary mode of practice and through a multidisciplinary body of work presented in and beyond the exhibition space, shifting away from the cerebral mode of comprehension by drawing out a primarily experiential conception of the relationship between art and Gen

Invoking Flora Nwapa

"By invoking Flora Nwapa, this monograph draws attention to Nigerian women writers in world literature, with an emphasis on femininity and spirituality. Flora Nwapa’s Efuru (1966) was the first internationally published novel in English by a female African writer. With the establishment of Tana Press in 1977, Flora Nwapa also became the first female publisher in Africa. Although Flora Nwapa has been recognized as the ‘mother of modern African literature’, she is not sufficiently acknowledged in world literary canons or world literature studies, which is something this monograph aspires to redress, with the help of earlier studies, especially Nigerian scholarship. Drawing on the Efuru@50 celebration in Nigeria in 2016, this book explores the revival of Flora Nwapa’s fame as the pioneer of African women’s literature. Using an ethnographic rather than biographical approach, it captures Flora Nwapa’s literary practice in the context of the Nigerian literary scene and its interlinkages with world literature. The ethnographic portrayal of Flora Nwapa is complemented with an exposé of a select number of contemporary Nigerian women writers, based on interviews during fieldwork in Nigeria. The book uses concepts like creolized aesthetics and womanist worldmaking to advance scholarly understandings of world literature, which is conceived here as a pluriverse of aesthetic worlds. Exploring experimental ethnographic writing, the book combines the genres of creative non-fiction, descriptive ethnography and scholarly analysis, in an effort to make the text more accessible to academic as well as non-academic readers. Through travel notes the experience of fieldwork is shared in a candid manner. Detailed ethnography from the Efuru@50 literary festival is presented to show the expansion of Flora Nwapa’s fame. In-depth analyses of Flora Nwapa’s literary works and the cultural context of her literary practice cover a wide range of themes, from feminine storytelling and children’s literature, to publishing and digitalization. The theoretical discussion draws on anthropological, literary and African womanist theory to contextualize and explore the central themes of femininity and spirituality in world literature. Inspired by the social change perspective of African womanism and critical decolonial theory, the book makes a contribution to current efforts to explore a more socially just and environmentally sustainable world of many worlds. Paying close attention to gender complementarity and sacred engagements in Flora Nwapa’s literary worldmaking, it shows how world literature can help us create other possible worlds of human, spiritual and environmental coexistence.