An aesthetics of touch: investigating the language of design relating to form

How well can designers communicate qualities of touch? This paper presents evidence that they have some capability to do so, much of which appears to have been learned, but at present make limited use of such language. Interviews with graduate designer-makers suggest that they are aware of and value the importance of touch and materiality in their work, but lack a vocabulary to fully relate to their detailed explanations of other aspects such as their intent or selection of materials. We believe that more attention should be paid to the verbal dialogue that happens in the design process, particularly as other researchers show that even making-based learning also has a strong verbal element to it. However, verbal language alone does not appear to be adequate for a comprehensive language of touch. Graduate designers-makers’ descriptive practices combined non-verbal manipulation within verbal accounts. We thus argue that haptic vocabularies do not simply describe material qualities, but rather are situated competences that physically demonstrate the presence of haptic qualities. Such competencies are more important than groups of verbal vocabularies in isolation. Design support for developing and extending haptic competences must take this wide range of considerations into account to comprehensively improve designers’ capabilities

The Legitimacy of Modern Democracy

By re-examining the political thought of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt and Hans Kelsen, this book offers a reflection on the nature of modern democracy and the question of its legitimacy. Pedro T. Magalhães shows that present-day elitist, populist and pluralist accounts of democracy owe, in diverse and often complicated ways, an intellectual debt to the interwar era, German-speaking, scholarly and political controversies on the problem(s) of modern democracy. A discussion of Weber’s ambivalent diagnosis of modernity and his elitist views on democracy, as they were elaborated especially in the 1910s, sets the groundwork for the study. Against that backdrop, Schmitt’s interwar political thought is interpreted as a form of neo-authoritarian populism, whereas Kelsen evinces robust, though not entirely unproblematic, pluralist consequences. In the conclusion, the author draws on Claude Lefort’s concept of indeterminacy to sketch a potentially more fruitful way than can be gleaned from the interwar German discussions of conceiving the nexus between the elitist, populist and pluralist faces of modern democracy. The Legitimacy of Modern Democracy will be of interest to political theorists, political philosophers, intellectual historians, theoretically oriented political scientists, and legal scholars working in the subfields of constitutional law and legal theory

Technology in an Alternative Modernity

This essay tries to defend a general embracing-controlling-stance on modern technology on the basis of the analysis of technology and a synthesized theory about the relationship between technology and culture. The task is carried out in the framework of an alternative modernity theory, in a cross-cultural context. China and specific technologies are used to illustrate the central ideas as case studies

Translation proposal and analysis of Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons by Sam Steiner

Il presente lavoro propone una traduzione dall'inglese all'italiano del libro Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons di Sam Steiner, pubblicato da Nick Hern Books nel novembre 2015. Il testo di partenza della traduzione è il copione dell'omonimo spettacolo teatrale che ha debuttato nel gennaio 2015 al Warwick Arts Centre, diretto da Sam Steiner. La storia parla di una coppia, Oliver e Bernadette, che vive in un futuro distopico dove l'entrata in vigore della Quietude Bill permette alle persone di pronunciare solo centoquaranta parole al giorno, alterando immensamente il loro modo di comunicare. Oltre alla traduzione, il presente lavoro comprende un capitolo dedicato al suo contesto teorico, con un'analisi degli aspetti della teoria della traduzione che più sono pertinenti alla mia tesi. Inoltre, questa tesi offre un capitolo dedicato al commento della traduzione, dove vengono evidenziati e analizzati i problemi più importanti sorti durante il processo di traduzione. Per ognuno di questi problemi, viene fornita una spiegazione delle strategie traduttive applicate, supportata da esempi e passi tratti dal testo di partenza e di arrivo. Lo scopo principale di questo lavoro è quello di offrire una proposta di traduzione dell'opera Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons di Sam Steiner e di portare maggiore notorietà a questo talentuoso autore che, purtroppo, in Italia è quasi sconosciuto.The present work proposes a translation from English into Italian of the book Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons by Sam Steiner, published by Nick Hern Books in November 2015. The source text of the translation is the script of the homonymous play that premiered in January 2015 at the Warwick Arts Centre, directed by Sam Steiner. The story is about a couple, Oliver and Bernadette, who lives in a dystopian future where the entry into force of the Quietude Bill allows people to speak only one hundred and forty words every day, immensely affecting the way they communicate. Besides the translation, the present work includes a chapter dedicated to its theoretical background, with an analysis of the translation theory that pertains the most to my thesis. Moreover, this thesis offers a commentary on the translation. This chapter highlights and analyses the most serious problems that arose during the translation process. For each of these problems, the reader is given an explanation of the translation strategies applied, as well as examples and excerpts of the source and target text. The main purpose of this work is to offer a translation proposal of Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons by Sam Steiner and hopefully to bring greater awareness about this talented author who, unfortunately, is almost unknown in Italy

The introduction and development of the comprehensive school in the West of Scotland 1965-80

This study investigates the emergence of the comprehensive school following the issue of Scottish Education Department Circular 600 in 1965, and its focus is the area of west Central Scotland covered by Dunbartonshire, the City of Glasgow, Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire. A major concern of the research is to examine how the secondary sector was affected by the transition from a bi-partite to a comprehensive system. The introduction gives a short account of the purpose of the research, its organisation and the methodology chosen. The thesis falls into six chapters. After a short examination of the comprehensive lobby in the post war period, Chapter One presents a literature survey in four sections: definitions of the comprehensive school, and some conceptual models; the cultural context, which highlights the characteristic features of the Scottish educational tradition; the political context, dealing with issues of central control, central-local government relations and the roles of local politicians and education officials; policy implementation and the management of innovation. These four themes form a conceptual framework against which to examine the data presented in the following chapters. Data for the thesis was gathered from two sources: a wide range of documentary material, and the transcripts of one hundred and fifty-two interviews conducted by the author with educationists and politicians. Data presented in Chapter Two leads to the following propositions: the comprehensive school was perceived as an English imposition on the Scottish system; official opinion in the Scottish Education Department was unfavourable to its introduction; optimistic claims for its educational and social potential were made in an ambiance of confusion about its definition; the Scottish Education Department conceived of the changeover principally in structural terms, and adopted a laissez-faire attitude to its philosophical implications; the advent of the comprehensive school caused widespread apprehension among educationist

Reinterpreted Europe: An Assessment of EU (In) Ability to Deal with Threats to the Rule of Law

The European Union has been the primary promoter of democracy and rule of law to its neighbors to the east. Much of the early scholarship as well as official documents on the EU’s transfer of norms to the east have shown some degree of optimism and expectation of serious reforms. Fast forward to its contemporary experience and the situation is significantly more grim than anticipated. Major think tanks like Freedom House, The Economist Democracy Index, and EU Venice Commission Reports show a stagnation and reversal on the question of rule of law, despite the millions of euros spent on anti-corruption and judicial reforms. This dissertation examines the transformation in Europe’s normative power i.e. rule of law norm from relative stability to a system where individual member states are openly challenging this cardinal EU norm. This study uses two case studies as reference points for assessing the robustness of the norm and examines the European community’s responses in light of the rule of law crisis in Poland and Hungary. It seeks to answer questions regarding the consequences of the current crisis on the integration process itself. How to consider change in the Europeanization process? What impact will Europe’s autocrats have upon on EU’s self understanding? Ultimately, there is strong evidence that suggests norm contestation has led to a deeper commitment to the norm as more than a “moral duty”, increasingly shifting to realm of interest when it comes to the EU. To this end, other factors which help shed light on the context of contestation are discussed including domestic politics of case study countries, economic factors, and historical traditions. Thus Europe is in the process of re-identifying its own understandings, seeking to rearticulate principles at the bedrock of its foundation

Girl with Lotus and M-16: The ambiguous lineage of Vietnamese revolutionary visual communication

Even before the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) was proclaimed and declared independent of France in 1945, the Việt Minh, the revolutionary organisation under the charismatic leadership of Hồ Chí Minh, began recruiting French-trained Vietnamese visual artists to produce visual communication materials, comprising posters, banners, billboards, murals, and other visual emblems of government. The political and military strategies of the Vietnam wars are the stuff of legend and subject to a vast literature and endless debate. However, the political messages produced by the DRV to mobilise popular support for independence and a prolonged ‘people’s war’ against the superior military might of two world powers, France and the United States of America (USA), remain in the shadows, undervalued as shrill ideological artefacts or amusing kitsch souvenirs of communist propaganda. In this thesis, I argue that DRV propaganda was a communist enterprise that drew on an amalgam of communist Sino-Soviet Marxist-Leninist styles, and a melange of other cultural influences, including Vietnamese literary traditions and French visual innovations. This ‘polyglot’ combination produced a vigorous cultural hybrid that was able to rise above party rhetoric and ‘speak’ to all Vietnamese in a ‘language’ they could understand. I contend that the efficacy of DRV propaganda was enabled, inadvertently, by colonial cultural reforms in literacy and visual arts as part of the French civilising mission, which sought to promote colonial rule to the Vietnamese and French populations. Contrary to design, these cultural reforms produced startling consequences for the Vietnamese revolutionary project, including a national writing system, and, an expert cohort of artists, trained in the aesthetics and techniques of visual communication. This thesis explores the cultural origins of DRV propaganda by considering the effects of those cultural reforms as vectors for Vietnamese nationalism, and, the motivations of the French colonial enterprise that propelled them. That cultural reform used as propaganda had unintended and perverse consequences for France’s imperial project is an enduring dialectical irony that Karl Marx himself might have found intriguing

Play Among Books

How does coding change the way we think about architecture? Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books