Sketch & The Lizard King: Supporting Image Inclusion in HCI Publishing

Almost all research output includes tables, diagrams, photographs and even sketches, and papers within HCI typically take advantage of including these figures in their files. However the space given to non-diagrammatical or tabular figures is often small, even in papers that primarily concern themselves with visual output. The reason for this might be the publishing models employed in most proceedings and journals: Despite moving to a digital format which is unhindered by page count or physical cost, there remains a somewhat arbitrary limitation on page count. Recent moves by ACM SIGCHI and others to remove references from the maximum page count suggest that there is movement on this, however images remain firmly within the limits of the text. We propose that images should be celebrated – not penalised – and call for not only the adoption of the Pictorials format in CHI, but for images to be removed from page counts in order to encourage greater transparency of process in HCI research

Authors’ Response: Balancing Openness and Structure in Conference Design to Support a Burgeoning Research Community

We focus on the following issues: our intentions behind establishing the new Research Through Design conference series; epistemological concerns around "research through design"; and how we might find a balance between openness and specificity for the conference series going forward

Mindfulness and technology: traces of a middle way

We contemplate paths between form and formlessness as a middle way between digital technology for mindfulness, and mindfulness without digital technology, thereby inviting alternative departure points with interactive systems. In doing so, we step into a contested yet potentially fertile arena to challenge the handling, analysis and reporting of the relationship between mindfulness and technology and the methods used to interrogate it. Through the documenting of the authors’ own creative practices (video, photography, and gardening), material traces and written vignettes of our experiments are presented to stimulate resonances and evoke mindfulness with readers. We also question the form of conference papers to consider how we can best share formless states of being in discussing their relevance for design

Behind the Lens: A Visual Exploration of Epistemological Commitments in HCI Research on the Home

   In this pictorial, we propose an alternative approach to investigating human-computer interaction (HCI) researchers’ epistemological commitments in research on the home. While researchers’ commitments can be discussed through textual aspects of their research, in this pictorial we conduct a pattern analysis of visual elements as a productive way to further inquire into such kinds of commitments. By analyzing visual elements from 121 works in HCI research on the home, we identify seven types of observers, which can be associated with epistemological commitments in research. We also propose two new complementary observers: the absent observer and the protagonist observer

From the Ground Up: Designerly Knowledge in Human-Drone Interaction

There are flying robots out there — you may have seen and heard them, droning over your head. Drones have expanded our human capacities, lifting our sight to the skies, but not without generating intricate experiences. How are these machines being designed and researched? What design methods, approaches, and philosophies are relevant to the study of the development (or decline) of drones in society? In this thesis, I argue that we must re-frame how drones are studied, from the ground up, through a design stance. I invite you to take a journey with me, with changing lenses from the work of others to my own intimate relationship with this technology. My work relies on exploring the fringes of design research: understudied groups such as children, alternative design approaches such as soma design, and peripheral methods such as autoethnography.This thesis includes four articles discussing perspectives on designerly knowledge, composing a frame surrounding the notion that we may be missing out on some of the aspects of the wicked nature of human-drone interaction (HDI) design. The methods are poised on phenomenology and narratives, and supported by the assumption that any subject of study is a sociotechnical assemblage. Starting through a first-person perspective, I offer a contribution to the gap in research through a longitudinal autoethnographic study conducted with my children. The second paper comes in the form of a pictorial expressing a first-person experience during a design research workshop, and what that meant for my relationship with drones as a research material. The third paper leaps into a Research through Design project, challenging the solutionist drone and offering instead the first steps in a concept-driven design of the unlikely pairing of drones and breathing. The fourth paper returns to the pictorial form, suggesting a method for visual conversations between researchers through the tangible qualities of sketches and illustrations. Central to this thesis, is the argument for designerly approaches in HDI and championing the need for alternative forms of publication and research. To that end, I include two publications in the form of pictorials: a publication format relying on visual knowledge and with growing interest in the HCI community

Usable Pasts

In Usable Pasts, fourteen authors examine the manipulation of traditional expressions among a variety of groups from the United States and Canada: the development of a pictorial style by Navajo weavers in response to traders, Mexican American responses to the appropriation of traditional foods by Anglos, the expressive forms of communication that engender and sustain a sense of community in an African American women\u27s social club and among elderly Yiddish folksingers in Miami Beach, the incorporation of mass media images into the C&Ts (customs and traditions) of a Boy Scout troop, the changing meaning of their defining Exodus-like migration to Mormons, Newfoundlanders\u27 appropriation through the rum-drinking ritual called the Schreech-In of outsiders\u27 stereotypes, outsiders\u27 imposition of the once-despised lobster as the emblem of Maine, the contest over Texas\u27s heroic Alamo legend and its departures from historical fact, and how yellow ribbons were transformed from an image in a pop song to a national symbol of resolve.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/1068/thumbnail.jp

Qiu Ti’s Contributions to Juelanshe and the Intersection of Modernist Ideology, Public Receptivity, and Personal Identity for a Woman Oil Painter in Early Twentieth-Century China

Despite her pioneering actions as one of the first female oil painters in China, Qiu Ti (1906-1958) remains on the periphery of China's modernist art movement. This dissertation repositions her to the center of a lively early twentieth-century dialogue about new roles for women in China's art world. Focusing on her involvement with the influential art group Juelanshe (often translated Storm Society), this study reassess her professional identity and the impact her membership had on the 1930s Shanghai art community. Examining contemporary magazines, essays on modernist art theories, art group manifestos, and the author's own interviews with the artist's children, this dissertation sheds new light on Qiu Ti's contributions. It demonstrates that, though her career ended early, the daring Qiu Ti embraced new styles and genres of modernist art with the same adventurous spirit as her male colleagues

Manhua Modernity

From fashion sketches of Shanghai dandies in the 1920s, to phantasmagoric imagery of war in the 1930s and 1940s, to panoramic pictures of anti-American propaganda rallies in the 1950s, the cartoon-style art known as manhua helped define China’s modern experience. Manhua Modernity offers a richly illustrated and deeply contextualized analysis of these illustrations from the lively pages of popular pictorial magazines that entertained, informed, and mobilized a nation through a half century of political and cultural transformation. “An innovative reconceptualization of manhua. John Crespi’s meticulous study shows the many benefits of interpreting Chinese comics and other illustrations not simply as image genres but rather as part of a larger print culture institution. A must-read for anyone interested in modern Chinese visual culture.” CHRISTOPHER REA, author of The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China “A rich media-centered reading of Chinese comics from the mid-1920s through the 1950s, Manhua Modernity shifts the emphasis away from ideological interpretation and demonstrates that the pictorial turn requires examinations of manhua in its heterogenous, expansive, spontaneous, and interactive ways of engaging its audience’s varied experiences of fast-changing everyday life.” YINGJIN ZHANG, author of Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing Chin

The Monk and the Mariposa: Franciscan acculturation in Mexico 1520-1550

Acculturation by the Franciscan Friars in Mexico from 1520-1550 This thesis sets out to examine the process of acculturation as experienced by the Franciscan friars during the first years of their mission in Mexico at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It will suggest that the acculturation was a two-way affair; that the Franciscans were as much changed by their contact with the indigenous people as were the natives by their contact with the friars. It begins with a study of the various changing interpretations of the notion of ‘acculturation’ and argues that beside the classical linear interpretation such expressions as ‘reverse acculturation’, ‘transculturation’ and ‘co-acculturation’ may be more appropriate for these particular circumstances. It then examines how the friars came to be in Mexico and the Aztec culture which they encountered which both shocked by its human sacrifice and yet provided striking examples of parallels with the Christian religion, thus indicating an early example of possible mutual accommodation. Next the thesis looks at the ways in which the friars prepared the ground for their mission: destroying many of the temples, settling the natives in ‘pueblos’ and above all, learning a range of local languages so that they could both converse with the Aztecs and preach to them. This can be seen as an excellent example of how the missionaries themselves were open to the process of acculturation; instead of insisting on the language of the coloniser, as was the practice of later missionaries, they carried the word to the natives by speaking their own tongues. The thesis goes on to examine the process of evangelizing, suggesting that in this area the greatest degree of ‘transculturation’ can be observed. Shortages of resources and manpower and sheer pressure of numbers made it necessary to take ‘short cuts’ in the administration of the sacraments, adopting for instance a ‘missa secca’ (where there was no wine) and dispensing with the use of white gowns and salt, which were in short supply, for the baptismal ceremony. In cultural areas of their work the friars found themselves exposed to another form of ‘acculturation’ – a phenomenon which might be termed ‘co-acculturation’. Thus in some of the songs of Pedro de Gante Christian and Aztec references sit side by side. Monastic architecture combines classical Spanish design with innovations like the ‘capilla abierta’. The Tlaxcaltecans, having been taught by the missionaries the art of using perspective, used this same art to extract more favourable terms from the Spanish authorities. Acculturation by the Franciscan Friars in Mexico from 1520-1550 This thesis sets out to examine the process of acculturation as experienced by the Franciscan friars during the first years of their mission in Mexico at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It will suggest that the acculturation was a two-way affair; that the Franciscans were as much changed by their contact with the indigenous people as were the natives by their contact with the friars. It begins with a study of the various changing interpretations of the notion of ‘acculturation’ and argues that beside the classical linear interpretation such expressions as ‘reverse acculturation’, ‘transculturation’ and ‘co-acculturation’ may be more appropriate for these particular circumstances. It then examines how the friars came to be in Mexico and the Aztec culture which they encountered which both shocked by its human sacrifice and yet provided striking examples of parallels with the Christian religion, thus indicating an early example of possible mutual accommodation. Next the thesis looks at the ways in which the friars prepared the ground for their mission: destroying many of the temples, settling the natives in ‘pueblos’ and above all, learning a range of local languages so that they could both converse with the Aztecs and preach to them. This can be seen as an excellent example of how the missionaries themselves were open to the process of acculturation; instead of insisting on the language of the coloniser, as was the practice of later missionaries, they carried the word to the natives by speaking their own tongues. The thesis goes on to examine the process of evangelizing, suggesting that in this area the greatest degree of ‘transculturation’ can be observed. Shortages of resources and manpower and sheer pressure of numbers made it necessary to take ‘short cuts’ in the administration of the sacraments, adopting for instance a ‘missa secca’ (where there was no wine) and dispensing with the use of white gowns and salt, which were in short supply, for the baptismal ceremony. In cultural areas of their work the friars found themselves exposed to another form of ‘acculturation’ – a phenomenon which might be termed ‘co-acculturation’. Thus in some of the songs of Pedro de Gante Christian and Aztec references sit side by side. Monastic architecture combines classical Spanish design with innovations like the ‘capilla abierta’. The Tlaxcaltecans, having been taught by the missionaries the art of using perspective, used this same art to extract more favourable terms from the Spanish authorities. However, it is in that astonishing art form the auto that the best example of both ‘trans-acculturation’ and ‘co-acculturation’ can be found. Here an attempt has been made to show that what are basically well-known Bible stories have been overlaid by Aztec religious and cultural references which are not only a form of ‘hidden resistance’ to Spanish rule but the most impressive example of the blending of two cultures under the aegis and inspiration of the Franciscan friars. The result is a moment of sublime dramatic co-operation which was never to be repeated