Fashion-able. Hacktivism and engaged fashion design

This thesis consists of a series of extensive projects which aim to explore a new designer role for fashion. It is a role that experiments with how fashion can be reverse engineered, hacked, tuned and shared among many participants as a form of social activism. This social design practice can be called the hacktivism of fashion. It is an engaged and collective process of enablement, creative resistance and DIY practice, where a community share methods and experiences on how to expand action spaces and develop new forms of craftsmanship. In this practice, the designer engages participants to reform fashion from a phenomenon of dictations and anxiety to a collective experience of empowerment, in other words, to make them become fashion-able. As its point of departure, the research takes the practice of hands-on exploration in the DIY upcycling of clothes through “open source” fashion “cookbooks”. By means of hands-on processes, the projects endeavour to create a complementary understanding of the modes of production within the field of fashion design. The artistic research projects have ranged from DIY-kits released at an international fashion week, fashion experiments in galleries, collaborative “hacking” at a shoe factory, engaged design at a rehabilitation centre as well as combined efforts with established fashion brands. Using parallels from hacking, heresy, fan fiction, small change and professional-amateurs, the thesis builds a non-linear framework by which the reader can draw diagonal interpretations through the artistic research projects presented. By means of this alternative reading new understandings may emerge that can expand the action spaces available for fashion design. This approach is not about subverting fashion as much as hacking and tuning it, and making its sub-routines run in new ways, or in other words, bending the current while still keeping the power on

Video Vortex reader : responses to Youtube

The Video Vortex Reader is the first collection of critical texts to deal with the rapidly emerging world of online video – from its explosive rise in 2005 with YouTube, to its future as a significant form of personal media. After years of talk about digital convergence and crossmedia platforms we now witness the merger of the Internet and television at a pace no-one predicted. These contributions from scholars, artists and curators evolved from the first two Video Vortex conferences in Brussels and Amsterdam in 2007 which focused on responses to YouTube, and address key issues around independent production and distribution of online video content. What does this new distribution platform mean for artists and activists? What are the alternatives

Le Sujet de l’Acteur. An Anthropological Outlook on Actor-Network Theory

In the past few years, the Actor-Network Theory of French philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour has become a hotly debated topic in the humanities. From a philosophical perspective, his theory of things keeps being reevaluated: is it possible for ‘Human and Non-Human Actors’ (Latour) to be analyzed as equally important actors? Does Latour’s theory of a simultaneous ‘agency’ of things and concepts indeed move beyond a subject-object relation? If it does, how far does it in fact go? Is it possible to develop a common new ontology by moving away from the notion of substance, and instead reducing any kind of entities to what they reveal in the course of their (inter)action? The contributions to Le Sujet de l’Acteur are looking for interferences between the idea of ‘agency’ and cultural dynamics. How can we relate questions of (social) action with those of cultural manifestations? Focusing on questions of symmetry or dissymmetry between the world of ‘things’ and ‘human beings,’ the volume includes contributions from the fields of social studies, literary studies, and philosophy. Although the contents are categorized in systematic and historical aspects, all contributions draw on the importance of case studies for the theoretical framework, either starting with systematic questions that are then answered exemplary, or starting from historical cases as well as theoretical options

Gaywaves: Transcending Boundaries - the Rise and Demise of Britain's First Gay Radio Program

At the beginning of 1982 an array of conflicting forces were working to shape the landscape of Europe's metropolitan radio services, and to alternatively control, commodify or liberate its gay communities. This paper examines the drivers, which inspired Gaywaves, a nascent weekly gay community radio programme broadcasting to an inner London audience on pirate station Our Radio from May 1982 until March 1983

Transnationalizing Radio Research: New Approaches to an Old Medium

Transnationalizing Radio Research presents a theoretical and methodological guide for exploring radio's multiple »global ages«, from its earliest years through its recent digital transformations. It offers radio scholars theoretical tools and concrete case studies for moving beyond national research frames. It gives radio practitioners inspiration for production and archiving, and offers scholars from many disciplines new ways to incorporate radio's vital voices into work on transnational institutions, communities, histories and identities

Post Industrial Journalism: Adapting to the Present

This essay is part survey and part manifesto, one that concerns itself with the practice of journalism and the practices of journalists in the United States. It is not, however, about “the future of the news industry,” both because much of that future is already here and because there is no such thing as the news industry anymore. If you wanted to sum up the past decade of the news ecosystem in a single phrase, it might be this: Everybody suddenly got a lot more freedom. The newsmakers, the advertisers, the startups, and, especially, the people formerly known as the audience have all been given new freedom to communicate, narrowly and broadly, outside the old strictures of the broadcast and publishing models. The past 15 years have seen an explosion of new tools and techniques, and, more importantly, new assumptions and expectations, and these changes have wrecked the old clarity. Many of the changes talked about in the last decade as part of the future landscape of journalism have already taken place; much of journalism’s imagined future is now its lived-in present. (As William Gibson noted long ago, “The future is already here. It’s just unevenly distributed.”) Our goal is to write about what has already happened and what is happening today, and what we can learn from it, rather than engaging in much speculation

Doing It Together Science: D1.1 Outreach Plan for Biodesign

This report presents an initial plan and compilation of public engagement activities in the area of biodesign. It outlines the methodology used to formulate the outreach plan for biodesign, namely consultation of partners and feedback via forms and online conversations. It covers around 50 events from 7 partners. The report outlines good practices, analysis and initial set of guidelines regarding issues and lessons learnt from events organised in phase 1. In phase 2, partners aim to run a hundred events and WP1 will support and promote collaborative practices and public activities. UPD leads WP1 biodesign. During phase 1 of DITOs it became evident that the term biodesign is used to describe a wide range of activities in bioart, DIY science, and synthetic biology. It is a term used within many disciplines hence there are different interpretations and some confusion about how the term is used within various communities. WP1 is undertaking an investigation for a working definition for biodesign. The outreach plan for biodesign is deliverable 1.1 (D1.1) from the coordination and support action (CSA) Doing It Together science (DITOs), grant agreement 709443