Architecture, colour and images. Ideas and designs by Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Colour, imagination, inspiration, amazement. These four words very fittingly describe the work of the Viennese artist/architect Friedrich Stowasser, better known as Hundertwasser (meaning hundred water), a master of organic thinking who between 1928 and 2000 worked and lived in Vienna, Venice and New Zealand. He uses eye-catching images to convey his ideas, forcefully expressive chromatic forms and patterns that betray a strong link with a re-interpreted geometric structure. This contribution, inspired by Hundertwasser’s works, intends to study the unique relationship between creativity, imagination and architecture based on sociological, cultural and psychological principles

Role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) art in care of ageing society: focus on dementia

open access articleBackground: Art enhances both physical and mental health wellbeing. The health benefits include reduction in blood pressure, heart rate, pain perception and briefer inpatient stays, as well as improvement of communication skills and self-esteem. In addition to these, people living with dementia benefit from reduction of their noncognitive, behavioural changes, enhancement of their cognitive capacities and being socially active. Methods: The current study represents a narrative general literature review on available studies and knowledge about contribution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in creative arts. Results: We review AI visual arts technologies, and their potential for use among people with dementia and care, drawing on similar experiences to date from traditional art in dementia care. Conclusion: The virtual reality, installations and the psychedelic properties of the AI created art provide a new venue for more detailed research about its therapeutic use in dementia

Brass Art: A house within a house within a house within a house

Performances from Brass Art (Lewis, Mojsiewicz, Pettican), captured at the Freud Museum, London, using Kinect laser scanning and Processing, reveal an intimate response to spaces and technologies. ‘A house within a house within a house within a house’ links historical and cultural representations of the double, the unconscious and the uncanny to this artistic practice. The new moving-image and sonic works form part of a larger project to inhabit the writing rooms of influential authors, entitled ‘Shadow Worlds | Writers’ Rooms’

The ruin and the circular narrative

The written component submitted to the University Research Degree Committee in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTERS BY RESEARCH in Fine ArtThis study constitutes the written component of a practice based Masters by Research in Fine Art. The research arises from my practice as an artist working in film and video in which I have come across links between the representation of ruins and aspects of narrative structure that have suggested the possibility that the ruin represents a nodal point in the work. Ruins have tended to be treated thematically by art historians and theorists and I will demonstrate that there are very few attempts to take the subject beyond the role of metaphor or allegory. However, Jacques Derrida has taken the idea of ruins into the idea of origin and it is this insight that lies at the core of this study. This leads to the idea of the ruin as a condensation of the end and beginning thereby giving it an important role in relation to narrative structure. The circular narrative is a form in which the end and beginning are stitched together at the same theoretical point as the ruin. In terms of practice the circular structure is explored in the form of film and video loops in which the circle structures the way the works physical production, its contextual background, its content and the ways in which it can be interpreted. Underlining this is Derrida's idea that the ruin is always already present at the origin of the work. These ideas are also combined with Freud's theory of the Death Instinct which is rooted in the compulsion to repeat. I have extended Peter Brooks' linking of the Death Instinct with linear narrative structure to include the circular narrative and tested this against my studio practice and the work of another artists, a writer and a film maker. In combining this link between the Death Instinct and the circular narrative with the ruin I have used the Freudian Theory of Primal Phantasies. This was also done to resolve the link with fantasy that was identified at the beginning of the project. My argument ends with the consolidation of these strands with Elisabeth Bronfen's use of the navel as a symbolic intervention into the conventional structures of psychoanalysis. In conclusion the identification of this nodal point in the structure of the work is shown to present an example of the ways in which theory and practice in contemporary art can be dynamically combined. In this way the art work is not only the result of the context from which it has emerged but also provides the means of interrogating that context

Silicon utopias: the making of a tech startuo ecosystem in Manchester (UK)

‘Silicon utopias’, the hope for a green, affluent and happy future through the creation of new tech-businesses, are today informing many urban development processes globally. In this contribution, I look at the recent remodeling of Manchester (Northern England) as an entrepreneurial city. In particular, I present a specific government investment scheme and its relation to the work of a group of local lobbyists who have been promoting a new tech startup community in the city since 2012. Stemming from this empirical example, I explore the interplay between local entrepreneurial dreams and the state’s promotion of startups. The paper concludes with the argument that an anthropologically informed concept of cynicism can contribute to a nuanced reading of silicon utopias and dystopias

Dialogical Skirmishes

Tan was guest editor for 'And Now China?', a special print edition of the Ctrl+P journal, which critically responded to the celebratory rhetoric’s of ‘China Now’ and other celebratory markers of China's global ascent in 2008. As well as the introductory article 'Dialogical Skirmishes', Tan also interviewed Hans Ulrich Obrist

The Visual Matrix Method: Imagery and Affect in a Group-based Research Setting

The visual matrix is a method for researching shared experience, stimulated by a sensory stimulus relevant to a research question. It is led by imagery, visualization and affect, which in the matrix take precedence over discourse. The method enables the symbolization of imaginative and emotional material, which might not otherwise be articulated and allows "unthought" dimensions of experience to emerge into consciousness in a participatory setting. We describe the process of the matrix with reference to the study "Public Art and Civic Engagement" (FROGGETT, MANLEY, ROY, PRIOR & DOHERTY, 2014) in which it was developed and tested. Subsequently, examples of its use in other contexts are provided. Both the matrix and post-matrix discussions are described, as is the interpretive process that follows. Theoretical sources are highlighted: its origins in social dreaming; the atemporal, associative nature of the thinking during and after the matrix which we describe through the Deleuzian idea of the rhizome; and the hermeneutic analysis which draws from object relations theory and the Lorenzerian tradition of scenic understanding. The matrix has been conceptualized as a "scenic rhizome" to account for its distinctive quality and hybrid origins in research practice. The scenic rhizome operates as a "third" between participants and the "objects" of contemplation. We suggest that some of the drawbacks of other group-based methods are avoided in the visual matrix—namely the tendency for inter-personal dynamics to dominate the event