Emerging Design Practice Meets Cutting Edge Curating

This paper considers examples of design practice emerging from higher education and its reception by museums, addressing their different educational philosophies and theories. It will also consider the symbiotic relationship of the designer as ‘avant-garde form giver’ and the museum as ‘arbiter of the avant-garde’ in the sense that some work appears to be created for the purposes of museum endorsement and display. Future-oriented design students constantly reconfigure practice. Established conventions of industrial design, craft work, mass- or one-off production, and even newer fields such as computer-related or interaction design, rapidly seem inadequate terms to map emergent practices which sometimes subjugate the production of objects to the creation of experiences or events. But history-oriented museums privilege objects, are formulated around established taxonomies, and have difficulty assimilating practice that does not conform to existing conventions or contexts. Therefore, in order to gain access to the museological canon, emerging design practices need cutting edge curating. In this context it is also pertinent to ask what types of design practice are not, or never can, be acceptable in the established museum context. The paper will focus on case studies of work by very recent graduates of the RCA. Jen Hui Liao’s Self-Portrait Machine (2009) creates a symbiotic relationship between artist and machine where both parties together create the artist’s self-portrait. Through it we can examine issues of personal identity and self-representation in a mechanized world. Is it a technological commentary, a media device, a sculpture, an example of advanced product design, a robot, or an artistic representation of any or all of these? Is, in fact, the machine itself subordinate to the portraits it makes and where can it be positioned in a museum? Thomas Thwaites’s Toaster Project (2009) comments on the production of high volume, low cost, industrially-made electrical appliances. He determined to replicate a toaster by sourcing and fabricating all his own materials and components, from the iron ore for the metal frame, to the copper for the electrical wiring. The outcome was both a documentary archive of his process, and a barely functional simulacrum of a toaster. Museums collect product design as evidence of industrial development and social life, but where does Thwaites’s commentary fit in this discourse? Both examples address core interests of museums but in themselves are hard to ‘collect’. The paper will argue that parallel activities of events, exhibitions, residencies and responses to permanent collections may bridge the space between emerging design and museums. It will also posit that ultimately the commissioning of such events and practices directly influences the type of design made purposefully for museum display, and that interdependence exists between designers and their curators

Who invented vaccination?

Edward Jenner, whose ‘Inquiry’ (1798)1 was the first published report of vaccination against smallpox, is widely seen as the inventor of vaccination. However, other individuals could lay claim to this title, notably his contemporaries, Benjamin Jesty and John Fewster. Jesty, a Dorset farmer, performed vaccinations in 1774, 22 years before Jenner’s first vaccination in 1796. Fewster, an apothecary-surgeon who knew Jenner personally, is also reported to have performed the procedure several years before Jenner. However, neither Jesty nor Fewster published or publicised their work and both were recognised retrospectively, notably by critics of Jenner. This article compares the contributions of these three putative ‘inventors’ of vaccination.peer-reviewe

Shift exhibition : Work implements for the legal immigrant (2018)

Exhibition: Shift. This exhibition is one of two that comprise a collaborative project between Blue Roof Museum, Chengdu, China and Wintec researchers, Hamilton, NZ. Wintec artists and Chengdu artists made up this exhibition and was curated by Ding Fenqi, Blue Roof Museum and Eliza Webster, Wallace Gallery , Morrinsville, NZ. Notions of community, technology and exchange were explored in the exhibition This sculptural work explores ideas of work, location/relocation and transferable skills

Recently published papers: An ancient debate, novel monitors and post ICU outcome in the elderly

Tracheostomies have been around for close to 3000 years, so one would hope that the controversies might have been thrashed out by now, but apparently not. Judging by some recent publications it would appear that we still do not know when or how to insert them. Monitoring is fundamental to critical care; two papers describe novel/modified techniques for assessing traumatic brain injury and cardiac output. The intensive care unit imposes a heavy treatment burden, particularly on the elderly. What impact does this have on the lives of the survivors

Indeliable exhibition: Yellow river boat (2018): Trap (2018)

This exhibition is one of two that make up a cultural and artistic exchange project with Xi'an Art Museum, Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province, China; Waikato Museum, Hamilton, NZ; and Wintec researchers (Hamilton, NZ). Themes of exchange, community, identity and location were explored by the various practitioners involved in the project. These two sculptural works examine cultural practices of food gathering in relationship to community

The mass of (1) Ceres from perturbations on (348) May

The most promising ground-based technique for determining the mass of a minor planet is the observation of the perturbations it induces in the motion of another minor planet. This method requires careful observation of both minor planets over extended periods of time. The mass of (1) Ceres has been determined from the perturbations on (348) May, which made three close approaches to Ceres at intervals of 46 years between 1891 and 1984. The motion of May is clearly influenced by Ceres, and by using different test masses for Ceres, a search was made to determine the mass of Ceres that minimizes the residuals in the observations of May

The post-embryonic development and functional morphology of the female reproductive system in Graphocephala fennahi

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ORTEGA LEYENDO A DILTHEY, E IDEAS SOBRE LA VIDA

Este artículo explora las afinidades del concepto de «conciencia viviente», que encontramos en el Ortega que, en 1933, escribe el ensayo «Guillermo Dilthey y la idea de la vida», con el lenguaje fascista de Mussolini sobre el nuevo Estado, y, en concreto, con la idea latino-románica de imperium.This essay explores the affinities between the Orteguian concept of «living consciousness,» as expressed in the 1933 essay «Guillermo Dilthey y la idea de la vida,» with Mussoliniʼs fascist language on the New State and with the Roman notion of imperium

Detroit’s post-bankruptcy redevelopment has been marred by a fragmented approach focused on short-term gains.

In 2013, after years of failed policies aimed at redeveloping the Motor City, Detroit declared bankruptcy. Gareth Williams takes an in-depth look at these policies, which included the allocation of millions in municipal funding which has done little for job creation and retention, and instead has funnelled money to corporate boardrooms. He writes that the city’s redevelopment efforts have prioritised unsustainable, short-term advantages at great and increasingly apparent public cost

21 Twenty One, 21 designers for twenty-first century Britain

This book considers 21 furniture and related-product designers or practices that have come to prominence in Britain since 2000. It takes the form of case studies of each individual or group, citing published interviews and critically known works, as well as interviews with the author. In the introductory essay (c.7,000 words), Williams considers the conditions under which such designers work in Britain and addresses the notion of ‘cultural diplomacy’, arguing that their work has been co-opted to project an image of Britain as a forward-thinking, liberal democracy, notwithstanding the fact that many of them were not born in Britain. The essay records the increased prominence of contemporary design in cultural diplomacy since the mid-1990s, through events such as the ‘Millennium Experience’ and the activities of bodies such as the British Council, setting the parameters for the subsequent detailed examination of designers who work in the cultural as well as commercial sphere. Williams’s extensive knowledge of the designers is grounded in research undertaken as V&A Curator of Furniture (1990–2009) and continued in his position as RCA Senior Tutor in Design Products (2009–). His selection of designers was made on the basis of critical reputation. Most work on self-initiated projects and many of them operate at the intersection of art, design, craft and performance. By presenting these designers in the context of cultural diplomacy, this book indisputably demonstrates that design has moved from the periphery to the centre of ‘soft’ power politics (Nye 2004). Williams delivered a lecture, ’21 twenty one’, at the V&A (2012), the University of Falmouth (2013) and the University of Greenwich (2013). He expanded on the theme with a paper titled ‘Contemporary designers, cultural diplomacy and the museum without walls’ at the Association of Art Historians’ annual conference (2013)