What does it mean to be a “materially attuned” practitioner?

This paper reports on research in progress that explores the potential role the materiality of things plays as a tool for the critical understanding of the human relationship with man-­‐made objects. The paper argues that many designers habitually engage with production and consumption of meanings more through the materiality of things than words and symbols. It proposes a hypothesis that materiality is a key to understanding the context, knowledge and information the man-­made objects may “embody”. Through the case study of an exhibition, the paper examines the ways in which this embodiment may be facilitated. Referring to Heidegger’s notion of "thingness", it further explores the origin of the mediating, and the “engaging capacity” of objects. The paper draws on the more established analysis of the origin and the experience of the work of art, in its examination of the role that materiality plays in the production and consumption of meaning and in facilitating the experience through objects. While exploring the potential advantage of an anthropological approach to design, the paper suggests that an attunement to materiality and an active reflection on their observations enable the designers to have better insights into the workings of the human-­object relationship

Performing weight change : a performative reading of reality-making through a relationship of meaning and doing : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in English at Massey University

Reading the reality-making processes that create bodies in weight change performances challenges us to understand the relationships between meanings and actions, or between discourses and materiality. This study uses a performative model to elaborate how discourses and materiality can be read in texts in such a way to bring transparency to the process of materiality-making, agency and causality. The texts used in this study are transcribed interviews of participants who identified themselves as undergoing weight change. Reading weight and body-making as a discursive-material relationship enriches a shared understanding in the interdisciplinary space of psychology and English. The performative model chosen for this study offers sufficient structure to read both the generic features of reality-making and individually-nuanced reality-making practices, presenting psychologists with a sophisticated understanding of change processes. To read reality-making with detailed transparency, we require tools of analysis that can directly read discourses and actions as shared spaces of relationship, through which material entities can emerge. For such tools of analysis, this study utilizes and extends the model of performativity offered by Dr Karen Barad (2007). In using this model to read text performatively, the unique features that are creating performances of weight change are accessed through a reading of boundary-making practices, through the relationship between meaning and doing that establishes what matters in accessing possibilities for meaning and possibilities for doing, and through the elaboration of subject-object relationships into a sequenced performance

The Materiality Concept: Implications for Managers and Investors

Discutem-se as implicações da materialidade da informação financeira sobre “gestão de ganhos”. Implica a descrição e a análise do conteúdo da Codificação de Normas Contáveis™. As perspectivas profissionais foram utilizadas para confirmar a ausência de diretrizes de importância relativa nos Princípios de Contabilidade Geralmente Aceitos (em inglês, GAAP) dos Estados Unidos da América (EUA). Os termos “materialidade”, “significância” e “importância” foram usados para determinar a inclusão de materialidade nas codificações. As principais conclusões indicam que, primeiramente, os fatores determinantes e as motivações internas e externas influenciaram nas práticas de “gestão de ganhos” e, segundo, os PCGA dos EUA não contam com diretrizes bem definidas para aplicar a materialidade na tomada de decisõesSe discuten las implicaciones de la materialidad de la información financiera sobre “manejo de los ingresos”. Implica la descripción y el análisis del contenido de la Codificación de Normas Contables™. Las perspectivas profesionales fueron utilizadas para confirmar la ausencia de directrices de importancia relativa en los Principios de Contabilidad Generalmente Aceptados (en inglés, PCGA) de los EE. UU. Los términos “materialidad”, “significancia” e “importancia” fueron usados para determinar la inclusión de materialidad en las codificaciones. Las principales conclusiones indican que, primero, los factores determinantes y las motivaciones internas y externas influyen en las prácticas de “manejos de ganancias” y, segundo, los PCGA de EE. UU. no cuentan con directrices bien definidas para aplicar la materialidad en la toma de decisiones.Discuss the implications of materiality of financial information on “earnings management”. Imply the content description and analysis of FASB Accounting Standards Codification™. The Professional View is used to confirm the absence of materiality guidelines in the US GAAP. Materiality, importance and significance are terms used to indicate the materiality consideration in the Codifications. The main conclusions are concerned to, first, the internal and external determinants and motives influence the practices of “earnings managements”, and second US GAAP do not offer well defined guidelines to apply materiality on decision making

Thinking Materially: Cognition as Extended and Enacted

Human cognition is extended and enacted. Drawing the boundaries of cognition to include the resources and attributes of the body and materiality allows an examination of how these components interact with the brain as a system, especially over cultural and evolutionary spans of time. Literacy and numeracy provide examples of multigenerational, incremental change in both psychological functioning and material forms. Though we think materiality, its central role in human cognition is often unappreciated, for reasons that include conceptual distribution over multiple material forms, the unconscious transparency of cognitive activity in general, and the different temporalities of metaplastic change in neurons and cultural forms

Digital culture, materiality and Nineteenth-Century studies

The rhetoric of the virtual stubbornly clings to digital culture, even though our experience of working within it is of a resisting medium that only behaves in certain ways. The persistence of the virtual demands attention: why do we cling to such a description even while we quite willingly recognise the interpenetration of the world beyond the monitor and that represented on it? In education we’re encouraged to use Virtual Learning Environments, as if somehow these spaces are not as real as classrooms; we participate (or read about others participating) in virtual worlds such as Second Life or World of Warcraft, places that imitate the real world, providing access to fantasies that are underpinned by very real economics; and we exploit the World Wide Web, believing in its textual metaphors (pages, hypertext) while ignoring its presence as a medium. In my contribution to this forum I want to suggest that our insistence on the immateriality of digital culture enforces an ontological distinction that overdetermines the materiality of the world beyond the monitor while misrecognizing the new things that are displayed upon it. Rather than continue to use the virtual as a category, I would like to argue using an alternative term, the apparition.1 Unlike the virtual, which foregrounds its effect of the real with reality itself present only as absence, apparition has two meanings: the first is an immaterial appearance, a ghostly presence that, like the virtual, can signal an absent materiality; the second is simply the appearance of something, specifically the emergence of something into history. It is this latter meaning, I suggest, that permits materiality to re-enter digital discourse