Visual Arts
Wild Renaissance
A Renaissance is underway. It can be seen as a response to environmental societal and ethical issues so acute that human survival is in question. Artistic philosophical and political it builds on the scientific revolutions of the last decades and positions itself in relation to technoscientific and transhumanist promises. Within this Wild Renaissance man no longer positions himself as master and owner imposing his will on a passive and purposeless nature. He makes ready to listen to a new partner: the world around him. He discovers the potential of its forces which he both harnesses and engages with joining them with his own. A new era is taking shape restoring man to his “wild” dignity and giving his existence meaning joy and ambition. An art is emerging that is redefining the paradigms of creation. Its work is in the vanguard of this societal project.
There is a major tendency in contemporary art and design and perhaps the most innovative one that is putting in place new ways of working and producing works which represent a significant break with the principles that have guided modernity up to the present. We are witnessing the beginnings of a renaissance that can be described as “wild.” Powerfully ambitious it stands as a response to the acute environmental societal and ethical questions raised in today’s world and at their heart the very survival of the human species as we enter the Anthropocene era. It bears witness to massive shifts in consciousness and echoes a call for a change that is becoming increasingly audible. Nature or more precisely a new way of being “wild” – that is to say of thinking and acting on the Earth is the key reference around which the contents of an alternative common destiny are being articulated. The “Wild Renaissance” is supplanting both the modernity that placed man at the center of the world assigning him the vocation of becoming the master and owner of nature and postmodernity which put an end to the great narratives and left only an absolute relativism incapable of supporting new sustainable models.
The word “renaissance” is not used lightly. It stems from a philosophical and ecological analysis of the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries in Italy. This upheaval did not come out of nowhere. Today as back then a period of some hundred and fifty yeas paved the way for its emergence. The proto-Wild Renaissance goes from the mid-19th century to the early 21st century. The evolution and convergence of art philosophy and the sciences of the environment can be observed there in relation to key historical and political moments that have repeatedly raised the question of the continuing habitability of the Earth.
The Wild Renaissance is articulated around a renewed vision of humankind and nature. Humankind no longer aspires to impose its will on a passive purposeless nature. Instead it is beginning to listen to a new partner: the world around it. Humanity is discovering the potential of these forces and entering into a relation with them allying them with its own. Humanity is going from from master to collaborator assuming an ecological responsibility that goes hand in hand with a revived dignity and an existence that is all the more exciting for all that. Already-established figures in contemporary art and design together with emerging creators are at the forefront of this new movement. The works and practices analyzed here are shown in a new light with a fresh understanding of their historical grounding conceptual underpinnings and significance for the present.
Previously published in French by Presses Universitaires de France (PUF).
Product Design, Technology, and Social Change
This cultural history critically examines product design and its development from pre-industrial times to the present day considering major milestones in the mass production of goods and services aiming to incorporate a more inclusive worldview than traditional surveys of the topic.
The breadth and versatility of product design through history has been profound. Products have long supported the integration and interpretation of emerging technologies into our lives. These objects include everything from tools accessories furniture and clothing to types of transportation websites and mobile apps. Products provide singular or multiple functions are tangible and intangible and in many instances have impacted the quality of our lives by saving time or money or by increasing feelings of personal satisfaction. At the same time many products have negatively impacted people and the environment. For nearly every product that makes it into the hands of a consumer there is also a designer who created it and someone who laboured to make it.
Examines the relationship between products consumption sustainability politics and social movements. This "pocket history" surveys product design from the agricultural revolution and the birth of cities through industrialisation and a digital design revolution.
artmaking as embodied enquiry
What can a fold be? Virtually anything and everything.
For centuries folds/folding has captured the world’s imagination. Folds readily appear in revivals of the ancient craft of origamithe simplest acts of pedestrian life in art design architecture performing arts linguistics the philosophical turnings of the mind and last but not the least in the many ingenious computations of (bio)engineering and technology. What awaits our understanding is how deeply the fold roots into embodiment into our very impulse to create.
This book is about folding as a vibrant stimulus for trans-disciplinary artistic research – whether for the performative for product realization or simply to enliven body mind and spirit. Conceived as art-made-differently Susan and Glenna share the abundance of their decade-long collaboration in developing their approach to practice research in the fold. In addition to their own insights they invite eight of their collaborators to contribute each a veteran artist. The fold is destined for artmaking – for making any art. Etching into the very fabric of embodiment the fold practice reaches outside the constraints of disciplinary silos into niche areas that embrace the unknown with all its underlying tensions and ambiguities.
Reflecting on a current and unique somatic oriented arts research practice and pedagogy with an intriguing blend of interdisciplinary concern and theory practice and includes a wide variety of practice samples and images.
Critical Digital Art History
Digital Art History has often aligned itself with the practical concerns of digital technology and the responsibilities of art institutions and associated institutional roles such as collection managers information specialists curators and conservators. This emphasis on practicalities and implementation while undeniably important has often meant that there is little room for critical examination of the broader implications of digital technology and computational methodologies in art history.
This anthology seeks to address the dearth of critical reflection by approaching the use of digital technology in art history from a theoretical perspective and critically assessing specific case study examples. This book also considers the political dimensions associated with the large-scale digitization and the application of digital tools within museums and collection management.
A long-standing concers of the field—and also a major focal point of this book—is museum and collecting practices in the digital era. While there is a certain degree of continuity in the field there are some important shifts and changes too. One of the key changes is the widespread uptake of artificial intelligence tools and an increased
attention to both the broader historical and societal aspects of the use of digital repositories and tools.
Decolonizing Islamic Art in Africa
This collection explores the dynamic place of Muslim visual and expressive culture in processes of decolonization across the African continent. Presenting new methodologies for accentuating African agency and expression in the stories we tell about Islamic art it likewise contributes to recent widespread efforts to “decolonize” the art historical canon.
The contributors to this volume explore the dynamic place of Islamic art architecture and creative expression in processes of decolonization across the African continent in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Bringing together new work by leading specialists in the fields of African Islamic and modern arts and visual cultures the book directs unprecedented attention to the agency and contributions of African and Muslim artists in articulating modernities in local and international arenas. Interdisciplinary and transregional in scope it enriches the under-told story of Muslim experiences and expression on the African continent home to nearly half a million Muslims or a third of the global Muslim population.
Furthermore it elucidates the role of Islam and its expressive cultures in post-colonial articulations of modern identities and heritage as expressed by a diverse range of actors and communities based in Africa and its diaspora; as such the book counters notions of Islam as a retrograde or static societal phenomenon in Africa or elsewhere. Contributors propose new methodologies for accentuating human agency and experience over superficial disciplinary boundaries in the stories we tell about art-making and visual expression thus contributing to widespread efforts to decolonize scholarship on histories of modern expression.
Watch this Space
This book and its individual essays examine key emerging and evolving practices theories and methodologies that operate in the blurred boundary between spatial design disciplines such as architecture interior and urban design and film and moving image studies more broadly.
The collection is an exploration of the evolving interdisciplinary rhetoric connecting spatial design disciplines like architecture and urban design with film and moving image studies. It is premised on the argument that the understanding of ‘space’ in these areas continues to draw on each other’s fields of reference and that in recent times this has expanded further to the point in which it blurs with multiple other disciplines including media art cultural studies and art practice to name but three. The result of this evolving interdisciplinary understating of ‘space’ in design disciplines and moving image studies is an expanded field of haptic-visual practice and theory that can be investigated as both a material and an image-based construct.
It engages with this evolving set of ideas and underlines how each of its primary discipline areas now increasingly incorporate tools and methodologies from each other’s fields. For example architects routinely engage with cinematic practice as a means of exploring space cultural theorists inspect filmic space as a two-dimensional surrogate of the real media artists incorporate knowledge of spatial design in video installations and film makers create spaces on screen that are informed by architectural theory. This all follows what can be defined as a discursive turn in our view of spatial relationships across disciplines which by definition is complex eclectic occasionally contradictory and at times characterised by surprising confluences.
Conceived as a form of mapping of these confluences and contradictions this book collects varied essays that in their own unique ways explore the diversity of how we today define understand and engage with notions of the body in architectural-urban space. It does so through a triadic structure that progresses from haptic relationships of the body in architectural space through film readings of represented space in mainstream cinema and concludes with ‘experimental spatial’ projects inspired by film and the moving image. This tripartite structure specifically encourages a look across disciplines broadening architectural urbanist media and cinematic concerns through insightful case studies that engage with their subjects by means of novel techniques i.e. employing graphic software for an analysis of pre-digital films deconstructing cinematography in modernist classics or researching urban edgelands via collaging and montage etc.
The Human Shutter
This book provides four key insights beginning with how photographic stillness depth and motion emerged en masse departing from the gradualist narratives familiar in histories of photography and film.
Secondly the book addresses the role of binocular vision in the history of painting and photography. Thirdly the rich history of early stereoviews that constitute the origins of photographic cinema and other instances of temporality is examined. The author explains how binocular rivalry termed ‘the human shutter’ provokes a reexamination of the standard chronology of cinema. The role of the human shutter is demonstrated with a preliminary taxonomy of astonishing images excavated from the photographic archive. Lastly focusing on what happens after light arrives at the retina numerous artists and theorists have employed the stereoscope as a metaphor for critical thinking.
In addition to these new perspectives the book contains significant original research particularly regarding early photographers who have explored motion with binocular vision especially Antoine Claudet and Giorgio Sommer.
Equally important to this discussion are modern and contemporary artists and experimental filmmakers who have focused on stereoscopic spaces including Marcel Duchamp Robert Smithson Lucy Raven Ken Jacobs Alfons Schilling Arakawa and Gins and OpenEndedGroup.
Global Culture after Gombrich
Ernst Gombrich can be considered the most influential art historian of the 20th-century. Until now however the global impact of his work has been under-appreciated. Global Culture after Gombrich: Art Mind World presents essays by historians of art and culture - themselves students of Gombrich or associated with his scholarly home the Warburg Institute - from Asia the USA and Europe.
Subjects range from picture-making’s place in human evolution to the visual marginalia of the Renaissance and from nineteenth-century modernism to the implications of the latest neuroscience for cultural history. Other chapters treat fundamental issues such as the notion of connoisseurship the fate of the idea of ‘culture’ or the cultural specificity of modernism. They range from theoretical broadsides – notably a defence of the ‘intelligence’ of art - to intricate reflections – for example on caricature as a style.
In showing how Gombrich initiated enquiries that have spread in numerous – and global – directions Global Culture after Gombrich: Art Mind World makes a vital contribution to contemporary debates around the languages of art history and showcases the range of approaches and methods by which art history is and has yet to be written.
Queer Contemporary Art of Southwest Asia North Africa
Presents new perspectives on queer visual culture in the Southwest Asia North Africa region from queer artists as well as scholars who work on queer themes. With contributions from both scholars and artists this volume
demonstrates that queer visual culture in the SWANA region is not only extant but is also entering an era of exciting growth in terms of its versatility and consciousness. The volume focuses on artworks produced in the contemporary era while recognizing historical and contextual connections to Islamic art and culture within
localities and regions from the pre-modern and modern eras.
By framing this volume as unambiguously located within queer studies the editors challenge existing literature that merely includes some examples of queer studies or queer representation but does not necessarily use queer studies as a lens through which to engage with visual culture and/or with the SWANA region. Through four interrelated sections - Gender and Normativity Trans* Articulations Intersectional Sexuality and Queer SWANA - this volume probes several previously unexplored academic areas namely the intersections of queer studies with
other fields.
Part of the Critical Studies in Architecture of the Middle East series.
Dissens and Sensibility
The book is motivated by the author's long-lasting interest in the role of art in society in general and education in particular and is a contribution to arts-based approaches to education. An introduction to pedagogy of dissensus: a pedagogy informed by the dissensual characteristics of art. The book includes both theoretical foundations and examples of how the theory is unfolded in different contexts ranging from educational practice to own arts-based research. This publication is a unique opportunity to launch the relevance of the pedagogy of dissensus in an international context.
The author invites readers to encounter dissensus as an educational strategy through examples from her own research and teaching. Referencing philosophers and theorists such as Rancière Gert Biesta and Dennis Atkinson she demonstrates art’s ability to create necessary disturbance and resistance in art education. Putting art at the centre of education and democracy the author shows what an art education focusing on concepts and issue-based art rather than form colours and composition can contribute as a contrast to the dominating practice in art.
Entangled Histories of Art and Migration
Dedicated to the stories of migrants refugees asylum seekers and exiles this collection asks how these stories are interwoven with art art practices activism reception and (re-)presentation. It explores the complex entanglements of art and aesthetic practices with migration flight and other forms of enforced dislocation and border/border crossings in global contexts - the latter significant phenomena of social transformation in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
These complex entanglements take centre stage when migration shapes forms and aesthetics (and vice versa) when actors employ image politics and visualisation strategies in and about migration at different times and places or when materialities sites and spaces gain importance for decision-making processes. Taking an art and cultural studies perspective the book questions the significance of spatial changes for artistic practice in migration and elaborates on new or different theory-formation.
Interweaves histories of modernism and exile in different urban environments and focuses on historical dislocations in the first half of the twentieth century when artistic and urban movements constituted themselves in global exchange. Although this book takes a historical perspective it is written with an awareness of current flight movements and will make a significant contribution to the theory and methodology of research on exile.
The knowledge of previous historical exile experiences is important for the understanding of contemporary flight movements: after all these are not singular phenomena. For migration movements in the first half of the 20th century and for those of today it is equally possible to speak of urban centres of attraction for refugees: Today Berlin is a European metropolis of exile; in the 1930s and 1940s Paris Prague London New York Istanbul and Shanghai were destinations for refugees.
Entangled Histories of Art and Migration
Dedicated to the stories of migrants refugees asylum seekers and exiles this collection asks how these stories are interwoven with art art practices activism reception and (re-)presentation. It explores the complex entanglements of art and aesthetic practices with migration flight and other forms of enforced dislocation and border/border crossings in global contexts - the latter significant phenomena of social transformation in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
These entanglements take centre stage when migration shapes forms and aesthetics (and vice versa) when actors employ image politics and visualisation strategies in and about migration at different times and places or when materialities sites and spaces gain importance for decision-making processes.
Giving space to these stories of art and migration and its power of pluriverse knowledge production the book takes an art and cultural studies perspective and questions the significance of spatial changes for artistic practice in migration and elaborates on new or different theory formation. Bringing together its case studies and theoretical approaches the argumentation unfolds over the five sections of the book Visibilities | Invisibilities Sites | Spaces Materiality | Materialisation Racism | Resistance and Practices | Performativity.
Digital Embodiment and the Arts
A timely examination of the use of emerging technologies in the arts in recent decades from the first wave of Virtual Reality through to the current use of Mixed Augmented and Extended Realities. It highlights the necessity of understanding technological experiences through the assumption that all experience is embodied. An explosion of digital culture and experience has most certainly given artists and creative practitioners new ways of exploring a hybridisation of creative practices with access to technological tools only previously dreamt of. Further there are a number of threads around digital embodiment and its centrality to the digital experience.
The book is divided into 3: Section 1 explores the whole notion of embodied experience through a study of space and virtuality imagination and technology. Section 2 lays the ground for a more explicit understanding of the role the body has in our engagement with the digital technologies focussing on three distinct bodies: the gravitational body the virtual body and finally the hybrid body. Section 3 is split into three chronological chapters in terms of technological developments that of VR Virtual Worlds and Augmented Mixed and Extended Realities.
While individual aspects and themes covered here can be found in some recent books there is little that places digital embodiment within the arts in the way this book does. A unique synthesis.
Becoming a Visually Reflective Practitioner
Professional practice is increasingly becoming more complex demanding dynamic and diverse. This important and original new book considers how self-study using arts-based methods can enable purposeful reflection toward understanding and envisioning professional practice. Ideally for visual arts practitioners on all levels this book presents a self-study model grounded in compelling research that highlights arts-based methods for examining four areas of professional practice: professional identities work cultures change and transitions and envisioning new pathways.
Chapters address the components of the self-study model artistic methods and materials and strategies for interpreting self-study written and visual outcomes with the aim of goal setting. Each chapter includes visuals references and end-of-chapter prompts to engage readers in critical and visual reflection. Appendices offer resources and guidelines for creating and assessing self-study outcomes.
The fluctuating nature of professional practice necessitates the pursuit of discernment and clarity that can be achieved through an ongoing reflective practice. Self-study is a systematic and flexible methodology for purposeful reflection on professional practice that embraces dialogic interpretive rhizomatic and visual inquiry. Self-study can occur at any level of practice and in the context of work-related professional development formal study or as a self-initiated inquiry. An arts-based self-study model for visual arts practitioners is explored and focuses on four intersectional components shaping professional practice: professional identities work cultures and communities transition and change within professional practice and envisioning new pathways for professional practice.
The self-study model is grounded in contemporary theory practice and compelling research and embraces robust strategies for understanding the complexities of professional practice that can include dual multiple overlapping hybrid and conflicting professional identities tensions within work cultures and unexpected changes within professional practice. Each chapter focuses on a component of the self-study model and an area of professional practice concluding with references and end-of-chapter prompts that are aimed to facilitate critical reflection-on-practice and the creation of written and visual responses.
With visual arts practitioners in mind various arts-based methods for self-study are discussed that highlight visual journaling as a key method for engaging in self-study. Interpretive research methods are discussed to guide readers in understanding the phases and processes for interpreting written and visual self-study outcomes. Processes are outlined to help readers determine key insights themes issues and questions from their self-study outcomes how to use them in formulating new questions and articulating new professional goals. Several levels for interpretation are presented to offer readers options relative to their professional needs and aims.
Throughout the text charts and visuals serve to summarize and visualize key chapter points. Images by visual arts practitioners appear throughout the text and represent a wide range of artistic media methods and approaches appropriate for self-study. The appendices provide additional resources for enhanced understanding of chapter concepts and key terms guidelines and rubrics for writing reflections creating visual responses and using a visual journal in the self-study process.
Primary readership will be visual arts practitioners at all levels. Ideal for university level graduate courses or as a guide for individuals and small groups of practitioners who seek to engage in arts-based self-study as professional development.
The Physical and the Digital City
The Physical and the Digital City is a unique collection of projects where researchers and designers show how the theories of technology underpinning the digital urban environment are applied in practical and spatial terms. The authors are experts in their respective fields who pursue cutting edge solutions for city-making and consider the theoretical premise critically. It is designed to be a self-contained and interdisciplinary reference text to introduce students designers and scholars to the idea of physical/digital and its urban application.
The book will help students and designers to develop a clear understanding of the physical and digital principles underpinning urban assemblages and a solid set of references to start working within this topic with confidence. Of interest to all students and scholars interested in urban studies (geography planning urban design social sciences and humanities) and human-computer interaction (media studies computer science social sciences cognitive sciences anthropology and psychology). The book will clarify the role of digital technologies within the city along with its possible implications for people and communities.
It is oriented to the academic and professional communities interested in architectural urban and digital design from different angles. This includes those interested in computational architecture for example eCAADe Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe ACADIA Association of Computer Aided Design in Architecture CAADRIA Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia SIGraDi Sociedad Iberoamericana de Grafica Digital CAAD Futures Foundation as well as those interested in the human-computer interaction.
Material Media-Making in the Digital Age
There is now no shortage of media for us to consume from streaming services and video-on-demand to social media and everything else besides. This has changed the way media scholars think about the production and reception of media. Missing from these conversations though is the maker: in particular the maker who has the power to produce media in their pocket.
How might one craft a personal media-making practice that is thoughtful and considerate of the tools and materials at one's disposal? This is the core question of this original new book. Exploring a number of media-making tools and processes like drones and vlogging as well as thinking through time editing sound and the stream Binns looks out over the current media landscape in order to understand his own media practice.
The result is a personal journey through media theory history and technology furnished with practical exercises for teachers students professionals and enthusiasts: a unique combination of theory and practice written in a highly personal and personable style that is engaging and refreshing.
This book will enable readers to understand how a personal creative practice might unlock deeper thinking about media and its place in the world.
The primary readership will be among academics researchers and students in the creative arts as well as practitioners of creative arts including sound designers cinematographers and social media content producers.
Designed for classroom use this will be of particular importance for undergraduate students of film production and may also be of interest to students at MA level particularly on the growing number of courses that specifically offer a blend of theory and practice. The highly accessible writing style may also mean that it can be taken up for high school courses on film and production.
It will also be of interest to academics delivering these courses and to researchers and scholars of new media and digital cinema.
Art Education in Canadian Museums
This collection considers how Canadian art educators are engaging with a new range of approaches to museum education and why educators are responding to 21st century challenges in ways that are unique to Canada.
Organized into three sections this collection reconceptualizes museums to consider accessibility differences in
lived experiences and how practices create impactful change.
With the overarching concept of relationality between art museums and interdisciplinary perspectives authors consider methodological philosophical experiential and aesthetic forms of inquiry in regional museum contexts from coast-to-coast-to-coast that bring forward innovative theoretical standpoints with practice-based projects in museums articulating how museums are shifting and why museums are evolving as sites that mediate different and multiple knowledges for the future. Informed by social justice perspectives and as catalysts for public scholarship each chapter is passionate in addressing the mobilization of equity diversity and inclusivity (EDI) in relation to practices in the field.
By weaving the learning potential of interacting with artworks more fully within situated and localized social and cultural communities the authors present a distinct socio-political discourse at the heart of teaching and learning. Rupturing preconceived ideas and sedimentary models they suggest a discourse of living futures is already upon us in museums and in art education.
The Bitter Landscapes of Palestine
Using both photographs and written narratives The Bitter Landscapes of Palestine provides a depiction of the lives and struggles faced by Palestinians living in the occupied Palestinian territories on the West Bank in particular the South Hebron Hills and the Jordan Valley. It sheds light on issues including house demolitions conflicts between Palestinian shepherds or farmers and Israeli settlers soldiers and police the daily struggles brought about by the occupation's efforts to displace Palestinians from their land and the resilience and bravery required to endure these conditions. This moving book conveys the beauty of the landscape the essence of the language the value of friendships and the richness of a threatened way of life.
Voices of activists both Palestinian and Jewish are brought into focus. The historical context that generated present realities in Palestine is outlined briefly as well as the history of the authors’ partnership. Their perspective mirrors extensive years of involvement in peace and human rights activism in Palestine. It also captures the ongoing dialogue between the two authors who have experienced together the continually renewed astonishment that comes with such experiences and encounters.
Art Education in Canadian Museums
This collection considers how Canadian art educators are engaging with a new range of approaches to museum education and why educators are responding to 21st century challenges in ways that are unique to Canada.
Organized into three sections this collection reconceptualizes museums to consider accessibility differences in
lived experiences and how practices create impactful change.
With the overarching concept of relationality between art museums and interdisciplinary perspectives authors consider methodological philosophical experiential and aesthetic forms of inquiry in regional museum contexts from coast-to-coast-to-coast that bring forward innovative theoretical standpoints with practice-based projects in museums articulating how museums are shifting and why museums are evolving as sites that mediate different and multiple knowledges for the future. Informed by social justice perspectives and as catalysts for public scholarship each chapter is passionate in addressing the mobilization of equity diversity and inclusivity (EDI) in relation to practices in the field.
By weaving the learning potential of interacting with artworks more fully within situated and localized social and cultural communities the authors present a distinct socio-political discourse at the heart of teaching and learning. Rupturing preconceived ideas and sedimentary models they suggest a discourse of living futures is already upon us in museums and in art education.
Propositions for Museum Education
From the perspective of art educators museum education is shifting to a new paradigm which this collection showcases and marks as threshold moments of change underway internationally. The goal in drawing together international perspectives is to facilitate deeper thinking making and doing practices central to museum engagement across global local and glocal contexts.
Museums as cultural brokers facilitate public pedagogies and the dispositions and practices offered in 33 chapters from 19 countries articulate how and why collections enact responsibility in public exchange
leading cultural discourses of empowerment in new ways. Organized into five sections a wide range of topics and arts-based modes of inquiry imagine new possibilities concerning theory-practice sustainability of educational partnerships and communities of practice with in and through artwork scholarship.
Chapters diverse in issues art forms and museum orientations are well-situated within museum studies enlarging discussions with trans-topographies (transdisciplinary transnational translocal and more) as critical directions for art educators.
Authors impart collective diversity through richly textured exposés first-person accounts essays and visual essays that enfold cultural activism sustainable practices and experimental teaching and learning alongside transformative exhibitions all while questioning – Who is a learner? What is a museum? Whose art is missing?
Designing and Conducting Practice-Based Research Projects
This is a textbook aimed primarily at upper undergraduate and Master’s students undertaking practice-based research in the arts and includes practical guidance examples exercises and further resources.
The book offers definitions and a brief background to practice-related research in the arts contextualization of practice-based methods within that frame a step-by-step approach to designing practice-based research projects chapter summaries examples of practice-related research exercises for progressing methods design and evaluating research approach and lists for further reading. This textbook can serve as the foundation for a wider online “living” textbook for practice-related research in the arts.
Designing and Conducting Practice-Based Research Projects
This is a textbook aimed primarily at upper undergraduate and Master’s students undertaking practice-based research in the arts and includes practical guidance examples exercises and further resources.
The book offers definitions and a brief background to practice-related research in the arts contextualization of practice-based methods within that frame a step-by-step approach to designing practice-based research projects chapter summaries examples of practice-related research exercises for progressing methods design and evaluating research approach and lists for further reading. This textbook can serve as the foundation for a wider online “living” textbook for practice-related research in the arts.
Contemporary Absurdities, Existential Crises, and Visual Art
Some have called this an age of absurdity and as such Contemporary Absurdities Existential Crises and Visual Art presents the contributions of artists theorists and scholars whose words and works investigate the absurd as a condition of a tactic for and a subject in the contemporary.
The absurd is a lens on the disturbances of our moment and a challenge to the propositions about and solutions for the world. The absurd shakes off the paralysis that what we know must be the only thing we (re)produce. Those willing to recognize that and confront it rather than flee from it are thereby introduced to the political writ large.
This edited collection adopts ideas and practices associated with the absurd to explain how the contemporary moment is absurd and how absurdity is a useful potentially radical tool within the contemporary.
Critical art allows the absurd a space within which audiences can observe their own tendencies and assumptions. The absurd in art reveals our inculcation into hegemonic belief structures and the necessity to question the systems to which we subscribe. Today we see the absurd in memes performative politics and art expressing the
confusion and disorientation wrought by the endless emerging crises of our 24/7 relations.
Intertwining Verbal and Visual Elements in Printed Narratives for Adults
In the course of print history only a few successful models of image and word-alliances (e.g. comics picture books) developed while other types remained rather marginal. This chapter tries to argue why such different and experimental works as What a Life! (Lucas and Morrow 1911) La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France/Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Jehanne of France (Cendars and Delaunay 1913) Dynamik der Gross-Stadt/Dynamics of a Metropolis (Moholy-Nagy 1925) La Cantatrice Chauve/The Bold Soprano (Ionesco and Massin 1964) La Toilette/The Cleaning (Charras Robial and Montellier 1983) or Narratology (Drucker 1994) in fact belong to a separate but cohesive body of works. Though individual works of this newly defined (by me) group of image and word-narratives may share some characteristics with better-known models (such as those of comics or picture books for children) as a group they use far more extensively typographic manipulations and special layouts they experiment more freely with varying styles and they can redesign the object of the book itself.
The Cognitive Grammar of ‘I’: Viewing Arrangements in Graphic Autobiographies
Gerard Genette's classic questions about narrative perspective – ‘Who sees?’ and ‘Who speaks?’ – are at their most relevant when it comes to the multimodal narrative intricacies of autobiographical graphic novels. The already complex matter of narration and focalization in a purely visual medium is distinctly complicated when taking the different perspectives of the narrating ‘I’ and the experiencing ‘I’ into account. Furthermore many acclaimed autobiographical comics including works like Maus Fun Home Blankets or Safe Area Goražde thematize the construction of their viewpoints addressing issues of memory objectivity and (un-) reliability. In this chapter I propose a new approach to this complexity turning to cognitive linguistics – more specifically to the model of cognitive grammar established by Ronald Langacker and his concept of ‘viewing arrangements’. In Langacker's theory all categories of grammar are based on cognitive conceptualizations that represent our position in the world and our relation to our surroundings. These conceptualizations have a distinctly visual bent. In Langacker's terminology a ‘viewing arrangement’ is a model of how a viewer conceptualizes a scene ‘the overall relationship between the “viewers” and the situation being “viewed”’. These arrangements change constantly as conceptualizers focus on various parts of their environment imbuing them with different meanings and expressing various degrees of subjectivity. Applying Langacker's model to examples from autobiographic graphic novels I will use the concept of the ‘viewing arrangement’ to illustrate how intricate narrative perspectives in these works can be analysed systematically and how different degrees of subjectivity are constructed with the formal means of comics. The model may not only help to untangle the narrative intricacies of autobiographies but may enrich discussions of narration and focalization in comics generally.
Re-inventing the Origins of the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up: Régis Loisel's Peter Pan
Régis Loisel's Peter Pan (Vents d’Ouest 1990–2004) is a striking re-formulation of the origins of this mythical character due to its stylistic narrative and thematic darkness. This chapter uses Loisel's bande dessinée to examine the potential of comics as an adaptive medium and the reading process of the comic prequel two aspects which are productively linked by the concept of the network. I draw on Sanders’ and Groensteen's uses of the concept in adaptation studies and comics studies respectively to reflect on both the way that Loisel's bande dessinée is connected to the network of proliferating Peter Pan narratives and the way in which the comic functions as a network itself engaging the reader in a translinear and plurivectoral reading. This chapter first explores how core elements of the well-known Peter Pan narrative are adapted in Loisel's comic both echoing and contrasting with previous versions as Loisel's bande dessinée engages with and re-formulates the character's textual and visual multiplicities from the network of Peter Pan narratives. This chapter then draws on Paul Sutton's theorization of the ‘dual temporality’ of the prequel to reflect on the reading process of Loisel's Peter Pan as a comic prequel that productively uses the nature of a comic as a network and its potential for translinear and plurivectoral reading. Loisel's Peter Pan engages the reader in an active retrospective prospective and anticipatory reading process in a dynamic of repetition and difference.
‘Animating’ the Narrative in Abstract Comics
How can one read an abstract graphic narrative? Under what conditions do we cease to view a set of images as static representations or as marks on paper existing for their own sake and begin to read them as the story of a changing world in motion or even invest them with impetus emotions and desires? In this chapter I will explore the ways in which readers can make sense of abstract comics. The notion of an abstract graphic narrative seems to be a contradiction in terms: how can something be non-representational and also be a narrative a category which seems to presuppose representations of characters settings and events? When confronted with these visual texts readers will have to seek out and create such ‘actants’ and ‘existents’ from the material abstract comics offer if the text is to warrant its status as narrative. The chapter will use a number of exemplar stories from Andrei Molotiu's 2009 collection Abstract Comics to explore the process of reading these image texts. It will use ideas from narratology and philosophy of consciousness to help outline some of the ways we can ‘animate’ the static images we see across the sequence of panels in which we recognize and reconstitute persistent entities bringing a narrative life to the apparently inert marks on the comics page. I will explore the limits of readers’ ability to apply this process and comment on its relevance to more mainstream graphic narrative in general.
Square Eyes: Augmenting Bodies, Boredom and Things
This paper explores Anna Mill and Luke Jones’ Square Eyes (2018) through the combined lenses of Thing Theory and Boredom Studies articulating how the latent stuff of boredom might resist the anxious shocks of Surveillance Capitalism. A vision of a near-future augmented reality (AR) dystopia Square Eyes focuses its gaze on the subject of distraction ennui and alienation in a city which is both concrete and virtual. By layering drawings text and transparent colour washes and breaking the borders of the panel Mill and Jones explore the interplay of vision and touch in representing a multimodal AR environment which is both stimulating and profoundly boring:
Fin: I’m just bored of looking… At all this stuff-
George: Um… Are you talking about… Reality?(2018: 2–3)
Mark Fisher argues that the mediating smartphone has replaced boredom with ‘a seamless flow of low-level stimulus’ (Fisher 2014). I argue our protagonist's resistance to this state of suspended affect allows for the radical disruptive potential of boredom outlined by Fisher and others (Kracauer 1929; Petro 2002).
In Frederic Jameson's words boredom provides ‘a very useful instrument with which to explore the past and to stage meaning between it and the present’ (Jameson 1991) and in this paper I argue that the haptic engagement with the digital present and concrete past of the city in Square Eyes allows for a fascinating dialogue with urban materiality. If Bill Brown identifies a more-than-human world where ‘[objects] are tired of our longing. They are tired of us’ (Brown 2001) Square Eyes’ permeable gutter allows the subject and the thing to join in revolt and experience radical boredom and thingness in multiple modes.
Spiegelman's Magic Box: MetaMaus and the Archive of Representation
The 2011 publication of MetaMaus which marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of Maus’ publication continued Art Spiegelman's long-standing preoccupation with creating an archive of his own fraught process of representation. While the difficulties of representing his father's experiences during the Holocaust were foregrounded in the representational strategies of his acclaimed two-volume graphic novel Maus they continued to haunt Spiegelman even after the book's publication. In 1991 a museum exhibit ‘The Road to Maus’ displayed the layers involved in Maus’ creation. In 1994 Spiegelman developed The Complete Maus CD-ROM an interactive digital archive of Maus. And in 2011 Spiegelman published MetaMaus which combines reflection on and documentation of the process of representing Maus. Drawing on Jacques Derrida's and Giorgio Agamben's theorizations of the archive this chapter explores the different kinds of archival work that Maus and MetaMaus do. Both Derrida and Agamben call attention to the traditional archive's exclusion of affective traces of the past. The chapter suggests that Maus and MetaMaus function as archives of the ‘after-effects’ of the Holocaust. As Maus so effectively demonstrates the Holocaust did not end with the conclusion of World War II; its effects continue to be felt decades later by the survivors as well as by their children who did not experience the events ‘first-hand’. Whereas traditional histories of the Holocaust narrate events that took place between 1933 and 1945 Maus depicts those events along with the difficulties of responding to and representing them. In documenting the process of representing Maus MetaMaus invites a rethinking of what counts as history and by extension what counts as an archive.
The Shape of Comic Book Reading
In most comics the art and the text – the visual and the verbal channels – seem to be telling the same story. But to be technical in a narratological approach it is actually the same fabula not the same story which requires a uniform perspective. That is both art and text present events from the same general plot but not necessarily at the same time in the same order or from the same viewpoint. The captions may be disclosing a character's inner monologue for instance while the panels show that character leaping to safety. Or as a reverse example word balloons could be vocalizing a fight between two off-panel parents while the panel focalizes on a tearful child trying to sleep. It is the dreadfully boring and narrow comic that has the visual and verbal reflect exactly the same thing in each and every panel. There would be no point and ultimately no reason for doing this narrative in comic form. Since the visual and the verbal narratives may be telling different parts of the same fabula simultaneously it stands to reason that there may also be two different narrators for a given panel as well. This distinction becomes particularly important when it is taken advantage of by a savvy creator (e.g. Art Spiegelman in MAUS Alan Moore in Watchmen and Chris Ware in ACME Novelty Library) to create an intentional schism between the two narratives; that is the visual and verbal narratives may actually be spinning different yarns. This narrative polyphony though not unique to comics affects the hermeneutic model for the medium to such a degree that a revised tetrahedral hybrid of Wolfgang Iser J. Espen Aarseth and Scott McCloud's theories bears implementation.
Sound Affects: Visualizing Music, Musicians, and (Sub)cultural Identity in BECK and Scott Pilgrim
This chapter discusses the portrayal of popular music in comics as a product of sensory and emotive experience as well as a determinant of social identity and labour. To this end it focuses on the Japanese serialized manga BECK and the Canadian graphic novel series Scott Pilgrim. These two works offer comparable perspectives on music and the social mythos of musicianship as well as sharing similar young male protagonists and social contexts despite their disparate settings in Tokyo and Toronto respectively. Through a comparative reading of these texts this analysis examines contemporary comic book techniques as well as the cross-cultural dynamics of Japanese and Anglo-American comic book cultures specifically with regard to the portrayal of workers in fields of cultural production. In order to examine their interrelated depictions of music as both sensorial experience and enactment of collective identity I draw on the canon of comic book semiotics established by Scott McCloud Ian Hague and others to examine the techniques employed by these texts in communicating music as an emotive sensorial experience. In particular I will concentrate on their use of diagrammatic techniques and visual caricature as a means of communicating music – not through attempted synaesthetic effects but rather through emotive evocation. Second I look at their representation of musicianship as an area in which the mythology of artistic entrepreneurialism coexists with imperatives of collective identity and lifestyle. I examine the sociologically idiosyncratic manner in which these comics reflect and build upon these mythologies through the filters of class cultural and generational identity creating narratives that at times perpetuate – and at others subvert – the grand entrepreneurial narratives ascribed to musicianship within contemporary neo-liberal notions of creative labour.
Narrative, Language, and Comics-as-Literature
Comics are persistently labelled a kind of literature but so-called literary treatments of the form are often questionable focusing on story content and themes. The fact that comics tell diverse interesting stories makes them no more ‘literary’ than film opera or indeed soap opera. It seems perverse for scholars bent on demonstrating the efficacy of visual storytelling to claim that it is storytelling which makes comics literary thus aligning narrative in general with the verbal medium. This chapter sets forth a more scrupulous framework for approaching comics as literature. Through a close analysis of various examples this chapter challenges the habitual sidelining of text within comics. It demonstrates: first how comics can be heavily dependent on text; second how that text can be properly – that is formally – literary; and third how the medium can deploy the linguistic element of its content in ways that create literary textual effects that are in fact unique to the comics medium. In carefully distinguishing between elements such as theme and plotting which are common to all narrative media and these truly literary devices this chapter ultimately concludes that in order for the comics medium to be given its due as a potentially literary form proper attention needs to be paid to the way it incorporates literary language. In service of theoretical precision critics must not confuse narrative properties with literary ones but must rigorously insist on the correct frame of reference in order to promote serious academic study of this diverse and complex narrative form.
The Myth of Eco: Cultural Populism and Comics Studies
For decades Umberto Eco's essay ‘The myth of Superman’ has been cited as the authoritative study of superhero comics. More recently however Eco's work has been a site of argument as cultural and media studies scholars such as Angela Ndalianis and Henry Jenkins contend that the narrative logic of contemporary superhero comics has become more complex than Eco imagines. These scholars replace Eco's ‘oneiric climate’ of suspended time with models of multiple and intertextual narratives that extend across diverse media. While Eco's observations are more historically contingent than he acknowledges his analysis remains more applicable than his critics allow. Some scholars have misread Eco's arguments and overstated the radicalism of contemporary superhero narratives. This chapter argues that it is time to re-evaluate Eco's work and move beyond the populist predominantly celebratory tone of his critics.
Multimodal Duck-Rabbitry: Multistable Perception and the Narrative Potential of Fold-Ins
Multistable perception describes the trick of visual perception where one image is perceived to transition into another. This process is both cognitive and perceptual which means the image itself does not change it is the viewer's perception that changes via our ‘subjective filtering mind’ (Horstkotte and Pedri 2011: 332). Karin Kukkonen calls this kind of visual paradox ‘duck-rabbitry’ after the 1892 illustration of a duck that can also be perceived as a rabbit (Kukkonen 2017: 137). This chapter examines multistable perception in the context of multimodal theory by exploring the meaning-making potential of narrative fold-ins – that is comics and ergodic analogue visual narratives that exploit the folding potential of the page for narrative ends. The chapter is structured in three parts: first we define multistable perception in relation to multimodality more broadly and then in relation to specific forms of multistable images; second we discuss how multistable perception is made more complex when considering the influence of metaphor materiality and temporal affordances; third we explore the narrative potential of multistable perception across a range of exemplar comics specifically in relation to these multimodal affordances in works by Gaëlle Lalonde Andy Poyiadgi Joe Sacco Carmine Iannaccone and James Jean. These analyses provide insight into comics which use the multimodal structure of the book-as-object to encourage play contribute to narrative disrupt time and undermine the assumptions of linear storytelling. Despite shifting paradigms in comics studies the tensions between the page and the panel are often resolved in favour of sequential narrative. By introducing multistable elements that emerge via the manipulation of the book itself narrative fold-ins promote non-linear reading creative engagement and interactivity.
Multimodal Comics
Comics have always embraced a diversity of formats existing in complex relationships to other media and been dynamic in their response to new technologies and means of distribution. This collection explores interactions between comics other media and technologies employing a wide range of theoretical and critical perspectives.
By focusing on key critical concepts within multimodality (transmediality adaptation intertextuality) and addressing multiple platforms and media (digital analogue music prose linguistics graphics) it expands and develops existing comics theory and also addresses multiple other media and disciplines.
Over the last decade Studies in Comics has been at the forefront of international research in comics. This volume showcases some of the best research to appear in the journal. In so doing it demonstrates the evolution of Comics Studies over the last decade and shows how this research field has engaged with various media and technologies in a continuously evolving artistic and production environment. The theme of multimodality is particularly apt since media and technologies have changed significantly during this period. The collection will thus give a view of the ways in which comics scholars have engaged with multimodality during a time when “modes” were continually changing.
Reimagining the Art Classroom
This book is for artists teachers and those who prepare teachers. In the field of art and design education there are many theoretical strands that contribute to the practices of teaching and learning in the visual arts. The problem for artist teachers and those who prepare teaching artists is how to frame the diverse methodologies of art and art education in a way that affords divergent practices as well as deep understanding of issues and trends in the field. Teachers need a field guide that provides a contextual background of theory in order to make their own teaching practice relevant to contemporary art practices and important ideas within the field of education. The book in its content and presentation of content is pedagogical; it provides a catalyst and prompt for meaningful and personal artistic inquiry and exploration.
The book describes connections between teaching and artistic practices including the pedagogical turn in contemporary art. As a book for artists and designers it is graphically compelling and visually inspiring. It is designed to be engaging for the practitioner and theoretically robust. A problem with many current texts is that they are written by academics who are often a step removed from the issues of classroom instruction and tend use the language of the scholar which is appropriate for a scholarly journal but can be difficult for other audiences. This book will bridge this divide through its use of design narrative and descriptions of innovative artistic practices. Rather than being a book about “best practice” it is a book about “diverse practices” within art making and teaching.
This field guide to artistic approaches including methods for teaching art frames its arguments around critical questions that artists and art teachers must address such as: What is the role of art and design in secondary education? What will I teach? How do we go about teaching art? How do I know if my teaching is working? What is the role of traditional mediums and methods within contemporary art practices? How can art teachers contribute to the reinvention of schools? How might fluency within a medium be connected to important issues within culture including the culture of adolescents? This book includes examples of approaches that might provoke or inspire artist and pedagogical inquiry. These are approaches that actively engage students in work that disrupts taken for granted conventions about schooling and its purposes. It considers how art and design might transform the school experience for adolescents.
Walking in Art Education
This edited collection highlights ways that arts-educators have taken up important questions around learning with the land through walking practices across spatial temporal and cultural differences. These walking practices serve as ecopedagogical moments that attune us to human-land and more-than-human relationships while also moving past Western-centric understandings of land and place. Yet it is also more than this as the book situates this work in a/r/tographic practices taking up walking as one method for engagement.
Authors explore walking and a/r/tography in their local contexts. As a result the book finds that kinship and relationality are significant themes that permeate across a/r/tographic practices focused on ecopedagogy and learning with the land.