Art and Design Commons^™

Designing For Circularity: Sustainable Pathways For Australian Fashion Small To Medium Enterprises, Lisa Westover Piller

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Purpose:

Australians consume twice the global average of textiles and are deeply engaged in a linear take/make/waste fashion model. Furthermore the Australian fashion sector has some unique supply chain complications of geographical distances, sparse population and fragmentation in processing and manufacturing. This research aims to examine how Australian fashion small to medium enterprises (SMEs) are overcoming these challenges to run fashion businesses built around core principles of product stewardship (PS) and circularity.

Design/methodology/approach:

SMEs make up 88% of the Australian apparel manufacturing sector. This qualitative exploratory study included in-depth interviews with three Australian fashion SMEs engaged in circular design practice, …

Conversations With Rain: Proposing Poetic And Non-Linear Interpretation Strategies In The Art Gallery, Lilly Blue, Jo Pollitt, Mindy Blaise

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Conversations with Rain aims to disrupt conventional socio-constructivist and cognitive notions of the child familiar in museum settings by rethinking children’s relations with art objects and weather worlds. Our rationale suggests that poetic and non-linear interpretation strategies, combined with artist studio practices that heighten presence and attention, expand the potential of more porous entanglements for children with the world, and potentially transform our climate futures. Disrupting didactic Gallery programming and environmental ‘learning about’ practices, we propose responsive, participatory, multisensory, open-ended, and poetic opportunities that recognise the unfixed, iterative, and tacit knowledges of the child. Building a body of research through …

Dis/Orientating The Early Childhood Sensorium: A Palate Making Menu For Public Pedagogy, Alex Berry, Jo Pollitt, Narda Nelson, Denise Hodgins, Vanessa Wintoneak

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This paper shares a multilayered retrospective story of an international exhibit curated for the Climate Action Childhood Network Colloquium as part of a commitment among exhibit curators to reveal the complexities of unpalatable climate futures. In the format of a tasting menu, we offer a sampling of the exhibit installations as a menu of potential alterpolitics in the making. Facing intensifying inequitable climate presents and futures, our intention is that this invitation might create openings for the intersection of local and global concerns. We gesture toward collective but tentative responses for thinking climate action pedagogies through the metaphor of a …

'We Cannot Heal What We Will Not Face': Dismantling The Cultural Trauma And The May '98 Riots In Rani P Collaborations' Chinese Whispers, Alberta Natasia Adji, Marcella Polain

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

In May 1998, ethnic riots and widespread sexual violence occurred in several major Indonesian cities. Chinese-Indonesians were targeted and, since then, there has been an interest in feminist visual art created by Chinese-Indonesian diaspora in Australia. This article explores Chinese Whispers, a digital graphic novel by Rani Pramesti, a Chinese-Javanese-Indonesian actor and Melbourne-based performance maker, and her team of Indonesian-Australian collaborators. Applying solemn imagery, it narrates a young woman’s attempts at understanding cultural trauma that has marked both personal and public identities of Chinese-Indonesians. Imbued with black-and-white illustrations and interview transcripts, the digital graphic novel tries to answer questions …

Leadbetter, Bruce Roberts Mutard

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

A satirical comic about the rogue, right-wing, gun-loving US Senator Leadbetter, who wins the presidency and installs a dictatorship, which solves all social problems with extreme prejudice.

The Return, Bruce Roberts Mutard

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

1943: Robert Wells has returned home from the war, having spent months in hospitals recovering from combat wounds. While being rehabilitated at Heidelberg Military Hospital, a series of visitors come to see him and, in the process, old wounds open, some close. What does seeing and doing the worst acts a human being can do to one another, do to a person?

Thirteen years after The Sacrifice, the follow-up story of Robert Wells concludes in this elegiac story of how the impact of war is felt, even far from the front lines.

Quantifiable Isovist And Graph-Based Measures For Automatic Evaluation Of Different Area Types In Virtual Terrain Generation, Andrew Pech, Chiou Peng Lam, Martin Masek

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© 2013 IEEE. This article describes a set of proposed measures for characterizing areas within a virtual terrain in terms of their attributes and their relationships with other areas for incorporating game designers' intent in gameplay requirement-based terrain generation. Examples of such gameplay elements include vantage point, strongholds, chokepoints and hidden areas. Our measures are constructed on characteristics of an isovist, that is, the volume of visible space at a local area and the connectivity of areas within the terrain. The calculation of these measures is detailed, in particular we introduce two new ways to accurately and efficiently calculate the …

Ways Of Depicting: The Presentation Of One's Self As A Brand, Lelia Green, Richard Morrison, Andrew Ewing, Cathy Henkel

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The research question animating this article is: 'How does an individual creative worker re-present themselves as a contemporary - and evolving - brand?' Berger notes that the "principal aim has been to start a process of questioning" (5), and the raw material energising this exploration is the life's work of Richard Morrison, the creative director and artist who is the key moving force behind The Morrison Studio collective of designers, film makers and visual effects artists, working globally but based in London. The challenge of maintaining currency in this visually creative marketplace includes seeing what is unique about your potential …

Using Blog Comments As Feedback To Promote The Metacognitive Development Of Creativity, Mark Mcmahon, Heather Joseph

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Creativity can be viewed, not just as a set of skills and strategies, but as an overarching metacognitive skill that integrates a range of subordinate generic skills. Key to developing creativity is to engage in a cycle of ideation, reflection and adjustment, within a feedback rich environment. Blogs have the ability to garner external comments that can prompt these processes. Case study research was undertaken to explore what forms of feedback promote metacognitive development and how those forms can best be elicited within a blog. Findings indicated that blog comments can motivate, provide information, enhance quality and promote reflection, and …

Laundry, Bruce Roberts Mutard

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

A minicomic that features no comics and no action. Instead, it relies upon the knowledge and cultural memory of beholders to induce the narrative from the pictures. A story about a different kind of money laundering.

Valuing Users Of Needle Syringe Exchange Programs: Design Approaches Within The Healthcare Sector, Samantha Pekaar, Hanadi Haddad

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Injecting drug users are among the most marginalised and stigmatised groups in society. This is a wicked problem exacerbated by multifaceted assumptions, misconceptions, and stereotypes surrounding injecting drug users. Stigmatisation results in injecting drug users being frequently denied basic human rights and subjected to severe social isolation (AIVL, 2003). Human-centered research approaches are particularly pertinent when conducting research in healthcare. The application of design approaches to define and address the perceived issues can result in more empathic and relevant designed outcomes (see Clarkson et al., 2010; Lamb, Zimring, Chuzi, & Dutcher, 2010; Loscin & Nagji, 2009; Razzouk & Shutre, 2012; …

Design Of Value And Value Of Design: The Roles Of Strategic Design In (Traditionally) Non-Design Disciplines, Russell Thom, Christopher Kueh, Hanadi Haddad

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Design skills such as Design Thinking, strategic design and service design are seen globally as skillsets that can help to innovate business, social, health, and environmental sectors in the 21stCentury (see Martin, 2009; Mootee, 2013; Brown and Wyatt, 2010). However, there is a difference between the perceived value of design in design practice versus academic design research. After decades of philosophical and conceptual discussions, design research has not yet found its academic position among the science and arts (see Faste and Faste, 2012; Jonas, 2012; Krippendorff 2007). Focusing on design based research, this paper proposes the Integrated People-Centred Design Model …

The Rescue, Donna Mazza, A. Mickle, Rebecca Corps, Tom Ansell, Daniel Kus

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Research Background : This public sculpture depicts the historic narrative of an 1897 sea rescue off Bunbury. Tensions in the story were highlighted in the design and demonstrate the contested nature of history. Sources are contradictory, with credit for rescuing the crew given to the ship's dog by one source, and local authorities by another. The project was won through EOI and proposal to City of Bunbury, who funded the work ($31,000). The research group comprised Dr Mazza (CI), and honours students with advice from sculptor, Alex Mickle, on production and installation. The design was endorsed by Director of Bunbury …

Messy Never-Endings: Curating Inconversation As Interdisciplinary Collaborative Dialogue, Lyndall Adams, Renee Newman-Storen, Neil Ferguson, Christopher Kueh

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This paper will explore the curation of a collaborative exhibition amongst creative higher degree by research candidates (from the School of Communications and Arts and the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts), arts practitioners and researchers from different art forms and discipline backgrounds. It will look at the conversations between artists and researcher collaborators working together to produce a broad range of creative works, culminating in an exhibition titled In Conversation, to be staged at Edith Cowan University’s Spectrum Project Space in October 2014.

The context of the inConversation exhibition aims to inform and expand on current debates about the …

Traces Of Departure And Arrival, Lyndall Adams

Research outputs 2013

This paper traces the consequences of dislocation for studio arts-practice. I recently found myself in Perth, far from my home of 20 years and with directional vertigo, looking east to my old life and west to the Indian Ocean. In order to make sense of this move I used the studio to resolve/recollect/ trace my sense of movement, change, loss and vertigo. The multiple departures and arrivals on this journey are articulated as catalysts to studio production. We rarely speak about the spaces between such departures and arrivals and the effects those spaces have on the lived body. The space …

The Dangers In Design Thinking, Alun J. Price

Research outputs 2013

Over the past few years there has been an increased use of the term Design Thinking (DT). Organisations such as The NextDesign Leadership Institute and its related design consultancy, Humantific have been using the term in various projects such as the ‘Design Thinking Made Visible’ project (Humantific, 2011). The term Design Thinking gained popularity after the Stanford University Engineering School ran a course on it in 2005 (Christoph, Leifer & Plattner, 2011). Many of the processes used by designers adopting this approach seem to come from non-design disciplines. Much of what has been taught in management schools for many years …

Designing With Images: Using A Realism Continuum To Choose Pictures For Communication Tasks, Stuart Medley

Research outputs 2013

Graphic design has historically been concerned with giving identity to clients’ projects. But what of its own identity? Graphic design and typography have become interchangeable terms, to the detriment of any theoretical position on pictures. This paper explains the necessity of a theory of pictures specific to the graphic design discipline. Bamford (2003) says there can’t be a vocabulary of images since it would be as limitless as the imagination and graphic skills of humanity. But a search for a vocabulary of images is a red herring for graphic design. Typography is less about what is spoken and more about …

Service Design 101: The Joy And Challenge Of Introducing Service Design Into An Undergraduate Design Curriculum, Christopher Kueh, Stuart Medley, Alun Price

Research outputs 2013

This paper describes the introduction of service design into a university design course that previously promoted itself as industry-based and practice-driven—but which had not necessarily kept pace with the contemporary meanings of these terms. The followings discuss the need to teach service design in Western Australia. These are being highlighted through the latest development in business community, government and NGOs that seek innovation and sustainability. Edith Cowan University Design Department therefore is committed to teach socially-focused projects (such as wayfinding; civic identity; designing out crime) connect students with the public and real clients through collaborative practice and social design workshops. …

Mobile Games With Intelligence: A Killer Application?, Philip Hingston, Clare Bates Congdon, Graham Kendall

Research outputs 2013

Mobile gaming is an arena full of innovation, with developers exploring new kinds of games, with new kinds of interaction between the mobile device, players, and the connected world that they live in and move through. The mobile gaming world is a perfect playground for AI and CI, generating a maelstrom of data for games that use adaptation, learning and smart content creation. In this paper, we explore this potential killer application for mobile intelligence. We propose combining small, light-weight AI/CI libraries with AI/CI services in the cloud for the heavy lifting. To make our ideas more concrete, we describe …

The Hd Magazine: Graphists And Wordsmiths, Hanadi Haddad, Stuart Medley

Research outputs 2013

HD Magazine is a cross-disciplinary initiative, seeking to bring together students from the fields of Journalism and Graphic Design (from 1st year through to 4th year). Its creation allows students to share knowledge and skills, showcase their work and contribute to establishing a sense of community within the School of Communications and Arts (SCA) at Edith Cowan University (ECU). HD Magazine is bi-annually published (four issues to date), with future stages of development including online publication and collaboration with students from interactive media development and creative writing. From a design perspective, HD Magazine is also an investigation into visual literacy, …

Design Thinking Practice And Research: Building Research Culture In Undergraduate Studies, Christopher Kueh

Research outputs 2013

The relationships between design practice and research in university education is an on-going discussion. The expansion and development of design fields such as Design Thinking has generated discussions between research and practice (see Kimbell, 2011; Sangiorgi, 2010). This sees the urge to develop strong research culture in both undergraduate and postgraduate studies. This paper presents and discusses a Design Thinking framework in cultivating research culture in undergraduate Design courses at Edith Cowan University (ECU), Western Australia.

Bridging The Gap: Scenario-Based Design As A Solution For Delayed Access To Users, Paul Haimes, Joo H. Jung, Stuart Medley

Research outputs 2013

Scenario-based design (Carroll & Rosson, 2002) is a Human-Computer Interaction methodology for considering the needs of potential users, without their direct input. Scenario-based design gives the interface designer the ability to create scenarios of use, along with postulations on the various types of users, expressed in the form of personas (Grudin & Pruitt, 2002). These scenarios and personas can be useful in the context of a design project, where real world issues preclude the direct involvement of users at a critical stage. By ‘walking through’ informal narrative descriptions in the form of a story, scenario-based design focuses on human activity …

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Votes: Graphicacy Skills For Political Debate, Amanda Rainey, Stuart Medley

Research outputs 2013

Political campaigns are greatly influenced by changes in technology and communication, from FDR’s ‘Fireside Chats’ to JFK’s embrace of television. Now a combination of technologies allows almost everyone to create, reproduce, transform, and share images with friends and family, or with the world. Individuals and grassroots organisations can communicate using images alongside mainstream media, corporations and governments. There is now a great need for all of us to develop the visual literacy – or graphicacy – required to interpret and recreate images, to communicate as educated equals in this new political environment. Political advertising can use graphic design to make …

To See The World Clearly: - Painting, The Camera Obscura And The Lens Of Spinoza, Paul Uhlmann

Research outputs 2012

My practice-led PhD research project seeks to find ways to create immersive painting installations to invoke contemplation of immanence, interconnectedness and impermanence in the mind of the viewer. In this paper I will discuss the methodology of my practice-led research as it relates to the concept of sensation (Deleuze) in relation to the body and to painting. In addition to this I will outline ways in which Spinoza’s monist concept of ‘one substance’ has illuminated and influenced my thinking and work. Central to this concept is the notion that mind and matter are not two separate things but one thing. …

Online Metacognitive Tool Development: Final Development, Joseph Luca, Mark Mcmahon

Research outputs pre 2011

The authors of this paper have been developing an online metacognitive tool over the past four years through a process of iterative design and development stages using Design-Based research. Based on feedback from students, tutors and peers, the application has now been finally developed and is available for public download. The application helps students working in teams reflect on their learning strategies through a process of planning, monitoring and evaluation, and allows students to reflect on their performance.

Surface Noise, Philip Samartzis

Sound Scripts

This paper seeks to trace the genealogy of surface noise as a tool of musical expression by surveying a range of artistic practices based around the record and turntable that privilege detritus, abrasion, repetition and decay as key compositional devices. The paper begins by examining the acoustic properties of the oldest playable recording (Frank Lambert's talking clock) in order to outline the numerous characteristics and flaws inherent in early models of mechanical reproduction and storage that vigorously conspired to interfere with the listening experience. This is followed by an examination of the way recording technology was converted from a tool …

Preface: Sound Scripts: A Word From Tura New Music, Tos Mahoney

Sound Scripts

The Inaugural Totally Huge New Music Festival Conference was a bold initiative by its partner presenters Tura New Music and the Faculty of Communications and Creative Industries, Edith Cowan University, Perth, including the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. In an arts milieu which is increasingly becoming “industrialised” and the dollar the bottom line criteria for success, it is reassuring to have the confirmation that there are those—in fact there is a strong cohort—who are dedicated to delving the depths of the meaning of their own and others’ practice.

Sound Art / Mobile Art, Cat Hope

Sound Scripts

This paper examines the role of sound installation and music composition practices in addressing the relationship between sound and telecommunications devices, in this case the mobile phone. The popularity of mobile phone artworks is rapidly increasing, with handsets readily available, artists excited about sponsorship opportunities, and the general push in electronic arts. This paper focuses primarily on work by Perth mobile phone Sound Art collective, Metaphonica, which explore many issues raised by this art form. "Phonebox" (2005) was a site specific sound installation where phones are called from a remote computer, presenting a synchronized composition featuring sounds created by the …

I.B.R. Variation 1, Miha Ciglar

Sound Scripts

In this paper I would like to introduce my recent composition: "I.B.R. Variation 1" (a composition for computer, electrified guitar, mixing board and human body), which is derived from three different projects, - Illusions, Body Mix, Resistance -, fusing three different and already unusual interfaces for musical expression into a powerful new musical instrument. The piece is implemented by employing computers and common sound synthesis/processing techniques in combination with a rather primitive manipulation and misuse of low tech analogue equipment. The main idea was to assign unusual tasks to usual pieces of musical equipment, transforming a mixing board into an …

Modernist And Postmodernist Arts Of Noise, Part 2: From The Clifton Hill Mob To Chamber Made Opera’S Phobia, Linda Kouvaras

Sound Scripts

This paper will continue to trace negotiations outlined in Part 1 of the music/noise dichotomy as expressed in modernist and postmodernist works.1 Drawing connections with the trajectory of "glitch" in popular music since the 1970s. The paper will examine a number of key ways in which the music/noise dichotomy has been addressed as a borderline dispute between, for example, the embodied and the disembodied, the scored and the unscored, the accidental and the intentional, sense and nonsense, culture and nature. Two key figures from the highly influential group of sound artists who came together at Melbourne's Clifton Hill Community Centre …