Art and Design Commons^™

Typ.Ologies: Reframing Ireland's Vernacular Letterform Through The Lens Of Heritage, Deirdre Maher Ring

Articles

Since the late 1800s, vernacular letterforms have been vital components of the traditional shopfronts of Ireland, enlivening, place-making, and inspiring dialogue with streetscapes. The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage identifies, records, and evaluates Ireland’s post-1700 architectural heritage. While the state initiative appraises architecturally significant shopfronts, it typically overlooks the critical signage element. This research aims to bridge this gap by documenting, mapping, and interpreting the existing vernacular letterforms in Kilkenny as a paradigm. Through the lens of heritage, the study seeks to construct a case for preserving, promoting, and advocating for vernacular letterforms and the traditional craft of signwriting. Signwriting …

Handouts Don’T Exist. Hustle Or You Don’T Eat., Conor Mcgarrigle Dr.

Articles

It is well established that AI has a bias problem; however, black-boxed machine learning systems render it difficult to even understand and visualize the nature and extent of the problem, let alone find solutions. This paper discusses an artistic research approach toward highlighting AI bias and explores the aesthetic potential of machine learning through a case study of an AI artwork called #RiseandGrind.The artist trained a recurrent neural network on a dataset extracted from Twitter hashtags (#Riseandgrind and #Hustle),which were selected to represent a specific filter bubble (embodied neoliberal precarity) in order to produce a biased AI that generates tweets …

Flesh And Circuit: Rethinking Performance And Technology, Conor Mcgarrigle, E L. Putnam

Articles

The live, embodied, material, and interactive qualities of performance have made it a notable means of exploring the creative potential of technological engagement, acting as a critical vector for revealing and resisting the technological colonisation of everyday life. The innovative collaborations of Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT) during the 1960’s with artists such as Yvonne Rainer and Robert Rauschenberg, Stelarc’s extreme body modifications, Dumb Type’s intermedia performance, and Guillermo Gomez-Pena and La Pocha Nostra’s poetic and speculative imaginings, have mapped the advances in technology and opened new creative fields to explore embodiment. However, there are still some significant oversights …

Care Full Objects, Barbara Knezevic

Articles

No abstract provided.

Affiliated Issue With 2020 College Art Association Annual Conference, ‘Flesh And Circuit: Rethinking Performance And Technology’ (Chicago, Il, Usa), Conor Mcgarrigle Dr., E.L. Putnam

Articles

The live, embodied, material, and interactive qualities of performance have made it a notable means of exploring the creative potential of technological engagement, acting as a critical vector for revealing and resisting the technological colonisation of everyday life. The innovative collaborations of Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT) during the 1960’s with artists such as Yvonne Rainer and Robert Rauschenberg, Stelarc’s extreme body modifications, Dumb Type’s intermedia performance, and Guillermo Gomez-Pena and La Pocha Nostra’s poetic and speculative imaginings, have mapped the advances in technology and opened new creative fields to explore embodiment. However, there are still some significant oversights …

Femagogical Strategies In The Art School: Navigating The Institution, Barbara Knezevic, Amy Walsh

Articles

This writing aims to define and examine ‘femagogy’ and the transformative potential for an inclusive intersectional feminist teaching practice in Fine Art education in the context of the contemporary Irish art school. This writing will trace the influence of linguistic power structures and the influence of broader institutional patriarchy in an educational setting and outline the inspirations and genealogies of femagogy. This writing provides situated embodied examples of femagogy in practice. It proposes the femagogical model of teaching as one that situates itself outside prevailing patriarchal models and proposes strategies to reimagine knowledge production and navigate the prevailing structural patriarchy …

Systems In Play: Simon Nicholson's Design 12 Course, University Of California, Berkeley, 1966, Tim Stott

Articles

In 1966, British artist, designer and educator Simon Nicholson (1934–1990) offered a lower division course, Design 12, at the College of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley. Controversially, Nicholson promoted play as the principal method of design and invited children to assess students’ projects on the Berkeley campus and in local schools, parks, playgrounds and hospitals. This article presents Design 12 as an important example of environmental design pedagogy in the USA, which uniquely attempted to synthesize British post-war constructivism with ‘design science’ and adventure play. The result was a course that placed play at the centre of design pedagogy, where it …

Art In The Age Of Financial Crisis, Conor Mcgarrigle, Marisa Lerer

Articles

This issue addresses the long financial crisis of 2008 and the nature and diversity of artistic responses to it. This financial crisis is understood as a globalized result of late capitalism that nonetheless is experienced differently at local, regional, and national levels. It is multi- faceted in nature, a phenomenon that has historical roots and precedents that inform contemporary responses. Artists are not restricted to engage with the economy through one specific vehicle of inquiry or one type of medium and message. Therefore, the central question that this issue poses is: what is the artist’s role in finance, crisis, and …

Laboratoire DéBerlinisation: Art, Finance, And The Legacies Of Colonialism In Contemporary African Art: An Interview With Mansour Ciss Kanakassy, Conor Mcgarrigle, Marisa Lerer

Articles

Mansour Ciss Kanakassy (b. 1957) is a Berlin-based Senegalese artist whose practice addresses the legacy of colonialism in contemporary Africa, in particular as it is expressed in the financial systems of the former Francophone colonies of West Africa, where the currency, the CFA franc, historically tied to the French franc, is now pegged to the euro. The acronym CFA originally stood for Colonies Françaises d’Afrique – French Colonies of Africa – and now Communauté Financière Africaine – African Financial Community. In 2001, Ciss Kanakassy created the Laboratoire Déberlinisation (Déberlinisation Laboratory), a multifaceted project that traces contemporary African issues to the …

Art Interventions And Disruptions In Financial Systems: An Interview With Paolo Cirio, Marisa Lerer, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

Prior to the release of the 2016 Panama Papers and 2017 Paradise Papers – leaked documents that uncovered the movement of funds through offshore tax havens – conceptual artist Paolo Cirio’s (b. 1979) project Loophole for All (2013) revealed and documented the mechanics behind offshore financial centers. In this interview, Cirio expounds upon his investigations of offshore banking practices, describes his projects for instituting alternative financial models, and explains his hacktivist (i.e. Internet activist) strategies that engage with legal and economic systems. Defining the foundational movements that inform his work, Cirio in turn illuminates his methods of direct provocation and …

The Us’S Economic Promises Are Over: An Interview With Miguel Luciano, Marisa Lerer, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in September 2017. The island was left without electricity and clean water for months. However, the natural disaster was not the only cause of this lasting devastation. The financial fall-out from predatory loans, which led to Puerto Rico’s inability to invest funds in its own infrastructure, caused an enduring humanitarian disaster. Artist Miguel Luciano (b. 1972) in this interview discusses his work in relation to the 2017 Puerto Rican debt crisis and the legacy of the over 100-year span of Puerto Rico’s colonial status as a US territory, which gives the US disproportionate control over …

Insurgent Finances: An Interview With Gabriela Ceja And Fran Ilich, Marisa Lerer, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

When the financial crisis of 2008 exposed the opaque workings of global financial markets, it led to calls for alternate economic models to replace the excesses of contemporary capitalism. A decade on, it can seem that those calls went unheeded. However, in the collaborative social practice of Fran Ilich and Gabriela Ceja, sustainable alternatives modeled on ancient modes of exchange are being developed with projects that are deeply embedded in economic practice; whether that is running a functioning microbank complete with complex financial instruments in Spacebank or serving Zapatista coffee from Chiapas, Mexico in the Diego de la Vega Coffee …

When Attitudes Became Toys: Jasia Reichardt’S Play Orbit, Tim Stott

Articles

No abstract provided.

How Things Grow: Gabriel Orozco’S Samurai Tree: Invariants (2005), Tim Stott

Articles

No abstract provided.

Design And Planned Obsolescence. Theories And Approaches For Designing Enabling Technologies, Matteo Zallio, Damon Berry

Articles

We are currently living in a decade where smart objects and Internet of Things (IoT)-based devices are becoming part of daily life in different contexts. This research seeks to investigate and verify, by using a formal literature review methodology, the most visible aspects of technological development, within the Industry 4.0 and IoT scenario, in relation to the theories of the so called “Planned Obsolescence”.

This study covers a defined number of works on Design theories and practices on how to face the issue of built-in obsolescence of devices in the era of the Connected Devices. The majority of the works …

Delivering Design Fundamentals Using Relevant Learning Theories In The Delivery Of An Interior Design Project At Third Level, Tracey Dalton

Articles

This is a reflection on teaching practice, focussing on design process in a BA Honours in Design – Interior and Furniture, in Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT). An intrinsic case study approach (Stake 1995) was taken for this research, which focussed on the use of the learning theories in the delivery of an undergraduate interior design project brief. A third year commercial office design project has been used to assess teaching and learning styles. This article will show that, in terms of delivery, in a typical third level interior design project in DIT, the process incorporates all of the learning …

Walking Code, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

This paper describes an early stage research project that seeks to apply Situationist concepts of psychogeography to urban walking as artistic and activist practice. The project seeks to ultimately create a syntax that can be used to describe and codify the subjective spatial practice of walking in the city. This process is a conceptual and discursive exercise to generate new knowledge about urban space as embodied data space that seeks to create a practical open framework that can be deployed to algorithmically generate walking experiences tailored toward specific desires and activities.

This will be achieved through the development of algorithmic …

Pivot Dublin: A Discussion On The Bid For Dublin To Become World Design Capital, Barry Sheehan, Ali Grehan

Articles

In this article, Barry Sheehan interviews Dublin City Architect, Ali Grehan, about PIVOT Dublin, the bid for World Design Council, how and why it came about, what happened to the bid and where PIVOT Dublin is now.

Knowledge Management: Collaboration Versus Concentration In Open Plan Workspaces, John Walsh

Articles

This paper looks at the design of open-plan offices, particularly in relation to the impact ofspatial design on different work-modes. It briefly examines the history of the open plan office, lookingat how today’s typical open-plan workplace has evolved. It considers how workplaces can besuccessfully designed to facilitate the seemingly conflicting requirements of supporting both collaboration and concentration

Preserving Born Digital Art : Lessons From Artists' Practice, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

This paper looks at the complex nature of developing effective and appropriate strategies for the preservation of born digital art, in particular networked art. These issues are approached from the perspective of artist practitioners, focusing on a case study of the preservation of a net art project by the author. It is suggested that any preservation strategy begins with artists and the conservation practices that are inculcated into the very act of creation. The paper proposes that for institutional digital art conservation initiatives to be successful they must originate from a pre-existing culture of preservation within digital art communities

And Or Not – The System, The Body And Time, Brian Fay

Articles

This catalogue text discusses artists and artworks featured in the exhibition BOOLEAN EXPRESSIONS: Contemporary Art and Mathematical Data, presented at The Lewis Glucksman Gallery, University College Cork, Ireland, 23 July – 8 November 2015. For an overview of the exhibition see the link https://vimeo.com/137620854

Criticality In Graphic Design, Clare Bell

Articles

No abstract provided.

Locative Histories: Exploring The Continued Influence Of Early Locative Media Art, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

This paper, which draws on aspects of my doctoral research, traces the influence of early Locative Media Art on the current form and application of location-aware technologies. The mechanisms and impulse for this influence are introduced and analyzed and it is proposed that they point to new approaches in the consideration of the agency of Locative Media art.

I return to the origins of Locative Media at the Karosta workshop and the ambitions of early practitioners to argue that the practice was based on a prescient analysis of the potential for ubiquitous networked location-awareness. From this analysis was developed an …

Knowing Knowledge, Noel Fitzpatrick

Articles

The position of the Art Academy in relation to third level education seems to be on the agenda in a number of ways at the moment. Recently at IMMA there was a panel discussion on the topic of “Art Academy+Knowing” in the context of the I Know You exhibition which is takign place there at the moment, but also within the wider sector there seems to be a sequence of alliances between the tradition Art College and third level education. The movement towards more integration of the stand alone Art Colleges and third level education is high on the agenda …

Forget The FlâNeur, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

This paper discusses the connections between the ‘flâneur’, Baudelaire's symbol of modernity, the anonymous man on the streets of nineteenth century Paris, and his contemporary digital incarnation, the ‘cyberflâneur’. It is argued that, although the flâ- neur could be successfully re-imagined as the cyberflâneur in the early days of the web, this nine- teenth century model of male privilege no longer fits the purpose. It is suggested that it is time to forget the flâneur and search for a new model to consider the peripatetic nature of location-aware networked devices in the digitally augmented city.

Augmented Resistance: The Possibilities For Ar And Data Driven Art, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

This article discusses the possibilities for Augmented Reality (AR) as a driver of data based art. The combination of AR and Open Data (in the broadest post-Wikileaks sense) is seen to provide a powerful tool-set for the artist/activist to augment specific sites with a critical, context-specific data layer. Such situated interventions offer powerful new methods for the political activation of sites which enhance and strengthen traditional non- virtual approaches and should be thought of as complementary to, rather than replacing, physical intervention.

I offer as a case study this author’s “NAMAland” project, a mobile artwork which uses Open Data and …

The Need For Close Looking, Tim Stott

Articles

No abstract provided.

Crucial Design Issues For Special Access Technology; A Delphi Study, Pearl O'Rourke, Ray Ekins, Bernard Timmins, Fiona Timmins, Siobhan Long, Eugene Coyle

Articles

Purpose: To develop and demonstrate a method to involve professional users of assistive technology (AT) in the development process of customisable products. Employing the ideas of user participation and mass customisation, this research addresses the need for reduced product costs and optimised product flexibility. Method: An adaptable six-question Delphi study was developed to establish consensus among AT professionals on design issues relating to a specified AT domain requiring innovation. The study is demonstrated for the special access technology (SAT) domain. A modified morphological matrix structures the application of the study results to the product design process. Results: Fourteen professionals from …

Can Design Thinking Have A Social Life Through Networking?, Brenda Duggan

Articles

‘The design process is best described metaphorically as a system of spaces rather than a predefined series of orderly steps. The steps demarcate different sorts of related activities that together form a continuum of innovation’. (Brown, 2008, 4) This paper addresses two different spaces for examining design thinking — the design research notebook and the digital space, the topic-driven blog. The premise for this paper arises from teaching digital media on a visual communication programme. I wanted to ask the question from my perspective as an educator — if the individual research notebook is a convention or vehicle for design …

Disassembly, Todd Mclellen

Articles

My interest in the real has always been present and I try to mix my work with that. In my series disassembly, I have used old items that are no longer used by the masses and often found on the street curbs heading for disposal. All of the items in the photographs were in working order. The interesting part was the fact that they were all so well built, and most likely put together by hand. I envisioned all the enjoyment these pieces had given many people for many years, all to be replaced by new technology that will be …