Digital Commons Network^™

Designing The Playing Machine: Stage Design As Play Catalyst, Maria Mandea

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This article presents practice-led research where stage design is understood as an active, agential collaborator in theatrical performance, similar to how toys, playgrounds and material games are used as catalysts for play. Addressing the limitation of static, representational design, we develop a design for play methodology drawing from Constructivist theatre’s concept of the “acting apparatus.” This research explores the agency of material design within the performative space through two complementary case studies: an analogue, embodied board game system and a tech-driven, automated environment where pre-programmed robots act as performers. The playing machine concept is proposed as a design method that …

Designing With Country: Relational Infrastructuring Beyond Technocratic Urbanism, Kimberley Harding, Jennifer Seevinck, Marcus Foth

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The design of both physical and digital layers of the built environment is increasingly shaped by the pursuit of “smartness,” often privileging efficiency and control over the cultural, ecological, and ethical dimensions that sustain life in cities. Resisting this technocratic urbanism and reimagining infrastructuring through Australian Aboriginal principles of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) – including relationality, responsibility, and reciprocity – offers ethical and sustainable directions for design. This paper proposes relational infrastructuring as a situated design practice that enacts and sustains cultural and ecological relations rather than merely delivering technical functions. Drawing on design scholarship, Indigenous knowledges, and urban studies, …

Disrupting Walking: Rethinking The Practice Through A Podal Extension, Zeynep Gul Bagan, Yaren Hazal Erman, Gulten Nur Bilgic

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Walking is approached not merely as a bodily act but as a phenomenon shaped by its historical, cultural, and spatial meanings, along with its relationship to the ground. Its historical continuity has made walking a constitutive element of social norms and bodily behavior patterns. The study seeks to reconceptualize walking not as rhythmic, standardized motion but as a relational experience, foregrounded through its intentional disruption. Such disruption prompts a questioning of biological and cultural codes, as the body becomes fragile when departing from the habitual. The first phase, conducted in Istanbul, explored the disruption of walking through body-movement experiments using …

Game Design As An Educational Method, Adeline Hvidsten, Evan Barba, Sarit Youdelevich, Rebecca Rouse

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design is playing an increasingly important role in the liberal arts and in general education at various grade levels. Integrating design into a curriculum can take many forms, from teaching general design literacy to specific disciplinary practices and using design methods to support topical learning. Over decades of teaching game design in various contexts, we have observed how students gain a deep and systemic understanding of topics when designing games on them. Synthesizing our experiences from higher education, we expand on Hanghøj’s model for game-based teaching to include teaching through game design as a pedagogical method. We argue that to …

How Does Costume Illustration Sketching Mediate Between Visual Development Concept Art And The Practical Construction Of Film Costumes?, Sophie Fretwell, Jon Burgess

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Sketching is a vital form of communication across creative industries. As an essential part of the filmmaking process, costume illustration functions as a mediating design practice where sketching translates concept art into wearable garments. Historically rooted in hand-drawn fashion illustration, contemporary costume sketching has evolved into a globalised digital practice that bridges artistic vision and physical construction. Through this lens of design mediation and embodied expertise, the study draws on industry interviews and reflective practice to examine the costume illustrator’s changing role as translator between the digital concept and physical costume. Costume sketching solves practical challenges based on knowledge of …

Body Class, The Grand Museum And The Queer Archive, Tadeas Riha

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Tělák, a Czech slang term for physical education (PE) that also echoes tělo - body, is a theatrical exhibition, developed by an interdisciplinary team of educators, activists, architects, and theatre professionals, introducing expressions of gender as a spectrum for teenage audiences. The exhibition unfolds across two layers. The first is a scenography evoking the familiar spaces of PE; corridors, changing rooms, bathrooms, gyms, reassembled within the museum’s own charged normative setting. The second is an archive of personal stories: fragments of experience retold by actors in sound, and others inscribed in situ by a local artist. This practice-based paper traces …

Mapping Agents: A Fab City Full Stack Geospatial Framework For Interdependent, Community-Led Interventions, Tomas Vivanco, Tomas Diez

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This article explores mapping as an experimental design practice that emerges from the intersection of ecosystems, technologies, and communities. Grounded in the Powers of Ten model and the Fab City Full Stack framework, our approach combines multi-scale observation- ranging from local infrastructures to bioregional systems- to capture ecological, material, and social data that reveal the interdependencies shaping territories. The work focuses on detecting weak signals of hyperlocal phenomena, often overlooked shifts in ecological or social systems, that can guide an iterative prototyping process. In this way, mapping becomes a generative act, tracing connections between citizens' behaviors, environmental conditions, and material …

Attuned Design Practice: Embodied Knowledge As A Design Vocabulary At The Intersection Of Artistic And Scientific Inquiry., Anne Marleen Olthof, Jouke Verlinden, Somaya Ben Allouch

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This article introduces Attuned Design Practice (ADP) as an umbrella term for studying embodied knowledge at the intersection of artistic and scientific inquiry. It addresses an epistemological gap across design and human–computer interaction, dance and somatics, and disability studies. Building on an existing framework of embodied knowing, we examine domain-specific traditions and expose the threshold between these knowledge domains. We propose Open Rehearsals as experimental settings for co-performance among human and non-human actors. Within this context, attunement is introduced as a performative materiality that enables relational, situated, and operational forms of understanding across disciplines. An eighteen-month field study in design, …

Reframing Architectural Practice Through Territory And Emotion: The Atlas Of Emotions In Bajo Atrato, Colombia, Carolina Saldarriaga-Cardona

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study reframes architectural practice in Bajo Atrato, Colombia, through a relational understanding of territory and emotion, during the implementation of the Peace Agreement. Using a situated research-by-design approach, the study combines field journeys, workshops on emotional cartographies, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and audiovisual recordings in Carmen del Darién, Marriaga Swamp, Triganá Bay, and Santa María de la Antigua del Darién. These methods consider everyday life, memory, and collective care as forms of territorial knowledge. The recognition of territories, identification of emotions, and the visibility of the Territorial Expressions of Grieving led to the creation of the Atlas of Emotions, …

Exploring Design Thinking In Entrepreneurship Education: A Pre-Accelerator Programme For The Creative Industries, Billy Franks, Melissa Terras, James Newbery, Susan Lechelt

DRS Biennial Conference Series

For many years, design thinking has been recognised as an important process in creating and commercialising new digital products and services. Increasingly, design researchers are attending to design thinking applied in real-world, interdisciplinary settings for entrepreneurial activity. In this paper, we surface and interpret examples of design thinking in the setup and delivery of a multi-cohort education programme connecting Edinburgh’s creative industries with local expertise in digital product innovation and entrepreneurship. Through a thematic analysis of 20 in-depth interviews with programme educators and participants, we explore the role of design thinking in bridging siloed industries and ecosystems. We interpret design …

Speculative Design Through Synthetic Data: Exploring How Synthetic Data Be Used To Represent Missing ‘More-Than-Human' Data, Michael Dunbar, Chris Speed

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Smart city data infrastructures largely reinforce anthropocentric paradigms, neglecting the entangled relationships that shape more-than-human worlds. This paper explores synthetic data as a transformative tool to address these omissions, offering alternative ways to represent missing non-human perspectives. Through a research-through-design approach, we present Kin Bank: a speculative interface that uses synthetic data to generate poetic, transactional representations between human and non-human actors. Adopting the metaphor of a shared bank account, the system foregrounds ecological and financial interdependencies while challenging reductionist data practices. Findings from a user study show how synthetic data can surface unseen relationships, embrace ecological complexity, and provoke …

Acknowledging The Blind Men And The Elephant In The Room, Arvind Lodaya

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Systemic design addresses complex, transdisciplinary challenges by integrating systems thinking and design methods. Yet, academic discourse remains limited to formal research and institutional methods, “invisibilizing” the rich, plural, and grounded practices of grassroots non-designer practitioners such as social workers, indigenous knowledge practitioners, and community facilitators. This paper challenges that narrow epistemology, and advocates restoring practice-centricity and incorporating plurality & pluriversality as essential ethical and political commitments to advancing the field. Mashing up the metaphors of “The Blind Men and the Elephant” and “The Elephant in the Room”, it highlights the need to proactively accommodate multiple perspectives for better reflexivity. The …

The Meandering Practitioner: When Research Emerges In Relational Resistance And Intentional Ambiguity, Markus Wernli, Kam-Fai Chan, Jonathan Yu, Josh Wolper

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper theorizes meandering as a dispositional heuristic in design research, foregrounding how researchers can encounter complexity through nuanced, situated journeying. Drawing on the case of SoilTrust nutrient-cycling praxis in Hong Kong, the study identifies four key dispositions – nimble resistance, contextual reasoning, temporal suppleness, and deliberate ambiguity – that enable practitioners to respond to structural challenges with humility, curiosity, and strategic indirection. Rather than pursuing fixed goals, meandering researchers cultivate relational awareness, embrace uncertainty, and reconfigure material and social systems through iterative, practice-led inquiry. Anchored in agential realism and indirect action, meanderability reframes design as a life-embedded mode of …

How Sound Knowledge And Education Can Support Designers In Creating Museum Experiences: Insights From Semi-Structured Interviews With Experts In Acoustics/Sound, Yi Zhang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Today, the growing demand for sound in shaping multisensory museum experiences requires exhibition designers to acquire relevant sound knowledge. However, designers often find it difficult to identify applicable insights across the vast and interdisciplinary fields of acoustics and sound studies. Thus, this paper conducts twelve semi-structured interviews with experts in acoustics and sound-related disciplines. The findings establish a basic sound knowledge framework comprising four thematic areas with related concepts: fundamentals of acoustics, sound and space, sound and audience experience, and sound control and technology. In addition, the paper explores interdisciplinary communication and collaboration in sound design practices within exhibition productions. …

Is There Limitless Romance Behind A “Bunch Of Ones And Zeros”? How Social Vr Shapes Romantic Interaction And Its Design Implications, Ágnes Karolina Bakk, David Redmond, Borbála Tölgyesi, Kata Szita

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study explores how romantic relationships and expressions of intimacy unfold within social virtual reality (SVR) environments such as VRChat. Drawing on virtual ethnography and 26 semi-structured interviews, it examines how embodiment, anonymity, and technological affordances shape trust, emotional intimacy, and sexual expression. While often framed as taboo, these dynamics are central to understanding relational practices in immersive environments. Findings show that intimacy is experienced as both emotionally authentic and technologically mediated, emerging through practices such as roleplay, virtual touch, and shared activities. The study highlights how anonymity simultaneously enables openness and introduces challenges around trust, consent, and safety. By …

Holy Cross Magazine, Vol. 60 No. 2, Summer 2026, College Of The Holy Cross

Holy Cross Magazine

For a GoodTime, Call ...
How Holy Cross’ Goodtime Marching Band and Bettertime Pep Band deliver much more than music.
Story by Abby Riviello
Photography by Colin McAlister ’29

Read Like a Professor (on Summer Break)
Holy Cross faculty share the books they’re taking to the beach.
Story by Marybeth Reilly-McGreen ’89
Photography by Michael Ivins

Michelle Mondoux Paused at the Middle — And it Changed Everything
Stick with Associate Professor Michelle Mondoux and you’re going to learn a lot about biology in the classroom, and perhaps more about life beyond it.
Story by Abby Riviello
Photography by Michael Ivins …

Mission Critical: Supporting An Ecology Of Theatre Criticism In Ireland.: A Report From The Mission Critical Symposium, Tanya Dean

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

The content of the report centres on discussions which took place during and after Mission Critical, a day-long, international symposium hosted by the National Theatre of Ireland, with the support of The Irish Times, which brought together critics, artists, audiences and readers, in November 2025. It is supported by the findings of an audience survey carried out by the Abbey Theatre and follow-up interviews between Dr. Dean and a range of professionals from the theatre sector. The report makes clear the many important functions of criticism, underpinning the need for urgent attention to be paid to its long-term sustainability. It …

Processing Freehand Interior Architecture Sketches Using Ai Applications, Khaled M. Zaki Hawas

Journal of Art, Design and Music

The intersection of interior architecture design and artificial intelligence is revolutionizing how designers perceive, inhale, and implement their ideas. One of the most exciting developments in this field is the use of artificial intelligence to process interior architecture design drawings. Handmade sketches have always been an essential tool for designers, allowing them to visualize ideas and spaces and transfer concepts. However, the transition from drawing to final design can be time-consuming and challenging. AI applications are now intervening to streamline this process, providing designers with powerful tools to boost creativity, improve accuracy, and speed up workflows. With the advent of …

From Story To Stage: A Journey In Pursuit Of Virtuous Leadership And Artistic Intentionality Through Student Directing A Full Play Production At University Level Theatre, Josephine L. Partridge

Honors Projects

A passionate storyteller and artist, earning her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Honors Liberal Arts and Theatre-Performance, explores her personal potential as the play Director of Little Women, a stage play adaptation based on the 1868 novel by Louisa May Alcott, adapted from the 1912 play by Marian de Forest and Jessie Bonstelle written by Josephine Partridge. Throughout the course of four months, Partridge adapted the script and works as Director and Marketing Director for this production with SPU Theatre Company club. She uses this experience to deepen her understanding and practice of intentionality with artistic vision and virtuous leadership. …

Government Documents For All, Tim Dodge

The Southeastern Librarian

The Government Documents for All column for the Spring 2026 issue of The Southeastern Librarian

Glory, North Dakota State University--Fargo

Promotional Material and Program

It’s Women’s Hockey meets A League of Their Own! Set in the Great Depression of the 1930’s, this highly engaging and humorous tale follows the journey of four women who set out to form one of the most iconic women’s hockey teams in history. Told with music and dance inspired from the jazz age, GLORY follows the true story of Canada’s own Preston Rivulettes – the pioneering Women’s Hockey Team that fought to play the game they loved, and to prove that hockey isn’t just a sport for men. This inspiring and thrilling play is the feel good story …

The Trauma Challenge: Are You Ready To Lead With Trust-Based Relational Intervention?, Tara Quinn-Schuldt Dr., Patrick Walker, Melinda Meadow, Megan Jance

Southeast Conference on School Climate

In today’s educational landscape, understanding trauma isn’t optional, it’s essential. The Cherokee County School District has transformed from trauma-aware to trauma-responsive through intentional implementation and the creation of its connectED cohort training model. Combining strategic district-wide staff, including administrators, teachers, school support personnel, nurses, and resource officers—we created a collective approach to improving school climate, culture, and overall student outcomes. This comprehensive model integrates mental health, attachment theory, behavior intervention, and trauma responsiveness into the educational environment. This session shares evidence-based tools, a trauma-responsiveness assessment template, and strategies to address contradictions and strengthen trauma-responsive practices.

Glory, North Dakota State University--Fargo

Dramaturgy

It’s Women’s Hockey meets A League of Their Own! Set in the Great Depression of the 1930’s, this highly engaging and humorous tale follows the journey of four women who set out to form one of the most iconic women’s hockey teams in history. Told with music and dance inspired from the jazz age, GLORY follows the true story of Canada’s own Preston Rivulettes – the pioneering Women’s Hockey Team that fought to play the game they loved, and to prove that hockey isn’t just a sport for men. This inspiring and thrilling play is the feel good story …

Ethelbert Barksdale In The Democratic National Convention Of 1860, Owen M. Peterson

Journal of Mississippi History

No abstract provided.

Catherine De Bourboulon's Diary In China (1858-1862) Fracture Between East And West, Qingya Meng

SOROUD: The journal of Literacy Criticism

This article is dedicated to the journey of Catherine de Bourboulon (1827-1865) with her husband, a French diplomat, through northern China, Mongolia, and Russia, during which she wrote a journal that was published upon her return to France in 1866. This journal reflects both her compassion for the Chinese and Mongols living in miserable conditions and her admiration for the landscape of the Gobi Desert. However, her perspective also establishes a hierarchical relationship with the Other. In this regard, our approach aims to show how the concept of civilization justifies Catherine de Bourboulon’s stance, convinced of the superiority of Europeans …

Performance Of Illustrations And Images As Language In Sarnath Banerjee’S All Quiet In Vikaspuri, Akanksha Barthwal Ms

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Sarnath Banerjee’s All Quiet in Vikaspuri, fictionalizes but at the same time addresses water wars and political ideologies in the city of Delhi. By the means of eco-critical approach in the name of Vi-kas (development) Banerjee discuss the acts of slow violence subverted on nature in the name of progress (vikas). Through text/ images the author depicts chaos and challenges for the readers in more direct and obscene ways. The current paper attempts to look at Banerjee’s illustrations and images as new form of language emerged in modern Indian literature with the possibly that illustrations have more effect on …

Century's Nail Spa Rebrand, Alena Le Thai

Graphic Communication

For my senior project, I redesigned branding for Century’s Nail Spa, an Asian-owned family business located in Fremont, California. My family purchased this nail salon from a former work colleague after the pandemic. We inherited the branding and the website at the time and did not make the effort to change or strengthen these business aspects since the change in ownership. Therefore, I decided to rebrand the nail salon to better align with our family values, culture and desire to connect with the local community. Along with designing a brand guide with new logos and color palette, I also redesigned …

Wellness Influencer Scienceploitation: An American Medicine Show Revival, Jennifer D. Oliva

UMKC Law Review

No abstract provided.

"Certain" Unalienable Rights: Christian Nationalism And Beliefs About Freedom Of Speech, Emily J. Haan

Honors Projects

Christian nationalism can be defined as an ideology advocating for the fusion of Christianity with American civic life. While the First Amendment protects freedom of speech and religion, Christian nationalism has been linked to limiting the rights of those who do not fit into their vision for America. Citing the belief that America was founded as and should continue to be a Christian nation, Christian nationalists hold an exclusionary view of America, pointing to a relationship between Christian nationalist ideology and a limiting freedom of speech for stigmatized groups. This project uses data from the General Social Survey, 2021, (N …

Peaks Island Star : June 2026, Vol. 46, Issue 6, Service Agencies Of The Island

Peaks Island Star, 2026

The Peaks Island Star is the newsletter of the island's service agencies and other community news.