[A]MAZE

Zijing Zhong The Journey is the Reward

A collaborative showcase of ongoing individual interview projects by MRes Communication Design Pathway students at the Royal College of Art, London.

Acknowledgements

We express our deepest appreciation to all those who supported us in the journey to publish [A]MAZE and made it possible.

In particular, we would like to thank RCA Professor Teal Triggs, Dr Rosa Woolf Ainley, and Dr Laura Santamaria for their instructive and supportive insights on editorial details and proofreading. Additionally, we would like to thank Patrick Lucas, from the Pureprint Group, for his valuable printing suggestions.

[A]MAZE

ISBN 978-1-8381535-8-8

Edited by Labna Fernandez, Zhiping (Sylvia) Xiao

Published by Royal College of Art Kensington Gore, South Kensington London

SW7 2EU UK

Typeface: Univers

Paper: G.F Smith

Printer: Pureprint Group

Printed in an edition of 150

February 2023

All images by individual authors, unless otherwise stated.

This document was printed sustainably in the UK by Pureprint, a CarbonNeutral® company and certified to ISO 14001 environmental management system.

Group Statement

[A]MAZE is the exploratory journey of an interdisciplinary collaboration between eight non-native English speakers, communication designers and researchers. The multilanguage experiences of each one of us provide us with insights into communicating across cultures and disciplines. These experiences inform our curiosities in exploring communication processes to different degrees, individually and collectively.

We believe in the significance of mutual exchange of information and subjectivities in communication design research. We investigate this exchange through interviews as a method and through critical practice. We have chosen the interview to establish the bridge between knowing and understanding; to comprehend the dissimilarities and connections between individuals and groups. [A]MAZE addresses the arts and design academic community.

We share a set of five axes for our publication: a) to be a medium that efficiently carries and conveys relevant information by stimulating and challenging the senses; b) to blur the boundaries by revealing the unknown and subverting the familiar; c) to express ourselves to reach out and connect with others; d) to encourage deepening conversations that make the implicit observable and functional; and last but not least, e) to discover unexplored paths, bringing pluralities together into one single coherent voice.

Co-authors

Labna Fernandez

Zihan Li

Zhiping (Sylvia) Xiao

Lifei Shan

Fan Zhang

Yixin Zhang

Zhenyi Wei

Zijing Zhong

Design Concept

The design of a book is somewhat similar to building an architectural space. The reading sequence and the structure of the book play an important role in the design process and could potentially influence how readers understand this publication. Arranging the order of eight individual projects was a challenge to the designer. The concept of structuring the book emerged from John Cage’s indeterminacy that segues with the title [A]MAZE.

This publication invites readers to start with an interactive game with the maze designed on the book cover before doing the actual reading. The technique of debossing creates a recessed relief image that mimics a threedimensional maze game. Readers of the book can use their fingers to touch and sense the texture of the cover while playing. This tactile experience allows the hand to interact with the book beyond the action of flipping.

Readers are also invited to use pen or pencils. The page numbers that correspond to each project are randomly printed on the maze, and the different pathway each reader takes will eventually give them a unique reading sequence of our works. Random selections will produce new interpretations. This publication invites readers to participate in the final stage of making the book’s cover, as well as giving the control of the reading order to the reader themselves. There is a blank space in the biography page for the reader-participants to put their information down to address the idea of co-creation.

For any readers who choose not to play the game, they can always start with page 1. For those who joined this game with a pen or pencil, the book cover accumulates how many pathways and times they have engaged with – from being one edition of a mass-produced identical product, the book has become a unique edition in the world for the owner.

Generally, the maze has an implicated characteristic of trial-and-error, which reminds the readers of the uncertainty and meandering that we encountered in our research journeys.

Introduction

The aim of this publication is to showcase the in-progress individual interview projects carried out by the eight Masters of Research Communication Design Pathway students at the Royal College of Art from our term 1 studies. In many ways, [A]MAZE is the ‘tasting menu’ of our work and of our personal and professional development during the MRes programme.

[A]MAZE is, unironically, a maze. It is a shared space occupied by us, as researchers, as students, as designers. We have taken these exploratory journeys through the maze towards communication using the interview as method. The approaches to the interview are, as you will see, quite diverse and therefore, so are the paths and directions through the maze.

The publication is divided into three thematic sections, Translation, Futurism, and Perception. The first focuses on translation and interpretation. The second looks into relationships, space, speculative, and abstraction. The third, investigates the senses, experience, and cognition. These concepts, perhaps vague at the start, were the scaffolding that brought us all in tune. The collaborative processes have unravelled organically from the human relationships we have established and the gambits we have found to circumnavigate the maze we are immersed in.

We hope this journey and odyssey amaze you as much as it has amazed us!

• We believe in the significance of mutual exchange of information and subjectivities in communication design research.

• We investigate this exchange through interviews as a method and through critical practice.

• We have chosen the interview to establish the bridge between knowing and understanding; to comprehend the dissimilarities and connections between individuals and groups.

Purpose

• To be a medium that efficiently carries and conveys relevant information by stimulating and challenging the senses;

• To blur the boundaries by revealing the unknown and subverting the familiar;

• To express ourselves to reach out and connect with others;

• To encourage deepening conversations that make the implicit observable and functional;

• To discover unexplored paths, bringing pluralities together into one single coherent voice.

Group Discussion Translation Mind Map

Key Terms

Thematic

Individual Fan Zhang

Interview as Lifei

Collaborative

as a Method

Terms

Surrounding

Abstract Concept

Relationship

Storytelling

Translation

Language

Dialogue

Narrative

Analysis

Futurism

Perception

Shan

Zhang

Yixin Zhang

Zijing Zhong

Zhenyi Wei

Editorial

• Content

• Curation

• Layout

• Copy editing

• Cover binding

• Material

Task Arrangement

Working as Groups

Experiences

• Event Design

• Format

• Equipment

• Curating

• Documentation

• Photography

Publication+Event

Sharing

• Branding

• Campaigning

• Posters

• Dissemination

• Social Media

• Connections

The MRes Group will be holding an event of our actual projects shortly after publication in February 2023 as an extension of the book.

This event documents and showcases our research processes and allows audiences to interact and communicate with our works. We take this opportunity to propose questions and hope to get some feedback.

Questions

Statement Process

Answer Collection

Thematic Analysis

The question isn’t whether the Society’s narrative is biased, but which the bias mechanisms are. How does it impact the popular image of science? How does this steer girls and women away from scientific practice?

The Royal Society's motto, ‘Nullius in verba’, is translated as ‘take nobody's word for it’. This expresses the determination of the Fellows to verify all statements with experiments and to maintain their independence.

The Royal Society is the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence (RS, 2022), since 1660. Due to its influential membership and its near-total control of scientific communication, at least within Britain, it has dominated the development of western-world science. The narrative of scientific history has therefore been constructed primarily under the Society’s norms.

The public perception of science depends largely on the representational practices through which scientific culture and knowledge are presented to and absorbed by the public (T Burns, 2003). Science communication isn't just about transmitting truths but being able to convey risk and uncertainty (Jucan & Jucan, 2014), making facts understandable and accessible to its audience. Descriptions and depictions of nature, science’s object of study, serve purposes beyond representation, they are used to convey affective states on which the production of knowledge through sensory experience depends (Wragge-Morley, 2020).

The scientist conjured in the imaginary is male (Jardins, 2010). Gender stereotypes about who usually is, can be, or should be skilled or successful in STEM subjects underlie the conventional narrative of science and suggest that men have innate abilities (McGuire, et al., 2020; Mascret & Cury, 2015). Even though not based on any real difference in performance or aptitude, such assumptions often lead to the social exclusion of girls and women from childhood to adulthood, thus contributing to the disparity in gender representation in STEM subjects. Members of the types (classification given to a group of entities with similar characteristics) are not indifferent to their representations, hence there is a causal influence cycle between representations and members of the type (Beeghly, 2015): greater representation affects the idea of who can succeed in STEM (McGuire, et al., 2020). This has widened the gap between the ‘great actors’ of history and the ‘passive and ignorant masses’ (Nieto-Galan, 2011), particularly for girls who do not see themselves represented in the scientific picture. For instance, in 2020 only 11 per cent of the living fellows and foreign members of the Royal Society were women. The lack of commonalities with role models depresses girls’ hopes and ambitions by representing unattainable goals (Laird, 2007).

Despite the presumption of an objective science, scientists and science communicators are socially involved epistemic subjects (McManus, 2016), so their discourse is always inevitably embedded in a social context that shapes what is studied (or ignored) and how (Schiebinger, 1987).

The idea of universal objectivity has reinforced the notion of epistemic institutionally endorsed authority of scientific knowledge, which has led to a phenomenon of epistemic injustice. Prejudices, structural or otherwise, in the economy of credibility and collective hermeneutical resources, along with predetermined masculine thinking, place the feminine as inferior.

Certainly feminism has changed science, but has it changed it enough? Presumptions made, questions asked, and ends sought must change so that the woman scientist ceases to be an oxymoron (Jardins, 2010).

I am in conversation with the Royal Society as a highly influential scientific institution to understand how the telling of its story has (re)shaped our understanding of the natural world, knowledge, and value. I have assembled a historical reconstruction by mapping the traces of the Royal Society, looking closely at how the Society has publicised itself, its fellows, and its activities, from its foundation in 1660 to the present day. After this dialogical analysis, I will attempt to retrieve the forgotten and retell the Society’s history through the voices of those buried in the oblivion.

‘Nullius in verba’ implies the promise that fellows of the Society will be ruthlessly critical both with each other and the rest of the learned world (RS, 2022). But what about the readers, the outsiders, the audience? What about us? Are we not supposed to be ruthlessly critical of the statements made by the Society? Are we supposed to just take its word for it?

I say we don’t.