University of Greenwich School of Design: Book 2022 by University of Greenwich School of Design

BO OK 22 School of Design University of Greenwich

Animation / Architecture / Design / Landscape Architecture & Urbanism / Media & Communication

School of Design University of Greenwich

BO OK 22 School of Design University of Greenwich

Animation / Architecture / Design / Landscape Architecture & Urbanism / Media & Communication

Contents

The Book 2022 Message from the Head of School of Design Critical Reflections Design Anthropology: Designing with and for Others Anastasios Maragiannis

6 9

A post-landscape Handbook Ed Wall

Mediafutures Maria Korolkova

School of Design Research 2021—2022 Exhibiting our Research Excellence Dr Benz Kotzen

Design Anthropology BA (Hons) Graphic + Digital Design BA (Hons) Animation

24 27 99

Architecture BA (Hons) Architecture MArch Architecture PDAP (Postgraduate Diploma in Architectural Practice)

116 119 235 317

Landscape Architecture + Urbanism BA (Hons) Landscape Architecture Masters Landscape Architecture + Urbanism BA (Hons) Urban Design Graduate + Student Employment

318 321 353 391 394

Media BA (Hons) Media + Communications Advanced Projects BA (Hons) Sound Design Dissertations MA Media and Creative Cultures MA Digital Arts

398 400 401 423 425 430 431

The Book 2022 Message from the Head of School of Design Dear reader, we are Shifting Thinking! If you read this, you have received a copy of the School of Design's annual publication celebrating student and staff work for 2022. This edition also includes a few critical essays to reflect on our vision. The School of Design is part of the highly successful and vibrant faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Frequently commended for our partnership working across the design and creative industries sector, the School delivers highquality research with funding reaching £ 4M. Our four main subject portfolios include a range of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes: #Architecture, #Animation, #DigitalArts, #FilmTV, #GraphicDesign, #InclusiveDesign, #LandscapeArchitecture, #MediaCommunications, #Urbanism, and more. Enshrined in the 2030 agenda is the principle that every person should reap the benefits of prosperity and enjoy minimum well-being standards. This is captured in the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals that are aimed at freeing all nations and people and all segments of society from poverty and hunger and to ensure, among other things, healthy lives and access to education, modern energy, and information and design can do that. Therefore, the School of Design is expanding to the future. We put EDI, entrepreneurship, and innovation at the centre of our pedagogic practices in response to the increasing demand for creative thinkers in the ever-growing creative industries and rapidly expanding circular economy. The University of Greenwich's brand new strategy recognises that these goals are challenging unless we make creative industries work for all. This year's degree show's emphasis is social inclusion. This term is defined as improving the terms of participation in society for disadvantaged people based on marginalised communities or economic status through enhanced opportunities, access to resources, voice, and respect for rights. To design inclusively means that our students engage deeply with the end-users needs from the beginning of and 6

throughout the whole creative process, sharing practices and amalgamating potential solutions into what becomes a unique knowledge exchange. In addition, this holistic approach to design practice enables inclusivity irrespectively of disability, gender, ethnicity, vulnerability, language, or age. The UK is one of the world's most influential and dynamic markets for creative industries. The highly skilled sector thrives with talented, well-prepared graduates, and the university experience and qualifications are essential to many creative careers. The School of Design is shifting thinking and responds to this by leading on sustainable, diverse, and inclusive design across all disciplines, empowering our students to future success with the 2022 Showcase putting our graduates at the centre of creative practice. The 2022 Graduates Determination and creative energy distinguish this year's graduates from the rest of the pack. An incredibly talented, culturally diverse group of designers and artists have been a joy and inspiration to work with. The students have worked on a broad body of projects, from print to screen, AR and VR, to conceptual explorations. Their work forges new lines of inquiry, engages established modes of thought, and develops innovative concepts with the potential to improve how we live as individuals, cities, societies, cultures, and as one planet. In these challenging times, this year's degree show embraces broad targets aimed at social inclusion and those who are the most vulnerable. It has never been more critical for our staff to endorse and our students to recognise creative practices for their positive impact on a multidisciplinary society: through inquiry, tradition & innovation, and the 2022 Showcase responds to this just perfect: in space, online and in print. Professor Anastasios Maragiannis Head of School of Design & Professor of Inclusive Design

Critical Reflections

Design Anthropology: Designing with and for Others Anastasios Maragiannis In creating the space for social inclusion, improvements in ongoing interdisciplinary collaboration are essential in considering “the other”1 in creative practices [1]. Since ancient times most disciplines focused on problem-solving for human needs; for example, architecture interacts with physical space as well as with digital; our daily engagement with media technology becomes more and more essential; not only it is empowering our communications, but in addition, is stipulating for those most vulnerable or in need; whereas visual communication satisfies aesthetics and the desire for the “beautiful”, and it creates unadorned but sophisticated ways of seeing and understanding complexity. In a way, “the other” is becoming a vehicle to inform and often liberate obscured information critical to our lives [2]. This introductory writing briefly discusses the amalgamation of design (+) anthropology concerning the ‘other’. However, it only scratches the surface between the two terms and defines how designing “with and for others” could empower participatory methods2 in every creative and non-creative practice [3]. This association is, from the beginning, hesitation about the relationship between the Designer and the end-user and everything surrounding both. As a discipline itself, anthropology focuses on studying what makes us human. Colomina and Wigley will argue that questioning if we are humans? “Is both urgent and old” is embedded in our lives through interaction with the self, human sciences, and technology [4]. In a broad spectrum, Anthropology takes a comprehensive approach to understanding the many different aspects of our experiences, with a focus on holistic theory. Anthropologists traditionally will consider the past {time} through an archaeological perspective to see how “human societies” lived in previous times ages ago and what was the most important to them at each period of {time}. Aristotle once mused, “{Time} is irrelevant” in the measure of change. It does not exist as a container to put things into; rather, it depends on shifting, reshaping, and what remains the same, always from an inclusive philosophical perspective (Aristotle 384–322 BC). We all have our philosophies, whether or not we are aware of this fact, and our philosophies are not worth very much. But the impact of our philosophies upon our actions and our lives is often devastating. This makes it necessary to try to improve our philosophies by criticism. This is the only apology for the continued existence of air which I am able to offer (Popper, 1974: 33) [5]. As Popper describes in the above quote, the philosophical approach is associated with actions. Design Philosophy arises in this debate. The relatively adolescent field of design practice and research is briefly presented by asking what the “Philosophy of Design” is about and what its use may be [6]. In almost every discipline, philosophies and routes are questionable based on personal knowledge, experiences and understanding. When focusing on the place of design aesthetics, designs related to peculiar 9

manifestations; the meaning and translation of function; and consumerism, the Designer’s social responsibility is shifting, and the impact of creative practice concentrates on humans. Although this appears as a tangible and ethical cognitive perspective, understanding design can often create misapprehensions. For example, few would argue that design is not just about making things pretty, at least not just for its sake. In the 21st century, philosophies classify “design” as an elegant sounding world, and there appears to be a certain number of misconceptions surrounding it. However, the reality is far from it. The focus goes beyond the aesthetics and the idea of enhancing ornaments to a product; instead, it is about making the end user’s interaction with the environment further natural, supplementary inclusive, and complete. It is then when Design (+) Anthropology comes together to form a {new time}, as the Aristotelian quote mentioned above. The {time} could shape the Designer’s role, especially in a post-pandemic era. Design Anthropology3 focuses on how design practice and design research could translate human values into unique tangible experiences. Combining the unique characteristics of each is a way to reveal social aspects of user experience and focus on philosophical and practical ideas oriented towards the world of transformation, innovation, and knowledge exchange. Design Anthropology attempts to combine observation and interpretation to intervention, participation, co-design, and co-creation as an emergent discipline. The design practitioner collaborates in multidisciplinary teams, working towards tangible results for unique problem solutions to evoke methodological processes and empathic assessments used in co-design approaches, and evaluates them in the context of inclusive studies [7]. Can we propose the evolution of deeper co-evaluation processes and practices between the Designer and the Anthropos (human)? The short answer is. Yes, we can. Niedderer has argued that creative practices have been used as a means of crafting implicit knowledge available to any cross-disciplinarity research, as it includes the empirical part of knowledge about “the other”, which equivocates conventional communication by unwritten or written methods, and which is otherwise neglected by research because of the prioritisation of propositional knowledge [8]. Shifting our thinking in the pandemic can be an excellent example to showcase as a measure of change. With the massive and “unexpected” rise of the pandemic, designers everywhere have been hanging on the research and outputs of the scientific communities, especially the epidemiologists, and building on healthy best practices to date. But the sheer volume of research and data and the professional responsibility we bear can be overwhelming for a designer, so co-evaluation is essential. Throughout the {times}, anthropologists, among others, have argued that pandemics (e.g. Influenza 1918, COVID-19) have introduced innovation in almost everything, including science, design, arts, technology, and public health and service design. Each pandemic forges us to rethink our preconceptions and explore innovative methodologies, encouraging us to review “the other” beyond the difficult times of any disease instigated and improve our way of living in a non-stop challenging society. The way we address the pandemics can be inclusively connected to what we believe at the time caused the disease. The focus is mainly on processes usually used in professional and creative practice to 10

produce work for any purpose other than the cautious acquisition of knowledge. Therefore, co-evaluation practices and methodologies could act as problemsolving processes that drive innovation, build business success, and lead to a better quality of life through services, products, and experiences. The focus for humans has always been on finding the best ways to improve quality of life; consequently, when design focuses on the end-users and the environment we live in, it could provide a new and innovative perspective that design could re-design the human. We live in times where everything surrounding us is designed based on our diverse experiences, targeting individual characteristics. From our inclusive looks to our digital personas to new materials systems and data. To design inclusively could decode methodological approaches where the Designer engages deeply with the end-users needs, from the beginning of and throughout the whole design process, sharing practices and amalgamating potential solutions into what becomes a unique knowledge exchange. This holistic approach to designpractice research enables human inclusivity irrespectively of disability, gender, ethnicity, vulnerability, language, or age. This could occur but is not limited: to the use of makeup, grinding coffee beans, buying a ticket, taking a bus, making a call, having an operation, having sex, praying to Gods or even getting in touch with outer space entities. Anthropos (human) has been designing the earth for many years now; it is also extended to outer earth space, which has now been surrounded by our designed rubbish, under the lower orbit [9]. As technology is now in everybody’s hands, we can decide if to send waste to space or contribute to recycling it before it gets there. There is no longer an earth-based design. Design has become the universe, and considering what the next 30 years of growth activities in space will bring. The most certain thing is that humans will be in the centre of every anthropological aspect, capable of designing to solving problems that transcend time and space for life on earth [10].

Notes 1 The “Other”, as another, is not only my alter-ego. He is what I am not (Levinas, 1995). Levinas will argue that “an-other” is the one who is not me, he is the one I am not and at the same time he is the same as me (he belongs to the human condition). 2 Sometimes referenced as Participatory design (or Co-design) (Simonsen, Robertson 2013), this is a considered act of directly creating, or designing with people for people, explicitly embedded in the design development process, to ensure that results truly meet the end users’ needs [3]. 3 Design Anthropology as a new field is broadly used by designers, sociologies, anthropologists and more. For example, Gunn, Otto, Smith, in their (2013) publication, “comprising both cutting-edge explorations and theoretical reflections, their book provides a muchneeded introduction to the concepts, methods, practices and challenges of the new field” Routledge.

References [1] (Online) Britannica https://www.britannica.com/ biography/Emmanuel-Levinas [accessed May 1, 2022]. [2] McCandless, David (2022), Beautiful News: Positive Trends, Uplifting Stats, Creative Solutions [3] Simonsen, Jesper, Robertson, Toni Routledge, (2013), Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design. (Ed) Routledge [4] Colomina Beatriz, Wigley, Mark (2017), Are We Human? Notes on an Archaeology of Design, Lars Müller Publishers [5] Popper, K. R. (1974), Objective Knowledge. An Evolutionary Approach. London: Oxford University Press. [6] Parsons, Glenn, (2017), The philosophy of design, Malden (Mass.) Polity Press [7] Bakker, Laurens, Nooteboom, Gerben, (2017) Anthropology and Inclusive Development, http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.cosust.2017.02.007 [8] Niedderer, Kraft. (2005). How much theory do we need to ride a bicycle: or how useful is research for practice? In P. Rogers, L. Brodhurst and D. Hepburn (eds.), Crossing Design Boundaries. (914). London: Francis & Taylor [9] (Online) BBC The quest to tackle the rubbish dump in orbit. Available from: https://www.bbc.com/future/ article/20180228-the-quest-to-beat-the-rubbish-dumpin-orbit [accessed May 2, 2022]. [10] (Online) International Space Station and World Design Organisation (2021) https://wdo.org/wpcontent/uploads/Design_in_Space_for_Life_on_Earth_ ReportSummary_vf.pdf [accessed April 21, 2022].

A post-landscape Handbook Ed Wall

Post-landscapes are about seeking out ‘other landscapes’.1 They are a reminder to enquire beyond the places that we have been conditioned to construct, a prompt to question landscapes constructed for us, and an urgency to invent new relationships with worlds. Prevailing and dominant approaches to landscapes, including those experienced and produced in most places on the planet, represent a continued trajectory of centuries old, Western European priorities of imaging and commodifying land for the benefit of powerful individuals, organisations, and states. At a moment of intersecting environmental, health, and economic crises, this 16th Century conception of landscape that was conceived and has developed along with practices of capitalism and colonial expansion should be challenged. This post-landscape handbook is a call to make radical change, not just to redesign physical environments but to simultaneously challenge the technologies, disrupt the ideologies, upend the politics, and reinvent the governance structures that inform daily life. On their own, physical designs of landscapes are too easily appropriated to exacerbate inequities of land ownership, distract from ecological destruction, or conceal social inequities. It is necessary, therefore, to expand our roles into areas otherwise left to engineers and economists, activists and politicians—to prioritise other landscapes and establish more just relations. To work with landscapes is not only to engage with the material specifications of places. Instead, it is necessary to radically reconstitute relations that make worlds in order to realise ecologically just and spatially equitable lives. To build other landscapes, we must contest prevailing practices: first, the dominance of visual imagery and pictorial representations as mediators of landscape practices; second, the ego-centered positions from which landscapes are viewed and transformed; and third, the controlling frames that enclose and restrict access and relationships.2 In ‘Landscape’s Agency’, the geographer Don Mitchell states: ‘So we need to talk (a lot) about what these post-commodities and post-landscapes might actually look like (literally)’.3 The twelve points of this post-landscape handbook aim to respond to Mitchell’s call, ‘toward a new kind of post-landscape order, one being worked out on the ground’.4 1 Question vision To maintain pictorial images as the primary relations that we have with people, things, and worlds around us privileges particular ways of seeing that can tend towards the illusory. Histories of landscape representations that can be celebrated for their technical invention need to be questioned for their fixation with painterly compositions over lived realities. Landscapes need to be studied for what is concealed from view and what is excluded from the frame—revealing other landscapes that have the capacity for more productive relations. Visual images have critical roles, but they are more powerful when they expose the complex and often contradictory constructions of landscapes and avoid the tropes of architectural competitions, travel guides and marketing brochures. 13

2 Make things visible Landscapes need to reveal otherwise untold human and more-than-human accounts of places. Landscape practices need to work with young people excluded from planning processes, residents displaced through gentrification, marginalised cultural practices, and unaccounted non-human labour. Simultaneously, landscapes need to make visible the agendas of commissioning bodies, decisions of government agencies, uneven distributions of land and resources, and species and habitats destroyed—while not overlooking commercial interests who may have the most to gain. Landscape practices need to look more closely and represent with more care while working with the cultural, ecological, and technological forces that inform the constructions of other landscapes. 3 Deny masterplans, get closer Views from above, the recognisable forms of masterplans, render invisible lived experiences of neighbourhoods and undermine citizen concerns by focusing on spatial forms. Challenging masterplans is not to ignore the potential of visionary designs and the importance of urban strategies, but it is to give voice to the situated lives, histories, and aspirations that can inform more spectacular futures. Proposals at the scale of neighbourhoods have the capacity to mediate between lived experiences and government policies. But imbalances of power, compounded by the distance between where decisions are made and the places impacted by these decisions, tends to undermine more local concerns. 4 Situate Situate knowledge. Situate actions. Situate yourself. Listen to residents displaced, consider traders put out of business, and recognise children forced to change schools—these are frequent upheavals caused by renewal, redevelopment, and regeneration. Situating requires pause, care, listening, study. It necessitates reflection on our positionality, the biases we carry, conflicting ethics, and partial knowledge that informs our worlds. Practices of landscape make claims to being situated. But in contrast to ethnographic fieldwork and generational struggles over land, landscape architecture—and architecture and urban design—must stay longer, invest more, and have more at stake if it is to truly engage. 5 Draw together Make composite images. Form collective visions. Challenging ego-centred approaches to landscapes suggests shared concerns, collaborative designs, and inclusive processes of making. Western histories of landscape reveal the positions of individuals—almost entirely men—overseeing the enclosure, distribution, and transformation of land. Working with human and more-than-human others requires negotiating disagreements and reconciling divergent priorities. Talking about places, collaging experiences, and making drawings together can work with and across contrasting landscapes—effectively combining scientific knowledge with subjective experience—even while these landscapes remain in tension. 6 Write more manifestos Make demands. Post-landscapes need to be written5—forcefully combining both vision and precision. As we reinvent visual images we must also look to other languages. From building specifications to house rules and from visionary 14

declarations to traffic regulations, crafted words can make change. Combine ambiguity (to open up questions) with specificity (to make explicit) as we write post-landscape manifestos. Don’t wait to be commissioned, write declarations, take action, and draw lines in the sand. 7 Accept partial knowledge Recognising that knowledge is always partial can be the basis for determined inquiry and listening more. This incompleteness is the basis for open conversations and asking questions, seeking knowledge rather than presenting solutions. 8 Make thick edges that can bring people together. Frames that regulate landscapes range from garden fences to picture mounts, from police patrols to designed layouts, from poor doors to national borders. The urge to control landscapes through enclosures precedes only the desire to commodify common lands and claim individual ownership. Frames are the basis for putting things in their place and claiming others out of place. Thickening edges, blurring boundaries, opening access, reimagining borders is only the beginning of reconceiving landscape relations otherwise controlled by frames. 9 Overthrow Contest power. Post-landscapes are not enduring passive entities handed from one generation to another, but exist in tension, contradiction, and struggle. Whether common lands, civic squares, or private gardens, landscapes are political, and they need to be fought over. Reposition. Occupy. Topple. 10 Decentre In the context of the unfolding climate crisis and the need for more ecological thinking, questioning the singularity of human agency and recognising the capacity of non-human entities to make and remake landscapes is fundamental. Tensions between engineering solutions to flooding and less predictable storm patterns, conflicts between industrial pollution and the legal rights of rivers, and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the way individuals and communities relate to their neighbourhoods, all highlight the role of more-than-human entities. Landscape thinking has long recognised the presence of climatic weathering, patterns of tree growth, and even the capacity of diverse ecosystems. But landscape thinking has also maintained humans at the centre of these relations. Decentre landscape practices if you want to research, design, and act ecologically. 11 Move The static nature of adopting (and often defending) positions from which to view and frame landscapes ignores that they are always on the move and that knowledge is never fixed. The desire to settle and belong—within the flux of worlds that tend towards unsettling—requires designers to protect the vulnerable from displacement while simultaneously working across multiple positions and adopting perspectives on the move. Movement is inherent in landscapes, but the resources to settle and the freedom of mobility must be within reach of everyone. 15

12 Never stop All landscapes are open-ended. Frames that allude to permanence must be challenged by open-ended processes as well as overlapping and discontinuous temporalities. The open-endedness of landscapes requires that they are never finished, therefore, landscape practices need to persevere. Finally, if landscapes are never finished, maybe their drawings should never be complete. Let them live through many hands, from historic accounts to construction documents and from presentation drawings to maintenance schedules. Post-landscapes are always to be continued…

Notes 1 See Barbara Bender’s description of ‘other landscapes’ in: Bender, B. (1993) Landscape: Politics and Perspectives. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan. p.2. 2 For an introduction and background to the conception of post-landscapes as described by Ed Wall, see: Wall, E. (2017) Post-landscape or the potential of other relations with the land. In: Wall, E. and Waterman, T. (eds.) Landscape and Agency: Critical Essays. Oxon: Routledge. pp.144-163. 3 See more in: Mitchell, D. (2018) ‘Landscape’s Agency’. In: Wall, Ed and Waterman, Tim, (2018) Landscape and Agency: Critical Essays. Oxon: Routledge. p.192. 4 Ibid. p.192. 5 This manifesto, ‘A post-landscape handbook’, was commissioned by Sean Geygan for publication in Lunch (Issue 16: Descent), a student-run design journal at the University of Virginia School of Architecture (forthcoming). The text was first published as part of Other Spaces Exhibition during the Melbourne Design Week 2022.

References Barrell, J. (1983) The Dark Side of Landscape. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bender, B. (1993) Landscape: Politics and Perspectives. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Corner, J. (ed.) (1999) Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press. Cosgrove, D. (1999) Mappings. London: Reaktion. Haraway, D. (1988) Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. In: Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 575-599. Mitchell, D. (2003) Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space. New York, NY: The Guilford Press. Sorkin, M. (1993) Local Code: The Constitution of a City at 42° N Latitude. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press. Tagg, J. (2009) The Disciplinary Frame: Photographic Truths and the Capture of Meaning. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Wall, E. and Waterman, T. (eds.) (2017) Landscape and Agency: Critical Essays. Oxon: Routledge. Wall, E. (2017) ‘Incomplete Cartographies: A Methodology for Unfinished Landscapes’, in OASE #98 Narrating Urban Landscapes. New York: NAi Publishers. Wall, E. (2022) Contesting Public Spaces: Social Lives of Urban Redevelopment in London. Oxon: Routledge.

Mediafutures Maria Korolkova

Media has always had an ability to shape the future. Marshal McLuhan ([1964] 2001) famously predicted that we all would live in a global village back in 1960s, Lev Manovich called new media “theory of the present” (2001: 6) meaning that this present will inform the century ahead, and even media archaeologies dig deep in the underlayers of media technologies of the past in order to better understand what await us ahead (Zielinski 2006; Sobchak 2022). What can then speculations on mediafutures tell us about today, about the challenges we are all facing in 2022—and the ways to deal with them? Simple Future: Web 3.0 Metaverse, blockchains, NFTs, decentralised technology and token-based economics. —Web 3.0 promises to be a paradise of freedom, acceptance, diversity and shared knowledge. Yet, only at the first glance. As Ben Tarnoff argues in the forthcoming The Fight for our Digital Future (2022), the modern internet is broken because it is owned privately and run for the purposes of profit maximisation within the flameworks of global capitalism. Johnny Golding, Martin Reinhart and Mattia Paganelli (2021) echo Tarnoff in their take on modern approaches to data and new system of knowledge. They too, like us, believed in “a fruitful explosion of knowledge from the world wide web”, in knowledge that after decades of Cold War “would be available to all at any time in the future, unrestricted and free of charge” (Golding, Reinhart and Paganelli 2021: 8). Yet, at best, event with the modern technologies, there seems to be “an endless undermining of established knowledge-structure-production sites, including universities, art schools, science labs” (ibid.), which often fail to defend themselves. The solutions to this is still in the future—and seems simple enough: to deprivatise the internet, to democratise professionalism, to diversify the knowledge production systems. Otherwise, a small number of executives and investors will continue to make choices on everyone’s behalf, and these choices will remain tightly bound by the demands of the market. It’s time to demand an internet by, and for, the people now, and that is a simple future of Web 3.0. Future Continuous: Medianatures Media is hardly just about capitalism and its technologies—furthermore, “media is hardly just about media” (Parikka 2019: 251). The continuous future of understanding media in 2022 cannot be separated from the systems of nature, and the way "nature is embedded in the cultural understanding of life" (ibid.). A longstanding binary opposition of culture and nature is thus united through media and mediated through continuous exchange. Any talk of the environment today immediately transferers in a network of social, political, ethical and aesthetical dimensions (Parkikka 2019; Guattari 2000; Braidotti 2006). This paradigm has its roots in Donna Haraway’s notion of Naturecultures, which 17

challenges the separation of nature and culture on many different levels, including animal-human relationships of co-becoming, of mediating "livable politics and ontologies in current life worlds” (Harraway 2003: 4). This notion of continuous ‘becoming’ is key here, and it unites our new understanding of both nature and media as two systems of existence. In this paradigm, media technologies are not just communication systems, but materials, which are composed of a variety of elements and forces, and hence become part of a “massive global networks of energy and supply chains that themselves are linked to the geographies of media materials” (Parikka 2019: 252-253), which could be from African, Chinese or Russian origins, and other diverse loci of global ecological operations. Future Perfect: Miscommunications Once media are conceptualised as material, they become prone to natural processes of decay, erosion and corruption. The two past decades increasingly see media in its fluid, unstable nature and, more importantly, as a spontaneous force of mistakes, accidents, and miscommunications (see Korolkova and Barker 2021). For media, and technologies, are already and always programmed with accidents—accidents will always have happened by the time the new forms of media are introduced. As Paul Virilio (2007) points out in The Original Accident, the invention of new technology is always already designed with the possibility of failure. Just as the locomotive is pre-designed with the derailment, and the car with the failing breaks, any kind of communications method has a potential for mistake—verbal, digital, or visual. Importantly, this potential of miscommunication suggests new systems and alternative ways to operate beyond dominant structures of communication, which embraces the possibilities of going astray. Post-future: Post-media Talking about the future of cultural categories, it is always tempting to add a post- prefix to it. Yet, to talk about the future of media would be as paradoxical as to talk about the future of the future. Media do determine the future in the same way as media are in and of future—any message that needs to be transmitted takes time—and this time is in the future. While we can easily imagine ourselves in the post-digital, i.e. a future where we will be more concerned with being human, than with being digital, a category of post-media is yet to be invented—whether as a form of Web 3.0, a part of nature or a mistake.

References Braidotti, R. (2006) Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Golding, J., M. Reinhart and M. Paganelli (eds) (2021) Data Loam: Sometimes Hard, Usually Soft: the Future of Knowledge Systems. Berlin: De Gruyter. Guattari, F, ([1989] 2000/2008), The Three Ecologies. London and New Brunswick: The Athlone Press; London: Continuum. Haraway, D. (2003), The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness, Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.

Manovich, L. (2001) The Language of New Media Cambridge: MIT Press. McLuhan, M. ([1964] 2001) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. London: Routledge. Korolkova, M. and T. Barker (2021) Miscommunications: Errors, Mistakes, Media. New York: Bloomsbury. Parikka, J. (2018) ‘Medianatures’, in R. Braidotti and M. Hlavajova (eds) Posthuman Glossary. London and New York: Bloomsbury, pp. 251-253. Zielinski, S. (2006). Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sobchak, V. (2011). 'Afterword: Media Archaeology and Re-presencing the Past', in E. Huhtamo and J. Parikka (eds) Media Archaeology. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 323–334. Tarnoff, B. (2022) The Fight for our Digital Future. New York: Verso. Virilio, P. (2007) The Original Accident. Cambridge: Polity Press.

School of Design Research 2021—2022

Exhibiting our Research Excellence Benz Kotzen

The School of Design Annual Exhibition celebrates the high quality and wide scope of design work that is undertaken across our programmes. This display is largely visual, with stunning and evocative graphic and illustrative pieces that culminate from weeks, sometimes months and in some cases years of keen and creative thinking that unravels sets of problems that are enthusiastically conquered by the students. In Film and TV and Animation, the skilful and creatively produced work integrates sound, image and word bringing together practical and avant-garde productions that challenge the intellect and can evoke strong emotions. And whilst words are often used across the board, particularly in graphic design, the word is king across the disciplines, in the writing of essays on theory, context and history and particularly in students’ dissertations which acquire increased intellectual rigour and writing proficiency as they progress through their undergraduate programmes and into post graduate taught programmes. These works in words, accompanied by supporting images, (some of which are showcased at the 2022 exhibition) are extremely important “outputs” as they confirm both the writing and design abilities of prospective employees at job interviews as most creative jobs require their employees to be able to write all sorts of documents from simple letters to complex reports. The term “output” is extremely current, particularly in the context of the REF. The Research Excellence Framework ‘is an internationally recognised system for assessing the quality of research in the UK’s Higher Education Institutions’. This submission identifies the highest quality outputs that have been produced by academic staff during the REF period which was from 2014 until the end of 2020. The outcome of the submission to the REF by the University as a whole, is used to calculate the funding that is allocated to institutions for the next REF cycle. The submission is not only important in terms of funding, but it also indicates the strength of research across the staff in the School of Design and particularly as a means of calculating the growth in quantity and quality of research from 2014 to the end of 2020, calculated from the outputs themselves (60%), Impact Case Studies (5%) and the Research Environment (15%). Submissions to the REF are organised according to 34 separate Units of Assessment (UoAs) devised to cover the full range of research activity areas. The philosophy of the School of Design was to submit as many staff as possible, i.e. those who are undertaking research under Unit of Assessment 32, Art and Design: History, Practice & Theory. This resulted in 33 (30.5 FTE) staff submitting outputs at an average of 2.5 outputs per person (as required by the REF) with a total number of 75 high quality outputs, (books, book chapters, edited books, refereed journal articles and Multi Component Submissions [MCSs]) most of them at 3* and 4*, i.e. of quality that is ‘internationally’ and ‘world leading’ and our impact was also predominantly 3* and 4*. The 17 MCSs were an outstanding new addition to the submission 21

portfolio. These focus on practice based research and combine the outputs of the researcher practitioner over a period of time in text and images which describes the research outputs, discusses the research question(s) and highlights the rigour, significance and impact of the research. 3 Impact Case Studies were produced and these combined with the Outputs and the Environment Statement provided a coherent and robust submission which raised our research quality and power way above where we were in 2022. For this, everyone involved should be congratulated as follows: George Ayekum Mensah, Michael Aling, Ghislaine Boddington, Rosamund Davies, Konstantinos Evangelinos, Somaiyeh Falahat, Lionel Feugere, Ivan Garcia Kerdan, Duncan Goodwin, Jim Hobbs, Anne Hultzsch, Ikpe Ibanga, Lindsay Keith, Stephen Kennedy, Andrew Knight-Hill, Maria Korolkova, Benz Kotzen, Hannah Lammin, Catherine Maffioletti, Anastasios Maragiannis, Sarah Milliken, Effiness Mpakati-Gama, Shaun Murray, Elena Papadaki, Caroline Rabourdin, Mohammad Sakikhalis, Miriam Sorrentino, Walter Stabb, Ian Thompson, Ed Wall, David Waterworth, Julie Watkins and Jonathan Wroot. The number of Post Graduate Research (PGR) students, those who are undertaking and completing PhD research is on the rise and so are our staff who are starting their PhD studies here in the School of Design. More opportunities are being given to ECRs (Early Career Researchers) to bid for research and participate in research projects and the supervision of PhD students. This is very important for our development of PGRs and ECRs, so that we can grow research in the School. Indeed, we want every academic staff member to be undertaking research and with this goal in mind, every staff member, where required will be mentored. We have been successful in numerous internal and external funding bids and we have either completed these or are currently working on these with UK and EU partners. All of these projects in themselves create new knowledge, but also provide a means for KE (Knowledge Exchange) which is a key strategic objective of the University, where our research makes a real difference in terms of society, economy and the environment Covid was an awful time and whilst we are not totally immune to its impacts, we can now look forward and approach our research with renewed vigour and purpose. Our engagement with the REF has driven home the fact that research has to have impact and that it needs to benefit people, profit and planet. These are the 3 foundation pillars of sustainable development. Going forward we are embracing the University’s strategy of our research engaging with the United Nation’s (UN’s) 17 Sustainable Development Goals (https://sdgs.un.org/goals), such as ‘no poverty, zero hunger, gender equality, sustainable cities and communities, life on the land’ etc. and we are already preparing for the next REF which will be towards the latter part of the 2020’s. Our transformation from 2014 to 2021 was remarkable and now we are looking forward to doing even better based on our commitment going forward and on the knowledge and experience gained. Dr Benz Kotzen Associate Professor, Research and Enterprise Lead School of Design

SH OW 22 School of Design University of Greenwich

Animation / Architecture / Design / Landscape Architecture & Urbanism / Media & Communication

Design Anthropology

DE SI GN

The Design Anthropology Portfolio at the School of Design focuses on how design research translates human values into tangible experiences. Here, the ideas are oriented toward the world of digital transformation and innovation through undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, including BA H Graphic and Digital Design, BA H Animation, MA in Spatial Design, MA in Design Diplomacy, and MA in Web Design and Content Planning. This year’s show features the work of designers engaged in active research practice to examine the questions and perspectives that connect to their individual passions/concerns/areas of interest—working through experimental thinking, writing and making our students have developed unique approaches to exploring society, culture and technology through design. The showcase of work demonstrates the hard work and achievement of contemporary design talent. In addition, the animation projects focus on an exciting area of research with a plethora of expressions and art directions. A flexible and supportive set of interconnected subject areas allows students to work in their specialist areas and develop their creative approach and academic skills through their 'Animation research project'. The student works explore a wide range of animation practices (both practical and theoretical), such as 2D and 3D animation, concept art, digital sculpting and immersive environment design. The 2022 graduates are distinguished from the rest of the pack. All graduates have worked on a wide-ranging body of creative concepts and used their skills to produce works that fit within the broader context of design and communication, making portfolios that will allow them to get their dream job in the creative industries. An incredibly talented, culturally and socially diverse group of designers and animators who have been a joy and inspiration to work with. Professor Anastasios Maragiannis Academic Portfolio Lead, Design Anthropology

BA (Hons) Graphic + Digital Design OUR GRAPHIC AND DIGITAL DESIGN programmes balance active research investigation, practical experimentation and critical thinking to prepare students for careers in the creative industries. Students develop excellent communication skills, control of creative practices within Graphic Design, as well as in fields close to their discipline — spatial design, fine arts, animation. Guided by our expert teams of academic researchers, practitioners and makers, students explore areas such as typography, visual grammar, data visualisation, narrative, branding, advertising, fine art practices, photography, motion graphics and moving image. Through a blend of lectures, studio-based workshops, technical tutorials and industry events we invite students to develop their knowledge and experience of design theory and practice. Popular career options for our Graphic and Digital Design graduates include roles in creative teams and agencies, particularly those specialising in print, publishing, packaging, branding and interaction design, as well as those focused on animation and moving image. During their time with us, students develop an appreciation of design as an area of intellectual investigation, critical thinking, creative visualisation and making — explored through active engagement and professional practice.

Fatima Alzaabi Visualizing Déjà vu fatimaalzaabi23@gmail.com

In my studies I worked towards attempting to visualise the experience of 'déjà vu'. Despite all of the research and theories developed for déjà vu, it remains difficult to comprehend. However, by attempting to visualise the causes, reasons, and feelings associated with déjà vu through the use of symbols, objects and photography, it is possible to gain a better understanding. This subject has always piqued my attention, since it is a phenomenon, an experience, that we all have at least once in our lives. But it is always unlikely for the individual to recount what they saw, what they heard, and how they felt when these few seconds of déjà vu happened.