Journal for Art & Design Research, Vol. 5. Edinburgh Napier University

Journal of Art & Design Research

Volume 5, 2019

School of Arts & Creative Industries

Journal of Art & Design Research Edinburgh Napier University Volume 5, 2019

Cover Image: Akin by Colin Andrews (see page 21-22)

Our goal is to help practitioners, businesses and communities prosper and flourish through accessing the knowledge and expertise of our staff, associates and partners

The Art & Design Research Centre The Art & Design Research Centre runs out of the School of Arts & Creative Industries at Edinburgh Napier University. It comprises of academics and practitioners with expertise in 3D design, (re)making and material practices, lighting design, exhibition design, design for heritage, video arts and photography, design for healthcare, advertising, graphic design and graphic advocacy, and design thinking. We work in research and creative practice, consultancy and knowledge exchange and offer research degrees and continuing professional development (CPD) courses.

Our aim is to extend and share new knowledge and ideas to benefit a wide audience of participants and community of practice.

We would like to hear from businesses, the public sector and local communities seeking help in providing a range of commercially and socially driven projects.

A Quick Update Welcome to volume 5 of the Art & Design Research Journal, showcasing the latest in our research and knowledge exchange work.

Right now, we are preparing our submission for the Research Excellence Framework at the end of 2020. As can be seen in the pages that follow, we have been busy with a number of externally funded projects working across a range of areas, including ocean plastic, leather and textile waste, heritage, photographic archives, and medical products. We have furthered our work on SFC Innovation Voucher and Follow-on Voucher projects and our external partnerships continue to thrive. More of our work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and many of us have been publishing papers and articles in journals, conference proceedings and books.

We have also grown our provision of research degrees with 12 students currently enrolled on MRes and PhDs. (see page 59-60) Our work is internationally recognised and valued by our partners. If you have a potential collaborative project, e-mail us at adrc@napier.ac.uk

Ian Lambert, Director: The Art & Design Research Centre

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Image: Isle of Harris Fish Slice (see page 33-34)

Finally, this is my last issue as centre director. Malcolm Innes will be taking over the role forthwith. Thank you.

Drawn to the Land Sophie Gerrard Drawn to the Land is an ongoing and exploratory photographic study taking an intimate look at the contemporary Scottish landscape through the eyes of women who are working, forming and shaping it.

While the number of women entering farming today continues to rise, the industry is still largely seen and discussed from a male point of view. Gerrard questions this stereotype of the farmer through her portrayal of the women who, in one way or another, find themselves ‘drawn to the land’.

Farming land in Argyll, the remote Western Isles to the Scottish Borders these women farm some of the most inhospitable and isolated rural areas of Scotland and have an intense and remarkable relationship with the harsh landscape in which they live and work.

The photographs document the domestic landscape as well as the physical, following the emotional impact as much as the historical and geographical.

The womens’ personal and physical stories reflect a wider story of our national identity, and emotional relationship with the landscape.

For Gerrard, this project began as a way of exploring her own relationship with the Scottish landscape. Having worked and lived away from Scotland for almost a decade working on environmentally focused photographic projects, she set out to understand the connection she, like many Scots, has with the landscape a great symbol of our national identity and nostalgia - but one which can often lead to a view of the picturesque, of romance and “rural fantasy”.

Drawn To The Land has become a long term ongoing contemporary “portrait” of a number of female farmers in Scotland who shape and are shaped by their landscape.

In walking with the farmers to their favourite places on the hill, Gerrard has been able to capture both the majesty of the landscape and its humbling effect.

She is photographing permanence and transience at once. These women may well be the last generation to work these hills.

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Mining For Counter Culture Colin Malcolm

Besides the people and places encountered, as part of the ethnography a review of historical documents such as fanzines, magazines and journals relevant to the timeframe was undertaken offering a personalized timeline with theories of underground subcultures as they were appropriated and misinterpreted by the mainstream. My broad aim was to discover why the culture that I experienced as a teenager refuses to fade with time and how it continues to be appropriated. This process was allied to another question; what is counterculture now and / or does it still exist?

“At that point in time there was no middle ground, you were either for the establishment or against it – now you can be a graffiti painter spraying a fucking advert for Nike.” (Joe Rush, Creative Salvage 2013:13) “Mining For Counter Culture” is published as a Chapter (12, Part 5: Cultural Legacies) in: Heart & Soul - Critical Essays on Joy Division. Rowman & Littlefield International: 2018. ISBN 978-1-78660-3357

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Raf Simons Parka with factory records logo £20,000. Open Eye Gallery. 2017. Photo Colin Malcolm

Mining For Counter Culture examines the legacy of the post punk music scene and in particular that of the factory records collective on popular culture today.

Lit Lace for Performance Sarah Taylor In partnership with: Dr Sara Robertson Collaborators: Jane Wheeler, Janey Gardiner, Fridthjofur Thorsteinsson, Alexander Whitley, MYB Textiles, Malcolm Innes Funder: WEAR Sustain Call 2 (Wearable Technologists Engage with Artists for Responsible Innovation), Horizon 2020.

Through the collective dynamic of smart textiles, stage and set design, choreography, lighting and performance industry specialists, the project creatively questioned how the use of innovative lighting within and on cloth could best exploit the use of Lit Lace as responsive backdrops within a controlled environment. Through the practical testing of lighting technology within a theatre environment, the team have started to address how to develop, innovate and present prototype backdrops as smart textile products. We have found ways to creatively use smart textiles and associated technologies to exploit multiple cloth effects and potential options for artistic interpretation and design application. The natural characteristics of the cloth and incidental markings through fabric wear and tear also provide exciting visual alternatives and the potential for reuse as a business model.

The project results were dissemination at WEAR Sustain’s Final Event and Symposium at BOZAR, Brussels and as represented by WEAR Sustain at ICT 2018 in Vienna (2018).

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Images: Margot Watson

In response to an EU call for sustainable and ethically-focussed Wearables and Smart Textile projects and the need to find sustainable options and alternative solutions for stage and set design, the vision for this research was to explore the inherent, programmable potential of newly developed light-emitting textiles within a performance environment. Building on the unique product development of Light-emitting Lace (2016-2018) with heritage lace manufacturer MYB Textiles, the research aimed to explore new display, projection and visual effects for the theatre industry, develop ideas for a flexible lighting and fabric design system, build infrastructure for its stakeholders, support local textile industry to sustain long term market growth and help promote life-cycle management. The project was supported by a â‚Ź50,000 EU WEAR Sustain award and was named by wearable.com as one of five most interesting WEAR Sustain open call 2 projects (accessed July 2018).

Ocean Plastic: Developing A Model For Localised Remanufacturing Ian Lambert Collaborator: Dr Kathy Vones Funder: Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland The aim of this practice-based research project is to develop a prototype model for gathering and reusing ocean plastic in-situ and locally to beachside locations along the Scottish West Coast and islands. Samples of ocean plastics retrieved from the Isle of Harris are being subjected to trials with different processes for remanufacturing.

The resulting material knowledge is being shared through educational and public engagement workshops. The remanufactured plastics are used in a digital fabrication context (3D printing) in partnership with high schools on the west coast.

Ocean plastic is a global environmental problem that is growing in both significance and severity. It also represents an underused material resource that is freely available in affected Scottish coastal areas. Through using flexible local collection mechanisms, the engagement of communities at all levels of the remanufacturing process is fostered. Applying a systemic approach to this circular process allows locals to experiment with materials and processes and discover novel ways to repair, repurpose and remake objects from ocean plastic, encouraging skill sharing and community education. It is particularly relevant to remote Scottish communities where these grassroots, low-tech approaches to remanufacturing processes could lead to job generation.

This project has arisen from earlier research undertaken in 2016 by Ian Lambert and Diane Maclean (see vol. 4). A related paper, co-authored by Ian Lambert, Kathy Vones, Sam Vettese, and Denise Allen, won the Elsevier 3D Printing Grand Challenge Innovation Prize of $10,000 (US). See also the Isle of Harris Fish Slice on page 33-34.

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Respirator Vehicle Project Will Titley Collaborators: Cameron Perrie, Liz Adamson The VT-One Respirator Vehicle is the result of contact made with the Edinburgh Napier University Medical Device Team by a NHS carer who was involved with the case a young child who suffers from Juene Syndrome. This condition involves the patient having chest wall deformities that affect normal breathing and lung growth. This results, in many cases, in a need for almost 24/7 attachment to a respirator. Patient B, as she is known, was attached to a portable respirator from a tracheostomy valve in her throat, and because she was mobile, her carer would initially move with her carrying the respirator.

Later on, by the time the project team met patient B, her carer had sourced a “skate” from a local hardware shop that the respirator was placed on (see figure 1). The skate was originally designed to assist people when moving furniture and was not particularly manoeuvrable. Often when patient B moved, the skate would be pulled along by the ventilator tube, which then tugged at the tracheostomy valve in patient B’s throat. The solution developed by the team has allowed for independence and freedom of movement for patient B and has significantly reduced discomfort and levels of pain.

The image shown is the result of work done by the project team to design an agile vehicle that could carry the ventilator and it’s battery. The tube fastener, known as the TF-One, is worn on a belt worn by the user. This provides the strain relief in the tube, and all force on the tube is isolated here. The project continues through contact with respiratory consultants in the NHS to trial the TF-One as a standalone product, and to develop within a consortium the VT-One and TF-one for multiple applications in respiratory care.

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Design and Emergent Ethical Crises Peter Buwert How should we respond when technologies like the blockchain and social media threaten to dissolve the foundations of established centralised structures like banking, journalism, even government? How do our lives change when artificially intelligent machines can clean our houses, order and deliver our groceries, drive our cars, fight our wars, do our jobs, be our sexual partners, and keep us company and care for us in our old age? What does it mean to be human when we can edit our own genes, prolong our lives, and exist digitally beyond physical death? What does it mean to be a living thing when synthetic biology promises the creation of entirely new life-forms at the same time as increasing numbers of existing species go extinct? As the global climate warms, the plastic-filled oceans rise, and we compete for finite resources in ever smaller habitable territories, how do we attempt to continue existing in any form in a world we have made fundamentally inhospitable towards ourselves?

Our world is a designed world, and the contemporary experience of living in our designed world is the perpetual experience of crisis. In this world of constant crisis, is design the tool, hero or saviour that we are looking for? This chapter explores some of the complexities and contradictions of the relationship between design and ethical crisis, considering that just as often as design turns up to save the day, it is caught red handed at the scene of the crime. The implications of our understanding of the link between design and crisis are significant and far-reaching for how we think about the activity of design, its operations and its effects in and on the world.

Buwert, P. (forthcoming 2020) Design and emergent Ethical Crises. Chapter in: A. DeRosa & L. Scherling (Eds), Ethics in Design and Communication: New Critical Perspectives. London: Bloomsbury.

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Creation of Id Andrew O’Dowd The built environment in which we live has been designed in an attempt to make it intuitive, efficient, and purposeful. The potential of designed objects are activated upon activation. In order to facilitate this moment of interaction designers apply the principles of affordance. While the foundations of affordance emerged from humans’ tacit comprehension of the natural world, we now live in a world where nearly all of our daily interactions with the world are interactions with carefully designed experiences with built environments and objects. This investigation critically interrogates people’s dependence on familiar attributes of affordance.

The art piece explores participants’ visceral interaction with a rudimentary form. By presenting the participants with an object of reduced affordances the interaction presented becomes based on primal instinct rather than apperceptive influences. It was expected and observed that participants would attempt to interact with their hand(s). It was then observed that participants would engage in a process of affordance addition and create a feature on the object.

In order to capture these interaction signatures, and in an attempt to reduce the influence of the visual culture on participants, the primary resultant outcome of interaction is presented as non-visual but instead interaction with the sculpture produces a sonic output. Through this approach participants are influenced toward focusing on a sensory stimulus that humans are much less expert in, the auditory stimulus. As a secondary outcome, the project has managed to capture the sounds of tactile interaction and the sound of the creation of affordance. As Freud put forward, the ‘id’ is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends that lead to the defining of self and other.

Through this work participants instil some sense of identity in the non-descript sculpture.

Creation of Id was exhibited (2018) at Casa da Prelada, Rua dos Castelos, Porto.

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Life, Death and Lilies Euan Winton and Dr Kirstie Jamieson Collaborator: Dr Diane Willis In November 2017 the Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief festival in Scotland allowed public discussion around how the public deals with shares bereavement. Life, Death and Lilies was a public art installation that invited people to place individual notes of remembrance. The notes took the form of 1500 illuminated lilies, each of which were placed in a memorial garden creating a colourful and powerful place of shared gratitude and grief. Gratitude for the life lived and grief that the individual is no longer with us. The project was very local in as much as it sat in the Grassmarket in Edinburgh but the participants included national and international visitors.

The artwork was highly collaborative and inclusive, engaging all ages and religions in the live production of the temporary garden. Participating in the lilies installation enabled the bereaved to strengthen their resilience to the weaknesses death can bring. However, the project also allowed for groups of people to be involved in the fabrication of the lilies and planting spaces, and supported maker workshops that brought together students from Edinburgh Napier University with people from support groups for people with learning disabilities. Through this venture the productivity and status of vulnerable groups was enhanced, demonstrating contribution in the eyes of society and reaffirming their equality as citizens.

The work has since been taken up by St Cuthbert’s Hospice in Durham entitled ‘Not a Day Goes By’ where instead of lilies, flames of remembrance have been produced. These will be on display at the annual Light Up a Life remembrance service at Durham Cathedral on Sunday, December 16 2018.

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Akin Colin Andrews The mystery and enchantment of the forest is deeply embedded in our culture, from ancient folklore to modern literature. Forests are places of magic and fear, shadows and shelters, exploration and adventure, getting lost and being found.

Almost all of us have had a tree in our past that has shaped us - we played, we climbed, we fell, we sheltered, we gathered, perhaps we kissed. Each tree provides a meter, a measure of a life lived, and a tangible, annual cycle of life, death and rebirth that profoundly shapes our concept of time.

The oak is the most iconic of Britain’s native trees - a symbol of longevity, strength and dignity. In the UK, the oak plays a unique role in forest ecosystems with a single oak able to support more than 1000 other species. Oaks once formed a third of all tree cover in Britain. Today, this is far from the case. The European average of woodland to landmass is 37%. In the UK it is just 11.8%.

We tore up our forests to wage wars and fuel industry at an alarming rate without replenishing our stock.

Akin is a long-term, participatory artwork which symbolically creates an oak woodland in Scotland and conceptually links this to notions of nurture, community and sustainability. Akin is an old Scots word meaning, ‘consisting of oaks’. In this work hundreds of oak trees, grown from acorns originally gathered in Fife, are to be re-planted across the region. Individuals, families and businesses of the region are to be engaged in the planting and care of the trees in the gardens, parks, common lands and green spaces of the Kingdom participating in a physical and symbolic cycle of growth, nurture, return, participation and sustainability.

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Deaf Heritage Collective Kirstie Jamieson Collaborator: Marta Discepoli Funder: The Royal Society of Edinburgh In 2015 the Scottish Government committed “to make Scotland the best place in the world for people whose first or preferred language is BSL to live, work and visit”. This mandate opened up a critical moment to research how Deaf culture might be discussed beyond the language of disability.

By integrating critical design and critical heritage we develop a distinct vantage point from which to question the role of museums and heritage sites in the representation of minorities. Through participatory approaches to heritage as future-making (Harrison 2012), our aim is to develop collaborative networks between Scotland’s Deaf community and the cultural sector.

By making and imagining models of Deaf museums, BSL infrastructure and Deaf arts we invoke critical design as a means of rehearsing the potentiality (Agamben 1999) of Deaf culture in Scotland. In this way, we explore design’s propositional force.

Since January 2018 we have developed a programme of playful and participatory workshops and exhibitions that facilitate co-creation between curators, heritage professionals and the deaf community.

Through playful design probes and speculative activities, we combine the language of critical design and critical heritage to generate propositions about the place and rights of Deaf culture in Scotland.

Our aim is to advance the workshop as research instrument and site of creative practice and collaboration (Rosner, Saba, Wenqi, Nicole, & Yi-Chen, 2016) to create a participatory interlingual BSL network that can be accessed by Museums and Heritage sites.

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#Prouder - London Pride Week Colin Malcolm Client: New Order for Adidas The design production for this work validated themes explored in my book chapter Mining For Counterculture (Heart and Soul: Rowman and Littlefield International 2018) (see pages 7-8) - namely the cultural influence of the post punk scene in design today and how to remain credible in the age of corporate counter-culture.

In a cultural call to action for unity and originality, Adidas invited creatives from the world of fashion, music, sport, art and design to reimagine the Samba training shoe in the context of #prouder for London Pride week in July 2018.

Having previously worked on the design production for some minor commissions with the band’s Art Director - Warren Jackson, the opportunity arose to collaborate with New Order on this project.

The outcome was a concrete rainbow installation consisting of 7 cast facsimile copies of unwearable and unbranded shoes. This correlated with a sub theme of their last recorded work - Music Complete and reflected the industrial aesthetic with which they are synonymous.

The outcome was exhibited in Soho, London at the Heni Gallery in July 2018 and simultaneously auctioned on eBay for 10 days. It raised ÂŁ4000 for the Albert Kennedy Trust which provides safe homes and mentoring to homeless LGBT+ youth. This was more than a quarter of the total raised and twice as much as the next biggest seller of the 30 auctioned lots.

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Investigating key visual elements in master paintings Ron O’Donnell In this work, I investigate key visual elements that operate in master paintings in order to understand the way in which painters employed certain iconography in creating their work. I am exploring the conversion of a 2-dimensional painting into a 3-dimensional instillation, and using a camera to convert the 3-dimensional instillation back to a 2-dimensional photograph. This process mimics the way painters used a camera obscura (dark chamber) effectively a pinhole camera to create, plan, and map out their work. I reverse this process, in creating a 3d life-size set as opposed to a 2d painted canvas, to investigate the dimensions, shape and feel of the original. It is important (where possible) to select works that I have seen face to face, this is essential to understand the size, detail, shadow and highlight information and to establish a rapport for a close and intimate relationship with the work. I am constructing these images with recycled cardboard, paint, and props, fabricating a series of 3d Installations. I then photographed the final set to produce contemporary replicas of master images. I am using myself and the painter and playwright John Byrne as the characters in this theatrical production.

The project offers a new understanding, a contemporary view of master paintings by connecting their thematic reference to contemporary issues. This on-going project was partly published in the 30th Anniversary Edition Scottish Society for the History of Photography, which included an article and interview with myself. One work from the series has been purchased by the National Galleries of Scotland and is for sale in a limited edition print at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

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Interactive, Site-Specific Souvenirs of Place, Individual and Collective Memory and Change Dr. Samantha Vetesse In 1966 John Latham set up the ‘Artist Placement Group’. The intention was that, by sharing skills and producing accessible artworks, artists would play a more active and influential role in society. Latham undertook a placement with the Livingston Development Council and was invited to come up with a plan for dealing with the Five Sisters ‘Bings’. Recognising that the Bings had an ‘immaculate and classical nature’, Latham recommended they be preserved as monuments, eliminating the need for their costly removal. His visual proposal is in the Tate. In 1975 the Bings were considered ‘carbuncles’ on the West Lothian landscape that are now seen as iconic, sculptural shapes that residents value.

The souvenirs are given away free to visitors as an act of ‘guerilla kindness’ (Greer, 2014) and perceptions and responses have been considered. The research was qualitative and exploratory in nature based on a constructionist philosophical approach challenging the existence of an independent, external objective reality. This research paradigm emphasizes the understanding of social phenomena and the understanding was co-constructed with that of the participants through their mutual engagement and interaction.

The philosophy of this research originated from an AHRC funded project (43K) in 2015, working with academics from Tourism, Design and with Historic Environment Scotland. Since then it has been exhibited by the Edinburgh Tourism Action Group, Edinburgh Open Doors Day, the Architectural Fringe and as part of an AHRC showcase at the London Design Festival in 2018. The project has now been disseminated in several international conferences, in two invited book chapters and in the Tourism Management (Q1) journal in 2018.

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Image courtesy of West Lothian Council Archive

The main aim of this ongoing project takes inspiration from the New Town artists of this time. The souvenirs produced, often with members of the local community present, express ‘not yet loved’ built heritage and engender civic reminiscences and sentiments in an extraordinary way. The souvenirs, to date, have been created digitally, utilising 3D printing technology, set up within public spaces. It will continue to go forward collaborating with artists, designers and featuring different making processes and materials.

Precision 0.025 Andrew O’Dowd The Human eye is approximately 1 inch or 0.025 metres in diameter yet through this tiny window we determine the shape, materiality, purpose, intention, and emotional state of the world around us. From the moment we are born we begin to catalogue our experiences. We associate emotions to the visual information present at a moment of experience. This information is then used as a visceral indicator in future moments of our lives.

We now live in a world where the vast majority of our experiences are not actually our own. Instead we digest experience visually through visual media content, both online and material. Thanks to mobile video cameras, VR and platforms such as instagram, youtube, and video games, humans can be teleported immediately across time and space. In this world of imagined experiences the opportunity for true unfamiliar visceral interactions are increasingly limited. Before a human-object interaction has occurred humans are now loaded with preconception about the potential of the interaction.

Adopting a phenomenological research method this project interrogates the distinctions between the apperception and true visceral interaction. What we see in the material sense is in fact only a minute aspect of the total experience of an environment or an object. Does a person even need to be presented with the resolved visual content or is the influence of our online world so great that we are capable of experiencing artefacts by means of our apperceptive mass.

Precision 0.025 was exhibited (2018) at Reitoria, Praça de Gomes Teixeira, Porto.

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The Isle of Harris Fish Slice Ian Lambert This project explores and appraises the adaptation of injection moulding, a process which is quintessentially for mass production, as a craft process, with ocean plastic as the raw material.

This process arose following a visit to the Outer Hebrides, where, in remote coastal parts, there is an abundance of ocean plastic. There are many estimates of 8 million tons of plastic being deposited in the sea every year. With reference to Max Lamb’s location specific process of casting pewter stools on the beach, and Studio Swine’s Sea Chair, made aboard a fishing boat with the plastic retrieved from fishing nets, an off-grid injection moulding process has been devised for use on location. The process utilises washed-up polypropylene rope melted on a fire of driftwood to make a utility object (fish-slice) bearing the name of the location from where the plastic is retrieved. This utility souvenir highlights the distribution of an abundant waste material in the world’s oceans, which has an uncanny parallel with sea-faring trade routes.

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This practice-based research highlights the problem of ocean plastic and provides a narrative of the reclamation of a valuable and abundant waste stream. The making of the injection-moulding tool utilised widely available digital technologies. Using a hand-guided and approximated process with an adapted sealant gun, an industrial material and industrial process are deployed for the purposes of crafted design.

The project was presented as a work in progress at the Making Futures international research conference, Plymouth, in 2017.

Furniture Design for Re-Use Paul Kerlaff Collaborators and co-funders: Neat Living Funder: the Scottish Institute for Remanufacture This project aims to demonstrate the capacity of Scotland to design for re-use in the context of domestic furniture, and in doing so to contribute towards reducing raw material use and a circular economy. To achieve this, the project will create new furniture products with the potential to increase turnover for both skilled manufacturing subcontractors in Scotland in addition to construction. On an academic level, it will establish a set of principles for design for re-use in furniture with wider academic and economic value and test these principles through full scale prototypes with compact housing provider Neat Living.

Scottish consumer research findings prepared by Crush et al (ZWS,2015) identified personal motivations as more significant than local or environmental factors when considering re-use in furniture. Participants were motivated by the opportunity to purchase a one-off item, reacting against consumerism and the opportunity to reduce life span costs; the biggest barriers to uptake of used items included the stigma of used furniture and uncertainty regarding quality.

Significant potential exists to address these concerns through furniture design which makes future re-use explicit, enables multiple options and embodies the quality and durability needed for several lifespans.

This project will produce a new set of guidelines for design for re-use in domestic furniture, to be disseminated through Zero Waste Scotland and the Scottish Institute for Remanufacture for the benefit of the wider remanufacturing economy. In addition, a full-scale prototype of modular furniture components aligned with Neat’s prototype housing unit being developed at the Construction Scotland Innovation Centre from summer 2018, to demonstrate tangible application of the above guidelines, generate user feedback and illustrate the commercial potential of designs. User feedback is being elicited through a magnetically connected set of 1:5 model elements that act as a catalyst for discussions about furniture reconfiguration and reuse.

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Work on the Move – Collaborative Design Thinking on Location Richard Firth, Ruth Cochrane and Trent Jennings Collaborators: Robert Hairstans, Maria Mullane Funders: Built Environment Exchange, NHS, SIE A growing and diverse portfolio of case studies utilising, testing and developing our Work on the Move methodology. Our approach uses problem solving techniques typically employed by practicing designers and applies them to social and commercial challenges in the context of their settings. By taking stakeholders on location and out of boardrooms, we create a rich environment for innovation and the dismantling of hierarchies which can inhibit creative problem solving.

Building on our successful 2018 conference, Using Design Thinking (Edinburgh Napier University) we have been engaged to employ our research methodology for several organisations.

In a pilot for the Scottish Land Commission and Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) task force, we successfully implemented the Work on the Move methodology as tool for the identification of potential uses for vacant and derelict land. We continue to be involved in the development of the task force, chaired by Steve Dunlop, chief executive Scottish Enterprise, and its proposal to use our methodology as an innovative public consultation tool.

For a workshop with Harvard Graduate School of Design and Edinburgh Napier Built Environment Exchange we used Work on the Move to break down hierarchies between architects and engineers to generate innovative development proposals, using offsite timber construction, for a challenging city centre site in Edinburgh.

Our methodology has also been used to support the NHS Scotland Healthy Aging Challenge Event, Scottish Institute for Enterprise Innovation Events, Royal Zoological Society of Scotland strategic challenges and a range of international commercial and academic partners.

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Aesthetic Justice.

Design for a blind-spot culture Peter Buwert This paper presents a conception of aesthetic justice which builds on thoughts of Theodor Adorno and Wolfgang Welsch and attempts to reconcile design’s relationships with both aesthetics and ethics. Where legal justice operates on a principle of homogenising equality, aesthetic justice recognises the full heterogeneity of experience and as such cannot tolerate the injustice of treating things which are not alike as if they were. Building on this theoretical conception a project of design for a blind-spot culture is outlined. Design, rather than contributing to societal anaestheticisation of the ethical can instead utilise its aesthetic influence to shine light on dark places, nurturing an atmosphere of sensitivity to differences, exclusions, oppressions and intolerances. Design’s potential to act, and fail to act, in such ways is discussed through examples of aesthetic artefacts relating to the 2016 British EU referendum, U.S. presidential election, and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Buwert, P (2017) Aesthetic Justice. Design for a blind-spot culture, The Design Journal, 20:sup1, S38-S48, DOI: 10.1080/14606925.2017.1353017

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SKiN Andrew O’Dowd The majority of technology is now personal. Humans, in turn, are expected to and have personal relationships with their devices. The issue is that humans are biological beings and relate to the world as animals, in a biological way. In contrast, personal technologies are increasingly losing any symbol of visceral behaviour or form. As a language, gestural interactions and visceral behaviours of objects are more capable of immediately communicating emotional intent and response than constructed oral language.

In critique of the homogenised aesthetics with which our most personal of electronic devices are designed SKiN is an investigation into the relationship between our sensorial experiences through touch and sight. A multi-textured skin was located on the reverse of the mobile device placing it in an orientation where participants could not see the distinctive textures but only experience them through touch. A variety of images, relating to primitive human emotions, were then presented to participants on their devices. The connections formed between the visual and tactile experiences demonstrated an innate association between sensory experiences. Further correlation of these finding and the bouba/kiki effect (innate human nature to link shapes to sounds) are ongoing.

This project was presented in demonstration at IEEE Computing Conference, London, 2017.

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From Singapore with Nature Dr. Alexander Supartono Collaborating artists: Robert Zhao, Ang Song Nian, Marvin Tang, Woong Soak Teng.

Funders: National Arts Council of Singapore and Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, Greece.

Curatorial project exhibited at the Thessaloniki PhotoBiennale 2018 ‘Capitalist Realism’ In 1819, when Stamford Raffles decided to turn the small fishing island at the Malacca strait into a trading port of British East India company, the future of Singapore was sealed. Highly influenced by the admirable Adam Smith and David Ricardo’s idea of free trade, Raffles transformed the island off the tip of the Malayan Peninsula as a port that charged nothing for import, export, and any use of the harbour for any other duties or trade. The invisible hand of free market took control and the rest is history. Despite its position as one of the world’s financial centres with its forest of skyscrapers and because of its unique history (botanical garden was one of the first things that Raffles built). Nature (albeit man controlled nature) has been an important part of Singapore’s national identity. Their obsession with nature reached another level when they moved from ‘garden city’ to ‘city in the garden,’ and reclaimed its status as a modern tropical paradise. Singaporean photographers in this project reflect the way nature evolves in 200 years of uninterrupted implementation of capitalist system in their city nation, where the liberal economic policy is a given reality and alternatives are almost non-existent. Robert Zhao’s Camping and Tramping in Malaya questions the idea of natural wilderness using historical and archival resources. Marvin Tang’s Stateland reveals the disorder hidden in Singaporean forest. Woong Soak Teng’s Ways to Tie Tree describes the nation’s obsession in controlling nature. Ang Song Nian’s Hanging Heavy on My Eyes investigates of the Singapore air pollution using the indexical quality of photography in the most literal sense.

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F ROM S I NGAPORE WITH

Organised by: This curatorial project is commissioned to be part of the Thessaloniki PhotoBiennale 2018 ‘Capitalist Realism’, from 28.09 to 25.10.18.

Potentiality: the ethical foundation of design Peter Buwert This paper presents the argument that design is by nature an activity which extends and transforms potentiality and that therefore, because of this, it is always an ethical activity. This foundational ethicality does not guarantee that design will always be good, but rather that it always possesses within itself the simultaneous potentiality for both good and evil. To demonstrate the practical application of this abstract thinking, two relatively well-known examples of morally controversial design – eco-friendly “green bullets” and “The Liberator” 3-D printed gun – are examined through this lens. Evaluation of the extensions of potentiality in such designs does not offer an opinion as to whether these designs are good or evil. Instead, an analysis of the ethicality of design prior to considerations of moral judgement offers perspective as to the scale and significance of the ethical impact which the design in question can be counted responsible for.

Buwert, P (2017) Potentiality: the ethical foundation of design, The Design Journal, 20:sup1, S4459-S4467, DOI: 10.1080/14606925.2017.1352942

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Materials with embedded ‘aura’ and narrative Dr. Samantha Vetesse Funders: Textiles Future Forum, the Scottish Institute for Remanufacture, Interface (The Scottish Funding Council) ‘The action of mechanical reproduction diminishes the original art work by changing the cultural context; thus, the aura, the unique aesthetic authority, of an artwork is absent from the mechanically produced copy’. (Benjamin, 1936) This cross disciplinary research brings together material innovation with imaginable art and design possibilities. In the first instance, funding was sought and secured to make these material advances possible and have included working with cellulose powder from sustainably produced wood pulp, wool and cashmere ‘waste’ from the Scottish textile industry, leather ‘buffing dust’ (the particles of leather usually swept away in the processing of leather hides), dried fungus processed from food waste, cellulosic bacteria and ‘historical’ concrete.

While the material innovation and artefacts made from them are meaningful, my own research interest lies in revealing the ‘story’ around the material – its political, societal and cultural influence, its provenance, its authenticity and then how these affect perceptions. Although the materials created are new, utilise contemporary technologies and specialised scientific input, their ability to have embedded history and carry the ‘aura’ of the original material is considered.

At this time, this research is ongoing – materials are being made and the theoretical contextualisation and ‘lab’ processes have been disseminated through some of the literature involved in the funding bids, Intellectual Property agreements, conference and journal publications. In the near future it is intended that these materials are used in visual outputs, including those that go into production within industry and as decorative artefacts, collaborating with artists and designers. Project funding to date is around £150K. Research has been presented at Making Futures and Intersections : Collaborations in Textile Design Practice and have been published in The Journal of Textile Design Research and Practice in 2017.

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Anthropometry Revisited Ian Lambert and Fabian Galama This project is presented as an homage to Yves Klein’s Anthropometries Series (1960), but with reference to Klein’s devotion to judo. Klein was a 4th dan black belt in judo, and wrote a book, Les Fondements du Judo (1954; recently republished in English as The Foundations of Judo, 2010).

Klein said of Judo that it, “... helped me to understand pictorial space and the discovery of the human body in a spiritual space”. (cf. Tate, 2017) This project explores potential links between the physicality of judo and Klein’s work as an artist. It also speculates on how the Anthropemetry Series may have evolved had he not died prematurely at the age of 34, in 1962.

In the Anthropometries Series Klein painted his models - or ‘human paintbrushes’ - in his own International Klein Blue before having them press themselves against canvases or drag each other across canvases on the floor, in a choreographed performance to the soundtrack of his Monotone Symphony.

There is evidence of Klein’s fearless physicality in other elements of his work.

Leap Into the Void, the famously staged photograph of Klein falling off a building (Harry Shunk, 1960), actually involved Klein falling onto a taught tarpaulin from the second floor of a building, a feat likely aided by Klein’s confidence, through learning to fall (ukemi) in Judo.

The images on the right are from an experiment using International Klein Blue, conducted with designer and judo 1st dan Ian Lambert (acting as human paintbrush) and spatial designer, choreographer and former dancer Fabian Galama. Here, Lambert, clothed in a Judo suit (or gi) has paint applied to the left side of his body before being thrown to the canvas to make an imprint. The resulting images are a form of mark-making through performance.

Following Klein’s highly physical spectacle Lambert and Galama are developing the project as a performance piece in a inspired by Klein’s performances. The performance, choreographed by Galama and art directed by Lambert will use a designed space and set, with other performers to create a number of Anthropometric human prints or disegno derived from Judo.

Initial experiments formed a presentation at the symposium Drawing Conversations 2: Body, Space, Object, Coventry University, December 2017

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Scottish Sweet Sixteen Sophie Gerrard Scottish Sweet Sixteen is a photography and youth engagement project taking place across Scotland engaging with 16 years olds from all walks of life to document their aims, aspirations, hopes and fears for their short term and longer term futures. The project explores the lives of young people in Scotland working as apprentices in rural industries, and also those at high school working towards university.

These adolescents share their views on being 16 in Scotland today, some talk about politics and the environment as being important to them, others think about family and problems they’ve overcome to get where they are. Scottish Sweet Sixteen is part of a larger UK project, Project Sixteen which engages with 16 year olds all over the UK. It will be exhibited in venues across the country in 2019. This marks a significant moment as our government shifts towards Brexit – a change that will ultimately affect these 16 year olds lives as they reach the legal adult age of 18.

The project is a timely opportunity to discuss with young people in the UK what really matters to them and to hear the views of a diverse range of 16 year olds from many different backgrounds at a time of great change for them personally and for wider society.

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Learning from the locals: how can co-design support malaria education in a post-colonial environment?

Myrna Macleod Collaborator: Dr. Iain MacDonald The focus of this practice based research project is the promoting of malaria awareness and preventative education in an area of Africa where the disease is endemic despite large interventions from NGOs. This study examines the co-design method and how it responded to the challenges of a post-colonial environment to deliver a method of communication that was valid and participatory.

Inspired by a humanist and socially conscious perspective that was originally set out by Ken Garland’s ‘First Things First Manifesto’ in 1964, the project is placed within a framework for ethical practice in graphic design, and the subsequent emergence of design for social good based on the lived experiences and knowledge of the participants.

In June 2016, graphic design workshops were held in three locations in Northern Mozambique. In the workshops 100 local people co-designed a pack of stickers alerting users to key moments, where a small behaviour change could be fostered in relation to malaria prevention. Young and old, students, community leaders, mothers, teachers, doctors, traditional healers and NGO’s took part in the workshops, some held on the streets. Hundreds of iterations of the intended stickers were discussed, designed and refined along the way and new streams of knowledge were identified from the lived experience of the participants.

The sticker packs have been tested in Mozambique by the people who created them, and the response is very positive. The project team will return to Mozambique in 2019 to distribute them further, and to establish collaboration with the net providers and health policy makers.

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Smart Textile and Lighting Innovation Sarah Taylor and Malcolm Innes Collaborators: Dr Sara Robertson, MYB Textiles, Mike Stoane Lighting Funding: Textile Future Forum Challenge Fund Award 2017. Combined TFF Award and in-kind contributions c. £97,300.

Design-led textile, lighting and engineering prototyping was carried out across specialist light labs, studio set-ups and manufacturing sites. Research was focussed on ways to maximise optical light input and textile light output through effective optical fibre cable management. The culmination of this research led to a textile and lighting proof of concept modular system. Within the current global market for woven optical fibre fabric and light source manufacture for optical fibre-based products, the combined modular system marks a significant departure from existing commercial products as a fabric lit selvage illuminator. As a linear light source, it can be suspended and manufactured in specific sizes and custom made to suit bespoke architectural spaces. Further insight on the current status of commercial light source design also prompts potential development and new market opportunities within this field.

The work has been showcased at various events including the world’s leading trade fair, Light + Building, Frankfurt (2018); Lace Unarchived exhibition, Bonington Gallery Nottingham (2018) and by invitation at IKEA of Sweden (Taylor & Robertson 2017).

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Images: Colin Andrews

As identified during and in response to the successful Textile Future Forum (TFF) funded project, Light-emitting Innovative Textiles in collaboration with Dr Sara Robertson and heritage-based lace manufacturers MYB Textiles (University of Dundee 2016), Sarah Taylor together with Malcolm Innes led a TFF funded, cross sector collaboration with industry specialists, Mike Stoane Lighting to innovate bespoke lighting solutions to enable MYB Textiles to maximise production capacity of newly developed smart textiles. In line with the Scottish Textile Industry’s 10-year strategy recognising diversification and innovation as a critical theme for the global textile industry and the potential growth of smart textiles, (estimated to reach $7billion by 2023), the research aimed to exploit LED technology and develop specialised lighting systems for illuminating woven optical fibre as an integrated light source component.

One and Three Discs Paul Holmes DVD, video screen, speaker It is over 50 years since Joseph Kosuth’s conceptual work One and Three Chairs challenged its viewer to locate the “real” by choosing between an object and its visual or textual representations. Replacing Kosuth’s chair with a DVD, this piece restates his question at a time when our experience of the world is actualised and often distorted through digital representation. Once a widespread tool for artists and curators, the DVD is in the rearguard of physical media, as artefacts and archives are increasingly ‘dematerialized’.

Three plinths sit along a gallery wall. To the right is a speaker, playing audio of the artist reading academic texts, manuals and advertisements extolling the robustness and fidelity of the medium. In the middle is a DVD, its gold colour recalling trophies won by recording artists in the CD era; objects now sold as novelty gifts. On the left a screen shows a video of the same disc in situ, shot on super 8mm, and, like Kosuth’s photograph, in black and white.

The frame is still but imperfections - dust, grain, weave - confirm the medium as film and echo the DVD’s dying role distributing movies. The tension between analogue and digital forms suggests the longevity of the former over the latter.

In mainstream and creative life, people increasingly embrace traditional forms such as vinyl records and film photography, while new technology hastens the obsolescence of once dominant digital media. As with Kosuth, the question is where meaning is created: In the description or the object defined by it. The hubristic words coming from the speaker helped define the DVD and assisted in its success. But the viewer sees the hollowness of these words: DVDs only acquire meaning when imprinted with the digital traces of an artefact.

Speeding towards disuse, it is emptied of that meaning, yet sits on a pedestal as a museum-piece, an artefact in its own right at last.

Showed at “Creative Legacies: Collaborative Practices for Digital Cultural Heritage”, Spazju Kreattiv, Valletta, Malta, 9-12 September 2018.

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Post-graduate Study Our award-winning post-graduate degrees are closely aligned with the work of the Art & Design Research Centre ensuring that student learning is informed by up-to-date research, with the opportunity to work with our research collaborators and industry partners. Over the years our graduates have enjoyed high levels of employment and success in industry and several of our masters students have progressed to PhD study.

Taught Post Graduate (MSc/MA/MFA) We offer taught one-year (MA and MSc) and two-year (MFA) post-graduate degrees in: Creative Advertising MSc Design for Interactive Art & Experiences MA / MFA Heritage & Exhibition Design MA / MFA Lighting Design MA / MFA Motion Graphics MA / MFA Photography MA / MFA Product Design Making MA / MFA

Research Degrees (MRes/PhD) We offer MRes and PhD research degrees and have a growing cohort of students undertaking practice-based research into lighting design, design and heritage, photography, photographic archiving, material practices, design and play, digital legacies and pedagogic practices.

All degrees are available in part-time study mode.

For further information e-mail us on adrc@napier.ac.uk or visit our website www.napier.ac.uk

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The Art & Design Research Centre is...

Colin Andrews Dr Peter Buwert Ruth Cochrane Richard Firth Fabian Galama Sophie Gerrard Paul Holmes Malcolm Innes Dr Kirstie Jamieson Paul Kerlaff Ian Lambert Myrna MacLeod Colin Malcolm Ron O’Donnell Andrew O’Dowd Dr Alex Supartono Sarah Taylor Will Titley Dr Sam Vettese Euan Winton

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This issue is dedicated to the memory of our much-loved colleague

Mick Dean, 1960 – 2019

Contact us at ADRC@napier.ac.uk All published works are available at researchrepository.napier.ac.uk Arranged and edited by Ian Lambert and Peter Buwert All images are the researchers’ own or published with permission Published by Edinburgh Napier University 2018 ISBN 978-1-908225-04-7

Journal of Art & Design Research

School of Arts & Creative Industries

Journal of Art & Design Research Edinburgh Napier University

www.napier.ac.uk ISBN 978-1-908225-04-7

Volume 5, 2019

Volume 5, 2019