The ‘Other’ Playground: An Interactive and Heterotopic Right to the City

This project speculates about the exercise of the public’s right to play in the city through an interactive three-dimensional design proposal. Developed out of a rich understanding of the host space, the project combines the ideas of community gardens and sculptural playgrounds, to convert a previously in-between, overlooked or interstitial space in Glasgow into a site of rich cultural activity.

Through embodied experiences of play, the design aims to engage and stimulate an interaction amongst the local population and the site; improving and enhancing the relationships between the body and the urban fabric, whilst giving the users a voice to celebrate their own imagination and creativity.

Based in Possilpark, the project takes advantage of growth opportunities and embraces innovative ways of working to develop a model for finding sustainable, attractive and economically viable ways to re-engage interest in lost and forgotten civic spaces. Until around 1870 Possilpark was no more than a mansion house and home farm with few residents.

Since the 1950’s Glasgow, as with many cities across Scotland, has seen the demise of its industrial sector. The inter and post-war period was the most traumatic for the industries and although Glasgow clung onto being the “workshop of the Empire”, by the 1990s most of the engine shops were derelict and the shipyards reduced to wasteland. The most rapid deindustrialization took place during the 1970s and 1980s, with many of the traditional industries drastically shrunk or completely closed down. Although many initiatives promised revival, a shift towards a new service-oriented economy emerged to replace traditional heavy industries. This left many Scottish cities peppered with derelict spaces and industrial wastelands.

Possilpark was unable to avoid this pattern of urban decay, and today 100% of residents live within 500m of vacant or derelict land. The district is also one of Scotland’s most deprived areas with 15% undeployed.

The site is located on the intersection of Allander St and Barloch St in Possilpark.

Previously supporting the east corner of a tenement block, demolished in 1970, the stalled space currently functions as a car park.

Along with the scale and derelict condition of the space, which provided a huge canvas for the project, the fundamental reasons for choosing the site was its location in Possilpark and the area’s social demographic context. At the epicentre of one of Glasgow’s poorest neighbourhoods and running parallel to Saracen Highstreet, the site provided the opportunity to benefit an extremely diverse and deprived community.

The site, as with many streets throughout Possilpark, had become an avenue of anonymity, rather than a place of rich culture and activity. After visiting the site and talking to local residents it became apparent the traditional sense of a community had broken down. The increased transience of people in and out of Possilpark had developed a situation of people living in close quarters to each other but operating very isolated and separate lives. This ultimately breeds fear, contempt and frustration, bringing on a sense of alienation and powerlessness within the community.

This observation drove the development of a community based, public spaces project. These spaces are important assets to the urban fabric, providing people with opportunities to come together and engage with the community. When successful they can become a ‘self-organising public service’ for everyone in the society to participate in, learn from and to help create local attachments.

In Topographies of Contemporary Architecture Ignasi de Solà-Morales says architecture has gone silent. However, have we in fact just become deaf to the spaces around us through a lack of interaction and embodied experiences of play?

Relying less on visual stimulation and targeting a wider range of sensory stimuli the proposal shows how adding something new and enhancing the existing can positively change the way we experience and interact with the built environment.

The visuals explore the finer details of the design, whilst showing the inhabited capacity and tactile nature of the space from four different perspectives. To represent the demographic of people in Possilpark the images are populated with a range of figures, of varying heights, body shapes and abilities. These figures animate the design; suggesting how the space could be used and the rich variety of experiential goals the design can yield.

The project did not explore the technical details and specifications of the designed objects; how they would be made and what they would be made from, however, the visuals suggest a pallet of materials and textures which would achieve the goals of the space and design.

A conscious decision was made to crop the images and shape the field for view. Stepping away from a rectilinear frame not only avoided traditional presentation aesthetics, in line with the motifs of the project but also listened to David Hockney’s criticism of ‘traditional’ photography’s static field of view, revealed during early research into collage. Furthermore, the use of organic shapes to frame the visuals playfully focuses the attention on the designed space, drawing the eye into the centre of the space and reducing the attention given to the surrounding buildings.

After graduating from the Glasgow School of Art in 2019 with a first-class in BA (Hons) Interior Design, I am extremely proud to have completed my masters of Architectural Studies at the Mackintosh School of Architecture.

Having spent the last two summers interning at Interior Visions in Thailand and Waldo Works in London, I’m currently looking to widen my knowledge and experience within the growing discipline of design and architecture.

Clutha is one of Glasgow’s first bars and has long witnessed the development of Glasgow. Over the years, the disrepair brought about by history has become an obstacle to the development of Clutha, and many problems have gradually surfaced. The project will start with an in-depth analysis of the historical context of the site from the historical culture of the area where Clutha is located, and find the uniqueness of Clutah. While analyzing the regional conditions, the unique network of Glasgow’s music development was analyzed, making the project have a good internal music network system architecture and become the core of the new Clutha. Next, the project reconstructed the function and form of the building from each floor in turn, incorporating a richer space and Clutha’s unique musical attributes into a limited space, thereby building the new Clutah into an emerging music and cultural center in Glasgow.

‘Connecting New Centres for Tradeston & Laurieston’

How might hierarchy of urban form introduced into Glasgow’s gridiron diversify pedestrian movement and experience? is the question to the design project in Tradeston & Laurieston located across river Clyde in south-side of Glasgow city centre.

The non-hierarchical system gird has the overall similarity of sizes and visuals on most streets, which makes harder for pedestrians to perceive a sense of hierarchy and difficulties pedestrian movement.

In Consequence, the author believed a city without the sense of hierarchy of urban form reduces the diversified pedestrian experience.

Recognised by the street user, the quality of varied diverse experience of pedestrians because people remembering the image of identity of different places. Glasgow’s gridiron which is essentially a non- hierarchical urban pattern, lack of the hierarchy of urban form. Missing of the secondary and tertiary street, the city loss the opportunity to introduce more diversity in the street network.

The hierarchy allows for the great decision by the pedestrian when travelling from their location to destination. The variety of street types have corresponding building typology that enclosed the space between buildings.

This design project aims to investigate how pedestrian movement between two neighbouring districts of Tradeston and Laurieston in Glasgow has been affected by an existing grid-iron morphology.

The project introduces a hierarchy of urban form including central square with primary public buildings; primary streets, mid-block lanes to plays as shared space and building variety at the scale of the block into the Glasgow grid-iron system.

Reflection on the success of the design project will allow conclusions on the applicability of a similar method to the understanding and transformation of other locations of under-performing gridiron morphologies.

The following study explores a new form of urbanism that can take over the Glasgow city center. The study is based on observations and modeled with reasoning studying theories that back the reasoning. The study looks at modeling an architectural form that amalgamates architecture and play using an array of curated elements, thresholds and functions. The study is developed in 3 stages:

Stage 1: Observations The observations collected have been collected post exhaustive exploration of Glasgow’s city center, especially its history, culture and development over time. The site was analyzed for its land use, junctions, accessibility, density, pedestrian and vehicular traffic, larger city connections as well as the differences in elevations. These observations culminate in raising a series of questions. These questions, in turn help in pointing our certain obvious issues with the urban fabric. The lack of open to sky spaces, the rising levels of density, the lack of breakout spaces and the diminishing centers of public assembly. Conversely, the observation couples with questions helped the analysis of site in terms of identifying its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Moreover, the observations, lead to the exploration of play as an architectural element. The observations prove to be an important stage of our study as they are notes to fallback on and model design developments from the perspective of children and adults, in adherence to their movement and activity across the site.

Stage 2: Literature Primary and secondary data collection was all done in adherence to references and citations that have explored similar strategies in similar situations to create new forms. The study of literature culminates in the analysis of site that provides us with a formidable hypothesis – architecture and play can be amalgamated to create an urban form. The urban form itself is developed from experiments around expansion and contraction of spaces that respond to changing vision cones. The composition and organization of architectural elements is curated to efficiently engage user groups and functions. Furthermore, the parameters set for data analysis emerge from the surrounding buildings and site barriers, thrusting the study us to adopt and iterate Stallan Brand’s design proposal.

Stage 3: Modeling parameters The architectural language is developed as a result of user movement, site massing, and composition of the form. Plot divisions, accessibility, and functions give an order to aesthetics and design. The massing itself is a response to the urban fabric. It is an attempt to play with surfaces that integrate seamlessly into one another and the streetscape. The urban form generated as a result of design development addresses the notion of play at varying thresholds. It imbibes the childlike wonder of being in spaces, exaggerated through modeling of masses, portals, and thresholds in accordance with a user experience that looks at users to develop their own navigation system based on the order the form adopts from materiality and color. It is an attempt to curate scales such that it creates a paradigm shift in the way we look at Glasgow’s urban fabric.

Conclusion

The form is majorly modeled to be an open public space that curated movement by instilling a sense of navigation on its elements. The entire form can be collectively viewed as a coming together of the smaller kits of parts and engage with one another at varying scales. Each part has a certain role to play in hosting children and adults and activating multiple functions using materiality and color.

The integration of play through the urban form is rooted within the response the form offers by opening up its ground plane and terraces (both of which are internally connected as well). The permeable nature of the built form, in terms of both structure and the skin, develops from contracting and expanding spaces based on the site parameters and the surrounding built form. Furthermore, distinct circulation blocks double as navigational nodes that engage users and help them develop a sense of wonder through navigation.

The attempt is to create a new sense of urbanism amidst the city center, one that is more inclusive and active in its approach and management of users, that provides breakout spaces at varying scales and forms to develop niches that can best activate the structure in terms of aesthetics and functionality. There is a careful consideration given to threshold treatments and their engagement with the user is particularly curated to create memorable experiences through exaggeration of scale and modeled features such as furniture, walls and openings. Holistically speaking the urban form is an experiment that stemmed from the observations of Merchant city’s urban fabric. It is an attempt at bringing curiosity back into the users by appealing to everyone’s sensibility, vision and movement to narrate a sequence of urban play.

The most important point of urban building is its response to the urban environment, culture, and history. The main purpose of urban building is to better integrate the building into the surrounding environment, maintain the continuous urban streetscape, create attractive architectural spaces, while also contribute to the creation of a beautiful and harmonious urban environment.

This portfolio is mainly about the design of an urban building for health and well-being located on Clyde Street in the city center. Start from the urban background scale to the specific block scale, discussing the selection of site and the potential of the site. Then, by introducing the site research, analyzing the current problems of the site and possible causes, and providing certain solutions to these problems. These research lead to the selection of the program. Finally, combined with the analysis of the urban context, a design scheme is proposed.

Sushmitha Srihari is a Postgraduate student at Mackintosh School of Architecture. Through the work experience as an architect, she believes the built environment is the key element which shapes the city and its people. At GSA, she has been learning the concepts of Urban design and their applications in today’s world.

The research and design project is focused on urban issues such as i) tension between the future of markets as a city-wide ‘destination’ versus neighbourhood or local amenity ii) Importance of socialising space in the city. The research conducted shows the study of 19th C market building typologies in the UK and Socialising patterns or usage of markets in the daily lives of the people.

This project studied and combined sociological, historic and architectural research to envision one of the most complex spaces in the urban fabric – the market place. Each of these aspects can define and impact the local economy and trade as well as how public open spaces are perceived. The project is aimed to understand how to successfully regenerate the market place as a lively functional and economic community space in the urban setting.

Creative Urban Practice.

An artistic exploration into urban space.

The production of a series of digital screen prints to create opportunity for speculation on how terrain vague urban spaces are viewed.

The considered urban spaces are ‘terrain vague spaces’. These spaces are often under appreciated, or misunderstood. They are overlooked.

This project consists of a series of images to provoke the viewer to consider these ‘terrain vague spaces’ differently, to contemplate value in otherwise undervalued spaces.

The artistic process allows characteristics of terrain vague spaces to be revealed. Highlighting the spaces value, and prompting these spaces to become part of the city in a way that wasn’t previously considered.

The final output of the project is three series of art practice, digital screen print images, which challenge conventional readings of urban space. Each series draws attention to a key principle of terrain vague spaces evident across three studied sites.

The images use abstraction to allow for the displacing and realigning of knowledge to realign thought. Specifically, this is the realigning of logic from spatial knowledge to re-frame thought on urban space.

Printed editions at A0.

FRAMEWORK FOR A JAPANESE RITUAL

How does architecture facilitate ritual practice within the context of the Japanese archipelago? 

During Paul’s time in Japan he encountered many ritual practices, from daily activities to religious ceremony. Bathing to tea ceremony. As a result, he investigated elements of a design for a timber Bathhouse, not only the physical attributes of the construction [and making] but the philosophies and atmospheres, namely the metaphysical qualities, which underpin these Japanese spaces.

To gain an understanding of Japanese spacial concepts it was of value to draft using more Eastern illustrative devices. Traditional Japanese prints show an innate convention for the use isometric projection, which may be because of the orthogonal nature of Japanese traditional architecture. The lack of three- dimensionality in this method of drawing amplifies the quality of the space. In particular, he was inspired by the traditional isometric projections by traditional carpenters that he encountered during his travels, these simple line drawings honour the immense complexity involved in traditional timber building construction and the skill of the maker. Craft and complexity of draftsmanship, therefore, can be an implication of skill and complexity in craftsmanship.

Beyond this, through the process of physically producing each drawing in a sequence of subjective lines, the essence of craft became apparent. With each intersecting line, columns began to merge; interlocking like they were newly carved at a carpenters’ workshop.

The cities are looking to reuse their heritage buildings with new factions and purposes in order to give new life to these abandoned spaces. By using an area of the postgraduate diploma thesis that needed development this research aims to find methods and establish a better understanding about the use of interior spaces for the regeneration of heritage factory buildings by analyzing the work of Antony Gormley through his exhibitions Antony Gormley in Royal Academy of Art and Model in White Cube. The diploma thesis was located in the abandoned Can Ricart Factory in Poblenou, an old industrial area of Barcelona full of historic factories.

Using different mediums, this study analyses and determine knowledge from the work of Antony Gormley. Books, journals, lectures, videos, documentaries, research papers, diagrams, plans, and sections assisted this research with the appropriate knowledge. Structured in two sections, this research introduces the two shows of the artist, followed by their evaluation and comparison of the two with Can Ricart which assisted with strategies for the regeneration of the interior spaces of the factory.

Antony Gormley firstly studied archaeology, anthropology, and art history at trinity college, Cambridge. Then, he traveled to India which inspired his artistic theories. Afterward, he returned to England to continue his studies in art. In his studies, he focused on sculpture at the Central School of Art, Goldsmith’s College, and the Slate School of Art.

He is known for his artworks that explore the connection between the human body and its spatial surroundings. He wants to make you think about your position and the room you are in and in relation to his work. He says that ́art is no longer about power and privilege, but about participatioǹ. Most of his artworks are human figures, which he cast from his own body with various materials such as plaster, concrete, and iron. Some of Gormley’s works explore the relationship between old heritage sites or buildings, his contemporary artwork, and the viewers.  Few shows that explore this relationship are; Antony Gormley in Royal Academy of Art, London (2019), Sight in Delos Island, Greece (2019), Model in White Cube Bermondsey, London (2012-2013) and Still Standing at state Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (2011-2012).

This study investigates the following two shows, Antony Gormley (2019) and Model (2012-2013). His Royal Academy show was the most recent work by the time of the research and was easy to visit and explore. The Royal Academy show was in the Burlington House building which was built in 1868 by Sydney Smirke. The visit to the show took place on the 26th of October where a further understanding, observing, and sensing of his artworks occurred. On the other hand, the white cube show was in an old industrial warehouse which was build in 1970 and transformed by Casper Mueller Kneer in 2011 into a contemporary art gallery. The medium that was used for the understanding of the show was mostly through videos due to the fact that was ended in 2013. The two exhibitions were similar in overall spatial size that I want to explore for Can Ricart and both are placed within buildings.

The Antony Gormley show was held in the Royal Academy of Art and included a non-chronological retrospective artwork from the 45 years of the artist’s work. According to the artist, one of the goals of the show was to exploit the entire volume of the Royal Academy in a way that made the viewer’s journey through it exciting. One of the characteristics of this show is that there is no story behind but only the story of the viewer that brings with him.  According to Martin Caiger Smith, the show binds together Gormley’s most recent and previous work, which emphasizing on his general and continuing concerns on how we experience the elemental natural world, with who we are, as bodies moving through space and time, and how we relate to the man-made environment we have to create in our environment.

The Model show that was held in White Cube, testing the physical possibilities of the gallery space. This ambitious show investigates our experience of the body through architecture, and of architecture through the body. In this show, a dialogue between extension, expansion, and the scale of the body is taken as a variable throughout the installation of objects. Unlikely, the Royal Academy show here the viewer can choose the pathway he wants to take. Additionally, in this show, the artist uses weathering steel and iron for his artworks. The use of these materials unites the various sculptures and gives the impression of one continuous artwork.

Revealing Peripheral Space: An analysis through drawing of threshold spaces  across the buildings of the Maiden Lane Estate

The goal of this research project was to explore the threshold spaces within housing which are peripheral to the dwelling spaces themselves. The analysis is focused particularly on public housing, or council housing, in London. This analysis was undertaken as a series of drawings which isolate these peripheral spaces across several development stages of the Maiden Lane estate in London. By abstracting these spaces from the housing blocks the aim was to reveal the various types of threshold spaces present and their arrangement across the different development phases.

The estate had originally been planned as one large development, designed by Benson and Forsyth, but was realised in three different phases. Phase one was a reduced version of Benson and Forsyth’s original plans, built by Camden Council and completed in 1979. Phase two was also designed by a team from Camden’s architect department but without Benson and Forsyth. This phase was overseen by Daniel Usiskin and was completed in 1983. The third and final phase of the estate is much more recent, completed in 2017 by PRP architects with Camden Council as the client.

Each phase of the development has been categorised by the house or block typology. The block have then been drawn in plan, isolating only the peripheral spaces and layered across different storeys. These plans have formed the templates to produce a set of axonometric drawings, coloured coded to show the various types of threshold space, along a scale of public to private. These drawing highlight the differences in spatial design across the different phases of the development. The resulting drawings provide a comparative study of the earlier and later phases of the project. Shown here is a selection from the complete set of drawings. The accompanying design report can be found via the link below.

The rapid development of the global civil aviation industry has led to a surge in the number of airports. Airport departure hall consumes a lot of energy throughout the year due to their large size, complex function, busy business and long operation time. Among other functions the energy consumption for artificial lighting and air conditioning is one of the main factors leading to high energy consumption in the terminal. Skylight lighting, as a common way of lighting, is also different from ordinary buildings when it is applied to departure halls. At the same time, there is a special relationship between the energy consumption of air conditioning and the energy consumption of daylighting due to environmental conditions in low latitudes, and skylight lighting has a better energy saving potential in low latitudes. In view of this, this paper studies and analyzes options of skylight design for a typical airport departure hall form and layout. Based on the study of the design of departure halls and the theory of natural lighting design, the elements of daylighting design of skylights of the departure hall are summarized, and the natural lighting effect of the three skylights are discussed.

Sa Cheng, also called Selah, is consider fashion is an art. It is a concept that can be interpreted in various ways for each individual, which, for her makes it fascinating – everyone has a different style. For some people, self-expression is difficult, having an individual style gives these people the ability to show their personality and beliefs and this intrigues her. Her interest in fashion has grown year after year through her development of expressing herself with different styles.

She always consider that beauty is not static and it can be displayed with different forms. What our designs convey most is our value. She is aiming to overthrow the traditional definition on fashion and provoke thinking of the real world in others’ mind through her designs. Structure is an important design element in her design, and different silhouettes are created through different permutations and combinations.

Her interest in fashion fuels her creativity and determination and she is excited to improve the technical skills she already has and to combine her love for fashion with knowledge of marketing and merchandising. She wants to delve deeply into the fashion world, increasing her growing curiosity and knowledge. The skills she has built on her own through her profound interest in the area and her skills.

By studying politics, she has a deeper understanding of the economy and its impact on fashion. For example, she found that due to a year of protests and demonstrations that led to a decline in Hong Kong’s economy, the overall profit of the fashion industry declined. This is very insightful because it reveals how the economic uncertainty of Hong Kong affects the fashion industry, and the fashion industry depends on consumer confidence and material demands. In addition, her research on philosophy helps she to understand human nature, so we are naturally eager to create art forms and make our ideas practical.

As a member of a generation who criticizes the indifferent and lack of inspiration, studying fashion is now more important than ever, because her determination to create timeless and influential things has become stronger and stronger. She thrive in a dynamic environment where she can reach her full potential, and she believes that the vision of becoming a major contributor to fashion will be realized by studying at university. Here, she will be able to fully cultivate her creative passion and finally realize herself.

Manwei Ou is a womenswear designer who graduated from MDes Fashion and Textile of Glasgow School of Art. Inspired by the curtains blowing in the wind of Gabriel Lester’s installation , the designer decided to research the concept of frozen in time and space and experiment with capturing old clothing in the mid-air through photography.

These images selected from the impressive shape of thousands of pictures lead to a sensitive collection of twisted, flexible silhouettes dresses and hats. The shadow cast by the clothes on the wall in the photo also contributed a lot to this collection.

The work refers to revoke the warm memory and the unforgettable moment of urban people, as well as the concretization of personal abstract emotions, second-hand garments’ rebirth. Time is unstoppable, but we had this moment.

Gaultier asked a famous question: “What is masculinity and what is feminization? Why shouldn’t men show their vulnerability and sensitivity, and women shouldn’t show their own intelligence and strength?”

This is a fashion series about gender fluidity, the designer hopes to finds a balance between the hard characteristics of masculinity and the soft characteristics of femininity, combining the two and displaying them in clothing.

In her development process, she used the basic suits bought from charity shops to transform the human body, combining two different color suits to produce deformation, to create new silhouettes and structure. She added to these suits by creating some extra features such as historical sleeves, ruff collars draped sections to the front, side, back, to combine with other structures and enhance the sense of design. She explored the characteristics of masculinity and femininity on a body through dress up exercises to investigate the blending of these two characteristics, from this she extracted the most successful elements to generate collage work and initial design ideas about cut, shape, color, fabric and silhouette.

Her design allows people in the current society who are afraid to express their true selves to express their bravery in the public with more confidence through dressing.This designer hope she can break through the public’s traditional solidified thinking about gender, through rejecting gender labels, and moving towards a wardrobe of gender freedom.

The designer graduated from Master of fashion and textile in Glasgow school of art. With the main direction of silhouette design, her design is focusing on the relationship between human body and clothings and balancing traditional tailoring elements with dramatic design ideas to achieve the purpose of both wearable and conceptual design.

The name of the project is “Body in desire”, which came from the story of lustful people transformed into monsters in the anime “Devilman Crybaby”. Therefore, the designer used the change of human bodies in desire to combine with the elements from traditional tailoring jackets to present the influence from desire to human bodies by the hyperbole and abnormal silhouettes of the design work.

The designer thinks that everyone is equal in front of desire, there is no difference of gender, age, nationality and body shape, thus, she wanted to do gender less design with not only oversized clothings, but the garments structure that independent from human body, so the visual effect won’t be influenced by human body shapes. Therefore, all the datas came from different body shapes with various sized, height and genders, so the prototypes were also tried on various bodies to achieve the most balanced result.

Inspired by the shape and structure of architecture and influenced by the Bauhaus Movement, Carolina De Jesus designs and produces intriguing, colourful garments that are environmentally conscious.

Her work stems from the simple method of hand wrapping fine threads to create abstract layered shapes. She is fascinated by challenging the boundaries that arise when producing art formed from the winding of vertical and horizontal threads. The choice of threads and colour influences each shape to respond uniquely to the surrounding light, creating compositions with innovative shapes and three-dimensional effect.

Carolina continued developing resources and techniques to perfect this craft and also constructs commissioned wall art in a range of colours and sizes.

With the purpose to produce sustainable clothing in the forefront of her mind, she carefully mirrors this technique onto fabric by decisively cutting, folding and directing squares three-dimensionally.

These patched designs have traditional suggestions that emphasise its classical and timeless element. The patchwork technique clearly articulates Carolina’s personal design aesthetic, whilst creating opportunities to revive discarded fabric, in order to produce vibrant long-lasting clothing.

Shanxu Cong, also called Vivien.

As a women’s wear designer, she is concerned about women’s freedom and protection, and she also explores the development of underwear style structure to convey women’s pursuit of free life attitude.

In her opinion, the sexiest moment of a woman is the moment when she comes home, takes off her clothes one by one and lies lazily in her delicate bedroom. With this in mind, she conducted an in-depth visual photographic investigation of the process of undressing.

This is the moment to show the beauty of the female body line, but it is not limited to age and figure. The structural change of folds is a good way to express these body lines. She loved the wrinkles, whether they were in the fabric of clothing or on human skin, and she didn’t see anything bad with them. Just like she loves everything about herself.

I created a new Collection with the interests and the feelings of mine which inspired by sound and silence and focused on the whole process of design through the studies at GSA. I became a surface led student and focused more on textiles in the whole year. I did much more textiles works than before and got much more than my expectation after the whole year studying in GSA. I explored the working method of fashion design and created my personal aesthetic.

I was inspired by the Artist, Film and Muse research project a lot. The muse in this project of mine is Brian Eno who works as a musician. Music gives me a fascinating world in my life, and I would like to create a relationship between music and clothes for a long time. So I was really excited to start this project. The project I was working on is to translate music and sound into garments. It was a pretty exciting project but with many difficulties, and I created a relationship among the sense of hearing and seeing by my own understanding of music and garments.

My project consists of three parts, sound part, visual part and the part of “sound” and “silence”. Throughout this project I undertaken  an in-depth research. In my previous project I took little time on research，so the outcomes were limited by my limited views. In this project I did research by the whole time in stage 1 and got much more than my expectation. So my work in stage 2 was making a selection of stage 1’s works to further my project, instead of continuing working difficultly with the limited ideas. I explored the sound materials and silent materials in stage 2, and I found flexible foam which is interesting to work with it on garments. It was my first time using an untraditional material on fabrics and it was an exiting start for my future projects.

Currently, the fashion industry is one of the most wasteful industries in terms of resources. Most brands launch new products at least twice a year or more. Garments are losing their value through time because popular trends are always changing. Chao’s designs are inspired by the traditional Japanese patchworking techniques, such as “Boro” and “Sashiko”. Those techniques link to the traditional Japanese aesthetic “Wabi-Sabi”, which embraces imperfection, incompleteness, and impermanent beauty. Chao uses “Boro” and “Sashiko” techniques and the concept of “Wabi-Sabi” to repurpose textiles, deconstructing and reconstructing garments to give new lives to old pieces of clothing. This practice can produce numerous designs, giving a new life and purpose to otherwise disregarded clothing.

I am a multidisciplinary artist utilising skills in Film Making, Photography and Visual language as my primary method of storytelling. Adhering to an underlying ethical code within my practise is a required part of acting responsibly as an artist, designer and a consumer, something I needed to be keenly aware of, given the sensitive nature of my work. This is no longer a choice or privilege, but a commitment everyone carries with their actions and Communication Design challenges me to ensure these values are upheld.

For the film “Mektub” I followed the animal welfare organisation “Ims’one Project” based in Morocco who seek to vaccinate, sterilize, tag and release street dogs as well as house the most vulnerable in the region. The documentary highlights the general situation facing street dogs in Imsouane, Morocco, and the attempts by local animal welfare organisations to introduce legislation combating the inhumane mass culling by authorities as an attempt to control their population. Woven alongside the issues facing dogs is also the personal portrait of Fran Belle, founder of “Ims’one Project”. Fran has to care for them as humanely as possible with limited resources, relying often on little more than her own relentless determination and immense self sacrifice.

Xiaoxin Wang is an illustrator and visual designer from China. She is currently working as a freelance illustrator. She explores the use of comics to tell stories about what happens around her. She uses irony and humor to take us into a surreal space. Her work aims to give the reader an emotional identity. She was shuttling back and forth between reality and the surreal.

Xiaoxin graduated from Hubei Institution of Fine Arts with a degree in Visual Communication Design before completing her GSA master’s degree.
“My works focus on the study of all kinds of emotions brought by the society. Through the observation of the people around me, I find that some of the pressures brought by the community are very subtle by looking at these stories and adding some emotional content. It is the most exciting thing to let the work wander between the real and the surreal. “

I have a deep passion for trying to tackle the climate crisis. I consider it my way of contributing to that, by acting as a communicator and advocate for the greatness of change and alternatives that lie ahead of us. As an Illustrator, I want to utilise the ability of art to tap into people’s emotions and reach their guts – to influence a decision-making process and to motivate people to fight apathy and to find perspective. What I personally like so much about art, as a tool, is that it can easily be used to show a way of growing out of, instead of fighting against, whatever has to be changed. This follows the principle that whatever you give your attention to will expand. It is the perfect possibility to generate a new reality by feeding people‘s imagination – making something that might be yet invisible visible. “Homo sapiens rules the world because it is the only animal that can believe in things that exist purely in its own imagination, such as gods, states, money, and human rights.”, says Noah Yuval Harari in his book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”; hence, all systems on our planet earth (except for the ecosystem) once were just ideas in someone‘s mind who then acted upon them, convinced others of the ideas‘ strength, and therefore created a new reality. With all of my projects, I aim to contribute to creating such a new reality; one that is not based on exploiting people and planet, but one that is built on social, sustainable, and equitable values.

If this made you curious about more: Chrysopoeia is my recently launched caboodle of work where I will showcase all of my future projects.

Yu Xie is a photographer from China. His works focus on how do we look at the current social situation and its impact on individuals? We re-examine our way of life from the perspectives of individuals, habits, groups, urban structures, international news, etc. Explain, embody, analyze and criticize what is applicable to the individual’s emotions, the connection with the group, and how the individual can explore and respond to the next potential crisis in the context of the individual or the relationship between the individual and the urban development.

INNER CITY

In this project, he initially focused on an exploration of the ubiquity of architecture and urban objects within the city. Through constructed image making his project has morphed into a wider critique of how we see cities and the symbols within them. The images explore liminal or transitional spaces and their meanings are interpreted through his subjective perspective. His hope is that the viewer looks at the world he have constructed, and sees a world of absurdity, fiction, reality and fantasy. Something that is both familiar and unfamiliar, unnerving and uncanny. An inner city born of my observations and imagination.

Normal

After the covid 19 outbreak and subsequent pandemic, the whole world seemed to stop, but in the wider expanse of history, what has felt like forever, has in reality been just a few short months. Time did not stand still. His life and the world changed quietly. His room effectively became his world as he gradually crepts towards his new normal. This normal was uncertain but not unfamiliar. The objects and space were effectively the same, but how he viewed them had changed. Through his camera he sought to try and make sense of his surroundings and state of mind. Using primarily still life, his photographs look for clues and explore metaphor through the daily narration of his new normal life.

THE AMAZON IS ON FIRE. SAVE AMAZON.

In recent years, Coronavirus, Australia fire, dramatic temperature change and amazon rainforest destruction rate have returned to their peak. The frequent occurrence of disasters on earth made me start to think about human beings and the environment. How to balance the relationship between human and nature? How can the situation of the “future” not be worse than that of the present?

My topic is about the deforestation of Amazon rainforest. The number of fires in the Amazon rainforest increased 30.5% in 2019 from the previous year, while deforestation rose 85%, according to recent data released by Brazil’s space research agency INPE. The Amazon rainforest is far away from our lives, but its roles the lungs of the earth. Where would we be without it? My project is to make a publication–THE AMAZON IS ON FIRE( bilingual edition in Chinese and English)–to make more people aware of Amazon rainforest.

“The Fire” does not only fire in the Amazon rainforest but more importantly, the amazon is in a state of emergency and need of rescue right now.

Compared with the undergraduate study of visual communication in a comprehensive university, the postgraduate study of graphics in Glasgow School of Art has brought Renyu Tian a greater space to explore and professional perspective.

The exit of graphics is not limited. Renyu believes that the information conveyed by graphics is diversified and can be very personal. When expressing views on some social phenomena, such as the infodemic and the conceptual change of marriage to modern people, she is more inclined to start from her senses and feelings.

Pauline Levy is a French multidisciplinary Graphic Designer, currently based in Paris. Keen on experimentation, she explores different mediums such as sculpture, drawing, and photography, and plays with materials and colours, as part of the research process. Publications are often the outcome of her projects, because of her high interest in Editorial and Type design, discovered during her bachelor degree in Art Direction at Penninghen (Paris). Meanwhile, her passion for Dance, and more widely performing arts, led her to focus on movements, space, and body. Feet were her main interest of studies during this year, bringing her to a developed and various reflection presented through two different supports: a publication and a dance performance. At the moment, the dance performance is presented as a score, and will evolve into a video, in collaboration with some dancers. Next steps for her are to increase collaborative and interactive projects, in the dance field in particular, and to discover more in Type and Set Design.

Jiayi Cai was born in Guangdong Province, China. She studied fashion design and garment engineering in China before completing the Master of Design in Photography from Communication Design at the Glasgow School of Art.

After graduating from university, she decided to come to the UK to study fashion photography. In stage 1 and stage 2, she devoted herself to finding her visual language and working hard to learn to create narrative fashion photography works.

She works across disciplines, her practice is process-led, trying various methods and techniques to develop ideas. She likes to dig out the relationship between fashion and humanities and create emotional works on this basis.

Yingjie is a graphic designer. He usually uses illustrations and typography to reflect the concept of his work. Sometimes he will use almost crazy methods to achieve his goals. Some of the concepts of his works may seem naughty or even lazy, but he hopes that the audience can find something deeper behind these.

After coming to GSA, he focused on exploring more interesting things and concepts that people usually don’t notice easily, and try to use crazy ways to transform these concepts into his works. ‘Films in 1994 ’ is a good example.

As a Chinese, he understand the environment and current situation of Chinese art. He especially admire the artists from the 1970s to the 1990s. They worked hard to find their own artistic value and dared to fight for their purpose under the circumstances that the social environment changed very quickly. The spirit of confrontation is very worthy of the current artists to learn. Yingjie is also attracted by this spirit and hopes to make a work to commemorate it.

email: yingjiezhou1220@gmail.com

Incense, In Sense

” Faith could be identified as a personal response to the surrounding, which comes from our spiritual reflection.”

In terms of the Asian culture, the charming religious architectures and the praying activities are impressed in the general’s eye. Especially, the prayers in Taiwan usually adore an idol to visualize their belief. Thus, according to this situation, it made me challenge why we need to work with religious regulation, the models of god, and the celebration activities to re-shape our faith to respond to our value of belief? What if everyone could investigate their praying experience and comprehend their feeling while exploring in transcendental sensory? Then, applying their sensory to create a personal panorama, which is space fulfil with emotional and touching to a person’s faith.

About religious architectures, the prayers mainly understanding the beauty of divine space via viewings, such as light effects, detailed decorations, and volumes… Thus, based on the previously mentioned presumption, I aim to investigate beyond vision sensory to re-shape the space, trying to develop the possibility of spiritual experience, activating a personal engagement with the praying scenes which we get used to it before.

As stated in my spiritual experience, the small temple located in my community, which is full of my growing memories and emotional associations, is meaningful for me to analyze what emotions does it bring, and the secondary senses beyond the primary experience. After analyzing personal praying sensory with contained imagination, association, emotional reflection, I caught sight of incense, the main component of my praying experiments, which as the medium to activate the atmosphere, helping a person to build the temporary visualization to engage with their beyond vision sensory.

Eventually, in agreement with my analysis, faith could be identified as a personal response to the surrounding, which comes from our spiritual reflection. Thus, my sensory examination aims to deconstruct our personality to re-visualized the space of faith and our emotional responses of the environment. In my incense studies, the smoke of incense redefined as an extension of a person’s willingness to re-shape the faith scenario. With the materiality responses, a person activation, and the environmental conditions, these factors collaborate beyond the physical experience, which giving us the methodology to re-seeing the original religious space in a different point of view, or providing the possibility to re-create the new functions on the faith area.

My praying investigation of incense smoke

According to my daily worship routine, I usually go to the small temple at midday or after work. The daytime and the night provide different types of light effects and wind blowing in the narrow alley, therefore, I plan to concentrate on the day, the night and the rainy scenes.

In my experiments of activating the incense smoke, the weather conditions and my engagements provide the diverse forms of intangible perspective, which influence the density, the height, and the colour of the smoke, collaborating the temporary panorama of divine understanding.

By activating the temporary panorama of personal responding on faith, I suddenly realised that space might not just be built in the physical world, or made up with the material, in order words, it might lose the aura to represent the personal response to the surrounding.
Space, such as I produced in the intangible perspective, could provide more emotional reflection, which was only be received by own, also be seen as a kind of space. It indicates the temporary, the changeable possibility to re-appreciating the aura of our religion.

Besides, I reconnected the secondary response I explored in the first impression collage. Aiming to re-verify my temporary panorama in an emotional understanding beyond the primary experience, giving more personality respond to the environment, giving more possibilities of re-creating the aura experience.

Another prototyping- Incense accessories

Except for the smoke investigations, I executed another prototyping to react to the extension of our willingness.

The incense acts as the tangible bridge between the material and spiritual space, promoting a person realises their emotional reflection to the surrounding. Based on the previously mentioned principle, I originate the prototyping to envision the incense smoke as an object, which reflected the theory of Gernot Böhme and Walter Benjamin: atmosphere aims to extend our quality of feeling, also as artwork for affecting individual participation. To visualize the personal extension, I intended to solid the incense. By adding the water, Methyl Cellulose and Gypsum, the ash of the incense concreting its form. Then, to show the extension of my body willingness, I shaped the incense on some part of my body in random and folded them.

After solidification, I reconnected these objects as our body extension of activating movements, re-defined them as the accessories, which performance our emotional reflection on the surrounding.

Millions of people around the world often encounter artworks. Whether in museums or on the Internet, art is a ubiquitous part of human life. The fascination with art is a unique experience of influence. Although the feelings are different, it is undeniable that people’s physiological reactions can be stimulated when viewing artworks. This reaction process makes artworks have the ability to affect basic aspects of emotion or body, such as self-regulation, personality, and worldview. Changes in cognitive abilities. At the same time, this process of responding to artworks will even have an impact on people’s mental health by reducing stress. Therefore, this project will explore the interaction between artworks, people and space, and then use a three-dimensional visualization space to present this abstract reaction process that occurs in our brains when people view artworks.

Painting is the most common form of visual art expression. These products created by artists are an external expression of the artist’s inner world view and subconscious. When some works are created, there will be some motivations to encourage artists to present the content. Sigmund Freud has been studying artists and conducting psychoanalytic art throughout his career. He believes that art work is focused on a method of imagination. Art is created from imagination, can be analyzed to explain its meaning, and therefore can also exist as a means of communication. Artists pass their works to others in a way of understanding, participating, and experiencing the world, and thus establish connections with others. As a product of inner emotion and subconsciousness, artwork has the function and power to communicate with the outside world.

In the process of being appreciated by people, people’s basic emotional feedback is transformed from direct acceptance of the content of the painting to a personal understanding of the content of the painting. People will first use their eyes to accept the information conveyed by the artwork, and then according to their own understanding, add personal imagination, and convert the artwork into personal content in their minds. The process of touching people by artworks comes from the endless space of imagination that the content depicted by artworks brings people.

The development of imagination has constructed many wonderful moments in people’s lives. Imagination involves a process of “connection”, in which experience evokes thoughts and thus becomes integrated with thoughts. Imagination can help people visualize invisible things and form images of objects or experiences before bringing them into physical reality. Imagination is built on vision, which is a supplement to vision. People transform the two-dimensional graphics they see into virtual three-dimensional space in their own imagination space. Artwork will stimulate people’s imagination, and at the same time, imagination will enrich the content beyond the two-dimensional plane of artwork, and make artwork full of more possibilities.

Emotions will cause people to produce a series of specific performance states for a series of specific themes. Imagination expresses our emotions and responds to our emotions. Therefore, when describing and constructing the three-dimensional virtual space of this project, I will start from the five basic core emotions of people to describe the imaginary space in the brain after seeing the artwork under different emotions. At the same time, these five spaces They are integrated on the basis of a certain logic.

Art reflects real life and conceptual experience. Art is important because it is considered therapeutic, it provides an escape from reality, and it also provides meaning to life. The therapeutic effect of artwork is reflected in the process of viewing and appreciation, it enables people to establish a connection between the mind and the body, and uses imagination to build their own unique and private space. Imagination gives people the right to change subjectively. People can have emotional and spiritual dialogue in the virtual space of imagination, cover up some things, and transform them into new things. The model of this project will show a healing process, which exists in our minds and is the product of the collision between painting and imagination.

In the creation of the two-dimensional painting part of this project, five works by the surrealist painter Dali were referenced. In his works, mirroring is mostly used to express truth and falsity, so I also used mirroring to express the real and imagined space in my design. In the painting of swan reflecting on elephant, he used purple and yellow as opposites to describe the two opposite worlds. My work extracts these two colors to construct a world that is upside down, where the false and the real are opposed. At the same time, in the false world constructed by imagination, people will feel that time has stopped, and a metaphorical pattern is needed to help people distinguish the boundary between the two worlds and avoid getting lost in the falsehood. Many art historians point out that “red fruit” and “strawberry” are metaphors that symbolize people’s desire to pursue happiness, so I chose strawberry as a sign to guide people in the right direction in this amusement space.

The space of this project is divided into five spaces to express according to the five basic emotions of people, namely sadness, disgust, fear, anger and happiness. In order to express the entertainment and healing characteristics of the space, I abstracted some basic entertainment facilities. Forms and use their functions to metaphor the nature of space. At the very bottom of the space is the disgust space, which uses a maze metaphor, and the anger space for bumper cars continues upward, expressing anger with collision. Continuing upward is a falling roller coaster, used to express fear, and there is a sadness space that expresses fluctuations with huge ups and downs. This model has a forward part and a reverse part. Among them, the part of the hot air balloon that only metaphors happy emotions has only positive space and no reverse space. The process of forward and reverse is a metaphor of the healing process of art to the human spirit. At the beginning, emotions were negative and sad, but after a series of mental space games, everything developed into opposites, the negative emotions began to change, and finally reached the peak of happiness.

“The Monster At Our Door”: Space as Medical Instrument Against Infectious Diseases

Mike Davis points out in his book The Monster At Our Door that, one of the reasons why infection has become a “global threat” to people is space. We are too close to the sources of infection. Modern infectious diseases have become a spatial problem. If a kind of infectious disease can be regarded as a kind of space, space becomes a strategy for controlling pandemic as a general prescription or a functioning medical instrument. Based on it, this project aims to highlight the spatial duty of keeping down the virus spread and preventing infectious diseases.

The whole research focuses on the medical effect space can provide to explore a kind of disease-free and heterotopias space through investigating the relationships between medicine and architecture, and disinfection measures space can provide. Combined with scientific and social issues, space demonstrates its medical potential to be speculated as a post-pandemic experiment.

During the lockdown period, supermarket delivery is the main way to get food and daily necessities in quarantine, however, it shows an insufficiency in transportation resources and concerns about food safety management. So, medical space is narrowed to a supermarket to be redefined and promoted as an essential example. The space, as a medical instrument, is constructed based on the healthy features to approach the medical effect, and filled with disinfection surveillance and examination. The aerial view of this construction is like an X-ray film to show body fragments.

In order to balance minimized human contact and shopping experience, a variety of mechanical devices preserving visual, olfactory, and tactile channels for the customers are designed to realize automation. Modular construction is applied because of its convenience and ease of promotion. A material language of white concrete, antiviral copper alloy and glass became standard issue in order to create hygienic, antiviral, and easy-to-clean surfaces.

Bio

Interior Design is the study of the interaction between people and space, which is easier to be combined with social, environmental, and human activities. A product, a performance, and an event are all included in it, which gives me a lot of room to play. As a designer, I wish to improve the traditional indoor environment with the development of modern technology, provide artistic resonance through interaction with space, and find undiscovered stories in urban space.

Key skills: Photoshop, Illustrator, SketchUp, AutoCad, Rhinoceros

As a designer, I try to use the environment to tell stories to build a connection between people and space. I like old places in cities because there are always stories behind them. Space is a powerful narrative vehicle because of its multidimensionality. Now, I am exploring how to apply this spatial narrative method to exhibition design.

In this project, I tried to apply a nonlinear narrative to an experimental exhibition about the novel Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino 1972), and transform the description in the novel into the atmosphere, experience, and sound in the space. Compared with an exhibition with only one fixed path, a non-linear exhibition gives visitors more possibilities to piece together and explain the content. Visitors may go around in the exhibition, and all narrative order becomes uncertain. By doing this, it gives visitors more power to express their own meaning and independent understanding in the exhibition. Besides, the project changed the traditional experience in literary exhibitions that visitors just read text while standing. The translation of the novel text into spatial scenes provides visitors with a multi-sensory interpretation.

Dora Huang / Szu Shiuan Huang

Portfolio for Stage 3 Project: https://issuu.com/dora15a/docs/journal

Portfolio for Personal Interior Works: https://issuu.com/dora15a/docs/port

UNDERWATER SHELTER: Reshape the form of life under the sea

For years, humans sought to conquer the ocean in all kinds of means. People have illustrated numerous imaginations how humans might inhabit the undersea. This attracted me to start my research about an underwater space. My project is about a scenario of an underwater shelter located outside the coast of New York in around 2050.

The study is a proposal by a speculative approach created in perspective of interior design, especially supplying the life of eco-refugees. Attempting to speculate the era with more advanced underwater technology and crisis happens to all humans but possibly erase some of the world’s great coastal cities. While underwater living is a new trend of avoiding flooding, how humans adapt themselves in the world like that period of the future. Focused on suggesting a form of living scenario in an imaginary way, this paper questioned of how could people possibly live underwater within 30 years, how eco-refugees might have a temporary home to wait until flood to fade away, What does a day living underwater would be like and What impact does the underwater environment do to human activity.

My research is a study of rising sea levels, eco-refugees and how we can embrace the water. And further related into my own understanding.

Climate change reforms the habitat for humanity throughout history. Sea level rising can increase the speed of further shoreline erosion and put some low-lying land completely underwater and uninhabitable forever since. Sea level rises can influence both coastal and island regions, moreover make them become sinking cities or a country been wiped out from the map from then on. However, every human being has the right to live, but for residents on endangered land it is likely that the sea can take that away. More and more people are aware of this ecological crisis.

As every individual is a part of the global village, everyone could be impacted by it and therefore become an eco-refugees. Eco-refugees also known as environmental refugees, are people who have been affected by environmental problems and thus can no longer have a secure livelihood in their homelands. According to statistics, 150 million lives are threatened by 2050 due to this crisis. It happens to all humans but possibly erases some of the world’s great coastal cities. To face this crisis, Water Architect Koen Olthuis suggested our cities should embrace the water and have a better understanding of the ocean. Underwater living could form a protection shelter for these eco-refugees.

Result of analysis: understanding from the research

Overall, rising sea level is a worldwide crisis and it is going to affect numerous lives in the near future. As claimed by the water architect, embracing the water into our lifestyle might be the only way to tackle the problem. Everyone on this planet all has the potential of becoming an eco-refugee. There is no place to call home once a flood comes and with the countless number of eco-refugees, how to settle them all in a sudden would be an issue. Therefore, why not offer them an underwater shelter to avoid the catastrophe and stay in their local areas until the flood to retreat. With the supporting measures being taken in this underwater shelter, eco-refugees gain a secure temporary home and help for both their physical and mental care.

In the year of 2050, constant rain and floods make the residents in New York flee to underwater shelters for several months. Not until the flood retreated, they could only settle in this community before getting back to their home. People leave their city home, reach this temporary house by submarines which is just outside the shore of New York. At the coastline of the Big Apple, there will be 53 shelters and each of them will be 1.5 kilometres apart from each other and the coast. This shelter can contain around 1300 people. A unit of 6 Refugees would share their room that provides them to sleep and give them privacy of life. 6 units would become a block that shares a kitchen, common room, laundry place and bathroom. There are 9 blocks in one floor and in this underwater community, there are in total 4 floors of rooms with an extra floor of public places.

To further relate to interior design, this dissertation shows the report of underwater structures and the space arrangement. From this study, I aim to find and speculative a new way of settling down eco-refugees while they face the life-determined crisis. I argue about the life could be like when living underwater. The needs and the dilemmas I analysis from eco-refugees reshape the form of spaces. With the ocean surrounding their life, their behaviors are impacted by the new limit, including depression, lack of the exposure to the sun, the difficulties to access the outdoors and need comprehensive life support. The facilities I created fulfill the basic life for eco-refugees for up to a couple months. For instance, the pharmacy with counselling service to take care for their mental health, the artificial sun for the consuming vitamin D, a daily diving walk to stretch their legs and the fundamental supply for life. This structure can be a brief insight of how people can embrace the water and be part of the ocean colony.

We live in an era of a stable economy and rapid development of science and technology, but we have to admit that the society we live in is a profoundly differentiated society, with a series of issues such as gender, race, class, and religion that are not in harmony with the current world.

In this project, I will take gender differentiation as my main research direction. As is known to all, gender inequality is very common in Asia, especially in China, and it does not match the current world civilization. Chinese women from the 1930s and 1940s are the main subjects of this study. Analyze and consider the phenomenon of the existence of such problems and the deep causes of such problems. And combined with the theoretical research and related design to put forward their own ideas and substantive solutions to the gender differential society. Moreover, as a relatively vulnerable group in society, I would think more about space design from the perspective of women. I will bring the “female perspective” into life and design, and explore the female emotions contained in it to interpret the female power. I will design several large experience Spaces so that people can have an “immersive” experience through devices and space design.

“The Ideal Woman” is designed as an exhibition and experience gallery for women, which is a place for people from all walks of life to know about women. I hope that through the space design and the internal function of the space everyone focuses on sexism instead of turning a blind eye to it or even treating it as the norm.

TIK TOK: AN EXPLORATION OF DREAM SPACE

portfolio available here

Do you hear the sound of your life clock?

There are several age stages in our lives, and each is unique with its own charm and fantasy. I once floated in a dream, standing on stairs and seeing a boy’s life cycle from when he is a baby, to when he is a grizzled old man. From my perspective, life is a journey where we exploring the world in our own way.
The scene in the dream makes me wonder if there was a connection between space and time. I hope to explore the relationship between space and time in the process of gradually materializing the abstract world in dreams.

In this project, you may see some very different spatial relationships from the real world. As far as I am concerned, these mysterious and uncanny spatial relationships are more able to reflect the feeling of dreams and the abstraction of life. When stepping into the stories, you may find something similar to yours, and when you look back, what does your story look like?

I’d like to continue the fantasy and mystery in the dream. Through the bookThe Architectural Uncanny (Vidler, 1992), I find what makes a space different is not what actually it is, but what we attach on it such as stories, memories, and imagination.

As I mentioned previously, to make the dream space differ from the reality, I referred to some films like Doctor Strange(2016), Inception (Nolan, 2010), and Escher’s painting, and I found there are three patterns to help me achieve it: reverse, distortion and mirror effect.

During the process of finding out how to create a closely connected story, I find something useful. In a music video called Cheers by Mayday, a Chinese band, I noticed that the changes of time can be reflected in the items that we hold at different ages, for example, comic books and yogurt turn into briefcase and champagne over time. What remains is we always have something in our hands, what changes are the thing that we hold at different ages, this makes a story logical and strongly bonded. I would like to create a life story and try to extract elements from life cycle, draw a sketch according to 12 age stages, and transform them into a digital model. My idea is that people only have access to this space once in their life, and they can’t go back after entering it, implying that life can only be once and we cannot start over.

Life clock is one-way, it cannot be stopped or reversed.

Olivia Lu is a junior interior designer who is creative and passionate about spatial design. She received a dual degree in agronomy and painting from Shanghai Normal University. She then entered the Glasgow School of Art to study MDES interior design. With cross-professional knowledge, Olivia developed a strong sense of art and design. She perceives that each space is alive, and different space is telling different stories. Her design discusses the relationship between human and the environment. She hopes her design can give the audience an immersive experience and become a media of different perspective thinking.

Consumerism first appeared in the 1600s, and it has spread across most countries in the world in the 21st century. Alongside the modernisation of consumerism, it has produced more waste of resources and damages to the ecological system. At present, human beings have approached a tipping point that all our choices will lead to a future which has ‘no return’.

2050 represents the goal of zero-carbon for human societies, but according to the nature of consumerism, this is almost impossible to achieve. The author has researched the topics in diverse materials, including case studies, readings, and questionnaires, and speculated how will we live in a sustainable new order. Ecological changes as the background, the author had created a New Amphibious nomadic space can adapt to the land and sea life. The research has tried to explore the possibility of living differently from the endless cycle of consumerism in a primitive way.

In this research, the project wants to explore the future position of human beings in the ecological system, and examined whether there is an alternative way to live, which can achieve a balance between human and nature.

Glenda Annokye is an Italian/African designer. She began her academic career studying product design at Brera Academy in Milan.
Following a few years living in Scotland, she decided to pursue MDes in Interior Design at Glasgow School of Art. Glenda drew inspiration for her design from her everyday life with the aim of enhancing people’s lives. During her master’s degree, Glenda continued to inspire the interface between product and interior design with a design of a tile that was able to capture vibrations from steps. The idea behind this project was to create a space where people could see what is usually not possible to see. In her latest project, she created a pod for enabling people to spend time isolated with their thought, for a few minutes or hours per day. The idea was to tackle the negative association with solitude and integrate this state of complete isolation into our lives in a positive way.
This project was created, mostly due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has changed our lives and encouraged us to consider how people can cope with being isolated and how isolation can be beneficial creatively and spiritually.

In the future she sees herself living in the UK pursued her career as a designer
Another area that she hopes to explore in future projects is incorporating elements of her African heritage into her design.

glenda.annokye@gmail.com

After graduating from the University of Dundee in 2019, with a BEng (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering, I am extremely proud to have completed my masters in Product Design Engineering at Glasgow School of Art. Having worked within a range of companies over the past 4 summers, including Camlin Technologies and Bell Architects, I am excited to further use the skills I have developed to widen and grow my knowledge of the field of design.

I’m Rishi. I got my undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Arizona. There, I worked as an Undergraduate Research Assistant for a year. My emphasis was in mathematics and mechatronics.

For this project, I worked to design the concept for a product that helps to alleviate the problem of distraction. In our current society, sustaining focus for extended periods of time has become a challenge. Even if it is for something we love to do, like a good book or a film. The final solution I designed is a headband that uses EEG technology to measure the user’s attention. The device then gives the user subtle feedback when attention drops. Over the long term, the device trains the user to improve their focus.

I am looking for work in the UK as a mechanical engineer and/or designer.

Nowadays, people concern more about environmental problems. In this project, I focused on two main problems, the first one is the decline of bees, the second one is the biophilic urbanization. In the early stage, I did some research about bees’ decline, such as the reason of it, where it happens and how large influence they will cause. The result is not good because nearly all over the world people suffer this problem, can it may lead to some bigger problem such as the shortage of food because about 80% of planted food is pollinated by bees. Another topic I focused on is the biophilic urbanization. Cases in Singapore and US proved its possibility, even urban agriculture can also be achieved in a biophilic city. These two points connected together when I was thinking the pollination the urban area, will urban environment suit for bee to live in? I did some other research about that, and in fact, bees can get better life in the urban area according to the research. So I decided to design a product which can enhance the biophilic feeling and also give bees a home in the urban area.I picked bench as the form of the product at the beginning, then I tried some ideas to discover the possible solution. After choosing an idea, I began to optimized it, I considered about its structure, material, the user experience and if it good for bees. During this period, I build the 3D model for simulation and testing. I met a problem when designing a connection component, because there were so many obstacles need to be avoided and the structure should not block the sunshine for the plant, so I used generative design to build the component, and I felt really happy with the solution it provided. The result of the simulation was quite good, it proved the structure of the bench could be safe enough when being used in an outside environment.

The project starts from photography. While after the research on the increasing amount of digital images generated by people, I found a problem on the rapid development of information and communication technologies and the carbon footprint it brings. According to the research about photo storing, it is estimated that there will be 1.4 trillion pieces of photos taken by people,and over 7 trillion pieces of photos will be stored by people.With the advertising of cloud storage service, more and more photos will be sent to cloud data centers by users, which means more energy will be consumed to storing data of digital images.

With the further increase in Internet penetration, more people will use personal computers and mobile phones. The large amount of data needs to be stored. More data centers will be put into use. Depending on scope, in 2020 ICT stands for up to 7% of the total global electricity use. In the future, we can foresee that human society will invest a lot of power and manpower to operate data centers. While it is our responsibility to protect our environment, we should think about how to build a greener Internet.

While most photos uploaded to the cloud storage are seldom viewed by people, I am thinking about storing them locally to reduce the energy used as well as protecting the privacy.

Hi everyone! I am Adarsh Vijay and I am a Product Design Engineer with a background in Biotechnology engineering. My ambition is to work in the medical devices and in-vitro diagnostics sector. Design for the medical industry is my aspiration. Designing equipment and devices interlaced with biological processes and human anatomy and morphology makes up for my redefinition of User-Centred design. If you would like to know more about how my services can help your company, please send me an email at adarshvijaykl@gmail.com

About the project:

Sharps are medical devices that are used to puncture or lacerate the skin. They include hypodermic needles, scalpels, contaminated glass, guidewires and other medical devices. The World Health Organization estimates that 16 billion injections are administered world wide every year.

The major problem with sharps waste is sharps injuries which causes transmission of Blood Borne Viruses such as HIV, Hepatitis, Epstein Barr virus among many others. Sharps injuries are responsible for 16,000 HBV; 6,600 HCV and 5,000 HIV infections worldwide annually.

From 2012 to 2017, NHS had 1,833 injury claims which cost the NHS £4,077,441. NHS estimates that 40,000 needle stick injuries occur within the workplace per year and recognizes that the true figure may be twice this due to under reporting of injuries.

The main causes of sharps injuries as listed by the NHS are:

Non-compliance with standard infection control precautions
Inadequate disposal of clinical waste
Overfull sharps bins
Not using safer sharps and
Not using Personal Protective Equipment.

My design is that of a sharps bin that uses a needle remover to immediately isolate the needle to prevent further injuries to Health care workers and sanitation workers. It also helps to segregate the wastes. The product itself can undergo steam sterilization for disinfection thereby making it reusable. At the end of life, the DSharps bin is recyclable.

This product can help the NHS to eliminate sharps injuries through a sharps bin and create a safer environment for the Health care workers. With the ever increasing mountain of plastic waste, this immediate segregation of wastes will provide more options for recycling thereby help saving the environment as well.

Many people have mentioned that sleeping on a plane can be a painful experience, leading to the need for a deep rest when you arrive at your destination, which is bad for jet lag.This product promotes the secretion of melatonin by regulating human body temperature, so that passengers can have a good quality sleep during the long-haul flight.

Technology: Add an air pockets layer in the middle of the aircraft blanket, and control the insulation of the blanket through intelligent breathing:  introduce and outlet air from the blanket.This process is completed by intelligent air pump, which is connected with user smartphone and sensor. Also, the light belt on the pump can tell flight attendants whether to wake you up for meal. Controlling air content in the blanket can control human body temperature, promote the secretion of melatonin, thus promote deep sleep, and adjust human biological clock during the flight.

I came to the course from a mechanical engineering background since I wanted to make a difference to people’s lives and could not see much potential for that in my previous field. I enjoyed the course and being able to learn new design skills with classmates from all sorts of walks of life.

The FretFriend

Learning a new instrument can be difficult in the early stages when a student needs more feedback to keep them right. For this reason, I started working on a project which would later become the FretFriend.

The device gets fitted to the fretboard of a stringed instrument and connects to a screen to give the user real-time visuals of what they are doing. This means that they can check that they are holding the right chords without having to split their attention between a sheet of music and their fretboard. Using the screen in this manner allows the learner to get more confident in their fingering and build up their muscle memory playing the instrument.

Additional functionality has been considered which would allow the FretFriend to be used for fingering practice without the use of the instrument, meaning a user could take the device on public transport during a commute and practice chord transitions and handling using their phone for feedback.

The instrument used in developing the product was a four-stringed ukulele, but simple modifications can be made to the design to make it suitable for instruments with more strings, such as an acoustic guitar. Other considerations have been made for left-handed users as a change in orientation may be required for the device meaning that the inputs from the user would need to be inverted.

Making our digital communication more human.
Beyond words, our prosidy, intonation and dozens of other cues serve to derive meaning and empathize during a conversation. Video-calls make it difficult to pick-up on these cues, which can alienate and fatigue the participants.
This product uses ultrasound and optical sensors to capture non-verbal cues and respresents them using vibration, heat and light. It is designed to be centered around a mutual remote activity, which creates a sense of being in the same space. I tested the prototype with multiple users to prove this concept and they reported an enhanced sense of connection and see the potential for this product as a new way to interact online.

Andrés is a Venezuelan Italian product designer. He has experience with medical devices, rapid prototyping, art, and most recently came from the United States where he worked as an engineer in the development of commercial jet engines. He now focuses on human-centered design, with emphasis on a creating a healthy relationship between nature and technology. He is actively seeking positions as a product designer in the UK and Europe.

To see more details on this project and the rest of my work, please follow the link below (GitHub) to see my portfolio

The product is a building game product that helps children with physical isolation contact their peers or friends. Using the combination of physical toys and virtual experience, the remote interaction is achieved by building different building blocks in a cooperative mode. The combination of entity and virtual makes children meet the needs of remote interaction while increasing the sense of participation. When a certain goal is reached, the entity module will give users feedback with different lights, which will increase the fun of physical toys and the interaction between products and children. At the same time, combined with the use of intelligent devices, children can integrate their own toys into the built city and share them with friends, which increases the fun of products and deepens the communication between users.

In solidarity with those embroiled in complaints against GSA we present a collaborative piece of writing that came about as part of a conversation responding to Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s text ‘The university (last words)’ and our own experiences of the institution.

This text is available to listen to as a special edition of the Art Writing Soft Shell podcast here.

///

hang on can’t hear back in a sec 
Radically detach
Rejecting the gowns the dress
I think just stop paying
the feedback is the grades / collective feedback takes its place
If we accept
experience economy
Access to your peers
in a pragmatic way
undermine value of credential
What is required
Using the university as a hermit crab shell
university as hermit crab shell
university as a hermit crab shell
occupy
carapace
Any kind of shell
something useful that can be carried off
steal from the university
Access to each other
beep
you’ve all been expelled
refusing
refusing to end
Refusing the discipline
sticky question
extracted as currency
extracted from you as the university’s currency
Submit awful work
Do your best work in secret amongst each other
do your best work in secret
then you lick it
the university as guard of resource
University as guard to be undermined
break down barriers of access
Disperse them outwards
I can let anyone into a zoom
physical barriers
Robin Hood it
What they hold
authorship
people on the inside giving away for free
Intellectual property
how are those entangled
Property ownership authorship
property ownership authorship
Collective authorship
complicity
Talked out of it by submission
voices that join in with each other
hierarchy of work
Work rises
hierarchy of work
What it means to have an art practice
arts ed capitalises on “my work”
the privilege of being paid to work/research
academics rise
Individuality of submissions
Read by a higher reader
even if working as a collaboration
the individuality of submissions
can’t submit as one
Property–>value
the labour isn’t equivalent
From the beginning we are learnt to say ‘my practice’ ‘my work’
You go in holding this thing
disrupt and defer
the language of “my practice”
a practice of individuation
language of practice is the language of funding applications
we don’t present without names
We don’t present nameless
Naming as a form of violence
naming as ossifying
fixing to commodify
Acknowledgement as first step
Overcoming our complicity
my work/my practice,
What could it become
many many terms
Different ways to conceptualise it and put it into language
what role does language have in all of this
a manifesto
manifesto as movement to a different language
language of movement of criticism
Instead of floating through it
what we understand collectively
our own our practices
maybe just not paying
if you’ve got a problem you assume there’s a specific solution to that problem
Step outside – the potentials get bigger
meet in the car park
Stepping around the problem
increasing surveillance of students
Restriction of access
ways to work around that
movement around the campus is documented
Not a given that that’s okay
surveillance – it’s not a given that that’s ok
you start at group and end at solo
whole artist trajectory is group show towards solo show
start at group and end at solo
Art – start in group move to solo / it’s all pushed that way / it’s a tradition – proponent of larger apparatus of making solo
a larger apparatus of making solo
Abolish the solo show!
(Dorothea Lange, at her big moma retrospective, insisted on including her assistant’s work in it)
Presented to a student, to take part in – take part, scoop
student paying for the conversation / staff being paid to ‘give the conversation | taking part is the language of the university
Conscientious and active students paying
often not lines defined by the students themselves
this weird accountability thing
Its not a mutual thing
staff student ‘relationship’
the beginning of being solidified
We’re in the beginnings of being solidified
the early fizzy stages
it didn’t feel fun anymore
The work, my work, a unit of work
play
Resisting articulation or end
the structures that make things not fun anymore
Sustained practice (SH)
fun and play as subversive strategies
What about anger
what about anger
Anger within play
Play assumes we’re happy
where is anger within play
an indulgence
pastoral care as pull / indulgent
someone to care what you’re doing
you can’t show anger bc you’re getting pastoral care
It puts you in a clinch
play as in mess with it
Other ways to be antagonistic within the structure
it ultimately benefits the uni
Never made the actual work
withheld the work
benefited the course – won prizes
To not make the final product
it is very slippery
that’s not really the fucking point
The inconvenience of anger
the inconvenience of anger and of not playing
Of not giving back
Inconvenience of giving something back that’s not palatable
Not playing
Not user friendly
how do people think it’s different and why
remove reference to it
The institution are uncomfortable so trying to remove reference to them / keep it in house
the idea of looking back
Alumnus are used
alumnus – they let themselves be used
that doesn’t make any sense chronologically
University relying on complacency on a more giant body of students
university relying on complacency of larger body of students
like business does
I’ve just got to get through this
the individuation of it
I’m gonna carve this time out
I’m going to carve this time out
the sacrifices people have made
the sacrifices people have made
money/time
Relies on the sacrifices
A bind
competition, apathy
Some people aren’t in a position to reject it
powerless within that
to be in a specific place
What can we do as a group to disrupt or reject that
on a day to day basis
habitual things
Habitual actions
What habitual things over a long term force change
the privilege to be able to protest
the privilege to be able to protest
it’s about access as well
access to these thought processes
Access to these discussions
organising outwith the institution
Brief moments of interactions have sometimes been more worthwhile than 2 hr seminars
that spontaneous conversation that arises
the stuff that’s around the institution the para
is probably most valuable
The stuff that’s around the institution /the para part of the institution
Those spaces, they’re spontaneous
there’s something and it’s a bit sideways
make the structure make less sense
Let it go let it stop being property
how you articulate where your position in the university is
How you articulate what your position in the university is
what agency or organisation could look like
Let the property go
can ‘an organisation’ not have property
divert you from your aims are usually the three p’s: property, prestige, power
digital exclusion
Who’s left behind
The shifts that have had to happen
Necessary adaptation
false sense of agency
fob us off
Property when it’s not investment
property when it’s not investment
GAS – things are housed there
can an organisation or an institution be a free entity if it doesn’t have property?
keeping that space safe
is the issue not with the property but who controls the use of the property?
How do you make an open and radical accountability process?
a radical accountability process
those issues come up very much in the virtual space
not as free as the university would like you to believe
Property is theft
property as a thing or a space that can be collectively owned
property as something you own and others don’t (property is theft)
it is a long change
decentralising who holds the power
it didn’t just appear as we know it now
Rely on a common thought
I’m such a good product of capitalism
how much I’m a good product of capitalism – following through a structure –
radical complicity
Underpass learning
nowhere to gather
what you fund to keep going
the whole text is an echo in a way

Collectively authored by the current and continuing 19/20 Art Writing MLitt cohort.

IMPORTANT LINKS :

www.pauseorpayuk.org
www.alt-d.online
gsashowcase.net/louie-tyssen/
gsamfa.net/

In solidarity with those embroiled in complaints against GSA we present a collaborative piece of writing that came about as part of a conversation responding to Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s text ‘The university: last words’ and our own experiences of the institution.

This text is available to listen to as a special edition of the Art Writing Soft Shell podcast here.

///
     hang on can’t hear back in a sec
Radically detach
Rejecting the gowns the dress
I think just stop paying
the feedback is the grades / collective feedback takes its place
If we accept
experience economy
Access to your peers
in a pragmatic way
undermine value of credential
What is required
Using the university as a hermit crab shell
university as hermit crab shell
university as a hermit crab shell
occupy
carapace
Any kind of shell
something useful that can be carried off
steal from the university
Access to each other
beep
you’ve all been expelled
refusing
refusing to end
Refusing the discipline
sticky question
extracted as currency
extracted from you as the university’s currency
Submit awful work
Do your best work in secret amongst each other
do your best work in secret
then you lick it
the university as guard of resource
University as guard to be undermined
break down barriers of access
Disperse them outwards
I can let anyone into a zoom
physical barriers
Robin Hood it
What they hold
authorship
people on the inside giving away for free
Intellectual property
how are those entangled
Property ownership authorship
property ownership authorship
Collective authorship
complicity
Talked out of it by submission
voices that join in with each other
hierarchy of work
Work rises
hierarchy of work
What it means to have an art practice
arts ed capitalises on “my work”
the privilege of being paid to work/research
academics rise
Individuality of submissions
Read by a higher reader
even if working as a collaboration
the individuality of submissions
can’t submit as one
Property–>value
the labour isn’t equivalent
From the beginning we are learnt to say ‘my practice’ ‘my work’
You go in holding this thing
disrupt and defer
the language of “my practice”
a practice of individuation
language of practice is the language of funding applications
we don’t present without names
We don’t present nameless
Naming as a form of violence
naming as ossifying
fixing to commodify
Acknowledgement as first step
Overcoming our complicity
my work/my practice,
What could it become
many many terms
Different ways to conceptualise it and put it into language
what role does language have in all of this
a manifesto
manifesto as movement to a different language
language of movement of criticism
Instead of floating through it
what we understand collectively
our own our practices
maybe just not paying
if you’ve got a problem you assume there’s a specific solution to that problem
Step outside – the potentials get bigger
meet in the car park
Stepping around the problem
increasing surveillance of students
Restriction of access
ways to work around that
movement around the campus is documented
Not a given that that’s okay
surveillance – it’s not a given that that’s ok
you start at group and end at solo
whole artist trajectory is group show towards solo show
start at group and end at solo
Art – start in group move to solo / it’s all pushed that way / it’s a tradition – proponent of larger apparatus of making solo
a larger apparatus of making solo
Abolish the solo show!
(Dorothea Lange, at her big moma retrospective, insisted on including her assistant’s work in it)
Presented to a student, to take part in – take part, scoop
student paying for the conversation / staff being paid to ‘give the conversation | taking part is the language of the university
Conscientious and active students paying
often not lines defined by the students themselves
this weird accountability thing
Its not a mutual thing
staff student ‘relationship’
the beginning of being solidified
We’re in the beginnings of being solidified
the early fizzy stages
it didn’t feel fun anymore
The work, my work, a unit of work
play
Resisting articulation or end
the structures that make things not fun anymore
Sustained practice (SH)
fun and play as subversive strategies
What about anger
what about anger
Anger within play
Play assumes we’re happy
where is anger within play
an indulgence
pastoral care as pull / indulgent
someone to care what you’re doing
you can’t show anger bc you’re getting pastoral care
It puts you in a clinch
play as in mess with it
Other ways to be antagonistic within the structure
it ultimately benefits the uni
Never made the actual work
withheld the work
benefited the course – won prizes
To not make the final product
it is very slippery
that’s not really the fucking point
The inconvenience of anger
the inconvenience of anger and of not playing
Of not giving back
Inconvenience of giving something back that’s not palatable
Not playing
Not user friendly
how do people think it’s different and why
remove reference to it
The institution are uncomfortable so trying to remove reference to them / keep it in house
the idea of looking back
Alumnus are used
alumnus – they let themselves be used
that doesn’t make any sense chronologically
University relying on complacency on a more giant body of students
university relying on complacency of larger body of students
like business does
I’ve just got to get through this
the individuation of it
I’m gonna carve this time out
I’m going to carve this time out
the sacrifices people have made
the sacrifices people have made
money/time
Relies on the sacrifices
A bind
competition, apathy
Some people aren’t in a position to reject it
powerless within that
to be in a specific place
What can we do as a group to disrupt or reject that
on a day to day basis
habitual things
Habitual actions
What habitual things over a long term force change
the privilege to be able to protest
the privilege to be able to protest
it’s about access as well
access to these thought processes
Access to these discussions
organising outwith the institution
Brief moments of interactions have sometimes been more worthwhile than 2 hr seminars
that spontaneous conversation that arises
the stuff that’s around the institution the para
is probably most valuable
The stuff that’s around the institution /the para part of the institution
Those spaces, they’re spontaneous
there’s something and it’s a bit sideways
make the structure make less sense
Let it go let it stop being property
how you articulate where your position in the university is
How you articulate what your position in the university is
what agency or organisation could look like
Let the property go
can ‘an organisation’ not have property
divert you from your aims are usually the three p’s: property, prestige, power
digital exclusion
Who’s left behind
The shifts that have had to happen
Necessary adaptation
false sense of agency
fob us off
Property when it’s not investment
property when it’s not investment
GAS – things are housed there
can an organisation or an institution be a free entity if it doesn’t have property?
keeping that space safe
is the issue not with the property but who controls the use of the property?
How do you make an open and radical accountability process?
a radical accountability process
those issues come up very much in the virtual space
not as free as the university would like you to believe
Property is theft
property as a thing or a space that can be collectively owned
property as something you own and others don’t (property is theft)
it is a long change
decentralising who holds the power
it didn’t just appear as we know it now
Rely on a common thought
I’m such a good product of capitalism
how much I’m a good product of capitalism – following through a structure –
radical complicity
Underpass learning
nowhere to gather
what you fund to keep going
the whole text is an echo in a way
///

Collectively authored by the current and continuing 19/20 Art Writing MLitt cohort.

IMPORTANT LINKS :
www.pauseorpayuk.org
www.alt-d.online
gsamfa.net/

I’m a first time art student from Perth who’s been living in Glasgow for the past seven years. During that time I studied Professional Writing Skills at Glasgow College, and English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Strathclyde. Throughout most of that time I was focused on screenwriting and examining bias in journalism, particularly from the far right. I took this masters as an opportunity to do some less structured and more experimental writing, within both formats I was familiar with and those that were completely new. Studying at GSA I found myself thinking a lot about Scottish culture, in particular our nationalism and our kitsch. That thinking led to Shortbread Tins.

Shortbread Tins is a dense twine game that seeks to replicate the feeling of falling into a research wormhole. It’s also a ghost story about Scotland trying to kill you. It can be played here: https://weemanjoe.itch.io/shortbread-tins

In solidarity with those embroiled in complaints against GSA we present a collaborative piece of writing that came about as part of a conversation responding to Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s text ‘The university: Last words’ and our own experiences of the institution.

This text is available to listen to as a special edition of the Art Writing Soft Shell podcast here.

hang on can’t hear back in a sec
Radically detach
Rejecting the gowns the dress
I think just stop paying
the feedback is the grades / collective feedback takes its place
If we accept
experience economy
Access to your peers
in a pragmatic way
undermine value of credential
What is required
Using the university as a hermit crab shell
university as hermit crab shell
university as a hermit crab shell
occupy
carapace
Any kind of shell
something useful that can be carried off
steal from the university
Access to each other
beep
you’ve all been expelled
refusing
refusing to end
Refusing the discipline
sticky question
extracted as currency
extracted from you as the university’s currency
Submit awful work
Do your best work in secret amongst each other
do your best work in secret
then you lick it
the university as guard of resource
University as guard to be undermined
break down barriers of access
Disperse them outwards
I can let anyone into a zoom
physical barriers
Robin Hood it
What they hold
authorship
people on the inside giving away for free
Intellectual property
how are those entangled
Property ownership authorship
property ownership authorship
Collective authorship
complicity
Talked out of it by submission
voices that join in with each other
hierarchy of work
Work rises
hierarchy of work
What it means to have an art practice
arts ed capitalises on “my work”
the privilege of being paid to work/research
academics rise
Individuality of submissions
Read by a higher reader
even if working as a collaboration
the individuality of submissions
can’t submit as one
Property–>value
the labour isn’t equivalent
From the beginning we are learnt to say ‘my practice’ ‘my work’
You go in holding this thing
disrupt and defer
the language of “my practice”
a practice of individuation
language of practice is the language of funding applications
we don’t present without names
We don’t present nameless
Naming as a form of violence
naming as ossifying
fixing to commodify
Acknowledgement as first step
Overcoming our complicity
my work/my practice,
What could it become
many many terms
Different ways to conceptualise it and put it into language
what role does language have in all of this
a manifesto
manifesto as movement to a different language
language of movement of criticism
Instead of floating through it
what we understand collectively
our own our practices
maybe just not paying
if you’ve got a problem you assume there’s a specific solution to that problem
Step outside – the potentials get bigger
meet in the car park
Stepping around the problem
increasing surveillance of students
Restriction of access
ways to work around that
movement around the campus is documented
Not a given that that’s okay
surveillance – it’s not a given that that’s ok
you start at group and end at solo
whole artist trajectory is group show towards solo show
start at group and end at solo
Art – start in group move to solo / it’s all pushed that way / it’s a tradition – proponent of larger apparatus of making solo
a larger apparatus of making solo
Abolish the solo show!
(Dorothea Lange, at her big moma retrospective, insisted on including her assistant’s work in it)
Presented to a student, to take part in – take part, scoop
student paying for the conversation / staff being paid to ‘give the conversation | taking part is the language of the university
Conscientious and active students paying
often not lines defined by the students themselves
this weird accountability thing
Its not a mutual thing
staff student ‘relationship’
the beginning of being solidified
We’re in the beginnings of being solidified
the early fizzy stages
it didn’t feel fun anymore
The work, my work, a unit of work
play
Resisting articulation or end
the structures that make things not fun anymore
Sustained practice (SH)
fun and play as subversive strategies
What about anger
what about anger
Anger within play
Play assumes we’re happy
where is anger within play
an indulgence
pastoral care as pull / indulgent
someone to care what you’re doing
you can’t show anger bc you’re getting pastoral care
It puts you in a clinch
play as in mess with it
Other ways to be antagonistic within the structure
it ultimately benefits the uni
Never made the actual work
withheld the work
benefited the course – won prizes
To not make the final product
it is very slippery
that’s not really the fucking point
The inconvenience of anger
the inconvenience of anger and of not playing
Of not giving back
Inconvenience of giving something back that’s not palatable
Not playing
Not user friendly
how do people think it’s different and why
remove reference to it
The institution are uncomfortable so trying to remove reference to them / keep it in house
the idea of looking back
Alumnus are used
alumnus – they let themselves be used
that doesn’t make any sense chronologically
University relying on complacency on a more giant body of students
university relying on complacency of larger body of students
like business does
I’ve just got to get through this
the individuation of it
I’m gonna carve this time out
I’m going to carve this time out
the sacrifices people have made
the sacrifices people have made
money/time
Relies on the sacrifices
A bind
competition, apathy
Some people aren’t in a position to reject it
powerless within that
to be in a specific place
What can we do as a group to disrupt or reject that
on a day to day basis
habitual things
Habitual actions
What habitual things over a long term force change
the privilege to be able to protest
the privilege to be able to protest
it’s about access as well
access to these thought processes
Access to these discussions
organising outwith the institution
Brief moments of interactions have sometimes been more worthwhile than 2 hr seminars
that spontaneous conversation that arises
the stuff that’s around the institution the para
is probably most valuable
The stuff that’s around the institution /the para part of the institution
Those spaces, they’re spontaneous
there’s something and it’s a bit sideways
make the structure make less sense
Let it go let it stop being property
how you articulate where your position in the university is
How you articulate what your position in the university is
what agency or organisation could look like
Let the property go
can ‘an organisation’ not have property
divert you from your aims are usually the three p’s: property, prestige, power
digital exclusion
Who’s left behind
The shifts that have had to happen
Necessary adaptation
false sense of agency
fob us off
Property when it’s not investment
property when it’s not investment
GAS – things are housed there
can an organisation or an institution be a free entity if it doesn’t have property?
keeping that space safe
is the issue not with the property but who controls the use of the property?
How do you make an open and radical accountability process?
a radical accountability process
those issues come up very much in the virtual space
not as free as the university would like you to believe
Property is theft
property as a thing or a space that can be collectively owned
property as something you own and others don’t (property is theft)
it is a long change
decentralising who holds the power
it didn’t just appear as we know it now
Rely on a common thought
I’m such a good product of capitalism
how much I’m a good product of capitalism – following through a structure –
radical complicity
Underpass learning
nowhere to gather
what you fund to keep going
the whole text is an echo in a way

///

Collectively authored by the current and continuing 19/20 Art Writing MLitt cohort.

IMPORTANT LINKS :
www.pauseorpayuk.org
www.alt-d.online

Claude Chan

Bio: Claude is a curator and researcher from Hong Kong. Her practice is concerned with queer histories, performance, technology and posthumanism, particularly the relationship between human body and technology as a framework for challenging the issues of ontology and anthropocentrism. Her research is centred around interview and conversation, with a focus on the role of the curator within an artist’s practice when facing ethical issues of display.

Recent exhibitions and research include: In/Invisibility: Presence In Performance, co-curated with Carol Dunn, Hannah Braithwaite and Shalmali Shetty (Kelvin Hall, March 2020); Authority & Freedom: Testing the Context, co-curated with Beatriz Lobo Britto, Marianne Vosloo, Dia Cao and Luke Liu (Under M8 Motorway and A804 Phoenix Road, Oct 2019). She has worked for CCA Glasgow through its Art Internship since 2019, assisting the curatorial team on the Cooking Pot Programme (May/June 2020).

Curatorial & Research Statement:

With a strong interest in posthuman art and curatorial practice, my curatorial methodology uses creative discourse as a strategy by conducting interviews with artists and curators as specialists key case studies, from which a layered exploration of experience, theories and narrative may develop.

My Master’s dissertation aims to discuss the concept of posthumanism in terms of exploring changing relationships between technology and the human body as a framework for challenging issues of ontology and anthropocentrism; observing that, the discussion of this topic in contemporary art and curatorial practice remains to be fully charted, and the theoretical research on it is worthy of which to pay attention. By reviewing historical exhibitions concerning the post-human, this research aims to examine the conditions of curating that frame the existence and further development of posthuman art, as well as presenting the desire for body enhancement as a response to expand the imagination and discussion.

My curatorial concerns centre around the moral impact of artistic practice on curatorial practice, seeking to develop a deeper understanding of the attitudes that curators should hold when facing these challenges through my research. By analyzing key case studies in my dissertation, I hope to present a wider view of posthumanism in curatorial practice, which will advance and support my own curation of projects in the future.

Expanded Attitudes is a publication developed collaboratively between curator Hannah Benassi and artists Sean Ellcombe, Naomi McClure, and Masaki Ishikawa. Reflecting on the isolation of lockdown and the restrictions imposed by Covid-19, this publication provides a space for three contemporary painters to reflect on previously completed projects and share new experimental developments of their practices. Focusing on the expanded field of painting and its different working processes, Expanded Attitudes presents a variety of work from linear drawings to three-dimensional models. This publication chronicles the artists’ creative processes during the pandemic while considering changing identities in contemporary painting.

Hannah Benassi is an artist and curator based in Edinburgh. Receiving her BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Benassi has exhibited her work in Dundee, Edinburgh, Kelso, and London. Continuing her studies in Curatorial Practice at The Glasgow School of Art and the University of Glasgow, Benassi’s practice is concerned with contemporary painting in the expanded field, where she focuses on providing curatorial contributions to the development of the artists’ practice. Recently curated exhibitions include: My Truth is your story, co-curated with Shalmali Shetty and Yihang Hu, The Britannia Panopticon (2019), Beyond the Conventions of Painting, Salt Space Gallery (2020); and the digital publication Expanded Attitudes (2020). Working independently and collaboratively with artists and curators, she has also worked for Patricia Fleming Projects in Glasgow assisting the curatorial team with Anne Colvin’s interconnective residency When does a second become a moment? (2020).

Creating communicative spaces through collaborative methods of practice, my curatorial projects perform a levelled working dynamic between artist and curator. My curatorial research stems from my practice as an artist where I explore the changes in contemporary painting to examine how curators are responding to the expansive developments of the artform. Shifting between artist and curator, my curatorial methodology engages in prioritising the working process of the artists and to contribute to the development of their painting practice. Providing a loose framework at the beginning of every collaboration allows me to support interdisciplinary approaches to painting where my aim is to connect with the explorative practice of the artist and their unique identities of contemporary painting.

Instagram: @hannahbenassi

Hannah Braithwaite is a curator and writer working on a Master’s in Curatorial Practice at the Glasgow School of Art. She is currently based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Her previous exhibitions include Looking at People Looking (Or Not Looking) At Art More or Less 1 Mile from Here (2019), (Dis)CONNECT (2018) and an unrealized project with the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow. She holds a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Art History from Concordia University. She is interested in queer archival practices and storytelling, domestic spaces, craft and their political importance.

Her most recent project, having been touched on the surface, is a zine and online appendix for queer women to reflect upon the spaces they inhabit and create. Initiated by Hannah Braithwaite in collaboration with and featuring new writing from Hannah Karpinski and Isabelle Joy-Stephen, the project explores queer friendships, ephemera, and domestic space, inspired in part by José Esteban Muñoz’s text “Ephemera as Evidence”. Ephemera, defined by Muñoz, accounts for the residues of queer life. In having been touched on the surface, ephemera takes the form of sewing patterns, shared clothing, and familiar routines. The zine will be published in a limited run in September of 2020 and will not be available online, rather distributed locally by the collaborators.

The accompanying online appendix shows fragments of the many works that inspired and innfluenced this project. It can be found at surfacezine.tumblr.com.

Kat Zavada (b. 1990, Poland) is an independent curator, researcher and spiritual technocrat based in Glasgow. She uses speculation as a method to investigate radical & fringe concepts. Her current research examines “humans as data beings”, dataveillance and post-work imaginaries.

After her first Master’s in Social Communication at the Pedagogical University of Cracow with a dissertation titled “The political image of the alt-right movement in Poland”, Kat went on to study MLitt Curatorial Practice Contemporary Art at The Glasgow School of Art and the University of Glasgow.

Recent curatorial projects include: Data Beings – collaboration with artisit Letta Shtohryn (in progress), Works On Work – collaborative research platform (ongoing), Hyper Hyper podcast (ongoing). She conducted a research in support of the COP26 related programme during her internship at the CCA Glasgow (disrupted by COVID-19). Kat contributed to the organisation of several arts and culture projects such as Cracow Gallery Weekend (2018), she founded and organised the visual art & experimental music festival Nadmiar/Excess (2017 – ongoing).
Portfolio: www.katzavada.com

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Curatorial Statement ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Curation for me is a form of critical enquiry, knowledge creation and exchange.
I use speculation as a method to investigate fringe or radical topics – to question the present by constructing alternative realities. My process bounces between academic rigour and humour, as I tackle academic themes in a sometimes non-academic manner.

My curatorial process has a rhizomatic structure, an assemblage of the political, economics, sociology, philosophy and pop culture. My research spans neoliberal tech utopias, South China Post’s newsletter, Reddit memes, Reza Negarestani’s tweets and conspiracy theories. I’m intrigued by topics related to post-work, late capitalism, data colonialism and post-Anthropocene imaginaries.

Each new project has its beginnings in a ‘curatorial crush’ which is born out of excitement, uncertainty and true admiration for an artist’s practice. This, I believe, leads to a dynamic collaboration full of challenging discussions and intellectual stimulations. Through my curatorial practice, I strive for genuine relations built upon trust and mutual respect, but foremost, openness to honest feedback and constructive critique.

I don’t have just one curatorial methodology and I do not believe in a one-size-fits-all model. Instead, I approach projects by learning the process and needs of my collaborators. I listen, respond and adjust to find a comfortable and effective way of working for both sides. It is a flexible and empathetic way of working. This creates a solid base that allows for exciting explorations and the creation of new knowledge.

Alison O’Shea is currently based in Cork city, Ireland, currently pursuing the MLitt Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) programme through extended study. Her curatorial and artistic practices’ primary concerns include alternative methodologies of productivity, and creating sustainable practice models through speculative fiction. Recent curatorial projects include; relaxation*, Siuán Ní Dhochartaigh, Glasgow, UK; Over or Under, Molly O’Leary and Dominique Rivard, co-curated with Joe Henry and Cecelia Graham, Glasgow, UK; and Burning Down the House, Cork, Ireland. Her upcoming project a passive house is a collaborative publication and event with her sibling Lily O’Shea and will launch in late November 2020 in Cork city, Ireland.

Lily O’Shea is a visual artist based in Ireland and current artist-in-residence at The Guesthouse Project as part of the INHOUSE initiative, Cork. Her practice is concerned with political questions surrounding the contemporary labourer. This practice involves sculpture, performance, and film, as well as different forms of writing and publishing in varied contexts. Recent group exhibitions include: Rhetoric, Crawford College of Art and Design Online Degree Showcase, Cork, 2020, Villa the End, Berlin Gallery Weekend, Charlottenburg, Berlin 2019, and Art(ist) Film, The Gate Cinema, Indie Film Festival, Cork, 2019.

a passive house takes the last months of lockdown as a satirical artist residency interrogating ideas surrounding creative pursuit, productivity and down-time. A passive house is a house which is truly energy efficient[1], a sustainable and comfortable structure. This publication will comprise of a series of archival material from within the house – a house which is striving to become a passive house – the goal of energy efficiency is still present but for the occupants rather than the structure. The occupants of the space return to share a room for an extended retreat into the house.

The production of this text has simultaneously been a search for a sustainable practice but also an ever-present pressure to create an output to validate the pursuit of a practice. The methodology utilised to create this piece might be considered to be procrastination – in an attempt to understand what this work is, methods such as extended periods of reality TV watching, can drinking and sleeping have been utilised. These methods have now become the material of this object as procrastination has allowed us the time of having very little time whilst simultaneously having this opening up of time due to the blurry boundaries of when this work must be done. The attempt to describe what this labour is, removes some of the irony of calling it labour in that there is now an attempt to co-opt these everyday activities as artistic pursuit. Once the observation of the residents by the residents has begun; the excavation of the everyday, the labour which was being avoided begins.

[1] https://passivehouse.com/02_informations/01_whatisapassivehouse/01_whatisapassivehouse.htm

Beatriz Lobo (b. 1994, Brazil) is a curator, museologist and researcher. An enthusiast of non-hierarchical thinking, she believes in the equality of ideas and non-linear ways of composing and organizing them. Interested in performance art as a form of critique, and guided by a theoretical approach, she works under an intersectional feminist framework. Her most recent research investigates strategies to decolonize the curatorial through Brazilian art practices.

Beatriz holds a BA (Hons) in Museum Studies and her professional experience extends from community-based museums to private collections. For more information, please refer to the website.

DISSERTATION TITLE

Performing Refusal: Lygia Clark’s practice as a decolonial tool within the curatorial

ABSTRACT
Although decoloniality has been a prominent topic in the arts since the 1990s, the major studies and publications on the topic have been led by institutions from the Global North. Despite the increasing amount of exhibitions by artists of colour and other minorities, the internal structures of these institutions are still white-male dominated. This paper introduces Brazil’s political scenario since the 1960s and, under the Black Feminist Poethics methodology, discusses strategies of decoloniality within the curatorial field. By building a parallel between Lygia Clark’s practice and conceptualising refusal aligned with the Practicing Refusal Collective, it proposes refusal as a generative tool. Finally, the research is brought to a contemporary context, presenting the COLERE Project, a curatorial initiative that has emerged to perform the theory and methodology discussed in this very paper. It concludes the fundamental importance of people of colour and other minorities to lead discussions that concern themselves. Ultimately, this paper demonstrates that visibility is not power, suggesting alternative ways of working in the arts, going beyond exhibiting unprivileged artists, and placing them in a role of knowledge production and decision-making instead.

Grace Jackson is a curator and writer from Toronto, Canada, currently based in Glasgow, UK. Presently, Grace is completing her Master of Letters in Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) at the Glasgow School of Art and the University of Glasgow. Her research interests include queer theory; alternative and ephemeral forms of archiving; and curatorial practices based on hope, disappointment, and uncertainty.

Previously, Grace was the director of the Toronto gallery The Zwig Foundation Collection from 2017-2019, where she organised artist talks, community events, and alternative curatorial programs that intended to enliven a static collection with new perspectives and discursive forms of looking and learning. Additionally, she was editor-in-chief of discount magazine, an artist-run publication based out of Toronto from 2015-2018. With discount, Grace led the organising, fundraising, and publication of two successful issues that brought together international artists based on varying themes. Grace completed her BFA in Art History with distinction at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada in 2015.

PROJECT SUMMARY

VIDEO ~ From My Bedroom to Yours: Art History Lessons from an Absolute Nobody and EXTENDED ESSAY ~ Unruly forms of Care: Preserving Humility as a method of Curatorial Resistance

This curatorial project takes the form of both essay and video, using the work of artist Vaginal Davis to unpack traditional curatorial strategies of care.

Vaginal Crème Davis is an LA-born, Berlin-based artist whose artistic practice spans a vast and untameable array of media. Throughout her work, she has applied unpredictable styles, techniques, themes, and venues making her difficult to define or pin-down. Her lengthy career destabilizes notions of gender, race, sexuality, and linearity, as she fluidly moves between progressing forward and returning back to old habits and ideas. As Dominic Johnson explains, “Davis’s personas reject the internal counter-cultural mandate to refuse self-criticism, instead problematizing the functions and assumptions of normative trends within the margins,” (Johnson, 2001). Her conceptual lectures, zines, and drag performances not only move away from standards imposed by mainstream culture, they further seek to undermine standards more generally. Davis continues to challenge her viewers to look for alternatives to current circumstances and new possibilities that are not always evident elsewhere.

Famously described as employing a form of ‘terrorist drag’ by José Esteban Muñoz in 1999, Davis imposes unruly and eccentric concepts upon her audience, often even radicalising ideas that already appear unconventional (Muñoz, 2018, 93). In 2003 Davis explained to her interviewer:

“When it comes to performance art, I am more interested in the failures than the so-called successes. I have never cared for entertaining anyone. My performances may have elements that some may find entertaining, but that’s not my main purpose.” (Bregman, 2003)

Gaining a clear understanding of Davis’s goals is not necessarily possible, as her intentions with each project vary enormously. However, determining the purpose of her work, or trying to grasp it entirely is perhaps beside the point. Davis invites us into a space in which we are not necessarily privy to what is going on; however, we are together in collective discomfort, sharing an uncertainty about how we should feel or what we should think. Angry, messy, humorous, and unkempt, yet always intelligent and thoughtful, Davis’s work activates the politics of her own body, as well as the bodies, spaces, structures, and oppressions that surround her.

Further, Davis’s work offers a powerful avenue through which to explore practices of curating, and therefore caring for art. My video project seeks to both present the work of Vaginal Crème Davis, while also experimenting and exploring avenues of curation that are antithetical to traditional standards of white cubes and academia. Following from Jack Halberstam’s concept of the ‘queer public intellectual,’ the project seeks to undermine boundaries between academic and community-based forms of learning, blending them together and demonstrating their validity harmoniously (Halberstam, 2003, p. 363). The extended essay examines institutionalised curatorial methods that seek profit and cultural capital above the interests of the artists they work with and seeks to demonstrate how Davis’s work is inherently in opposition to such goals. Divergently, the art historical video diary intends to offer a unique counterpoint to institutionalised curating and writing about art. Inspired by Davis’s anarchic and nonlinear practice, curator Grace Jackson comes to us via webcam, taking us through three disparate works by the artist. From the confines of Jackson’s bedroom, we have the opportunity to engage with personal and sensory interpretations of Davis’s work that are indeed bound by fact, yet also by ephemera. The project seeks to demonstrate the fluidity necessary within authentic forms of care, asking us to consider how each artist can offer new ways to interrogate curatorial practices.

Curator’s Biography

Jiaying Cao is a curator and designer from China, currently living in Glasgow. She is adept at turning concepts into reality, and likes to explore different forms, genres and media in both curation and graphic design. She is currently interested in film-making and has also created and participated in the shooting of several short films. Recently, she has been conducting research on curatorial activities in different professional fields, exploring productive ways to present artworks to the public.

She holds a BA in Information and Communications from Shih Hsin University in Taiwan (2019). Recently curated exhibitions include: Monologue: an exhibition about solitude co-curated with Tingzhen Zhang, Weizheng Huang, Weidong Zhuang and Yongru Chen in December 2018 at Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, Taipei; Authority & Freedom: Testing the Context, co-curated with Beatriz Lobo Britto, Pui Ying Chan, Kehan Liu and Marianne Vosloo in October 2019 at M8 motorway pedestrian underpath, Glasgow; and the Online project Dia-Logue, August 2020.

Curatorial statement

My curatorial methodology is based on interview and expanded dialogue. I seek to explore how interviews and online interactions serve to promote art and enable it to reach a wider audience, establishing through these my own curatorial framework.

Most of my curatorial projects include two elements: interactivity and interviews. Interviews have the potential to communicate core ideas about artworks, while interactivity encourages expression and sensory experience. I actively use these two methods to close the distance between art and the audience

Through the practice of interviewing I can learn more about artists and their practices,  have a symbiotic exchange and influence on one another. The format of the interview allows the artist’s voice to be heard, giving the audience a closer understanding of the ideas and intention behind their artworks. Additionally, through the process of interviewing, I can learn about other people’s curatorial experiences, and subsequently through an iterative practice, continually review and find the most suitable curatorial methods for myself.

This interaction with artists and curators builds the internal framework of my curatorial practice. Interactivity can attract audiences to engage with curatorial projects or exhibitions, and through this interaction, the audience is not only a viewer, but also, part of the exhibition experience, hopefully allowing the audience to be completely immersed in it. In turn, breaking the stereotype that art is untouchable, so that art can be accessed and felt by more people.

Project Description:

Dia-Logue is an online project curated by Jiaying Cao. Through the art interview as the main method, this project explores diverse methods for bringing artwork(s) to the public(s) and curatorial workings across different fields. Jiaying firmly believes that the sonic space can draw the audience closer.

The project launched on 3 August 2020 and will continue to develop as a long-term project. Everyone is welcome to join and have a chat with her, to make this project more colourful and abundant as it grows in content and form.

About the Project

Roc Blackblock– Barcelona; KMG – Edinburgh; Priestcorp – Glasgow; Siguel – Poland and Dr. D – London

Running through autumn 2020, Art of Defiance originated in Glasgow as a progression of creative responses centred on the ideas of connection, disruption, influence and change within the period of the Covid-19 pandemic. The project is curated by Marianne Vosloo and has developed through close collaborations with artists spanning a range of backgrounds, whose practices seek to create spaces of resistance and forms of disruption in the physical and digital public spheres in a time of crisis.

Art of Defiance takes the form of a series of poster interventions in advertising sites situated on the walls of the railway arches in Glasgow’s Eastvale Place. This small dead-end street is tucked away in between a diverging point of two railway lines next to an old industrial site, now a multi-disciplinary arts venue called SWG3. In addition, the project takes the form of web postings on social media and a customised website, developed collaboratively with each artist. The project connects a group of visual artists, street artists, aerosol artists and communication designers with overlapping subversive practices. Art of Defiance captures creative reactions to concealed, pre-existing and invisible issues further exposed by the pandemic, personal experiences, contemporary events and public discourse.

The zero in A0D represents artists, practices and voices not fully recognised in the art canon and, those who prefer the shadows of artistic anonymity. At the same time, zero is the new beginning of unlimited possibilities and visions for the future.

Curatorial Rationale

The emergence of coronavirus rapidly grew from a highly infectious disease into a set of circumstances and restrictions worldwide that would affect everything that we know and all aspects of our lives. What surfaced as a result of this turmoil was an unmasking and magnification of social and economic inequalities, with many levels of injustices made visible by an “invisible agent” (‘The Pandemic’s Invisible Agent‘, www.hyperallergic.com). The humanitarian crisis that unfolded simultaneously presented new possibilities to unsettle, subvert and transform systems and structures of power in creative ways, whilst concurrently revealing acts of resilience and new visions for the future.

The development of Art of Defiance started in the street; directly engaging with the strong imagery of placards and protests seen in early 2020. Most memorable was the political graffiti slogans painted in protest onto the monument of the Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, as part of numerous 2020 protests against police brutality in the U.S.A.  The discarded placards around the toppled Edward Colston statue in Bristol similarly highlighted the strong presence of art in protest. This builds on evolving political struggles, acts of intervention to raise awareness of repressive and regressive acts of selfish capitalism, and an emerging satirical theme in activist art. Art in public space continued to emerge resilient and unrestrained, despite pandemic restrictions, while the rest of society viewed it on the internet under lockdown.

The placement of artwork into advertising sites such as billboards and bus stops in the urban environment is a disruption and repurposing of the commercial space. At the same time, the content of artwork created specifically for Art of Defiance is in itself seeking to disrupt, defy and challenge the major social, economic and political manipulations of 2020. A0D is the beginning of a community beyond the local, and which engages in the broader discussions around public art emerging during the pandemic.

Each of the artists has devised a poster intervention considered as an act of defiance in itself, which directly addresses the pandemic period. They have produced a piece of artwork during 2020 whilst remaining in five separate locations in Europe, working under different lockdown restrictions and limitations. The production of the artwork as posters connects with the history of artistic protest posters used at times of major social change.

A0D is both an arts commission and a shift towards a movement in public art. The platform gives a collective voice to artists working in different parts of the world, and that is my contribution as curator. The project goes beyond curating the poster interventions in Glasgow, to try and connect with, and actively contribute to, a broader conversation internationally.

The major global events arising throughout 2020 alongside coronavirus fears, have motivated a surge in activist contemporaneous research across public sites as well as newly formed online artistic platforms, creating an ideal recipe for Art of Defiance: for artists to shout back, to escape the limitations of daily life, and to challenge authority. And possibly to signal the start of a major new cultural revolution?

Curatorial Statement

I am a South African with an extensive interest in subversive and activist art practice, especially in street culture, public space interventions and the involvement of art in pivotal contemporary events. This interest emerged in my formative years in the Limpopo and Gauteng Provinces of South Africa where my awareness of the powerful effect of art in communal space developed into a fascination for art as a disruptive force. My visual experience of art as a tool of protest against the Apartheid regime and as part of a wider internal resistance movement fighting for change, established my desire to seek out art on the unconventional fringes of the mainstream. My curatorial practice explores interdisciplinary connectivity, transformational shifts and social engagement through art with a particular interest in artistic practices identified as marginalised, alternative, or part of DIY urban sub-cultures. My current research-led projects focus on anti-establishment art and creative activism within spaces that seek to defy and undermine dominant systems of influence and control on society.

Biography

Marianne Vosloo is a freelance curator, artist and event organiser, and an arts programmer at SWG3, Glasgow. She is the co-organiser of Yardworks, an annual multi-disciplinary live arts event at SWG3, showcasing Visual Art, Street Art, Design, Typography and Aerosol Art in public space. Marianne has a degree in Art History and Visual Communication from the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Recent exhibitions include Authority & Freedom: Testing the Context (Underneath M8 motorway and A804 Phoenix Road, Glasgow, 2019) co-curated with Beatriz Lobo Britto, Jiaying Cao, Kehan Liu and Pui Ying Claudia Chan, and Control Alter Delete (The Photography Studio, SWG3, Glasgow, 2020). The latter event linked the work of a satirical artist, illustrator and writer, a subvertiser and visual activist, painting and printmaking students and a street artist to showcase overlapping subversive responses to structures of power and authority.

Hu Yihang is a “silent” pseudo curator and radical post-idealist in a sense. His practice investigates “redundant events” arising from the ontological contradiction of ideological intervention in communities; His recent research centres on the reconstruction of the body caused by epistemological and aesthetic conflicts, the ontology of organic bodies and digital simulacra and the dialectic of texts as visual and phonetic act in the exhibitions.

He is also a co-founder of curatorial community /nfornonsense/ & founder of /Stray Dogs’ Garden (野犬花园)/ & 1/3 of curatorial collective /the_bricolage/.

Recent produced exhibitions include: /My Truth is Your Story/ (Britannia Panopticon Music Hall, November 2019), co-curated with Hannah Benassi and Shalmali Shetty; (online project, March 2020); /Phenakite are Forever/ (online project, August 2020); /Bon Voyage/ (Wooton Gallery, January 2021).

yihang.hu29@gmail.com
Instagram: @yihanginthewild

visit my website and follow my Instagram for more work

Born in the northern city of China, Tianjin, I am a contemporary artist who specializes in the use of image media. Personal research and artworks involve visual experience, information communication, etc. At the same time, as a Chinese artist, I also pay special attention to the differences in the origins between eastern and western cultures and tries to practice contemporary art with Chinese-style philosophical logic, so as to enrich contemporary art. Besides, I have a professional background in IMS, so I am also interested in algorithm art and generative art.

Photography and its territories. Forming a repository which continues to evolve throughout the years, my work frequently positions itself in the (ever-)shifting space between the photographic root and the limits of what photography can mean and be. Expressing myself using an interdisciplinary approach, in which I embrace process and materiality, the rhythm and connected diversity of the works reflect my life and art.

Works displayed here are from my Glasgow School of Art Masters submission, to view my other work, please visit my website (link below).

A Chinese fine artist. Within a wide range of the exploration of art, his artworks include installation art, video, oil painting, photography and more. His distinctive personal style emanates nostalgic emotions and oppressions, while expressing the cultural dilemma and cultural autonomy under globalization.

More works and Info can be found on my website.

Exploring island living (both actual and perceived) through a contemporary art lens, my painting, textiles and digital interventions merge object and experience. Through collaboration I form relationships and conversations between material, place and people to question single artist ownership.

As an island artist, the internet acts as an integral disseminator to my work, to broadcast my practice and reconsider both the art audience and the gallery space — challenging the art worlds reliance on being physically present.

Since the onset of Covid-19 I have been actively campaigning against GSA mismanagement and the lack of support and care they have shown toward their students. For more information, visit https://www.pauseorpayuk.org

For more of my work, follow the links below:

Since 1880, we’ve lost two thirds of our ocean’s fish biomass and if nothing changes we could lose 60% of our ocean species by 2100. Coronavirus led to a collapse in fish exports and many people’s livelihood is being used as a bargaining chip in Brexit negotations.

Within this context, I sought to ask: what is the future of our ocean industries and how might we take a more regenerative approach to harvesting our oceans?

To divine this knowledge I asked experts who work in sustainable fishing advocacy, seaweed harvesting and government bodies. I learned about Integrated Multi-trophic Aquaculture(IMTA): a means of growing edible seaweeds next to shellfish in a way that cultivates biodiversity by drawing new fish and plantlife to areas where it’s cultivated.

I then worked with budding crofters and people who fantasised about escaping from the city to navigate what they wanted and how they might take steps to reify their fantasies. There wasn’t an awareness of the possibilities that were available.

I propose an informational campaign that would help those who want to work closer to nature to take clear steps to starting an IMTA farm.

After finishing my BA in Industrial Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, I pursued a Masters in Design Innovation & Citizenship at The Glasgow School of Art. Together with my partner Kat Zavada, we organise Nadmiar/Excess – contemporary art and experimental music festival. I was part of the editorial board of Formy.xyz – Poland’s first peer-reviewed design journal (2018–2019). I held design roles at Ergo Design and Comarch. Together with Tillman Kratzer and Kat Zavada, we are preparing to launch Works On Work – a collaboration space for people pursuing projects related to the topic work.

For me, Design isn’t necessarily about finding a solution nor about solving problems. It is about creating space or situations where conflicting views and power relations can be discussed and renegotiated. I oppose the idea of the designer as a facilitator who seeks consensus between different actants, for it blurs authorship and what follows – responsibility. My practice is not about creating consensus or pleasing all parties. On the contrary, I see great value in conflict and dissensus as vehicles for liberation.

My master’s thesis looks at the idea of wellbeing appropriated by the contemporary mainstream managerial discourse, where employees’ happiness is perceived as something to be quantified, managed, and used as a productivity-enhancement strategy.

In opposition to the dogmatic aesthetic representations happiness related to a neoliberal moral fantasy imposed by those in the position of power, I propose taking a step back to anticipate and celebrate the spontaneous, unmanageable sources of joy and satisfaction resulting from autonomy.

The project aims to document minor everyday activities, techniques and coping strategies that go against the managerial regime – micro-disobediences that give one a sense of autonomy. Some examples may include: binge-watching Netflix during work time, taking unnecessarily long breaks, choosing different routes than the algorithm decides, being intentionally mean to your customer, acting grumpy when everybody is overenthusiastic or perhaps not participating in socials. And through these ‘coming-outs’ create a space free of slack-shaming and overstepping guilt.

With this project, I want to provoke a further conversation about work dogma and the spiritual violence of positivity at work. Unguilty Pleasures is an (auto)therapeutic tool for many working people, including myself.

I am Mugdha Patil, a graduate of the Master of Design in Design Innovation and Citizenship course at the Glasgow School of Art. I completed my undergraduate studies with a Bachelor of Design degree in Furniture Design from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad (NID). I am a designer who believes in making social change through people-centered and people-led actions and policies. I design services, products, product-services, and experiences that promote social, ecological transformation by applying research that focuses on people and the ecosystems (social, cultural, economic, psychological as well as physical) they occupy.

Citizenship for me means having a sense of belonging to a society. Design can help bring that about. I believe that taking into consideration the needs of an ecosystem as a whole gives us an opportunity for creating lasting change that is not just environmentally sustainable but also economically feasible and socially equitable. I believe that the design process has a thousand endings; it simply doesn’t end with a product and I continue to absorb its messages and meanings beyond that.

About the project.

My project, The Design of Dissent, combines public pedagogy and participatory design to create a Museum of Dissent. The final proposal made is that of a co-curated and co-created space where citizens can educate themselves about the various ways of critically participating in government, engage in the causes they believe in, and commemorate people’s power and struggles from the past.

The overall aim of this project is to identify how citizens perceive their duty of participation in government, especially in terms of dissent and our civic education on this particular topic. My focus is especially on the process of collective legacy-making, trust in institutions, and different approaches to critical civic participation, in times of protest and social change.

Following a qualitative case study + participatory design approach, this research intends to build a rich in-depth investigation focusing on how civic education is realized in our political lives and how critical sentiments are expressed by the citizenry, through the use of interviews, workshops, surveys, and document analysis. The results of this project are intended to bring more clarity to the ‘design’ of dissent, legacy of people’s movements, people’s trust in institutions (or lack thereof), and the viability of leaderless social movements.

My name is Imanina. I’m a designer interested in designing for a post-capitalist society.

My most recent work explored media and democracy in the UK and looked at how alternative, citizen-owned media might provide a voice for the mis- and under-represented groups in society.

I’m keen to further explore how design might be used as a catalyst for social good, that is accessible for all and not just an elite few.

I originally graduated from a Graphic Design Masters orientated towards social matters. I developed a background in print and editorial design. My practice is now focusing on research, social design and community-based projects. I am interested in looking at how design can support emancipation but also how design relates to politics and democracy.

My Master’s research project looks at political representation and democratic processes. It challenges the concept of representation and majority as effective forms of democracy and proposes different frameworks for democracy and civic engagements.

Because politics is often pictured as a complex topic only accessible for experts to discuss, instead, I tried to look at it with a didactic approach.

The research presents two complementary approaches “From the System to the People” and “From the People to the System”. Ultimately, what I am asking is how to represent multiplicity? What are the obstacles and problems of representation? Why do they exist and how to go around them?

I first attempted to define the French political system of representation in principle and in practice as a case study. I looked at its history, philosophy, practices and the roles played by experts and public institutions hoping this will enable me to identify entry points or short-circuit for change and civic engagement.

As my research perspective shifted I realised people were affecting the system themselves. I researched around the problematics of participation and how, why, when and by whom they are currently fostered. I identified different discourses around participation relating to different ideologies.

To get perspective, I searched for analogies. I compared network theories, animal and vegetal philosophies with the different discourses and ideologies around participation and with the way our social and political systems function. This allowed me to anchor my topic in a wider ecosystem and to compare current interactions and modes of assembling, of co-existence, and see what can be improved or challenged.

If you would like to know more about my work, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

A Fashion and Textiles Educator currently working at BPS Secondary College in Mauritius. As a fashion and textiles teacher she has always promoted the Green concept in students project work.

With a Bachelor degree in textile and fashion, she is always interested into studying the properties of fabric, basics of colour and texture.

This project began as an exploration of fabric construction methods.

It involves engaging stakeholders and collaborators in the processes of designing, making and testing of textiles. The strategy used is upcycling of fabric remnants sourced from the local textile mill in Elgin. The approach to upcycling, with which this practice is aligned, treats the textile source as laden with information that guides the form of new fabrics out the textile waste. Subsequently, the fabrics were sent for testing in Portugal for the creation of Almalaguês- Spanish sneakers.

Awarded as a Highly Commendable project in September 2020 for the SIE Fresh Idea Competition.

This project used design as a medium to explore the significance of ordinary furniture to residents’ daily life and the feasibility of sustainable development of furniture.

As a necessity of residents’ daily life, furniture hides many unknown stories and secrets and also carries emotions of different users. Every piece of furniture has a special meaning for everyone. However, the fast-paced life of modern society makes the circulation of products faster, and the replacement rate of furniture is increased so waste is inevitable. It is regretted that many furniture worthies of being preserved are therefore neglected and then abandoned. The reason for its waste is not only because of damaged furniture, style changes, and residents’ relocation but also ignore daily furniture and the lack of environmental awareness. Although there are endless related education projects, how to implement residents’ behaviours into daily life is the pinpoint of this project.

This project traced the circulation process of furniture, explored and redefined the meaning of furniture to residents, and finally designed a solution to extend the service life of furniture accordingly.

Dialect heritage aims to protect and promote dialect heritage. It focuses on remote communities in Scotland for their decline number of dialect speakers. Also, the research concentrate on Doric language as research example and the final outcome is related on it. The final outcome visualizes the idea of ‘dialect heritage make up a part of cultural heritage in the community’.In addition, this board game can be used as a catalyst, with youngsters meeting up with older native Scots speakers. During this process, youngsters have the opportunity to discover and begin to use new words, and the speakers found their inheritors and pass on their dialect knowledge. It could solve the problem of fewer dialect inheritors in remote communities.

With a curious mindset to unpick and discover hidden opportunities for design intervention, Fanechka seeks to understand behavioural insights from psychologists and scientists to nudge people towards a more sustainable form of living. Can Design play this role when assessing behaviours of communities collectively? She has a previous background in the interior design and architecture sector with her focus now shifted on projects that aim to understand the social and cultural complexity directly influenced by various biases, social norms and spaces.

Fanechka’s Final Project:  How might we promote pro-environmental behaviours to create sustainable neighbourhoods?

Communities and Climate Change are complex challenges that force us to act in a certain way due to various systemic issues. Based on the COMB model tool provided by the behavioural insights team in London, I directed my research to find motivators and opportunities that drove people to act a certain way.
Understanding and analysing these behavioural insights to drive social change has moulded this project.
Making the language of climate action and environmental sustainability more inclusive and accessible to groups of people from various class structures had built the foundation of this project. Can we multiply and amplify certain behaviours to create a new and pronounced sense of identity to those communities that are tied with complexities? This project does not intend to focus on one specific behaviour, as sustainability is a journey with one success action resulting in us taking the next action – this was uncovered through various forms of research.

Visualizing the whole community as a complex system within which a collection of design interventions take place would help in the shift towards adopting sustainable lifestyles. Collective behaviours could then influence individuals due to social norms or perceived values.
As the local council carefully creates change to its infrastructures it needs to also ingrain behaviours within this system simultaneously to have the community working as an ecosystem.

Proposal:   WHITE CITY CARES
The design outcome considers behaviours projected by citizens of a social housing estate in London. Based on these behaviours, there are 3 different parts that work in cohesion to instil certain values among residents i.e pro-environmental.

‘White City Cares’ inspires and empowers people from different backgrounds, cultural values and upbringings to inspire, learn and take action individually or collectively to help live as a part of the ecosystem.

Brief detail on the design process is mentioned under each slide.

I am a visual communication designer based in Seoul, South Korea. My current interests and practice are in socio-environmental design, especially focusing on the possibilities of collective changes that individuals’ behaviour can foster.

This project ‘Empathy-derived recycling model’ opens up the opportunities of personal connection between refuse collectors and the general public, for residents’ better understanding of what results their behavioural decision on waste disposal could cause. The research explores people’s cognitive and environmental behaviour change when no one intends to cause environmental harms but far too much waste that could easily be recycled is going to landfill. The system highlights the significant environmental impact of correct recycling and putting the stuff in the right bins, and the intrinsic drive for such waste disposal behaviour can be improved by building up the familiarity with refuse collectors.

“Please try your utmost to separate and wash. It’s not just us you are helping. It’s yourself in the future.” – Mr. C, Refuse collector

The Exploding School: The Potential for Outdoor Learning and Play Space in Dublin’s North East Inner City along the Royal Canal

Please find a short image diary of my process and outcomes at the bottom of this text.

Background and overview of project:

Note on Language: NEIC refers to the North East Inner City of Dublin, a geographical area with a population of over 18,000 people.

Covid-19 has exposed the quality and accessibility of our public spaces in Dublin. When schools in the Republic of Ireland closed on March 12th to prevent the spread of Covid-19,  the availability of outdoor space was thrown into stark relief. It was my assumption coming into the research that the NEIC was already suffering from a lack of public spaces and invitations to spend time in the area outside of commercial spaces. It was also my belief that this lack of possibility to freely gather outside without spending money disproportionately impacts young people.

I chose to focus my research on the needs of schools in the NEIC as major stakeholders who would benefit from an increase in outdoor playspace, interviewing teachers in the local community and young people who live and go to school in the area.  Through engaging with schools I found that space for schools in the NEIC is critical not just to facilitate play and engagement during Covid-19, but also to provide space to play for pupils, many of whom do not have gardens or are living in temporary emergency accommodation due to the acute rental and public housing crisis in Ireland.

Space to play and the possibility of learning through play is a vital aspect of a young person’s wellbeing and development. However research also shows its relationship to the wellbeing of the broader community. In particular, play in public space, either on pavement, the street, the immediate public realm has been shown to have a vital role in breaking down social isolation.

In the existing literature written on improving a young person’s experience in the NEIC, we often see a heavy focus on preventing “anti-social” behaviour and increased police presence. However the effect of this fear of people gathering outside has been to remove many places to rest or gather outdoors, leaving more vulnerable street users such as older people, children, people with specific mobility needs at a loss for space in the city.

When it comes to a young person’s experience of the city at street level in the NEIC, we do not find many playful touchpoints in the immediate public realm. Through speaking to teachers and young people themselves, I found many young people who live and go to school in the NEIC carry negative associations with the urban environment, often associating it with rising levels homelessness due to the ongoing housing crisis in Ireland. Many also associate it with negative interactions with police, experiencing or witnessing racism, or being hit by traffic.

A lack of public space which invites play and is accessible to young people leaves us with the self perpetuating narrative of anti social behaviour – if the urban environment is solely to be used for commerce or travel, we face the problem that anyone spending time in it who is not performing these roles is at risk of being seen as acting in an “anti social” manner.

To address this, I am proposing built interventions into the Royal Canal to create new opportunities for play and pedagogical engagement with the city.

As Ward and Fyson write in Streetwork: The Exploding School:

“Just as the school should be open to the community, so should the community be open to the school. All resources of the community are educational resources.” [Fyson, Ward, 1975]

I chose to visualise this possibility through the introduction of mooring points along a specific stretch of the Royal Canal. The site was picked after a process of mapping the schools and distribution on young people in the area. The Royal Canal was built in the 1700’s as a motorway of its’ time, to link Dublin port with North western counties, however it is now largely used for foot and bike travel. Focusing on the water of the canal based on young people’s observations around it, I chose to imagine mooring points for activities like boat racing and raft building, and as spaces that could add focus to the huge biodiversity of the canal beds.  Collecting and building objects is a tradition in the inner city particularly around October and halloween when bonfires are lit. These skills could be brought to raft building, or attention could be brought to the huge amount of native plants which grow along the canal as pedagogical activities and embodied learning.

I went through several stages of research from critical inquiry and interviews, to quantitative mapping of the area, to ethnographic observation and workshops with young people who live and go to school in the area.

It is the hope of my project that I will use the work and insights gained to build a proposal for a community build project in partnership with a youth project in the area. I am currently working on the proposal for this, and would be interested to hear of any similar community based building projects happening in the UK or Ireland.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to my project in particular the young people who took part in the workshops and teachers who gave their time to talk to me. For any further information or to read more about my process, please feel free to email me at rosi.j.leonard@gmail.com

Hi, I’m Maja! In a previous life I was a physics grad but I realized I was more passionate about studying and helping people through design. My main interests are in public space as an arena for tactile democracy, encounters, and explorations. I aim to examine this through an analytical yet playful approach.

My master’s project, Serendipity in the City, looked at the city through the lens of “designing for serendipity”. I saw serendipity as a possible antidote to physical filter bubbles, routine, and strictly functionalist uses of space.

Through a series of discussions and walks, I explored the meanings of serendipity, community, connection and strangership with a range of people. The project identified 4 key areas to consider when building for serendipity, and proposed a freely accessible publication to inspire and empower citizens to form new relationships with their surroundings.

The full report can be viewed here.

Coming from a Product Design background in Politecnico di Torino I am now finishing a MA in Innovation Design and Environmental Design.

The following study explores what the digital support for mental health is, and the relationship that people have with it. The research is based on interactions with people connected with mental health support. Different methods were used to get information from the people, such as digital interactive workshops and video interviews.

Stage1. Observation. The first step in the research came from the analysis of the current online support for mental health. This observation was intended to be a starting point in the understanding of the topic, and at the same time it has turned out to be the beginning point for the understanding of the problems connected to this service.

Stage2. DeskResearch. The literature was done to better understand the potential of the digital tools in the mental health sector, following the citations and the references from other articles in the same field. The study of the literature concluded in the analysis of different therapies ( CBT, ACT ) used in the digital online services, and of the digital tools used by therapists as extra tools for their sessions.

Stage3. Interviews. The interviews were done to experts of the field to receive their viewpoint of the digital mental health support compared with the more traditional face to face therapy. During the lockdown therapists were obliged to use digital media to get in touch with their patients and conduct their sessions. The feedback from the therapists interviewed were absolutely positive and encouraging for the future of the sector. A therapist though underlined the problems about the accessibility of digital mental health, especially for the lack of safe places where to do online sessions, as reported by some of his patients.

Stage4. Workshop. The workshop was meant to get information and experiences from the users of the mental health support and digital mental health support. It was a fully online and interactive workshop designed to help people to speak about their personal experiences in an open way, ensuring the maximum privacy. The results were, again, focused on the problems of accessibility of different online services, above young adults leaving with family, not feeling at ease to have online sessions with the possibility of someone hearing from another room.

Stage5. Modelling. The designing of the intervention came exactly from the problem found in the previous research: the accessibility of digital mental health. This idea consists in a net of SafeRooms to be located in cities and urban areas. A SafeRoom is simply a room in which your privacy is guaranteed, where it is possible to access the digital support systems that already exist online. Inside these rooms you can find all the tools you might need during a complete digital session. To be free and open this net of rooms will be placed in public and open spaces. Libraries, schools and universities are the best locations, but there could be many others. The important thing is to give people a safe place where they can feel comfortable while having mental health support.

The renderings of the intervention were given to the participants of the workshop to get feedback, that were positive and people were giving interesting stimuli for future possibilities of this service.

Conclusion. This journey brought to the definition of a problem that some people are facing now and probably more people will in the future. The intervention is just the first step to try to resolve this situation, but is a good base for further research.
The next steps for this design project are to keep organizing workshops with users to codesign the layout of the SafeRooms and their more suitable locations. Another extremely important perspective is that the initial concept was based on the idea “to make mental health support in step with the times of technology”.This project has to be fluid and able to change as fast as technology evolves.

‏More information in the attached document

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