Articles

Finding Time: How it is Made Visual Artists Newsletter

Brian Fay — Tue, 07 May 2013 07:40:44 PDT

FINDING TIME

Brian Fay outlines the processes and concepts underpinning his practice

Macromedia Director Audio Project Research - Written Report

Peter Dee — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 03:15:20 PDT

A written report about the Director Audio Project: Underground Sound to include the four headings of control of audio, thematic coherence, management of assets and originality of approach / design rationale. The Underground Sound Director Audio Project is about contemporary black music in an urban setting. Images of old and young captured in the environment in which they live.

Design Principles: Attractive Bias Written Report

Peter Dee — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 07:05:16 PST

A written report to analyse two objects in relation to the principle of attractiveness bias; one of which supports this design principle and one which does not.

Design Principles: Continue with Critiquing :Written Report

Peter Dee — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 00:30:25 PST

A written report about an object which is considered to be an example of good design focusing on two principles of design; aesthetic usability effect and affordance.

Director Transporting Project: Written Report

Peter Dee — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 00:30:24 PST

A brief written report about the mini Director Project: Transporting - to include the four headings of rollover buttons, buttons that link to external movies, embedded fonts and external casts. The Transport Director Project is all about a city in motion. It can relate to any city around the world and ties in with various means of transport available to the public in the city, to get from the proverbial ‘A to B’.

Short Animation Project Written Report

Peter Dee — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 02:55:12 PST

A brief written report about a short animation project to include the four headings of thematic coherence, walking animation, talking animation and title credits.

Movie Web Project Written Report

Peter Dee — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 01:45:16 PST

A brief written report about the Movie Web Project 'Something There' to include four headings of control of media, thematic coherence and originality, navigation and use of code. The project involved the design and development of a Flash-based website to promote a new fictitious movie 'Something There' by two new Irish Movie Makers, Alan Fletcher and Salvador Robinson also known as 'Al + Sal'.

My dog Patch! Website Written Report

Peter Dee — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 02:30:21 PST

A brief written report about the My dog Patch! Website and to include the four headings of navigational functionality, file structure, thematic coherence and use of code.

The My dog Patch! Website is designed as part of the Mini_Website_project_brief given by Dr. Brian Keegan as part of the Dublin Institute of Technology MA in Digital Media Technology Programme.

Disassembly

Todd McLellen — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 09:55:59 PST

My interest in the real has always been present and I try to mix my work with that. In my series disassembly, I have used old items that are no longer used by the masses and often found on the street curbs heading for disposal. All of the items in the photographs were in working order. The interesting part was the fact that they were all so well built, and most likely put together by hand. I envisioned all the enjoyment these pieces had given many people for many years, all to be replaced by new technology that will be rapidly replaced with half the use that these were once getting. I had shot two scenarios. In the first where they were all laid out in the order in which they were taken apart, almost like a family portrait. Everything was taken out in sections as they came out of the objects. I was very cautious with the pieces and made 100% sure none were lost in the process. They were all laid out in the same fashion. I tried to stay true to the organisation in a way that it would look like if you magically swiped your hands across the image they would all fit into place. Of course I had to take some creative steps. In the second scenario, I thought of it as setting the parts free. The parts were placed strategically on a board near the ceiling then dropped. Using the newest and fastest technology in strobe lighting I was able to freeze the pieces mid-frame. After many attempts I was able to achieve the design that I had envisioned. Finding the pieces after each drop was no easy task and was a lengthy process. Again I stayed true and made sure every piece was accounted for.

Buttering up the British: Irish Exports and the Tourist Gaze

Mary Ann Bolger — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 09:28:20 PST

This paper argues that the advertising of Irish exports in the 1960s provided for their consumers a form of ‘tourism without travel’. (1) This concept is borrowed from Mark McGovern, who uses it to describe the experience of the consumer of the ‘Irish pub experience’ in his article ‘”The cracked pint glass of the servant”: the Irish pub, Irish identity and the tourist eye’ in Michael Cronin and Barbara O’Connor (eds) Irish tourism: image, culture, and identity. Clevedon; Buffalo, N.Y.: Channel View Publications, 2003 In particular, Kerrygold butter acted as an especially authentic souvenir of Ireland because it was, as the ads still claim today, ‘made of Ireland’.

On Creativity

Kerry Meakin — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 09:26:13 PST

A review of available literature on creativity was undertaken to determine the definition of creativity, the common traits displayed by those perceived as being creative and how those traits may possibly be nurtured. The word ‘creativity’ has been used by politicians as if it is tangible commodity that must be developed in time of economic recession. Indeed, Dublin City Enterprise Board, a local government authority are in the process of staging ‘Idea Generation’ workshops, “this workshop not only shows you what ideas are good ideas but also introduces you to the concepts of thinking laterally” (Dublin Regional Authority, 2011). The Science Gallery in Trinity College, Dublin has held a series of events called Connector Brainstorm. “Einstein once said ‘We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.’ Age old policies need new age thinking and with this in mind our team of experts came up with some radical suggestions on how the future of Irish politics and economy should be ran.” (Lynch, 2010). The elusive commodity of creativity and creative thinking has been heralded as the panacea to rescue us from the grip of the recession. But what defines creativity? What are common traits? And can we nurture them?

Motionless Monotony: New Nowheres in Irish Photography

Colin Graham — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 09:22:41 PST

‘But my mind was too confused … so with a kind of madness growing upon me, I flung myself into futurity … What strange developments of humanity, what wonderful advances upon our rudimentary civilization, I thought, might not appear when I came to look into the dim elusive world that raced and fluctuated before my eyes. I saw great and splendid architecture rising about me, more massive than any buildings of our own time, and yet, it seemed, built of glimmer and mist … the earth seemed very fair. And so my mind came round to the business of stopping.’

So The Time Traveller in H.G. Wells’s novella The Time Machine recounts his experience of temporal speed — as the fluctuation of landscape. In Wells’s often relentless fascination with the possibilities of ‘progress’, future time is made real as architecture, and as the eradication of landscape and its replacement by the ever larger and more complex reshaping of the material environment.

Reconsidering the Avant-Garde Through Ritual

Clodagh Emoe — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 09:16:16 PST

This essay seeks to challenge, albeit in a modest capacity, the ostensible understanding of the avant-garde as a failed project. While acknowledging the criticisms arguing the failure of the avant-garde to motivate a new social order by leading cultural commentators, such as Raymond Williams and Peter Bürger, this essay follows critic Hal Foster’s retroactive model of art and theory to reconsider the avantgarde under conditions of enquiry that focus on the enactment of alternate modalities — this being ritual theory. A key concern of Fosters “new articulation” of the avant-garde is an understanding of the critical capacity of art by its potential in forming contestatory moments and spaces. (1) Foster, The Return of the Real, The MIT Press, 1996, p. xviii. Rather than considering the avant-garde as a failed project it seems more productive to encounter this from a trans-historical perspective, beyond a chronologically rooted position. This reconsideration is carried out by revisiting the night of the première of Ubu Roi, at the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre on 10th of December 1896, a pivotal moment in the early avant-garde through the “synchronic” rubric of ritual theory. (2) Foster uses the terms diachronic and synchronic to imply a historical and social axes (respectively) in art and theory. The ritual as an anthropological interpretation of a symbolic and cultural apparatus provides a theoretical vantage point to tease out the complexity and potential of artistic forms, exemplified in this essay by the première of Ubu Roi, and initiate a reconsideration of the project of the avant-garde as mobilizing the condition and space of potential.

Word and Place in Irish Typography

Brian Dixon — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 09:11:26 PST

Toponomic typography, or place-name typography, is not, in any sense a formal discipline. It is, however, common for typographers to find themselves setting the names of locations and settlements within a diverse range of projects. Wayfinding solutions, public transport information material and road signage are but some examples of the instances in which the designer is required to represent and visually interpret those words which mean so much to so many.

Can Design Thinking Have a Social Life Through Networking?

Brenda Duggan — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 09:09:36 PST

‘The design process is best described metaphorically as a system of spaces rather than a predefined series of orderly steps. The steps demarcate different sorts of related activities that together form a continuum of innovation’. (Brown, 2008, 4) This paper addresses two different spaces for examining design thinking — the design research notebook and the digital space, the topic-driven blog. The premise for this paper arises from teaching digital media on a visual communication programme. I wanted to ask the question from my perspective as an educator — if the individual research notebook is a convention or vehicle for design thinking within a print technology culture, could the use of group-blogs provide a space, acting as a continuum or counter balance, in addressing design thinking in a digital networked culture? Can design thinking have a social life, through networking? This paper will examine the ‘different sorts of related activities’ that takes place in design thinking through the design research notebook and the group blog. Through the use of both for articulating design thinking — can we blur the boundary between private and public space?

Reappraising the Disappearing Body and the Disembodied Eye Through Multisensory Art

Maria Coleman — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 06:54:49 PDT

This paper examines the mind/body dualism inherent in western culture, tracing some causes and consequences of the ‘disappearing body.’ It considers the complicity of the ‘disembodied eye’ in privileging the intellect over corporeality and proposes the more holistic approach of interactive and installation art as an antidote to this age-old mind/body split.