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1.10. Architecture of slowness: reflecting on the actions of historical repetitions and loops

Seminar on the 6th July 2022

Source: MButcher

Architecture of slowness: reflecting on the actions of historical repetitions and loops

The presentation focuses on two of Butcher’s recent design projects: the Silt House and Monument to Superstudio. The central aim of this focus is to present how the methodologies used in the design of these works offer alternative architectural design processes to certain contemporary architectural discourses and practices that have emerged from specific philosophical legacies of Modernity. These discourses and practices continue to promote a need for technological progress and efficiency in the design and construction of architectures. This exists in the way the profession of architecture should place greater emphasis on certain design processes focused on computation and cybernetic discourse. These processes not only reduce the space and time for critical reflection but also seek tight allegiance with determinist logics of the market, to drive efficiency in the production of architecture.

As a means of questioning this, the presentation aims to explore how one might propose an architecture of slowness, a concept that, emerged from a reading of Bruno Latour in his essay An Attempt at a ‘Compositionist Manifesto’ where the philosopher invites us to acknowledge that the ‘time of time […] has passed ’(Latour, 472) and that with this acknowledgement we must embrace a slowness so we can look around, feel and see the world in order to be more aware as we move forward. To help manifest this notion of slowness the chapter will focus on different methodologies of design that seek direct reciprocity with, and reflection on, historical architectures. These processes include performative modes of drawing that seek to mime and re-enact historical works of architecture and art.

Bruno Latour, ‘An Attempt at a “Compositionist Manifesto”,’ 471-490.

Matthew Butcher is an academic and designer. His work has been exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2009 and 2011), The Architecture Foundation Gallery, London (2011); The Architectural Association, London (2011); Prague Quadrennial, Prague (2011); V&A Museum, London (2012); Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York (2012) and Betts Project, London (2020). In 2020 His work was included in the Architecture Foundation’s publication New Architects 4 which showcased the work of the best architectural designers and practices currently working in the UK. Butcher has contributed articles and papers for journals including Conditions, Architecture Research Quarterly (ARQ), the RIBA Journal and Architecture Today. He was Guest Editor, along with Luke Pearson, of the special issue of Architectural Design (AD) titled Re-Imagining the Avant-Garde: revisiting the architecture of the 1960s and 1970s (2019) and editor of the book Expanding Fields of Architectural Discourse and Practice: Curated Works from the P.E.A.R Journal published by UCL Press (2020).

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In conversation 7: Dr Hakan Ergül

The “In conversation” series aims to demonstrate the wealth, breadth and depth of what constitutes Practice As Research.

In this episode, Dr Nicole Brown talks to Dr Hakan Ergül.

Dr Hakan Ergül is a Lecturer in Media Studies in the UCL Knowledge Lab of the Department of Culture, Communication & Media at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society. Hakan received his PhD in 2006 from the Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, Tohoku University, Japan, with my 5-years ethnographic inquiry on Japanese television production.

Hakan’s short stories have appeared in a number of literary journals, and he is the author of Dedicated to Chrysanthemum (in TR: Krizanteme Adanmis, 2003) and Where Do the Noises Come From? (TR: Sesler Nereden Geliyor? 2009), anthology of short stories. His most recent books include Popularizing Japanese TV (author, Routledge 2019) and Universities in the Neoliberal Era (co-editor, Palgrave 2017).

Hakan’s current research examines the role of traditional and digital communication technologies in everyday life of vulnerable groups, including children, refugees, and urban poor from ethnographic perspective.

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In conversation 6: Dr Helen Ross

The “In conversation” series aims to demonstrate the wealth, breadth and depth of what constitutes Practice As Research.

In this episode, Dr Nicole Brown talks to Dr Helen Ross.

Dr Helen Ross is a fully qualified Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCo) and alongside providing support to other professionals and undertaking research, she currently works part time as a SEN teacher in a mainstream school. Helen is also Chair of the Wiltshire Dyslexia Association, where she supports the running of events, provides expert advice on pedagogy and contributes to the Association social media networks. She has recently become a Trustee of the British Dyslexia Association.

For more information about her work and her achievements, check out her web site.

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In conversation 5: Dr Margaret E. Collins

The “In conversation” series aims to demonstrate the wealth, breadth and depth of what constitutes Practice As Research.

In this episode, Dr Nicole Brown talks to Dr Margaret Collins.

Margaret E. Collins is an award winning composer whose recent focus has been the integration of non-western instruments into ensembles with western orchestral instruments. Meg earned a PhD in Music composition form Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, for her dissertation “Melting the Boundaries: The integration of ethnic instruments into western art music.” She composed eight works featuring seven different ethnic instruments: the Chinese xiao, the Native American flute, the Persian tar, the Persian santoor, the Irish uilleann pipes, and Irish tin whistles. Her song for treble chorus, flute and piano, “maggie and milly and molly and may,” was awarded First Prize in the Berkshire Children’s Chorus Composition Competition.
For more information about her work and achievements, check out her web site.

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1.9. Participatory activist research: Reflexivity, transparency and accountability

Seminar on the 1st June 2022

Source: Jenny Pickerill

Participatory activist research: Reflexivity, transparency and accountability
After briefly outlining what participatory activist research is, this talk will explore what it means to become intimately involved in activist projects as an academic researcher. Jenny will reflect on the need for transparency, accountability and a pragmatism in navigating the multiple demands of a neoliberal academy, activist temporalities, and personal emotions and politics in her work in community environmentalism.

Jenny Pickerill is a Professor of Environmental Geography and Head of Department of Geography at Sheffield University, England. Her research focuses on inspiring grassroots solutions to environmental problems and in hopeful and positive ways in which we can change social practices. She has published 3 books (Cyberprotest; Anti-war Activism; Eco-Homes) and over 30 articles on themes around eco-housing, eco-communities, social justice and environmentalism. She is currently completing her book Eco-communities: Living Together Differently.

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1.8. Drawing research: Using drawing as a participatory research paradigm

Source: Monica Sassatelli

Seminar on the 4th May 2022:

Drawing research: Using drawing as a participatory research paradigm
Drawing has had a place in social research for a long time, especially in anthropology as field note taking, but also more specifically and recently in arts-based research and visual studies. Social research on drawings is a well-established method in a variety of related areas from psycho-social research with children to market research. Research with drawings however, where both the artefact and the practice of drawing are a constitutive part of the production of knowledge being sought, often in collaboration with research participants, is rarer. In this talk Dr Monica Sassatelli looks into the latter, with particular focus on the affordances of narrative drawing.

There is some drawing involved in this presentation: please have some paper and a pencil or pen ready.
Here are some drawings from participants:

Source: RJ

Source: SBass

Source: NB

Download Dr Sassatelli’s slides.

Dr Monica Sassatelli is Associate Professor at the University of Bologna, Italy. She is a cultural sociologist with research expertise on on cultural events and institutions, cultural policies and creative industries. Among her publications are the monograph Becoming Europeans. Cultural Identity and Cultural Policies and the edited collection Arts Festivals and the Cultural Public Sphere. Recent articles include: “‘Europe in your Pocket’: narratives of identity in euro iconography” (Journal of Contemporary European Studies) and “Symbolic Production in the Art Biennial: Making Worlds” (Theory, Culture and Society).

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1.7. Queer Psycho: arts-based research and immersive visual storytelling

Source: E Dare

Queer Psycho: arts-based research and immersive visual storytelling.

After Neumark, Dr Eleanor Dare considers the software and processes through which Immersive Visual Storytelling (IVS) develops and unfolds as a medium and material in which we perceive, rather than ‘an object that we perceive’ (Neumark, 2017, p. 28). The critical and creative strategies Eleanor will discuss in this talk have the intention of surfacing the assumptions, affordances and dissaffordances of the technological and social terrain of IVS, to avert a critical vacuum in which immersion becomes a spell, arguably making us too beguiled to exert political and social agency. Dr Dare will preview scenes from an evolving project, Queer Psycho, part of several long term works which re-envision and re-evaluate aspects of Alfred Hitchcock’s films, often deploying artificially intelligent agents and automated cinematography as a critical practice.

Dr Eleanor Dare joined UCL in April 2022 as Lecturer in Practice Based Research and Media. Eleanor currently works at the Faculty of Education, Cambridge and was formerly Reader in Digital Media at the RCA and Head of Programme for MA Digital Direction. Some of Eleanor’s work, short stories and academic publications can be found here: https://rejectedshortstories.uk/2021/10/20/academic-publications/

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In conversation 4: Cymbeline Buhler

The “In conversation” series aims to demonstrate the wealth, breadth and depth of what constitutes Practice As Research.

In this episode, Dr Nicole Brown talks to Cymbeline Buhler.

Two adult person wearing coats, twirling.

Source: CBuhler

Cymbeline Buhler has been a theatre artist for over twenty years. She has held Artistic Director positions at Western Edge Youth Arts in Melbourne and Backbone Youth Arts companies in Brisbane. She has developed over twenty original theatre productions that have shown in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Cymbeline is currently undertaking doctoral research investigating her arts practice within ‘Theatre of Friendship, Sri Lanka’, an ongoing peace-building arts network she founded in 2012. Her work has been located in spaces such youth engagement, disability arts, cross-cultural theatre and cross-generational communication.

Download more images from Cymbeline’s past projects here.

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In conversation 3: Prof Haidy Geismar

Cover of Prof Geismar's book "Impermanence"

Source: UCL Press

The “In conversation” series aims to demonstrate the wealth, breadth and depth of what constitutes Practice As Research.

In this episode, Dr Nicole Brown talks to Prof Haidy Geismar.

Prof Haidy Geismar is a social anthropologist with research interests in intellectual and cultural property, indigenous rights and colonial histories and legacies, new forms of cultural representation, the affects and effect of digitisation, the anthropology of art, critical museology and the South Pacific (especially Vanuatu and New Zealand).Current research projects include Finding Photography – a collaboration with collections care researchers to explore the social networks and materials underpinning contemporary digital art photography, and Collecting in Context – a project exploring the applicability of new digital collecting platforms in diverse cultural settings. Prof Geismar is committed to museum practice, with long-term affiliations to a number of different museums, including the Tate and Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and she has curated a number of exhibitions, including Port Vila Mi Lavem Yu (Port Vila, I love you) in Honolulu, Hawaii, in May 2011, and part of which then travelled to the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Prof Geismar’s work is available on the website https://www.haidygeismar.com/index.html and her two books Impermanence: Exploring continuous change across cultures and Museum object lessons for the digital age are free to download from the UCL Press website.

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1.6. Explorations in film-making as a form of practice-based research

Image showing two children holding hands and one person with an iPad filming. One further person looks on.

Source: TBryer

Seminar cancelled due to strike action in UK Higher Education Institutions.

In this session Dr Theo Bryer and Prof Andrew Burn will share some of the films they have made as aspects of the research projects that they have engaged in. They will reflect on the questions raised by this approach related to possibilities and limitations associated with: representation and ethical concerns; editing as a form of analysis; viewing or sharing as a means of opening up dialogue about research findings; the academic status of these artefacts and skills, technology and support.

Dr Theo Bryer is currently joint Programme Leader for the MA in English Education and tutor on the English with Drama PGCE at UCL IOE. Theo joined the IOE part-time to teach on the English with Drama PGCE, around ten years ago, while still teaching in school and having taught Drama (mostly) for over twenty years in schools and colleges in Birmingham and London. Theo was also involved in Theatre in Education, youth theatre and projects involving young people who were newly arrived in South London schools. Theo has received Arts Council funding for some of these projects and experimented with media production alongside improvisational drama. These activities informed on-going research interests.

Dr Andrew Burn is Professor of English, Media and Drama, and director of the DARE centre (Digital | Arts | Research | Education), a research collaboration with the British Film Institute. Visit the DARE website – www.darecollaborative.net – for information about events and projects, and links to people and partners. He is also director of MAGiCAL projects, an enterprise developing game-based software for education, in particular the game-authoring tool Missionmaker which features in several of his research projects. Andrew has published work on many aspects of the media, including media literacy in schools, the semiotics of the moving image and computer games, and young people’s production of digital animation, film and computer games. He has conducted a wide range of research project over many years, funded by, among others, the AHRC, the European Commission, the ESRC and the EPSRC. Visit his personal website for more information about projects, publications and interests: www.andrewburn.org. He is interested in the study of popular culture, especially as it relates to play, the arts and education. Methodologically, he has adapted theories of multimodality to describe and analyse media texts, relating them to them to to the Cultural Studies research tradition. He has previously taught English, Drama and Media Studies in comprehensive schools for over twenty years. He has been a Head of English and an Assistant Principal at his last school, Parkside Community College in Cambridge, where his main role was to direct the school’s media arts specialism: it was the first specialist Media Arts College in the country.