Research News 12, Autumn 2005

CRD Centre for Research Development UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON researchnewsFACULTY OF ARTS AND ARCHITECTURE Behaving Technologies Mette Ramsgard Thomsen investigates concepts of interaction and interface design Re-development, Sculpture trail re-use, and Artistic endeavour recycling as a common by Nick Gant language 4 12 CRD Centre for Research Development UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON �� a Berlin based photographer, Eike Braunsdorf. The idea is very simple; over the course of fifty-two weeks the two artists take turns in researchnews electing an object or object>idea to be photographed for each week. In addition, each writes a very short accompanying text. At no point Autumn 2005/Edition 12 Behaving during the project do the two protagonists get to see the results of Technologies Mette Ramsgard Thomsen investigates concepts of interaction each others’ work and, this protracted conversation remains tenuous and interface design Commemorative Stamps Creative workshop at Staff News 12 but also intimate. At the completion all of the images and texts are for the Royal Mail 2 Museum of Modern Art, Re-development, Sculpture trail Funding Opportunities 14 re-use, and Artistic endeavour brought together, matched into their object pairs, and the shape of recycling as a common by Nick Gant language New York, May 7th 2005 5 4 12 Out of Range: the communication finally falls within range. At its culmination the Conferences and (a conversation) 3 An Education in Events 16 two artists are fated to discover both their similarity and their dif- Illustration: Lawrence 1930s Architecture in COVER IMAGE: ference. In one sense this is governed by geographical distance, but Zeegen 6 Student News 18 Napier and Brighton 3 Mette Ramsgard Thomsen investi- also through different perceptions of shared reality; a shared reality gates concepts of interaction and A New Limited Edition New Students 20 interface design Out of Range (a conversation) limited to the more or less arbitrary choice of each object to be pho- Re-development, re- Book: MANUAL 9 tographed. The freedom preserved within the minimal rules of the use, and recycling : The Next Issue 20 Full article on pages 10-11 project was designed to yield a democratic model for collaboration. GreenHouse Project 4 Behaving Technologies: Out of Range: emergence and presence In Out of Range the disciplines of written and visual language are Morphogenesis: Finding in a digital ecology 10 placed under duress. Is there a struggle to forge a plausible narrative Fluid Form 5 (a conversation) from a reality, which is invariably strange enough that it seems more closely allied to fiction? Richard argues that the meaning, even the ‘ex- Richard Schofield (PhD student School of Arts and Communication) planation’ this kind of fragmented form confers most closely resembles is currently engaged in a collaborative project, Out of Range (a con- the subjective qualities of our existence, which resist decoding within versation). He devised this as an interim stage in his PhD titled In The the realms of the scientific or supernatural. Meaning is constructed Relationship Between Text And Image, Can The Between Successfully Be within the individual (the audience) as a creative act, one which extends Removed? beyond the implications of the source material itself. Commemorative This studio based PhD sets as its challenge the creation of floating or Out of Range (a conversation) will be exhibited in Brighton and Berlin unfixed narratives; aiming ultimately to combine text and image in a in 2006. Stamps for the Royal way that neither dominates the other, and where each threatens to col- lapse if left in isolation. However, this expression emerges in the context Mail: The Centenary of of a poetic, rather than a pragmatic structure. the Magic Circle The Out of Range project is a collaboration between Richard and Tatham Design were commissioned to undertake this project. Amanda much (until the recent “rescue” Tatham came up with the idea that 1930s Architecture in of Wells Coates’ Embassy Court the stamps could be based on ‘magi- flats) to knock down or endan- cal’ printing and optical techniques. Napier and Brighton: ger many of the best examples Very simple graphic visuals were from the same period. In his produced by the designers and the Annual Conference talk Woodham also considered Royal Mail suggested that George aspects of a futuristic, never- Hardie (previously commissioned to provide a Millennium stamp and the of the Society of built, Brighton seafront stretch- stamps to commemorate the Channel Tunnel) should illustrate the set. ing from the Adur to the Ouse Working with Sam Griffiths, a designer at Tatham Design and an ex-as- Architectural Historians envisaged in the mid-1930s by sistant of George’s, (a graduate of the MA Sequential Design/Illustration Herbert Carden, alongside the course at the University of Brighton), George further explored the tech- In September in Napier, New Zealand, Professor Jonathan Woodham visions of town planner Stanley niques to be used and then started to provide designs and illustrations, presented a keynote address to the Annual Conference of the Society of Adshead and R A Hudson in their and finally artworks. Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ) under 1937 Borough Plan. He also The set, launched 15th March 2005, was announced on the BBC and the title An Outsider Looking In: Seaside Deco in Napier from a Brighton looked at the forms and mean- in the national press, as is usual with new stamps. In Design Week (17th Perspective. In his paper Jonathan Woodham made comparisons with ing of ornament, particularly March 2005), John Stover wrote an illustrated article. An illustrated de- the post-1931 earthquake architecture of Napier, New Zealand, with in New Zealand which drew on Napier Carnival Poster, New Zealand scription of the design process appeared in the Journal of the Chartered that of interwar Brighton, a town that had inspired Napier’s original native flora and fauna as a Railways, 1933 Society of Designers. Marine Parade. Both had strong preservation societies: Brighton and means of providing a distinctive national decorative aesthetic as well Hove’s Regency Society, having been established immediately after the as indigenous Maori decorative motifs such as the widely proliferating Second World War, and Napier’s Art Deco Trust, the origins of which lay Kouhaiwhai-inspired patterns that could be found on buildings as well as in the 1980s. Napier, often dubbed ‘The Art Deco Capital of the World’, banknotes and ceramics. He concluded by looking at the tensions be- Interactive “magic” stamps, by George has a centre dominated by striking 1930s buildings that have become tween the politics of preservation in Napier and Brighton and the desire Hardie a strong tourist attraction in their own right, whilst Brighton has done of many for architectural forms appropriate to the twenty-first century. 2 researchnews FACULTY OF ARTS AND ARCHITECTURE 3 CRD Centre for Research Development UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON unteers and probationers who do not have the benefit of ‘High Street’ Re-development, marketing and promotional budgets. Morphogenesis:Finding Nick and the development team focused on the positive aspects that re-use, and recycling: the project proposes: Re-development, re-use, and recycling all fed into Fluid Form the spatial design which utilises an ‘interior garden’ theme and narrative The GreenHouse with ‘Eden style’ geodesic dome greenhouses (also developed by Nick) In December 2006 University of Brighton will host the cross-discipli- and topiary and flower borders that utilise images of members of the nary symposium Finding Fluid Form. The symposium invites practition- Project community and children’s drawings as blooms. Interactive watering cans, ers and theoreticians from the fields of digital art and architecture, bird boxes and other gardening objects produce birdsong, rain sounds robotics, cognitive science and biology, to discuss concepts of morpho- Nick Gant was recently commissioned to design a pioneering retail en- and project information. The space uses the energy and functionality genesis as a process of constant interactions between an organism, or vironment and re-use centre for West Sussex charity Guildcare. The of a large curved interior structure generated to produce storage and form, and a dynamic environment. Finding Fluid Form is a collabora- GreenHouse project entailed re-developing a greasy, former council display for the volume of goods. The scheme was proposed at Christmas tion between The School of Architecture and Design and the Centre refuse lorry depot into a giant charity shop that encompasses educa- and the main first stage of redevelopment was completed in April. The for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics at University of Sussex. tion, training and re-use facilities as well as display for donated goods. space has featured in a number of press and media features and won the The symposium is planned in collaboration with local art-technology The project was funded predominantly by the Big Lottery Grant scheme National Association of Charity Shops Design Award for 2005. group BLIP. Sea Unsea, Escape Design and Carol Brown Dances and was commissioned late in 2004 with first stage of the project and The GreenHouse approach represents a holistic and hopefully sustain- The conceptualisation of embodiment as a fluid construct is informing the main spatial

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