T Fisher

What We Touch, Touches Us: Materials, Affects, and Affordances

Using insights from material culture studies to analyse new data, this paper builds on social-historical studies of plastics and literature in the sociology of technology, as well as some design literature to elucidate the ‘fine grain’ of consumers’ relationships with ‘artificial’ materials. Whereas the literature takes plastic to operate as a signifier of modern supremacy over nature or of a fugitive and protean post-modernity, consumers’ perceptions of these qualities are accompanied by a more physical relationship to the materials. Whereas there is evidence that consumers appreciate plastics’ potential for technical mastery, this cultural knowledge is always accompanied by knowledge gained by direct physical interaction with the materials, which in turn has affective consequences. Drawing on the work of James Jerome Gibson to integrate the cultural/ rational and physical/ sensorial aspects of our relationship, this paper offers an integrated view of our relationship to the materiality of new objects, and identifies elements of our relationship to plastic objects that are implicated in their disacquisition and disposal.

The designer's self identity - myths of creativity and the management of teams

This paper describes recent research conducted at Sheffield Hallam University in which practicing designers reported on their experiences of working in a cross functional team. The survey related these experiences to the designers’ attitudes to their creativity. Two models for creativity are proposed - one based on the romantic stereotype of the creative genius, the other taking creativity to be an attribute posessed by all human beings in some measure, which can be enhanced by personal effort or by training. Identifying features of cross functional teams which are likely to demand certain personal qualities in designers, the paper notes that these are at odds with the qualities of a ‘romantic - type’ creative person. The link between these qualities, and notions of personality as a set of fixed attributes is pointed out. Several theories of personality which describe mechanisms for change in self identity are described. It is noted that the results of the survey suggest that in many cases designers have a pragmatic attitude to their creativity, despite the prevalence of the romantic stereotype for creativity in the literature of both management and education. Principles are suggested for design education, to enable designers to reflexively re-evaluate creativity as a component of their self identity to enhance their performance as teamworkers.

The significant other: the value of jewellery in the conception, design and experience of body focused digital devices

In this paper, we demonstrate how craft practice in contemporary jewellery opens up conceptions of ‘digital jewellery’ to possibilities beyond merely embedding pre-existing behaviours of digital systems in objects, which follow shallow interpretations of jewellery. We argue that a design approach that understands jewellery only in terms of location on the body is likely to lead to a world of ‘gadgets’, rather than anything that deserves the moniker ‘jewellery’. In contrast, by adopting a craft approach, we demonstrate that the space of digital jewellery can include objects where the digital functionality is integrated as one facet of an object that can be personally meaningful for the holder or wearer.

The Individual-Practice Framework: A Design Tool for Understanding Consumer Behaviour

Design for behaviour change is a growing research field which aims at providing methods and tools to foster pro-environmental and pro-social action through the application of diverse theories, models and approaches from the social sciences. This chapter presents the Individual-Practice Framework, which uniquely combines insights from social psychology and social practice theory, and discusses its possible use as a design tool. The Individual-Practice Framework captures the interrelation between the individual and specific combinations of the ‘material’, ‘meaning’ and ‘competence’ elements of practices. The framework is proposed here as a design tool for the effective exploration and envisioning of innovative, and conceivably more sustainable, product and service solutions. The paper discusses the advantages of employing the framework as part of the design process, sets preliminary guidelines for practical application and considers possible limitations. It concludes with an assessment of the potential for adoption of the Individual-Practice Framework in participatory design workshops.

Machine-made lace, the spaces of skilled practices and the paradoxes of contemporary craft production

This article inspects a set of paradoxes that appeared in an investigation of contemporary industrial craft in the last remaining factory making machine lace in the United Kingdom. Its focus on a single site, set against a now global industry, means it can build on work in cultural and economic geography to understand this setting as a heterogeneous space, with links to a range of material and immaterial lineages, practices and networks. Ethnographic fieldwork on the factory floor at Cluny Lace threw up three paradoxes inherent in the firm’s continued survival in a context of industrial decline. The first of these paradoxes is the re-concentration of material and immaterial resources in the factory both despite and as a result of the global restructuring of the textile industry. The second is the embodiment of knowledge, and therefore craft skill, both within persons and distributed through the worker’s material environments. Third, is the recognition that the skilled practice the workers carry is not uniform but is multiple, resulting from an unequal distribution of opportunities within the lace industry and different versions of practice that result from the re-concentration of human capital in the factory. This article demonstrates that skill is not uncontested, but is power-ridden and value-laden, and transcends scale. It shows that knowledge and skill are not bound within an individual but are distributed among social actors, material objects and locales, where an attention to each is necessary for understanding the spaces of skilled practices and the ongoing survival of contemporary industrial craft production.

Relational resolutions: digital encounters in ethnographic fieldwork

The articles in this special issue highlight the relationality existing between researchers, participants, cameras and images, with each article bringing complementary perspectives on the use of digital images in ethnographic fieldwork. These include reactivating archives through their digitization for visual repatriation, facilitating dialogue and understanding between participant and researcher, analysing the relation between participants and the virtual spaces of their self-representations and exploring the range of capacities for new research methodologies afforded by digital technologies. Individually and through their juxtaposition, the articles highlight the complexity of the interactions between researchers and participants in their digital encounters and open dialogical spaces, in ethnographic fieldwork and in visual anthropology, about access, participation and transparency in representational practices.

The ‘Real Art School’: The Cultural Roots of Authenticity in Art Schools in the UK and China

Abstract This article investigates the identity of independent art schools, and art schools in multidisciplinary universities, in the UK and China, using the concept of collective identity from organizational management theory and drawing on semi-structured interviews with Chinese and British academics. It addresses the positive and negative aspects of art schools’ ‘image’. They are taken to be both the setting for creativity and innovation, and as being less effective than the other subject disciplines at contributing to economic growth. The article explores this not through an economic argument, but a cultural one. It shows that both independent art colleges and art schools in universities preserve ‘bohemianism’ in their organizational identity. It is not novel to note that in the West, this is based in Romanticism, however, it is possible to identify an equivalent, and more ancient, strand in Chinese culture that underlies the identity of ‘real art schools’ there.