Amateur Craft
Amateur Craft

Author: Stephen Knott

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2015-08-27

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 147257737X

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Amateur Craft provides an illuminating and historically-grounded account of amateur craft in the modern era, from 19th century Sunday painters and amateur carpenters to present day railway modellers and yarnbombers. Stephen Knott's fascinating study explores the curious and unexpected attributes of things made outside standardised models of mass production, arguing that amateur craft practice is 'differential' – a temporary moment of control over work that both departs from and informs our productive engagement with the world. Knott's discussion of the theoretical aspects of amateur craft practice is substantiated by historical case studies that cluster around the period 1850–1950. Looking back to the emergence of the modern amateur, he makes reference to contemporary art and design practice that harnesses or exploits amateur conditions of making. From Andy Warhol to Simon Starling, such artistic interest elucidates the mercurial qualities of amateur craft. Invaluable for students and researchers in art and design, contemporary craft, material culture and social history, Amateur Craft counters both the marginalisation and the glorification of amateur craft practice. It is richly illustrated with 41 images, 14 in colour, including 19th century ephemera and works of contemporary art.

Collaboration Through Craft
Collaboration Through Craft

Author: Amanda Ravetz

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-07-27

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1350007129

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Offering a challenging new argument for the collaborative power of craft, this ground-breaking volume analyses the philosophies, politics and practicalities of collaborative craft work. The book is accessibly organised into four sections covering the cooperation and compromises required by the collaborative process; the potential of recent technological advances for the field of craft; the implications of cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural collaborations for authority and ownership; and the impact of crafted collaborations on the institutions where we work, learn and teach. With cutting-edge essays by established makers and artists such as Allison Smith (US) and Brass Art (UK), curator Lesley Millar, textile designer Trish Belford and distinguished thinker Glenn Adamson, Collaborating Through Craft will be essential reading for students, artists, makers, curators and scholars across a number of fields.

Art and its Responses to Changes in Society
Art and its Responses to Changes in Society

Author: Martin Germ

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2016-08-17

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 1443898074

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Art and its Responses to Changes in Society brings together studies of young researchers dealing with the topics of decline, transformation, and rebirth from various points of view, characteristic of several different fields of the humanities and social sciences, in order to yield new insights into the analyzed subjects. The topics discussed here are diverse: on the one hand, several chapters deal with the metamorphosis of particular pictorial or architectural motifs and concepts, while on the other, studies are included that are dedicated to the analysis of the opera of individual artists, to various periods in architecture and landscape architecture, and to national and state commissions in art, as well as representations of WW2 atrocities in Yugoslavia and attempts to artistically reaffirm Christian symbolism after the end of socialism. As such, the book entails diverse scientific perceptions of art and society, from antiquity to modernity, from architecture to moving picture, from the USA to Yugoslavia, and from research on an object to observations on a concept.

Crowd Design
Crowd Design

Author: Florian Alexander Schmidt

Publisher: Birkhäuser

Published: 2017-07-24

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 3035610673

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Die digitale Revolution ist mit dem Versprechen verknüpft, die Selbstständigkeit des einzelnen Nutzers zu stärken. Der Aufstieg von kommerziellen Plattformen zur Koordination von Crowdarbeit stellt die Gültigkeit dieses Narrativs jedoch in Frage. In Crowd-Design analysiert Florian Alexander Schmidt die Entstehungsgeschichte, Funktionsweise und Rhetorik solcher Plattformen. Der Vergleich von historischen Crowd-Diskursen und Visionen der Online-Kollaboration bildet den Ausgangspunkt für eine kritische Betrachtung aktueller Ausprägungen von Crowdarbeit: Der Fokus der Studie liegt auf der Auslagerung von Designaufgaben unter Verwendung dieser Crowdsourcing-Plattformen. Grundlegenden Mechanismen, welche den Plattformbetreibern zur Motivation und Kontrolle der Crowds dienen, werden offengelegt.

Assessment: Social Practice and Social Product
Assessment: Social Practice and Social Product

Author: Ann Filer

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-11-01

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1134586981

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Assessment has become one of the most significant areas of interest in educational policy development, as well as the focus of complex political, economic and cultural expectations for change. Increasingly, governments worldwide have become aware that curricula and teachers can be indirectly controlled through programmes of assessment. Opponents of centralized systems of mass assessment claim they are ill-suited to the diverse and changing needs of learners and users of assessment. In this text, the UK and US writers take the reader beyond the obvious functions of assessment, and focus upon the roles it performs in the social structuring of society. They examine the myths and assumptions that underpin assessment and testing and draw attention to its cultural context. This collection is devoted explicitly to socio-cultural studies of assessment and attempts to map the terrain of some 30 years of study in the field. Chapters are organized thematically, with background text providing comparative perspectives, key issues and further reading. The book provides a wide-ranging, structured and accessible approach to the study of socio-cultural origins and impacts of assessment.

Citizens of Worlds
Citizens of Worlds

Author: Jennifer Gabrys

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2022-11-15

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 1452967997

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An unparalleled how-to guide to citizen-sensing practices that monitor air pollution Modern environments are awash with pollutants churning through the air, from toxic gases and intensifying carbon to carcinogenic particles and novel viruses. The effects on our bodies and our planet are perilous. Citizens of Worlds is the first thorough study of the increasingly widespread use of digital technologies to monitor and respond to air pollution. It presents practice-based research on working with communities and making sensor toolkits to detect pollution while examining the political subjects, relations, and worlds these technologies generate. Drawing on data from the Citizen Sense research group, which worked with communities in the United States and the United Kingdom to develop digital-sensor toolkits, Jennifer Gabrys argues that citizen-oriented technologies promise positive change but then collide with entrenched and inequitable power structures. She asks: Who or what constitutes a “citizen” in citizen sensing? How do digital sensing technologies enable or constrain environmental citizenship? Spanning three project areas, this study describes collaborations to monitor air pollution from fracking infrastructure, to document emissions in urban environments, and to create air-quality gardens. As these projects show, how people respond to, care for, and struggle to transform environmental conditions informs the political subjects and collectives they become as they strive for more breathable worlds.