Kaleidoscopes

and Cacophonies
Contemporary Research to be
Seen, Felt, and Heard

Programme 2009
December 1st, 2009. St Cecilia’s Hall

Postgraduate Research Methods Conference 2009

The University of Edinburgh

27
 Table of contents Lucy Montague
Theory & praxis: an investigation into the relationship
between theories in urban design and urban design practice

Agnès Patuano
Introduction 2 Health and gardens: From theory to
practice
Information 4
Natural elements and settings have been proved
to have a positive influence on human health and
well-being. Through the example of Anne Ribes
and her therapeutic gardens in French hospitals,
this presentation intends to clarify various
timetable 5 theories and hypothesis on the effects of natural
environment and outline a few design principles
Concert Hall 6 for healing parks and outdoor spaces.
Laigh Room 8
talks 11
posters 18

Designed by Agnès Patuano

Printed at ECA Repro

1 26
 15:20- 16:20
Caroline Stanton
How to assess and communicate
changes within our landscape
How is the image of a wind turbine affec-
ted by its height, and can we perceive va-
riation if there is nothing of comparable size
nearby? This poster presents research into
the effects of different scale of elements in
our landscape and how we are able to com-
municate these effects through words and
illustration.
Chris French
Copresence and cross-cultural heterotopias: the Live8
concerts as social action
This paper will explore the emergence of “global cities” built on social
representation and enabled by communication, rather than economic or
commercial infrastructure. It will look at the role of technology in facilitating
virtual co-presence that permits instances of simultaneous, cross-cultural
action, and at the characteristics of the spaces associated with international
broadcast spectacles, such as the Live8 concerts.
Soumya Thomas
Understanding user needs: Architecture + Autism
As architects and designers, we have the ability to shape the built envi-
ronment and manipulate spatial organisations to fit the needs of its users.
But how often do we get it right? This paper questions the importance of
marrying both the architectural and psychological perspectives in order to
obtain a space/environment tailored and designed around its user – focu-
sing on complex conditions such as those on the Autism Spectrum.
25
Kaleidoscopes And Cacophonies
New Research To Be Seen, Felt And Heard
Welcome to the annual ACE/ECA Postgraduates One-
Day Conference: a showcase of the wide variety of new and
innovative research being undertaken by researchers and prac-
titioners who have embarked on postgraduate studies at either
the School of Arts, Culture and Environment (ACE) at Edinburgh
University or Edinburgh College of Art (ECA).
We are delighted that this year’s conference is able to
take place in the historic surroundings of St Cecilia’s Hall (built
in 1761) which houses two important collections of musical ins-
truments, and the auditorium of which is the oldest purpose-built
concert hall in Scotland.
Areas of research represented by this conference range
across many disciplines: the word-cloud reproduced on the co-
ver of this booklet gives an impression of the scope of indivi-
dual topics, with the more predominant words indicating areas of
common focus.
As you will see from the programme details below, two
kinds of presentation will be taking place simultaneously: in the
Laigh Room on the ground floor there will be groups of poster-
presentations lasting an hour apiece, while in the auditorium
on the first floor will feature a series of 15-minute talks running
throughout the day.
For many of the participating students this will be their first
public opportunity to present outlines or aspects of their projects,
2
 and we invite you to participate as a visitor through contribu-
ting your own thoughts and feelings about these projects. Our
title, Kaleidoscopes and Cacophonies, evokes a sense of an as-
semblage of fragments which we hope you will find thought-pro-
voking, and since the structure of the conference will obviously
make it impossible to take in the totality of the many directions of
enquiry represented, we would encourage you to construct your
own programme out of the presentations on offer.
We would like to thank Professor Richard Coyne, Ka-
ren Ludke, Dr Sophia Lycouris, Dr Kate Overy and Professor
Richard Williams for their inspiration and guidance in preparing
and producing this conference; and Martine Pugh, who took on
the onerous task of overseeing every aspect of its organisation.
3 24
14:00- 15:00
Noemi Garcia Diaz
To find a voice on autobiographical documentary - DVD
Martine Foltier Pugh
Objects of satire
Taking as premise that objects, like people, have a biography and a so-
cial life and that satire is a trait of human nature and social interaction, this
presentation, supported by some case-studies, will investigate the idea that
objects and things can also have an inclination towards satire at certain
stages of their life.
Amy Thomas
Aspects of the social within contemporary art
Gerard Byrne
Kentigern: Celebrating a sixth-century saint in twenty-first
century Scotland
My poster will attempt to elucidate the challenges/difficulties which the
author faced in preparing a sung liturgical Office in honour of St Kentigern,
seventh century bishop, and patron of the city of Glasgow. The project was
by nature inter-disciplinary, requiring the compiler to work within the disci-
plines of mediaeval music, Latin philology, translation, poetry and liturgy.
Cristiano Agostino
Usamaru Furuya and the ‘new tradition’ of auteur manga
There has been a resurgence in the past decade of Japanese comics
that, eschewing the escapist nature usually associated to the medium, go
back to the more socially and culturally committed works of the sixties and
seventies. They do so, however, by discarding an overly dramatic and se-
rious approach, choosing instead paradox and irony as cultural weapons.
A central figure in this trend is Usamaru Furuya.
 Xavier Contier
Education – a binding social narrative. Information
.
Aikaterini Antonopoulou
Living in second life versus acting in Registration : 9:00
flash mob: Exploring the sense of place
through virtual and urban games
Breaks (Laigh Room): 10:40 -11:00 15:00- 15:20
This project employs a digital game and an ur-
ban action in an attempt to explore the ‘sense of
place’ and define ‘placeness’. It aims at explai- Lunch break : 13:00- 13:55
ning the way that these two practices operate, in
what way they create a tension between ‘digital’
and ‘physical’ place and how they may serve as
Ends at 16:30
a medium to study the individuals’ experiences
and behavior.

H. Esra Oskay
House in Visual Arts

My research will be a contextual review of the use of house in contempo-

rary art. «An especially favored site for uncanny disturbances» as Anthony
Vidler calls it, the house becomes a means to play at the threshold of fa-
miliar and unfamiliar. The works of Gregor Schneider, Rachel Whiteread,
Kurt Schwitters and Doris Salcedo will be examples to investigate the pos-
sibilities of “house” in this research.

Julie Gaspard
Rituals and practices of death

Panos Kompatsiaris
Origins and effectiveness of affirmative tactics in
contemporary art

23 4
 Georgia Mavrakou
Fragments of the domestic
scenery

The problematic upon the domestic space aims

to reveal the attributes that enable the home to
be converted into a stereotypical formation within
our contemporary society’s practices. In order to
study the ‘homely experience’, the scenographic
concept is proposed. The home as an empty
platform will accept each characteristic, so as to
draw a mental collage of the domestic scenery.

12:00-13:00

Matt Ozga-Lawn
Revealing design: a dialogic approach through exhibition
methodology

The focus is an exploration of particular design methodologies and media,

timetable with at its core the concept of the exhibition of the design process itself
as an entity, reacting to and integrated with the design outputs that are
resolved from it. The manifestation and interaction with the design process
itself via the varied media of developed installation environments is hoped
to create a dialogue that will contribute to architectural outputs that are not
a compression or representation of a process but rather part of a wider,
transient, iterative collection of narratives, ideas and meanings.

Klas Hyllen
A therapeutic thesaurus for the architect

A city develops dynamically, similar in nature to the human psyche, whe-

re past experiences shape your present identity. To juxtapose the individual
‘self’ with the collective ‘city’ is a psychoanalytical process comparable to
‘putting the city on the couch’. This therapeutic approach exposes the his-
tory of knowledge in full, providing remarkable insight into the un-folding of
human interaction through time.

5 22
 11:00-12:00
Concert Hall
Salome Shahzad
Formulating appropriate qualitative methodologies to 09:30 CHAIR Sue Hawksley
research individual control over the thermal environment in ECA PhD student, dance artist, director of
workplaces articulate animal and a bodywork therapist
Richard Ashrowan 09:30 SPEAKER Prof Richard Coyne
Digital experiments in information Head of the School of Arts, Culture and
theory applied to moving image art Environment, University of Edinburgh
(Installation) 09:40 - 10:00 Te-Ju Chen
The work applies a variety of reductive
The spirit of place and architectural experience
abstraction processes to a piece of high definition 10:00 - 10:20 Damien McCaffery
digital filmed footage, using information theory
The Maven of a Quotation: cultural search –and–
definitions of ‘information content’ to drive the
reductive process. These experiments involve rescue from Harry Smith to DJ Shadow
reductions in colour, pixels and time and how 10:20 - 10:40 Wendy Kirkup
this affects their corresponding quantitive
information content, measured using the H264
Two perspectives on the spatialisation of artists’
compression process. and experimental film practices
10:40 - 11:00 Montasir Alabdulla
Car dependency and visual quality
Yuda Ho
Visualizing the city: space, architecture and visual art 11:00 - 11:20 Luisa Chiavacci
Fragments of landscape: the representation of
With more and more experiments in architecture and visual art in recent cultural landscape in contemporary Californian
years, architects and visual artists demonstrate that the new possibility of visual arts
urban life style. This research will reference the historical development of
urban screens and investigate their existing use in order to better understand 11:20 - 11:40 Heba El- Toudy
how they are currently used and explore the new potential of these screens Titles and attributes of Sufi figures in the islamic
as a new intermedia between people and space. architectural inscriptions of Cairo
11:40 - 12:00 Andrew Paterson
The painted gaze in late antique devotional
portraiture
12:00 - 12:20 Janan Mustafa
Design thinking and the emergence of design
solution

21 6
 12:20 - 12:40 Iman Alsumsam
Improvement to the quality of urban public spaces
in Hama city, Syria
12:40 CHAIR
Closure of morning proceedings
13:00 - 13:55 LUNCH BREAK
14:00 CHAIR Tolulope Onabolu
Architecture PhD student, Theory and the
Contemporary Avant-garde
14:00 - 14:20 Lauren Hayes
Sound and touch: Audio-haptic relationships for
digital music performers
14:20- 14:40 Christos-George Michalakos
Augmenting percussion: An overview and future
directions
14:40 - 15:00 Shih- Mei Lee
Text — the ink of the popular culture
15:00 - 15:20 Jana Kovacova
Present situation of medieval primary sources of
Hungarian provenance
15:20 - 15:40 Victoria Gair
Aubrey Beardsley in the 1960s
15:40 - 16:00 Rocio von Jungenfeld
Framing Space: on the illusion of preservation
16:00 - 16:20 Jordan Mearns
Caged nightingales: the feminization of domestic
music making in eighteenth century British art
16:20 CHAIR
Closure of afternoon proceedings
16:20 - 16:30 SPEAKER Dr Sophia Lycouris
Director of Graduate Research School, ECA
7 20
Beth Legg
The expression of Nordic identity within
the contemporary jewellery of Scandinavia
This presentation will focus on the prevalent themes that are evident in
Scandinavian jewellery. Through the examination of both historical and
current practice in Scandinavia I aim to identify the particular nature of Nordic
jewellery and to clarify the correlation between the creative environment
and national characteristics through the investigation of commonalities of
practice between makers within the Scandinavian countries.
Stacey Hunter
The dichotomies of ‘new’ urbanism
and ‘old’ architecture: Towards a
neutral account
New Urbanism is a relatively established
architectural movement which unifies a broad
range of disciplines and interest groups, yet
remains highly polarised within the realms
of critical discourse. My presentation will
illustrate the questions posed by my initial
research, where I perceive there to be gaps
in the contemporary corpus of literature and
the aims and applications of my research
methodology.
Ofita Purwani
The adaptation of European elements in the architecture of
Javanese palaces
The practice of colonialism in Indonesia brought in a cultural encounter
that affected the vernacular architecture. This can be seen obviously in the
case of Javanese palaces. Claiming as the sources of Javanese culture,
they adapt the European style into their palaces rather than strictly hold on
to the traditional one. However, there are some patterns in adapting the
European into the architecture of the palaces, in relation to spatial hierarchy
and the hybrid-ornament formation.
 Posters
9:40 -10:40
Nea Ehrlich
Identity through animation as metaphor
or mask
My presentation will explore the representation of
cultural identity through contemporary animation. I
will analyse the characteristics of animation and its
affect on the viewer through the theme of masking.
The goal of my work is to show animation’s varied
ways to reflect reality and its eventual influence
upon this reality, in concern with identity politics.
Alexandra Domeracki
Photographs in the Henry Dyer
collection: a westerner’s interpretation
of the japanese society in the late
nineteenth century
This work will deal with the Japanese
photographs in the Dyer Collection at the Central
Library, Edinburgh. The fact that they were taken
by an Austrian photographer rises the question
of the characteristics of a Westerner’s approach
towards Nineteenth-Century Japanese society.
This work will also try and identify the market for
which they were produced and how compositional
choices were made to attract these particular
customers.
19
Laigh Room
09:40 - 10:40 Nea Ehrlich
Identity through animation as metaphor or mask
Alexandra Domeracki
Photographs in the Henry Dyer collection: a
westerner’s interpretation of the Japanese society
in the late nineteenth century
Beth Legg
The expression of Nordic identity within the
contemporary jewellery of Scandinavia
Stacey Hunter
The dichotomies of ‘new’ urbanism and ‘old’
architecture: Towards a neutral account
Ofita Purwani
The adaptation of European elements in the
architecture of Javanese palaces
Richard Ashrowan
Digital experiments in information theory applied
to moving image art - Installation
10:40 - 11:00 Break
11:00 - 12:00 Salome Shahzad
Formulating appropriate qualitative methodologies
to research individual control over the thermal
environment in workplaces
Yuda Ho
Visualizing the city: space, architecture and visual
art
8
 Georgia Mavrakou
Fragments of the domestic scenery
Matt Ozga-Lawn
Revealing design: a dialogic approach through
exhibition methodology
Klas Hyllen
A therapeutic Thesaurus for the architect

12:00-13:00 Xavier Contier

Education – a binding social narrative
Aikaterini Antonopoulou
Living in second life versus acting in flash mob:
Exploring the sense of place through virtual and
urban games
Julie Gaspard
Rituals and practices of death
H. Esra Oskay
House in Visual Arts: Artist playing in the house
Panos Kompatsiaris
posters
Origins and effectiveness of affirmative tactics in
contemporary art

13:00 - 13:55 LUNCH BREAK

14:00- 15:00 Noemi Garcia Diaz

To find a voice on autobiographical documentary
DVD
Martine Foltier Pugh
Objects of satire
Amy Thomas
Aspects of the social within contemporary art

9 18
 Gerard Byrne
Kentigern: Celebrating a sixth-century saint in
twenty-first century scotland
Cristiano Agostino
Usamaru Furuya and the ‘new tradition’ of auteur
manga

15:00 - 15:20 Break

15:20-16:20 Caroline Stanton

How to assess and communicate changes within
our landscape
Chris French
Copresence and cross-cultural heterotopias: the
Live8 concerts as social action
Soumya Thomas
Understanding user needs: Architecture + Autism
Lucy Montague
Theory & praxis: an investigation into the
relationship between theories in urban design and
urban design practice
Agnès Patuano
Health and gardens: From theory to practice

17 10
 . Rocio Von Jungenfeld
Framing Space: on the illusion of
preservation

Focusing on the visual perception of tactile

space. When a space is presented on a flat
image its perception is remediated and a dialogue
between layers and space occurs. Two works,
one by Gerhard Richter and another by The
Boyle Family, will be used to reflect on how a flat
media could contain the experience of space
15:40

Jordan Mearns
Caged nightingales: the feminization of domestic music
making in eighteenth century british art

In eighteenth century Britain domestic music making was increasingly

seen as a particularly feminine ‘accomplishment’ becoming a popular sub-
talks ject for portraits. Accordingly depictions of male and female musicians de-
veloped distinct characteristics. As female performance afforded an oppor-
tunity to enact sexual availability and an excuse to gaze, the spectacle
of the accomplished female became simultaneously a site of considerable
anxiety and pleasure.
16:00

11 16
 Shih- Mei Lee
Text — the ink of the popular culture Talks
With the advent of the digital era, the usage of text has introduced a new
paradigm. In this paper, I will elaborate on how the change of text trends Te-Ju Chen
can reflect the existing culture. The approach will be based on comparing The spirit of place and architectural experience
textual practices of users with different cultural backgrounds to examplfy
this statement.
The world we are living in now is an unprecedentedly homogeneous one.
14:40 Thus the 2008 ICOMOS assembly focused on the spirit of place, how to
preserve it and how to refine it. This essay aims to reflect how the spirit of
place responds to people’s psychologic needs, and, how people’s expecta-
Jana Kovacova tion and representation react and reconstruct the shaping of place.
Present situation of medieval primary 9:40
sources of Hungarian provenance

Focus of this short discussion is how historical Damien McCaffery

events from the end of medieval period until today The maven of a quotation: cultural search-and-rescue from
have contributed to the state of preservation and Harry Smith to DJ Shadow
distribution of medieval visual and written sources 10:00
of Hungarian provenance. And what are the
implications of this situation for modern research.
15:00
Wendy Kirkup
Two perspectives on the spatialisation of artists’ and experi-
Victoria Gair mental film practices
Aubrey Beardsley in the 1960s
Moving image art has a dense and heterogenous history, with some
accounts arguably having been articulated more fully than others. This pre-
Aubrey Beardsley (1872-98) was one of the most ubiquitous and contro-
sentation will reflect on two film making practices from the 1960’s and early
versial artists of the 1890s. In the 1960s and ’70s, his work was re-exami-
70’s and seek to identify points of similarity and of difference in approaches
ned by art historians, influenced artists and designers, (and again became
to production and frames of reference.
ubiquitous and controversial). This paper will analyse the causes and ef-
fects of the resurgence of interest in Beardsley’s art during this period.
10:20
15:20

Montasir Alabdulla
Car dependency and visual quality

Significance of using dynamic images in assessing the visual quality of

urban streets in car-dependent societies
10:40

15 12
 Luisa Chiavacci
Fragments of landscape: the representation of cultural lands-
cape in contemporary Californian visual arts
1) An Introduction to the concept of Cultural Landscape and Vernacular
Architecture 2)The Representation of the Highway as an interpretative key-
theme to the cultural landscape in California.
11:00
Heba El- Toudy
Titles and attributes of Sufi figures in the islamic architectural
inscriptions of Cairo
Inscriptions are the most significant decorative elements of Islamic ar-
chitecture. They not only adorn, but also convey messages suitable to the
types and functions of the buildings they ornament. Sufi buildings of Cairo
constitute a large segment of its surviving glorious Islamic architecture.
This paper will discuss how their inscriptions reflect the development of the
Sufi dogma over time.
11:20
Andrew Paterson
The painted gaze in late antique devotional portraiture
An investigation of how a sixth century portrait icon from Constantinople
might have functioned, not merely as a public visual statement as to the
identity and likeness of Christ, but as the mediator of an intimate ‘exchange
of gazes’ between the image’s prototype and its viewer.
11:40
Janan Mustafa
Design thinking and the emergence of design
solution
While the classical definition of emergence focuses
on the discovery of new designs which have been not
anticipated, new studies claim that emergent design is
predictable. My talk highlights this issue and come out
with a question: could we stimulate the emergence of
new solutions.
12:00
13
Iman Alsumsam
Improvement to the quality of urban public spaces in Hama
city, Syria
This paper will investigate the social and spatial aspects of public spaces,
with concentration on exploring people’s perceptions of the built environ-
ment in Hama city and trying to understand their preferences and opinions
about public spaces.
12:20
Lauren Hayes
Sound and touch: Audio-haptic rela-
tionships for digital music performers
When a violinist plays a note, information about
the sound is fed back to the performer via the
haptic channels, such as pressure of the fingers,
string vibrations, and so on. This presentation
investigates the benefits of introducing haptic
feedback systems into interfaces used for digital
music performance which have generally over-
looked this important correlation between sound
and touch.
14:00
Christos-George Michalakos
Augmenting percussion: An overview and future directions
Many methods have been used to enhance the palette of sounds and
range of techniques used by percussionists, including electronics and pre-
parations. This presentation explores the use of such methods, and asses-
ses the success or shortcomings of different approaches taken towards
creating an augmented percussive instrument, optimized for the individual
user.
14:20
14