Tiny jubilations: using photography in fiction

Zoë Strachan offers here an examination of the haunting power of photography as a creative stimulus. She discusses the use of photographs in Janice Galloway’s two autobiographies This is Not About Me (2008) and All Made Up (2011), as well as her own use of photographic inspiration for her currently untitled new novel, an extract from which closes the special issue

Field-Testing Reusable Learning Objects Related to Sensory Over-Responsiveness

Background. There is an increased need for dynamic, mobile, and relevant parent and caregiver education related to autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and Sensory Processing (SP). This need may be due to the increased incidence of the conditions’ co-morbidity and the revision of the diagnostic criteria of ASD. Reusable learning objects (RLOs) have been implemented as instructional tools as a part of, or adjunct to, formal health care education programs. However, there is a lack of knowledge regarding the appropriateness of RLOs as a part of routine patient and caregiver instruction of children with ASD. Method. A semi-structured interview/rating scale was implemented among three practicing occupational therapists to ascertain their opinions regarding six prototype RLOs related to sensory processing for caregivers of children with ASD. Results. The participants’ perspectives revealed that the SP-based prototype RLOs were a viable and valuable option to be included as a resource for parents and caregivers of children with ASD. Conclusion. The findings of this study suggest that RLOs related to SP were valuable, especially related to their subject matter, accessibility, and reusability. Furthermore, the participants indirectly identified the strengths related to the foundational concepts of RLOs and how they could be applied to other therapeutic and behavioral topics for parents and caregivers of children with ASD

Las exposiciones de El Lissitzky a través del Cine-ojo

[EN] The Avant-Garde movements of the twentieth century explored the creative possibilities of new types of media in architecture, such as the photographic camera or cinema. In a series of experimental projects, authors such as El Lissitzky based their work on assimilating the human eye with a mechanical lens, making it possible to create new concepts of space. A simultaneous consideration of the resources of Vertov’s Cine-Eye in relation to the exhibition projects of El Lissitzky reveals some of his proposals as paradigmatic examples of the perceptive experimentation of the viewer in relation to art, and in a wider sense, to architecture. By analysing the cinematic resources of the film Man with a Movie Camera (1929), architectural aspects are analysed in the exhibition spaces of the Abstract Cabinet and PRESSA, identifying connections that break down the boundaries between the different disciplines.[ES] Las Vanguardias de principios del siglo XX exploran la capacidad creativa de los nuevos medios en la arquitectura, como la cámara fotográfica o el cine. En proyectos propicios para la experimentación, autores como El Lissitzky parten de la asimilación del ojo humano a un objetivo mecánico que permite la formulación de nuevos conceptos espaciales. Una lectura en paralelo de recursos del Cine-ojo de Vertov sobre proyectos expositivos de El Lissitzky, sitúa algunas de sus propuestas como ejemplos paradigmáticos de la experimentación perceptiva del espectador sobre el objeto artístico y, en un sentido más amplio, sobre la arquitectura. A través del análisis de recursos cinematográficos de la película El Hombre con la cámara se interpretan aspectos arquitectónicos en los espacios expositivos del Gabinete de los Abstractos y PRESSA, trazando vínculos que disuelven los límites disciplinares .Paz-Agras, L. (2017). The exhibitions of El Lissitzky through Cine-Eye. VLC arquitectura. Research Journal. 4(1):151-174. doi:10.4995/vlc.2017.6987.SWORD15117441Arnheim, Rudolf. Arte y percepción visual. Madrid: Alianza Forma, 1984.Aynsley, Jeremy. "" PRESSA", Cologne, 1928. Dise-o de exposiciones y publicaciones en la época de Weimar", in Espacios fotográficos públicos. Exposiciones de propaganda, de Pressa a The Family of Man, 1928-1955, edited by Jorge Ribalta. Barcelona: Musei d'Art Contemporari, 2008.Bayer, H. (1961). Aspects of Design of Exhibitions and Museums. Curator: The Museum Journal, 4(3), 257-288. doi:10.1111/j.2151-6952.1961.tb01561.xBuchloh, Benjamin H. D. "De la "Faktura" a la "Faktografía"", in Espacios fotográficos públicos. Exposiciones de propaganda, de Pressa a The Family of Man, 1928-1955, edited by Jorge Ribalta. Barcelona: Musei d'Art Contemporari, 2008.Cauman, Samuel. Living Museum: Experiences of an Art Historian – Alexander Dorner. New York: New York University Press, 1958.Gouch, Maria. "Constructivism Disoriented: El Lissitzky's Dresden and Hannover Demostrationsraüme", in Situating El Lissitzky. Vitebsk, Berlin, Moscow, edited by Nancy Perloff and Brian Reed. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2003.Lissitzky-Küppers, Sophie. El Lissitzky. Life-letters-texts. London, New York: Thames and Hudson, 1967.Moholy-Nagy, László. "Cómo la fotografía revoluciona la visión", in László Moholy-Nagy. Fotogramas 1922-1943, edited by Herbert Molderings et al. Barcelona: Fundació Antoni Tápies, Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 1997 (original: 1933).Pevsner, N. (1971). The Lissitzky Room. Art Journal, 31(1), 128. doi:10.2307/775658Pohlman, Ulrick. "Los dise-os de exposiciones de El Lissitzky. La influencia de su obra en Alemania, Italia y los Estados Unidos, 1923-1943", in Espacios fotográficos públicos. Exposiciones de propaganda, de Pressa a The Family of Man, 1928-1955, edited by Jorge Ribalta. Barcelona: Musei d'Art Contemporari, 2008.Ribalta, Jorge (ed). Espacios fotográficos públicos. Exposiciones de propaganda, de Pressa a The Family of Man, 1928-1955. Barcelona: Musei d'Art Contemporari, 2008.Stam, Mart. "El Lissitzky's conception of architecture 1966", in El Lissitzky. Life-letters-texts, edited by Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers. London, New York: Thames and Hudson, 1967.Tupytsin, Margarita. "From Abstract to Cinematic Cabinet", in Malevich and Film, edited by Margarita Tupitsin. New Haven, London: Yale University Press, Barcelona: Fundación "la Caixa", 2002.Tupytsin, Margarita. "Back to Moscow", in El Lissitzky. Beyond the Abstract Cabinet, edited by Margarita Tupytsin. New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1999.Vertov, Dziga. Memorias de un cineasta bolchevique. Madrid: Capitán Swing Libros SL, 2011

The affective Bauhaus 1919: 2019

Bauhaus artists László Moholy-Nagy and Oskar Schlemmer dominate the opening exhibition of the year-long celebration of ‘100 Years The Bauhaus’: ‘Licht. Schatten. Spuren’ (Light. Shadow. Traces) (Kunsthalle, Berlin, January 2019). The curators cite these artists as driving forces behind the contemporary visual art and performance pieces, many specially commissioned. This suggests that both artists demand a more nuanced appraisal 100 years on than they have hitherto enjoyed. Part 1 of this article re-evaluates the history of the Bauhaus ‘gestalt’ thinking in relation to creativity; part 2 asserts the absolute modernity of Bauhaus thinking within contemporary performance. The two artists’ work and ideas in every medium were so far ahead of their time that only now are their ideas able to be (if only partially) realised, exploited and developed to create a strong and affective art for the twenty-first century

On the Scales of Photographic Abstraction

This article explores three key ways in which questions of abstraction have been and continue to be closely associated with photography: the tradition of photographs that desire to “be” abstract; the invisible but determining forms of abstraction central to capitalism and shaping of photography as a technical-historical form; and the technical-conceptual abstractions embedded in and structuring of photographic apparatuses. The exploration of these themes is pursued through analysis of Vilém Flusser’s philosophy of photography, Lambert Wiesing’s analysis of abstract photography and Allan Sekula’s critique of capitalist modes of equivalence and exchange as these impact on the photographic. These analyses are pursued through exploration of the issues, processes and operations of “scale”, “scaling” and “scalability” entailed in these three modes of abstraction and in their critical and theoretical reflection. The aim of this strategy is to outline and to analyse the complex web of abstractions that are central to photography and the modes of scale that are crucial to abstraction in this context. The article suggests that to encounter or to think about abstraction photographically is to operate within some modulation of scale and that this may in fact be the closest one can get to envisioning the complexity of abstraction in the photographic context

Interactive visual music

How can Visual Music be composed and presented in such an engaging way that it will turn spectators into participants? How to connect a youthful, twenty-first century audience who are keen to update their Instagram story with Visual Music? Visual Music is an art form, which is “an equal and meaningful synthesis of the visible and audible” (Lund & Lund 2009 149) and “is typically non-narrative and non-representational” (Evans 2005 11). Visual Music is often presented as cinema. Cinema audiences are generally considered to be passive spectators, whose “reactions are pre-programmed by the director, crew, cast and writer” (Mackintosh 2003 2). This paper highlights the nexus between, to use McCall’s (2004) terms ‘the cinematic, the sculptural and the pictorial’, with a focus on creating interactive Visual Music installations