May / June 2009

RAE 08 Success

The Wales Institute for Research in Art & Design (WIRAD) is pleased to announce that in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise the Art & Design panel rated 95% of the research submission as international standard, with 70% rated as either Internationally Excellent or World Leading. Using Times Higher weightings this makes the submission 12th out of 70 in the UK and the best in Wales. This significant achievement by WIRAD's founding members, UWIC and Newport, demonstrates very clearly the international quality of WIRAD's research. It puts WIRAD in the best possible position to build on this achievement through our invitation to key research partners from across Wales to join in this success story.

WIRAD Researcher at WALKING WORKSHOP: Walking as Method and Practice

Thursday the 11th June, 2009
Cardiff University

Simon Pope (CFAR) is amongst five speakers who will share their knowledge and ideas on walking as a method and as an art practice at this one day workshop. The aim of the event is to provide a forum for the sharing of ideas and approaches across disciplinary boundaries, regarding walking as research method and practice.

Ideas and practice in the arts are increasingly and usefully being drawn upon to develop understandings of place, space and practice. The Walking Workshop will capitalize on this interest, creating a forum for the exchange of knowledge, debate and discussion on methodological developments around mobility, in relation to place making practices and to understandings of everyday experiences through embodied, multi-sensory research experiences.

Participants will include practitioners from the social sciences with expertise in walking as research method, and from those in the arts with expertise in walking as art practice.

The speakers are:

• Jennie Middleton - 'Stepping in time': walking, time and space in the city

• John Wylie - 'The Good Step': walking and estrangement

• Simon Pope - Finding a way: the dialogic negotiation and representation of mountain landscapes

• Tom Hall and Rob Smith - Footwork: pedestrian enquiries and the cityscape

As part of the workshop, there will also be a soundwalk around Cardiff at lunchtime, organized by the artist Jennie Savage, allowing participants to experience some of the theory in practice.

WIRAD Researcher to lead Banff Almost Perfect co-production residency

June 04, 2009 - July 04, 2009

The Almost Perfect Co-production Residency is an annual, concentrated experimental prototyping lab exploring the creation and context of location. Run by the Banff New Media Institute, practitioners from all walks of locative and mobile media practice are invited to use the A.R.T Mobile Lab, a research initiative created to enable research into mobile and location-based media design, art, technology and cultures of use.

The four-week residency will be led by established locative media practitioners Theo Humphries (MeAT), Daniel Belasco Rogers, and Kate Hartman. Through a combination of dedicated studio time, group discourse, peer critique, design exercise and studio visits, Almost Perfect will explore location-based artwork and the repercussions of producing work for place, and in particular in outdoor and non-urban contexts. The residency will support the open conceptualisation of new works, re-visit influential pieces from this emerging medium's history and consider how modern pervasive technologies allow us to disconnect from our desktop cells and interact with the world in a whole new way.

CSAD Research Student Amongst Winners of the 12th Westerwald Ceramics of Europe Prize 2009

Sara Moorhouse is amongst the 2009 prize winners of the 12 Westerwald Ceramics of Europe Prize 2009. Selected by a panel of 7 international judges, Sara won first prize in the Vessel / Form / Décor category for her colourfully banded vessel forms.

A total of five prizes worth EUR 5,000 each have been awarded for outstanding ceramic work in the areas of Saltglaze, Vessel / Form / Décor, Sculpture / Installation, and Emerging Artist. The prizes will be presented at a ceremony during the opening of the exhibition "European Ceramics - Westerwald Prize 2009", Keramikmuseum Westerwald on 28 August 2009.

The opening will be followed by a colloquium on 29 August 2009. Sara has also been invited to join the Colour Group (Great Britain) committee following her presentation "Spatial colour effects across a 3D form: from the tilt effect to the whole form illusion" at the Surface Colouration in Ceramics, Metal and Glass meeting held on 8th April 2009, City University, London.

UWIC to host Joint Society / Forum for European Philosophy Conference 2009

The 5th Joint Conference of the Society for European Philosophy and the Forum for European Philosophy is taking place at CSAD from Thursday 27 to Saturday 29 August 2009.

The conference offers faculty and graduate students the opportunity to present papers in any area of European philosophy. The keynote speakers are.

Rosi Braidotti (Utrecht)

Claire Colebrook (Penn State)

Leonard Lawlor (Penn State)

Christopher Norris (Cardiff).

The conference will include two open plenary sessions, The Future of Hermeneutics (Chair: Nicholas Davey, Dundee) and The Role of Imagery in Ontology and Thought (Chair: Clive Cazeaux, UWIC), and a work of sound art based on Cardiff's arcades (Jennie Savage) commissioned to accompany the conference.

For more information or to register, visit the conference website.

Jeff Jones starts Henry Moore Research Fellowship

Dr Jeffrey Jones (Centre for Ceramics Research)has started a Research Fellowship at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds. The Fellowship is supported by the Henry Moore Foundation, which aims to encourage appreciation of the visual arts, especially sculpture.

Dr Jones will utilise the Institute's extensive library and archive collections to investigate The Relationship of Sculpture to Pottery in British Art from the Early Twentieth Century to the Present Day. The project will focus specifically on the periods when the interests of sculptors and potters in Britain have either overlapped or come into particularly sharp focus. Jones's research will use case studies to track and interpret these relationships in order to provide an historical context in which the work of contemporary practitioners can be better understood and appreciated.

Each year the Henry Moore Institute offers four fellows the opportunity to spend a month in Leeds to develop their own research. As an integral part of the research programme, fellows present fresh perspectives on the Leeds collections, open up new collaborative possibilities and further research into sculpture.

Following an initial visit to the institute in May, Dr Jones will complete the Fellowship during the summer 2009.

Smart Clothes and Wearable Technology attracts major cross-council research funding

The Smart Clothes and Wearable Technology Research Centre (SCWT), University of Wales, Newport has attracted major funding from the New Dynamics of Ageing (NDA) project, which aims to improve the quality of life of older people. The programme is a unique collaboration between five UK Research Councils - ESRC, EPSRC, BBSRC, MRC and AHRC, has funded eleven projects across the UK.

The SCWT project, Design for ageing well: improving quality of life for the ageing population using a technology enabled garment system will focus on bringing emerging wearable technologies to active members of older age groups who do not suffer from restrictive medical conditions. The proposal will address "Ageing well across the lifecourses: autonomy and independence" with a multi-disciplinary team incorporating researchers from technical textiles, wearable electronics and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and social and care sectors, with active participation from the users.

"We are at the beginning of a new industrial revolution as textiles and electronics merge, and this collaborative research project will bring together design and technology to investigate the application of smart textiles in clothing to enhance the well-being and quality of life of the active ageing population," said Jane McCann, Director of the Research centre.

The Smart Clothes and Wearable Technology Research Centre will work closely to collaborate with co-investigators from the University of Westminster, the University of Salford, the University of Ulster, the London College of Fashion and the University of Brighton. Further information is available here.

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