News & Events November 2009

Keireine Canavan lecture at American University of Kuwait

15 November

American University of Kuwait

As part of several events on Bedouin Weaving organised by the Arabian Heritage Project at the American University of Kuwait (AUK), Dr Keireine Canavan delivered a principal lecture entitled "Communication & Language of Textiles", which focused on how textiles communicate information on a number of different levels: through colour association and recognized pattern; via uniformity and symbolism; the portrayal of culture and fashion, the desire for decoration and the conveyance of messages and religious beliefs from one to another.

Directly related to previous academic research of traditional Ikat weaving patterns and symbolism in Malaysia and India, the lecture culminated with a series of images related to the current research of Kuwait's Al Sadu weaving motifs, patterns and associated symbolism. Further information on the event and Dr Canavan's lecture is available from here.

Mark Durden Professorial Lecture: Tales from the Trophy Room

11th November 2009
E10 Lecture Theatre, Caerleaon Campus, University of Wales, Newport

Professor Mark Durden will be discussing both his writing on photography and his collaborative work with David Campbell and Ian Brown as the artists' group, Common Culture. Durden will look at both the problems and merits of writing in collaboration, discussing the production of a co-authored book, Variable Capital, and Common Culture's collective script for their recent video projection, Openings are Always Awkward.

Cathy Treadaway: Creativity and Cognition 09

27-30th October
University of California, Berkley

Held at the Berkeley Art Museum, the 7th Creativity and Cognition Conference (CC09) embraced the broad theme of Everyday Creativity. Dr. Cathy Treadaway's paper ‘Hand e-Craft' presented findings from her research on hand use and creativity. The paper has been published by the ACM Press in the conference proceedings and is also available on-line in the ACM digital library.

This month, Treadaway has also been featured in ‘Gizmos allow artists to 'feel' their creations', an article on creativity and digital interfaces published by the New Scientist magazine.

Jon Pigott: Seeing Sound Symposium

19-20 September
University of Bath

Hosted by Bath Spa University's Centre for Musical Research, the two-day symposium explored a broad range of multimedia work highlighting the relationship between sound and image. For Seeing Sound, Jon Pigott presented his work Visual Speakers: Prepared Loudspeakers with a Visual Theme - loudspeakers that have been physically altered in some way to change their sonic characteristics. The work concerns the interaction between the physical and electromagnetic sound worlds and explores the defining of the loudspeaker as a source rather than a carrier of sound. The visual speakers form part of the trajectory of this work but are also indebted to practitioners such as Thomas Wilfred who were working with mechanical and early electrical technologies to produce Lumia in the early twentieth century.

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