Category Archives: Uncategorized

RELATED TERMS: Epic theatre – Brecht; Deixis and Deictic Acts; Performance and Performativity; Theatre of Cruelty – Artaud; Tragic Theatre – Aristotle  “What is the real thing? The question is an ideal subject for the stage, where the actual and the illusory constantly shadowbox.” (Clapp, 2024) The ‘as if’ and the ‘what if’ at theContinue reading “Theatre and Drama Theory”

RELATED TERMS: Actantial model – Greimas; Narratology; Poststructuralism; Semiotics; Sculpture; “In short, the very manifesto of structuralism must be sought in the famous formula, eminently poetic and theatrical: to think is to cast a throw of the dice [penser, c’est e’mettre un coup de des].” Deleuze, G. (2004) ‘How do we recognise structuralism?’, in McMahon,Continue reading “Structuralism”

RELATED TERMS: Everyday; Alienation; Situationist International; Historical materialism – Marxism; Critical Theory; Avant-Garde Movements; Alienation effect – Verfremdungseffekt A critical, creative and reflexive design practice could benefit from an understanding of the issues raised by Guy Debord in his book, Society of the Spectacle, published in 1967. It is a manifesto of 221 theses on capitalistContinue reading “Spectacle – Society of the Spectacle”

RELATED TERMS: Actor-Network Theory; Anthropology; Ethnography; Ethnomethodology; Design practices would do well to be sociologically informed, particularly in relation to micro-sociological studies. The decades from the 1960s to the 1980s saw an increase in micro-social studies and methodology. The 1980s saw an attempt to bridge the gap between the more recent micro- studies and theContinue reading “Sociology”

RELATED TERMS: Modernism and avant-garde art practice Vid Simoniti points out that the work of politically committed artists has radically shifted since the mid-1990s. A new generation of artists has sought not just to represent social reality, but to change it, by blending art with activism, through social regeneration projects, and even by oursuing violentContinue reading “Socially Engaged Art”

RELATED TERMS: Structuralism; Poststructuralism Semiotics can be of great value in design practices, especially in the ways in which material semiosis can be understood to be an active constituent of the networks of social practice. Umberto Eco (1979: 7) has an interesting approach to defining what a comprehensive programme for a general semiotics would be.Continue reading “Semiotics”

RELATED TERMS: Landscape Design; Structuralism; Theoretical practice; Narrative environment design; Architecture Designed artefacts, while being environmental and situational, are not, in any simple or straightforward sense, architecture nor landscape. Nor, furthermore, are they sculpture. Yet they bear some relation to all of these forms of spatial practice: architectural design, landscape design and sculpture. Such fieldsContinue reading “Sculpture”

RELATED TERMS: Paradigm; Method and Methodology; Research Methodologies The term science has come to refer to a set of practices whereby knowledge is obtained through observation and experiment, critically tested and brought under general principles. Scientific method in the natural or physical sciences is a three-step process: careful observation of some aspect of nature; speculationContinue reading “Science”

RELATED TERMS: Avant-garde movements; Multimodal research; Method and methodology Two major research philosophies or methodologies have been identified in the Western tradition of science: positivist or scientific, which is quantitative in character; and interpretivist or anti-positivist, which is qualitative in character. In the context of design practices, a third, performative, paradigm is relevant, which isContinue reading “Research Methodologies”

RELATED TERMS: Philosophy; Performative To represent, or re-present, to bring to presence and/or to indicate prior presence or existence, is the activity from which representations arise. In that sense, representation is similar to the notion of ‘sign’, as that which stands for something for someone in some respect. Representation names both a field of establishedContinue reading “Representation”