Papers by Synne Skjulstad
How interdisciplinary design practices intersect as a powerful communicational core in fashion is... more How interdisciplinary design practices intersect as a powerful communicational core in fashion is given little attention in design studies. Even as fashion design is a design domain in its own right, this paper argues that our conceptions of power in fashion need to more fully include fashion as a matter of communication design. This paper argues that power is enacted via combinations of material and immaterial articulations of design practices in fashion. Design practices are essential in shaping the tastes, styles, and desires at the heart of fashion, thus rendering fashion design as an expanded field that reaches far beyond material garments. This discussion paper proposes an expanded conception of fashion design, one that includes a mesh of networked media and design practices central to fashion. Via analysis of the fashion collective Vetements, these intersections are regarded as a locus of both economic and aesthetic power.
We analyse the challenges and changing charac- ter, production and consumption of the emerging ge... more We analyse the challenges and changing charac- ter, production and consumption of the emerging genre fashion lm through a genre as ecology ap- proach. This approach accounts for the complex- ity of various rhetorical practices used within the creative industries, such as fashion. We nd that digital mediation compels genre innovation in networked cultures in the mediation of fashion. We examine three fashion lms to ascertain how they function as cultural production within web- and mobile-based communication and networked articulations. These need to be understood as part of distributed, polyvocal and multimodally medi- ated digital branding and advertising strategies that have largely not been addressed as genre by media and communication studies. Genre ecology is proposed as an addition to typological and de- velopmental models of (media) genre innovation.
Abstract: The paper discusses the work of Instagram artist Douglas Abraham as a techno- cultural ... more Abstract: The paper discusses the work of Instagram artist Douglas Abraham as a techno- cultural construct, and how the intersections between fashion and art photography in his work reveal some of the conditions for image practices embedded in Instagram. His profile name on Instagram is bessnyc4, having been expelled from the platform four times. A close study of Abraham’s work informs our understanding of how cultural practices relating to fashion photography, brand management and censorship are performed on the platform. Close attention is given to artistic approaches to the mediation of fashion, as this is central to Abrahams’ artistic practice. The article analyzes a selection of Abraham’s works published on Instagram. The analysis is rooted in a media aesthetics approach to mediation. In such a perspective, attention is given to mediation as processes involving the perception and sense-making activities of a situated subject, and encounters between the spectator, the work and its cultural and meditational references. The very materiality of the media involved - in this case, Instagram - is central to the analysis. The article also draws on design theorist Anne Balsamo’s notion of techno-culture, as she predominantly conceives communication technology as cultural artefacts. Instagram as such a cultural artefact is thus central in providing the conditions within which fashion photography is negotiated.
nordes.org
Project based work and the management of large urban development projects increasingly requires c... more Project based work and the management of large urban development projects increasingly requires co-ordination of multiple actors responsible for specified parts of a wider design process. This co-ordination also extends to the modes of representation involved in and across projects ...
Hypertext'01, 2001
Compendium: A Hypertext Approach for Participatory, Real Time, Hybrid Knowledge Capture & Publish... more Compendium: A Hypertext Approach for Participatory, Real Time, Hybrid Knowledge Capture & Publishing Jeff Conklin, Albert Selvin, Simon Buckingham Shum and Maarten Sierhuis Fluid Annotations on the Web with Open Hypermedia Niels Olof Bouvin, Polle T. Zellweger, Henning Jeh��j and Jock Mackinlay Visualizing guided tours with W3D Signe Herbers Poulsen, Mads Fjord-Larsen, Frank Allan Hansen and Bent Guldbjerg Christensen Open 3D Spatial Hypermedia as Roomware Components for Interactive Workspaces Peter ��rb��k, Michael ...
Abstract: In this paper we discuss how the teaching of visual identity in graphic design educatio... more Abstract: In this paper we discuss how the teaching of visual identity in graphic design education may be redeveloped within a speculative design framework. We inquire into how the teaching of visual identity design was framed speculatively with reference to a student project focusing on future scenarios for water sustainability. We propose the concept speculative graphic design, and discuss the implications such a concept might have for the teaching of visual identity in graphic design, and how this may position graphic design more as an agenda-setting discipline. Via analysis of selected student work, we inquire into how such a framing may both destabilise and consolidate conservative approaches to identity design with reference to water sustainability.
Computers and Composition, Jan 1, 2011
As museums’ public images become increasingly intertwined with architecture and tourism on a glob... more As museums’ public images become increasingly intertwined with architecture and tourism on a global scale, spectacular museum buildings have come to have a presence both in local, urban landscapes and online. We analyze the website presentations of two new national contemporary art museum buildings, the Tate Modern Museum in London and the National Museum of 21st Century Arts (MAXXI) in Rome, to explore the ways in which multimodal compositions and architectural narratives are designed to communicate a museum's public image. Applying methods from social semiotics and text analysis, we identify the compositional means by which narrative themes of transformation, social space, and recovered origins become linked with global market forces and destination branding through communication design.
Journal of Media Practice, 2007
Concerning the World Wide Web, little attention is given to textual analysis of websites from hum... more Concerning the World Wide Web, little attention is given to textual analysis of websites from humanistic perspectives influenced by media practice. This article investigates the mediation of online portfolios of contemporary designers working with motion graphics. It sees digital mediations such media rich websites in terms of complexity-hybridity, and coherence-convergence. It uses those combined approaches to unsettle prevailing notions of web interfaces, and applies multilinear spatio-temporal montage to address designers' inclusion of motion graphics in web design. The article also develops a Communication Design perspective in relation to wider online mediation. 359 Keywords motion graphics communication design web design mediation interface montage JMP 8 (3) 359-378
In the Nordic countries, web-based simulations are now widely used as an addition to the print-ba... more In the Nordic countries, web-based simulations are now widely used as an addition to the print-based marketing and exchange of domestic properties. Our interest in this chapter is to analyse how domestic dwellings are mediated online via digital representations. These representations draw on a range of digital tools and simulations of their professional uses in architecture, urbanism and web design. We approach these representations as mediating artefacts that clearly ask consumers to engage in an imaginative rendering of the unbuilt. The digitally designed and digitally mediated artefacts project not simply visions of the unbuilt, but envision what is to be built. In many cases they also include properties as having been sold prior to physical construction. We situate our analysis within the practices of buying and selling real estate. The digitally mediated exchange of such properties falls within the ambit of advertising discourse. This is a discourse that has persuasion as its primary aim. It seeks to draw and direct the activity of users towards the pre-purchase of future dwellings; an activity that is not merely a material one but also imaginary.
Computers and Composition, 2005
Interface design for the Web has received less attention in composition and rhetoric than other a... more Interface design for the Web has received less attention in composition and rhetoric than other areas of computer-based communication. In this paper, we introduce the term dynamic interfaces to refer to developments in single screen environments. We see that kinetic interface design involves movement in the interface, through content and via media types. We relate this to a case the BallectroWeb that we developed to report on an educational research project with choreography students. We annotate and discuss this interface and its design, composition and communicability. We suggest that developments in dynamic interfaces may be read as part of an ongoing shift from Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) generated web 'pages' to emergent and shifting screen spaces in which movement is significant. We refer to the software Macromedia Flash and close by suggesting some of the main features of dynamic interfaces.
Computers and Composition, 2011
As museums' public images become increasingly intertwined with architecture and tourism on a glob... more As museums' public images become increasingly intertwined with architecture and tourism on a global scale, spectacular museum buildings have come to have a presence both in local, urban landscapes and online. We analyze the website presentations of two new national contemporary art museum buildings, the Tate Modern Museum in London and the National Museum of 21st Century Arts (MAXXI) in Rome, to explore the ways in which multimodal compositions and architectural narratives are designed to communicate a museum's public image. Applying methods from social semiotics and text analysis, we identify the compositional means by which narrative themes of transformation, social space, and recovered origins become linked with global market forces and destination branding through communication design.
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Papers by Synne Skjulstad