In the making: Digital fabrication and disability

Ursula Kate Hurley, University of Salford

Digital fabrication combines virtual and material worlds; transforming thoughts into things, and things into data. It fosters complex and varied communities while enabling the pursuit of unique individual outputs. Current literature on digital fabrication concentrates on its technical and economic potential, with little attention yet being paid to the fundamental questions of how the technology might affect our understanding of identity, embodiment, or creative processes. Using case studies and experiences gained from ground-breaking fieldwork, "In the Making" explores these processes and their products from both cultural and aesthetic perspectives; with emphasis on its human interactions, not on technology. Embracing the absence of established methodologies in their emerging area of investigation, this volume offers a series of wide-ranging and original interdisciplinary framings which arise from the materials themselves. That very act of imagining, of selecting and committing to an envisaged but not yet physically present product, offers insights into needs and desires. What is the story of that design? How did it come to be? The basic principles of digital fabrication – the transformation from concept to physical entity – offer intriguing possibilities for aesthetic and cultural readings, particularly from the perspectives of disability. Online, open access maker communities mean that anyone with an internet connection and a desktop 3D printer is able to download and print a wide variety of replicable and customisable objects. What might this mean for disabled people? As digital fabrication technologies enter mainstream society, In the making poses urgently applicable questions about presence, existence, and authenticity and begins to suggest how we might explore them.

City of Children

Francesco Tonucci, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the National Research Council, Italy

The city, born to be a place of meeting and exchange, has for several decades taken as a default model the strong citizen, man, adult and worker, thereby transforming it into a hostile space for the weakest: the elderly, the disabled, the poor and the children. The automobile, the toy of choice for the privileged citizen, is also taken to be the principal 'citizen' of the city, thus endangering the health, aesthetics and mobility of the rest of us. This book proposes a new philosophy of city governance that takes children as the default citizens, with the confidence that a city sensitive to the needs of childhood will be healthier for everybody. This work recovers elements of the 1989 Convention of the Rights of the Child that recognize the full citizenship of children to suggest two principle axioms for optimal city design: the participation of children in city governance and the restitution of their autonomy, which allows them to stay with their friends and play freely. Boys and girls, in this way, represent all those excluded from decisions and power. This book is primarily written for politicians and city managers so that they can take on board the ideas within. Yet it is also important for teachers and parents so that they can respect the rights provided in the convention. City of Children should be made available to students on teacher-training courses, and also to the children who are the book’s true protagonists. At present, more than two hundred cities in Spain, Italy, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Brazil and Costa Rica have joined this project. This book is a translation of “La città dei bambini” and was translated as part of the Bridging Language and Scholarship initiative. The English edition by Vernon Press follows previous editions of this important work in Italian and the four languages of the Spanish nation (Galego, Basque, Catalan and Castilian), French and Portuguese to make available for the first time this important work to a broader international audience.

And the Loser is: A History of Oscar Oversights

2nd Edition

Aubrey Malone

In this updated edition of Aubrey Malone’s ground-breaking study of the unsung heroes and heroines of the Oscar ceremonies, he delves further into the circumstances surrounding many of the films either ignored or undervalued by the Academy from the 1920s up to the embarrassing gaffe of 2017 which saw La La Land wrongly announced as Best Picture instead of Moonlight. In a book which doubles as an unofficial history of Hollywood, he writes about all the great stars who never won an Oscar and, more poignantly, the tragedies that often befell winners as the law of diminishing returns set in. People like Susan Hayward, Rod Steiger, Vivien Leigh and many others never recaptured the magic after winning the golden statue. Instead of a foretaste of better things, for many of them it was the beginning of the end. In the case of some winners, like Gig Young, the decline resulted in a horrific murder/suicide some years down the road. The book also studies concepts like sympathy Oscars, consolation Oscars, Life Achievement Awards that are often AMPAS apologies for Oscar bypasses, and the number of relationships and marriages that broke down after Oscar wins. It also looks at those near-perennial bridesmaids at the Oscar wedding who were repeatedly passed over, often on spurious grounds. This intricate, highly detailed book also looks at the effect of the blacklist on the awarding of Oscars, and the various prejudices that saw many people excluded from the winner’s enclosure when they richly deserved to be there.

Cinematic Women, From Objecthood to Heroism: Essays on Female Gender Representation on Western Screens and in TV Productions

Edited by Lisa V Mazey, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Women have fulfilled film roles that exhibit their historically subservient or sexualised positions in society, among others. Over the decades, the gender identity of women has fluctuated to include powerful women, emotionally strong women, lesbian women, and even neurologically atypical women. These identities reflect the change in societal norms and what is now acknowledged as more likely and more mainstream. The evolution of society’s views of women can be mapped through these roles; from 1950’s America where women were depicted as the counterpart to male characters and their masculinity either as a threat or support to the patriarchal norms; to more recent times, where these norms have been questioned, challenged, deconstructed and reconstructed to include women in a more equitable balance. The fight for equal access, equal pay and equal standing still exists in all walks of life and different cultures requiring continued scrutiny of the norms that made that fight necessary. The essays offer a unique vantage of the changing culture and conversations that allowed, encouraged, and praised an evolution of women’s roles. They strive to represent the issues faced by women, from the early heyday of Hollywood through to films as recent as 2007; examining depictions of the masculine gaze, mental and physical oppression, the mother figure, as well as how these roles may develop in the future. The book contains valuable material for film students at an undergraduate or post-graduate level, as well as scholars from a range of disciplines including cultural studies, media studies, film studies and women’s and gender studies.

Embajadoras cosmopolitas. Exposiciones internacionales, diplomacia cultural y el museo policentral

Lee Davidson, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand and Leticia Pérez-Castellanos, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico

Ganador del Premio Miguel Covarrubias 2020 al mejor trabajo de investigación ¿Cómo trabajan los museos internacionalmente a través de las exposiciones? ¿Qué motiva este trabajo? ¿Cuáles son los beneficios y retos? ¿Qué factores contribuyen al éxito? ¿Qué impacto tiene este trabajo en los públicos y otros agentes interesados? ¿Qué aportaciones están haciendo a la diplomacia cultural, al entendimiento y al diálogo intercultural? El libro Embajadoras cosmopolitas considera el estado del conocimiento actual sobre las exposiciones internacionales y propone un marco analítico interdisciplinario que incluye a los estudios de museos, de públicos, la diplomacia cultural, así como los estudios interculturales y sobre cosmopolitismo. A partir de este marco analítico, presenta un estudio empírico a detalle acerca de un intercambio expositivo con duración de casi una década, desde su concepción inicial hasta su término, el cual incluyó la presentación de dos exposiciones en cinco países y tres continentes, conectando a seis instituciones culturales de alto perfil. La detallada comparación, tanto de la producción cultural de las exposiciones internacionales (a través de las colaboraciones) como de los actos interpretativos de creación de significados de los visitantes, revela las complejidades, retos, tensiones y recompensas de las exposiciones internacionales y su intersección con la diplomacia cultural. Los temas clave incluyen: la situación real de las colaboraciones internacionales, sus propósitos, procesos y retos; las políticas de la representación (y auto representación) cultural y de la museología indígena, las implicaciones para el diseño de las exposiciones, la interpretación y su mercadotecnia; las competencias interculturales y las prácticas en los museos, la recepción en los públicos y la creación de sentidos, la diplomacia cultural en la práctica y las percepciones sobre su valor. Este análisis teórico con base empírica, el primero en su tipo, provee las bases para un nuevo modelo de museos policéntricos: espacios con potencial para producir una visión caleidoscópica de centros múltiples y para ayudar a disolver los límites culturales, promoviendo el diálogo, la negociación y la búsqueda de la comprensión entre culturas. Embajadoras cosmopolitas también ofrece orientación para las tareas cotidianas en los museos, incluyendo recomendaciones para colaboraciones exitosas a nivel internacional, el desarrollo de exposiciones y la maximización del potencial de la diplomacia cultural.