Critical and Contextual Studies

Winner, Writing Prize and Commendation for Runner-up to Best Dissertation

A monster lies in wait, lurking outside.
It soars, it alights on a steep roof.
It sucks the viscera out of villagers when they sleep. It is the
most feared mythological evil spirit in Filipino folklore. Its split body
is a crack in my Filipino community.

Winner, Best Disseration (3D)

‘I felt uncomfortable in my own skin to the point I wanted to rip the flesh off my bones. I was having intrusive thoughts and I felt itching like there were ants crawling all over me. Even with all that happening, I didn’t realise there was a problem with me or the way I drank. I can look back now and realise that wasn’t normal. Normal isn’t someone at 15 getting liver damage due to excessive drinking and being told by the doctor in the children’s unit that if I carried on, I was going to get liver failure and die.’

Winner, Best Dissertation (Art)

‘In many ways, the archive can become something far greater than the sum of its parts. One could go so far as to say of this “representational” (Stewart) aspect that, because a collection is ordered by its own internal logic (as curated by the artist), it can be seen to function as a microcosm of the material world. Perhaps it is also the freedom of archival methodology to reorder the relationships between elements both relational to and representative of the material world that attracts artists to an archive-based practice.’

Winner, Best Dissertation (Film)

‘Audiences would typically wonder: What makes a hero in a film look relatable? Or why does the viewer react instantly to a villain? Whether it is a drawn cartoon or digital animation, many of these films begin with a pencil and a piece of paper. The visualisation of a story helps the viewer to understand the narrative and get an impression of its characters based on their appearances (Ekström, 2013). For character designers, it is crucial to accurately convey a character’s personality through its external features to allow the audience quickly identify the nature of the individual (Hauser and Docter, 2009, p. 19) and categorise it into its role in the plot (Tillman, 2011, p. 11). But how can a designer indicate a character’s personality through their look? This dissertation explores the use of geometric shapes in character design from its psychological origins to the methods and schemes of current practitioners, such as Pixar Animation Studios.’

‘Zines can be black and white or coloured, have drawings, collage, be handwritten or typed with annotations, photographs, rough edges markers, with spelling mistakes. That's what makes zines personal, organic, spontaneous, unique, and mirrors the character and personality of the writer. The imperfections it contains to handle a statement on the nature of truth is mixed with our inclination to believe what we read. In some zines, it is as if I were reading the letter from my best friend talking about subjects that are never addressed by the media. (...) The zine was a powerful tool for the Riot Grrrl movement to emerge and spread, giving girls voices across the world.’

‘Ocularcentrism filtered in all the areas of our society, including art, design and architecture; transforming them in mere intellectual images with no haptic memory behind. The issue with ocularcentrism and consequently reduced sensory experience is, not only that our body and mind need a complete set of sensory information to feel safe and secure, but the fact that spaces that do not create a sensory experience, do not allow us to bond with them and create memories.’

‘The more our daily life appears standardized, stereotyped, submitted to the accelerated reproduction of consumer goods, the more art must become part of life and rescue from it that small difference which operates between levels of repetition, making habitual consumption reverberate with destruction and death; linking cruelty to inanity, discovering, beneath consumption, the chattering of the schizophrenic; and reproducing esthetically, […] the illusions and mystifications which are the real essence of this civilization—so that, in the end, Difference can express itself […] even if it’s only in the form of a contradiction here or there, thereby liberating the forces needed to destroy this world.’ Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (1994)

‘I remove or add just one carbon molecule. All impressions become highly informational regarding objects, elements that are spatial and combine odour experiences. And in this instance, odour has the same spatiality in relation with the sense of smell that the starry sky has on my retina in relation with vision. Now my thought smells of interrelation. Smells of a moron taken out of an oxymoron—a conscious of unconsciousness of collision of senses.’

‘The British and other ex-colonial powers took cultural artefacts, such as the Benin Bronzes, from their colonies in an attempt to control them culturally which in turn would make it easier to control them physically. Decades after the end of colonialism however, Britain and other European countries continue to hold their ex-colonies’ cultural property hostage.’

‘There was a time when furniture was bought to last in our homes for decades and then passed away from generation to generation. Sofas, chairs and dining tables were looked after because made with valuable materials and upstanding workmanship. In the past when furniture would break, they would then be fixed, refurbished and adjusted in order for them to be used till the end of their lives. Nowadays capitalist society has lead us to a continue research to ‘convenience’ privileging cheap, low quality, standardised products which are also putting the environment and renewable resources in danger.’

‘This study will focus on how designers have embraced this ‘urge to affiliate with other forms of life’ to re-think the built environment as a place where ‘the relationship between mankind and nature [can] be one of respect and love rather than domination’ (Dubos, 1980). This relationship can be achieved by designing to increase the occupant’s connectivity to the natural environment as a vital aspect of the design.’

‘Eventually, artists must adapt to the political system and its influence on the content of art, and then skillfully navigate its complicated barriers in order to succeed in progressing their politics and ideology while maintaining a strong personal voice.’

‘This inability to exchange perception with others allows individuals to conserve a psychological reality, the self being unchanged, unchallenged and eternally trapped in its own perception at the centre of its reality. Being able to go past it would destroy individuality to the benefit of a merged global consciousness.’