Digital Collages Research Articles

“I would love for teachers to teach in a way that relates to my culture”: African immigrant youth composing digital collages

“I would love for teachers to teach in a way that relates to my culture”: African immigrant youth composing digital collages

Conducting collage elicitation research online: what happens when we remove the scissors and glue?

PurposeThis autoethnographic article presents the adaptation of collage—an arts-based method traditionally used in face-to-face settings—into an online research tool. It emphasizes the increased relevance of such a transition in the wake of the digital shift and the Covid-19 pandemic. The work aims to reveal how digital collages can facilitate in-depth participant responses in a time when conventional research settings are inaccessible.Design/methodology/approachThe article incorporates autoethnographic vignettes, which are identified in italics, that offer insights into my personal reflections on the transition and adaptation to an online mode. Firstly, I review how collage can be a valuable tool to include in focus groups and for elicitation during semi-structured interviews. Secondly, I review the challenges I experienced when conducting focus groups online to create the collages. Thirdly, I explore, in more detail, three examples of collages that reflect the diverse ranges that were produced and the insightful discussions that emerged from the participants describing the visual elements of their collages. Finally, the reflective nature of my autoethnographic vignettes provides an insight into the world of the researcher during this turbulent time.FindingsFindings show that collage, whether physical or digital, remains an effective tool for eliciting nuanced understandings from participants. The research contributes to the arts-based research narrative by showcasing how the digital adaptation of collage methods can yield profound insights into participants' perspectives, therefore enriching the data beyond what traditional interviews could unveil.Originality/valueThese observations can provide support for other researchers who are contemplating the adoption of online arts-based research methods. Understanding how traditionally face-to-face arts-based research methods can be adapted for the digitally evolving landscape is important for shaping the future of online research.

Review of "Writing in the Clouds: Inventing and Composing in Internetworked Writing Spaces by John Logie," Logie, J. (2021). Writing in the clouds: Inventing and composing in internetworked writing spaces. Parlor Press.

In the wake of the controversy surrounding the new AI chatbot application, ChatGPT, I wonder how Logie would seek to include this new technology in his work. I ponder this because, throughout the book, Logie presents compelling evidence for why the concepts of invention, composition, and internetworked writing should be embraced and not feared. While some denounce the application and take to social media to disparage the possible negative impact on students, creativity, and composition, ChatGPT, I believe Logie would argue, would be a powerful tool we can implement to become "composers." He believes that through cloud computing services we are now more apt to collaborate, use, remix, and create rhetorical modes that extend far beyond the formulaic argument, therefore we are composers. So, Logie applies the idea of a composer as someone who is a "prosumer" (Toffler). This composer is media literate and transforms traditional rhetorical canons into multimodal compositions such as memes, Google Docs, and digital collages. However, his overarching argument is that internetworked writing tools have democratized writing through that same offering of innovative outlets. His book is arranged in a way that walks the reader through this argument.

The Image of Taras Shevchenko in modern artistic practices

The interpretation of the image of T. Shevchenko in modern artistic practices is analyzed. Its characteristic features are noted and its correspondence to the main trends outlined in the early 10s of the 21st century is traced: the desire to articulate and understand the basis of the pain points of modern society through the image of Shevchenko and to present him as a certain image-thoughtform (spirit, energy). It is noted that, turning to the interpretation of the image of the poet in modern artistic practices, artists adhere to the transmission of his physiognomic features. Accordingly, the authors of posters, digital collages, illustrations for Shevchenko's poems most often rely on the most common types of images, in particular, Self-portraits of T. Shevchenko (1840; 1843), photographs of the artist during his lifetime (works by I. Doss and A. Denier). However, these traditional, matrix, types of the poet's image are subject to certain modifications. Among them: conceptual «rejuvenation» of both specified types; image of T. Shevchenko as a warrior, defender. When interpreting his image, the image of a monument to the poet becomes in demand, including as a manifestation of a new way of sacralizing Shevchenko's image — a guarantor of identity preservation. Groups of works are considered separately: those where the reception of his personality, as a constant value of the Ukrainian cultural space, is revealed through symbols of creativity; interpretations of T. Shevchenko's poems. The interpretation of the poet's image is considered in the socio-cultural context of modern history; it is shown that the main inspiring factor of cultural creation in Shevchenko's theme is the disclosure of the nation-building meaning of Taras Shevchenko's poetry.

Illuminating Transparency in Digital Historical Visualizations: Notre-Dame of Paris, St Stephen’s of Westminster, and Visualizing Venice

Illuminating Transparency in Digital Historical Visualizations: Notre-Dame of Paris, St Stephen’s of Westminster, and Visualizing Venice

과거와 현재의 조각을 이어붙이기

Africa's 'digitalization' is now a clear social, economic, and cultural phenomenon. Digital culture permeates the daily lives of many Africans and connects Africa to other regions in a way that has never been before. How are contemporary African artists changing the existing story? They are not only experimenting with digital technology, but also creating new images that project space between the past and the present, analog and digital, pre-colonial and post-colonial reality. By shortening complex perceptions to moments, overlapping reality and unreality, and reorganizing landscapes and history through multiple spatial implementations, digital collages build a world closer to neutral than concrete actions. The artists want to use digital collage to remind their values that have faded in the long history of oppression and to volatilize negatives about black culture. Through this act, the concept of modern 'memory represented by the past' is dismantled, disappeared, and the past as a dead time is revived. Another characteristic of contemporary African digital collage is that it rejects fixed identity and tries to expand it in an irregular and distracting way. By combining broken symbols through contradictory mixed styles, contemporary african digital collage that contain metaphors for deviation overthrow tradition. It aims to overturn the image of the colony through the process of "African remix," which consists of multiple images containing complex contexts of self-sustaining memories and overlapping memories that cannot be defined in language.

NFTs and Digital Art

NFTs and Digital Art

Approaching Composition as Showing–Telling through Translanguaging: Weaving Multilingualism, Multimodality, and Multiliteracies in a Digital Collage Proyecto Final

Couched in theories of translanguaging, multimodality, and multiliteracies, this article explores digital compositions (i.e., digital collages) as spaces for identity representation through the proyectos finales produced by 22 students in a Spanish composition class for heritage/native speakers in a U.S. university. Each digital collage was accompanied by two written documents: one describing the processes leading to its creation, and another one explaining the meaning of the collage and its components. Qualitative content analysis was used to investigate the submissions, with particular attention paid to instances of identity, experience, and self-representation through complex orchestrations of flexible multilingual and multimodal meaning- and sense-making. The proyecto final is discussed in terms of the curricular innovation for courses designed for racialized language-minoritized multilingual students, describing the nature and affordances of translanguaging in this context, and advancing an approach to digital composing as showing–telling.

Connecting within: Digital collage as art-based research to process a pandemic

This article focuses on the use of digital collage as art-based research (ABR) to process the COVID-19 pandemic by an employed art therapist. The researcher/artist created a series of digital collages over a four-month period that were explored symbolically and metaphorically to comprehend a period of collective grief. The investigation explores digital collage as an applicable ABR method and highlights the importance of expressive therapists creating their own art, especially during times of crises.

Embracing Creative Transience: From Political Remix Video to Digital Collage

In this essay, I explore my latest series of digital collages titled Notes and Narratives. These works utilize additive, subtractive, and substitutive remix strategies to integrate Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque paintings with visages of Donald Trump and his associates. The series appropriates historical masterworks to interrelate the theologico-political foundations of the original paintings with the political turbulence experienced under the Trump administration. Notes and Narratives foregrounds remix as a powerful and potent tool for disruption, change, and communication in the continuum of pedagogic praxes and remix studies. My previous artistic work was dedicated to creating political remix videos, and this body of work represents a fork in my creative practice. The immediacy of the collages draws upon intertextuality and remix strategies to reveal passionate polemical positions, positing contentious criticisms of the political leadership in the United States.

Creating sources of inspiration through eCollage, the FEA model, and a future visioning concept design project

This article presents an approach to creating sources of inspiration through a collaborative concept design that was developed and observed during a future visioning concept design project concerning the theme of “performance wear,” which was conducted at the University of Helsinki for second-year textile student teachers. During the project, the students created future scenarios; used the functional, expressive, and aesthetic (FEA) consumer needs model for apparel design (Lamb and Kallal in Cloth Text Res J 10(2):42–47, 1992) when considering what performance wear could be like in a future scenario; and created digital collages (eCollages) to present their concepts. In the course that followed the concept design project, the students designed and made actual clothes using the concepts developed during the concept design project as one of their sources of inspiration. The outcomes of the process are described in this article through four research questions: (1) What type of future scenarios did the teams create, what types of eCollages did the teams make, and how did the teams use information and communication technologies (ICT) in their collages? (2) How did the use of eCollages enrich the concept presentations? (3) How were the three dimensions of the FEA model utilized and presented in the eCollages and team presentations? (4) How did the future visions of the concepts and the eCollages act as sources of inspiration in the students’ clothing designs? Five of the six teams studied created a global future scenario that envisioned the world as a dystopia. The high level of technical and visual executions of all the eCollages was surprising. The ECollages played an important role in every team presentation and enriched them considerably. The FEA model, on the other hand, both provided a supporting framework for the concepts and guided the students to direct their attention to apparel within their future scenarios, as well as to consider different dimensions of it. The concepts especially inspired students to create aesthetic elements to their design and to consider the expressiveness and functionality of the garments from the concept’s perspective. The students also challenged themselves to find technical solutions to design ideas they created through being inspired by the concepts. Furthermore, the students often described gaining inspiration from the story or atmosphere of the concept or other non-visual elements of it, and thereby it seems that our approach indeed succeeded in promoting multi-sensory inspiration.

Climate Form Finding for Architectural Inhabitability

This research aims to develop a design process through experimenting cold climatic fluxes with a combined tactile and digital approach to create new architectural forms. Through successive design stages, this experimentation intends to validate the habitability of these new typologies of forms shaped by climate, which could offer multiple architectural ambiances. This paper addresses the following questions: How can these new forms be transformed and manipulated through design stages to visualize their potential architectural inhabitability? How can the design process inspire architects and designers to engage a more tactile and digital reflection with climatic fluxes, such as wind and light? Physical models are produced through combinations of lights, materials and scales, which are then studied through photographic explorations to visualize their inhabitable potential of these new climatic form. Images are further contextualized through digital collages by inserting inhabitants and an external environment to create architectural renderings. The final result offers new visual images of lively climatic ambiances that suggest a more contextual relation to the environment and ultimately, a new representation of our relationship between winter and architecture.

RETRACTED: Meanwhile in China … Miao Ying and the Rise of Chinternet Ugly

Abstract This article examines a series of internet artworks by the artist Miao Ying (b. 1985). Contextualizing her digital collages in relation to China's online culture and media spheres, it situates the contemporary art world's engagement with internet art in relation to anti-aesthetics and the rise of what has been termed Internet ugly. Interrogating the assumption that internet art emerging from China can only belatedly repeat works of Euro-American precedent, it argues that Miao's work presents a dramatic reframing of online censorship, consumerism and the unique aspects of vernacular culture that have emerged within China's online realm. Demonstrating a distinctly self-conscious celebration of what has often disparagingly been labeled The Chinternet, Meanwhile in China can be seen to emerge out of the broader contradictions of internet art practices that parody the relationships between The Chinternet and the World Wide Web, global capitalism and Shanzhai [fake or pirated] aesthetics, online propaganda and media democracy, and the art market's relationship to the virtual economies of an art world online.

Wellness (January, 2017)

Abstract This piece is in the form of a graphic suite of 31 digital collages for the 31 days of January, starting with ‘#wellness’ and ending with ‘#trump’. The piece is a meta-lexicon and cipher for the platform it takes as its medium. Hashtags and appropriated and subtly reworked images are collaged together, using the virtual platform they inhabit as a ground for détourned mingling. The artist plays a disassociation game with hashtags, using them as an unpredictable pathway to the next word or phrase. As the hashtags accumulate, each addition to the snaking words is combined with an image from the ‘Instaarchive’ to create new puns and misapprehensions.

Pass the Parcel

Based in Mumbai, India, Avani Aggarwal is a digital artist whose pieces reflect a yin-and-yang style harmony of digital and nature. Her trial and error approach incorporates Photoshop, photography, hand sketches, and even fractals. The cover image for this issue, Living in Harmony, is part of Aggarwal's Cityscapes series, digital collages in which the natural world collides with the urban fabric.

Polyvore Pedagogy: Everybody Is an Artist, Critic, Collector, Curator, and (OH NO!) an Art Teacher

This is what visual culture has come to: We live in image-laden worlds where anyone who wishes can create digital collages and present them to worldwide audiences of millions of collectors. These c...

SkeletonCity: Birdman Dancing, and: SkeletonCity: Skeleton Buddies

SkeletonCity: Birdman Dancing, and: SkeletonCity: Skeleton Buddies Susan Brown (bio) SkeletonCity: Birdman Dancing Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 178] SkeletonCity: Skeleton Buddies Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 179] SkeletonCity: Birdman Dancing Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 180] SkeletonCity: Skeleton Buddies Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 181] Susan Brown Susan Marie Brown is an author-illustrator. Once upon a time she went to archaeology school. Then she got an MFA at the University of Washington-Bothell. Now she uses her photographs of historic places plus bits of antique images to create theatrical digital collages. Her portfolio: www.victoriantravel.com. Copyright © 2015 University of Wisconsin Board of Regents

Use of technology and software applications for therapeutic collage making

Art therapists employ a variety of media, materials and processes during therapy sessions. The increase of technology among the general population and within counselling practice justifies interests in the use of digital media and software applications within art therapy. Technology can be added to expand upon current therapeutic interventions in art therapy, although the extent of its current use and acceptance in the field is not fully known. Specifically, digital collages may be used to increase the user's comfort and engagement with the collage process and decrease some logistical barriers that may exist. This article reviews the use of technology in art therapy, discusses the pros and cons of technology as applied to art therapy, addresses the role of the art therapist in technology-based interventions and presents software applications for creating digital collages that are available in today's market.

Exist‐Stencil

AbstractArchitect and interior designer Jeffrey James admits an ambivalent attitude towards nature. Here he turns that ambivalence to positive effect through a series of poetic digital collages that provide a mediation between ‘our incomprehension of the vast magnificence and complexity of the natural world and the actual spaces that we can physically touch and inhabit’.

A review of high-grade imaging of diatoms and radiolarians in light microscopy optical- and software-based techniques

Several optical- and software-based techniques for light microscopy are presented, which can be suggested as suitable means for the enhancement of image quality in observations and photomicrography of 3D specimens, especially diatoms and radiolarians. Sandwich illumination techniques, condenser aperture reduction darkfield, condenser aperture reduction phase contrast, axial darkfield (luminance contrast), traditional incident light and monochromatic illumination techniques can be used for optical improvements of visible microscopic images. In photomicrography, the image quality and visual information can be enhanced further by several software-based post-processing procedures: stacking techniques for deep focus imaging and high dynamic range rendering (HDR), digitized brightfield and interference contrast, inverted and ultra-high contrast amplified brightfield imaging, creation of digital collages and 3D imaging (anaglyphe imagery). All in all, several parameters determining image quality can be improved by these means: depth of field (vertical resolution), 3D appearance, lateral resolution, contour sharpness, image contrast, degree of equalization and balance in brightness and contrast, also the perceptibility of fine structures in thick specimens and very bright or dark zones. Thus, superior results are achievable when compared with conventional techniques.