Object-based Research Research Articles

When East meets West: The politicization of kei pou (qipao) or cheongsam in Hong Kong

When East meets West: The politicization of kei pou (qipao) or cheongsam in Hong Kong

Uniform-undone: A study in the repurposing of military attire through history and in experimental practice

This article reports on a practice-led research project focusing on military attire as both a subject and an agent of change. An historical account situates the origins of modern military attire within the emergent modern state during the nineteenth century, and then examines its subsequent role as part of the project to create a ‘new man’ in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. This is followed by a critical discussion of the decoupling of military attire from its associations with the institutions of state and warfare during the Vietnam War – where fatigues entered the popular atmosphere as casual attire that was variously subversive, countercultural and aesthetic in nature. Employing the MA-1 bomber jacket and camouflage as illustrative examples, the article then highlights the continued repurposing of military attire and its concomitant commoditization. The practice-led research employs object-based research, speculative artistic methodologies and various garment-making techniques in the production of a novel ‘military’ garment that explores the symbolism of military uniforms and critiques their traditional concept as utilitarian combat wear. The material outcomes interrogate linkages between military attire and notions of masculinity, class and gender identity. The research project further attempts to speculate on how military attire may be repurposed within the atmosphere of the twenty-first century – one that contemplates new forms of identity and other challenges that are responsive to contemporary circumstances.

Evaluation Methods of Change Detection of Seagrass Beds in the Waters of Pajenekang and Gusung Selayar

Knowledge about coastal and small island ecosystems is increasing for the monitoring of marine resources based on remote sensing. Remote sensing data provides up-to-date information with various resolutions when detecting changes in ecosystems. Studies have defined a shift in marine resources but were limited only to pixel or object classification in changes of seagrass area. In the present study, two classification method analysis approaches were compared to obtain optimum results in detecting changes in seagrass extent. It aimed to determine the dynamics of a seagrass ecosystem by comparing two classification methods in the waters of Gusung Island and Pajenekang, South Sulawesi, these methods being pixel-based and object-based classification methods. This research used SPOT-7 satellite imagery with 6 m2 of spatial resolution. Accuracy assessment using the confusion matrix showed optimum accuracy in object-based classification with an accuracy value of 87 %. Meanwhile, pixel-based classification showed an accuracy value of 78 % around Gusung Island. Pajenekang Island had accuracy values of 69 % with object-based classification and 65 % with pixel-based classification. A comparison of both classification methods revealed statistically high accuracy in mapping the benthic habitats of seagrass ecosystems. The results of the classifications showed a decline in the area of seagrass populations around Gusung Island from 2016 - 2018 and around Pajenekang Island from 2013 - 2017, with a change rate of 11.8 % around the island of Gusung and 7.6 % around the island of Pajenekang. This can explain the reason for the temporal method of object-based research classification having the best potential to process data changes in areas of seagrass in South Sulawesi waters and remote sensing information for the mapping of coastal area ecosystems.
 HIGHLIGHTS
 
 Information on coastal ecosystems globally with remote sensing data is currently very easy to access, but information related to ecosystem management and seagrass ecology in certain areas is still limited
 Analysis of seagrass benthic changes in shallow water requires data processing methods with high accuracy
 The OBIA (Object Based Image Analysis) method is one of the analytical methods that can provide optimal results in observing changes in seagrass ecosystems in the waters of South Sulawesi, Indonesia
 
 GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

‘No Small Share of Ingenuity’: An Object-Oriented Analysis of Eighteenth-Century English Dressmaking

This article details eighteenth-century English dressmaking through an in-depth, object-oriented exploration of garment construction practices and techniques from a maker's perspective. Building upon prior scholarship of women's work and aspects of pre-industrial English garment trades, this article employs primary and secondary source materials in conjunction with extensive object-based research of extant garments. The research findings outline exactly how pre-industrial English dressmakers’ skills were nuanced, sophisticated and adaptive to making and remaking, as well as the personal, haptic connections they cultivated with their work.

Information Literacy for Fashion Students: Translating Visual and Tactile Cues into Searchable Key Terms

Emerging fashion researchers often have their first experience with visual and tactile research in postsecondary school. Fashion librarians and educators must be able to assist students in adapting their perspective to include analyses of characteristics like color, silhouette, fabric, weave, and embellishment, in addition to familiarity with the fashion scholarship. However, translating visual and tactile cues into searchable vocabulary bridges can be difficult and exposes a gap in information literacy. In this article the author shares three information literacy exercises that librarians may combine with institution-specific resource instruction to guide students in developing a useful vocabulary for image- and object-based research and meeting their unique educational needs.

An object-based research study of archive pieces incorporating digital technology

Abstract This article presents a case study of a collaborative project between garment technology students and museum costume curators, centred around object-based research. The project brief was to re-produce patterns and toiles of selected archive garments, with a focus on incorporating digital pattern technology, to explore the possibilities of this technology in an exhibition context. In addition to these specified outcomes, a successful knowledge exchange was observed, with the curators advising the provenance and social history of the pieces and the students sharing their expertise in manual and digital pattern cutting and in garment construction. During the project, the personal development of the students transitioned from a position of inexperience relating to archived garments, to one of recognized expertise through their recreation of the pieces in a pattern and construction context.

The dress detective: a practical guide to object-based research in fashion

The dress detective: a practical guide to object-based research in fashion

Second Skin: Investigating the Production of Contoured Patterns for the Theatrical Costume Industry

This paper discusses research into pattern cutting via mould-making techniques for body-conscious, contoured clothing used in the theatrical costume industry (film, television and theatre). With their considerable experience as costume makers, the authors recognized a gap in knowledge and documentation for this approach to pattern cutting. The intentions were to expand the range of techniques available for theatrical costume professionals, allowing practitioners to draw complex style lines directly onto the body shape and onto inanimate objects. The research explored different approaches through a series of three-dimensional experiments, which included contouring the body with moulds to achieve sculptural or abstract forms and discovering the capabilities, advantages and restrictions of the technique. The enquiry includes a variety of methodologies, which investigated the practical, technical and historical background to contoured pattern cutting. Object-based research considered the design and manufacture of body conscious garments. Action-based research and semi-structured interviews with practitioners considered the skills costume makers use to produce contoured clothing and the ethics connected with drawing styles directly onto the human body. In order to contextualize the practical investigations, a review of the literature revealed the limited extent of contemporary and historical research dedicated to contoured pattern cutting.

Material in Context: The Amber Head of Christ of the Wallace Collection Pax

This article undertakes an object-focused study of a single work of art of great material and visual complexity: the Wallace Collection pax. This object stimulates an important discussion on how the making, materials and form of a work of art are fundamental to unravelling the object’s function and meaning for a contemporary audience. In placing at the core of the object a rare example of a late medieval amber Vera icon, the Wallace Collection pax also opens up a wider discussion on the nature and popularity of amber as a material of artistic expression in the later Middle Ages. In basing this article on the physical and material history of the work of art, I hope to illustrate the importance of going back to first principles when undertaking object-based research, and I intend to highlight the complex interaction between material and form in late medieval art.

Craft in unexpected places

Abstract Within the shifting territories of craft practice, the handmade has become a relational form of contemporary activity that transforms our understanding of place through a hands-on, minds-on process of collectivemaking. The conceptual significance of craft is activated through a chance encounter with the handmade in daily life. During the article we aim to explore the confluence between crafting, social engagement, volunteering and the realms of education and creative practice that we have both experienced first hand. What will be revealed will be the voices of practitioners collectively exploring cloth’s potential as a metaphor for consciousness, carrier of narrative and catalyst for community empathy and cohesion. This will be informed by an enquiry into historical forms of communal crafting drawn from archival research at the Imperial War Museum London and Foundling Hospital Collection housed at the Foundling Museum in London and a primary case study of the workshop ‘Desconocida – Unknown – Ukjent’. We employ a method used in object-based research: a value system that can be applied to the consideration of cloth as an object of study – namely, the locational, iconographical, archival, aesthetic and transferral. Focusing particularly on the transferral and locational, we will examine the significance of the handmade gesture in particular artistic, political and social contexts. These visual and textual narratives will inform our perception of ‘Craft in unexpected places’ and bring visibility to a selection of craft interventions by making links between the wide-reaching possibilities for craft-based practices and their expressive potential within the social and political landscapes they inhabit.

Curating in the Postdigital Age

Curating in the Postdigital Age

The spiral relationship between suffering and the production of fashionable clothes

Abstract In this article, I explore the relationships between suffering and the production of fashionable clothes. In the commercial struggle for survival many fashionable styles are discarded while some remain durable due to their adaptability to new trends and creative ideas. The aim of this research was to investigate how suffering initiates these changes in the creative process of fashion design. This was examined through a number of methodologies, which included object-based research and ethnography. The research findings indicate that suffering within the fashion industry can be a positive attribute. It can influence the way in which clothes are produced and the skills necessary to produce them. A model depicting the connection between suffering and fashion is posited as a tentative theory suggesting that there is a spiral relationship in that changes in fashion production and consumption resulting from suffering evolve into a spiral of further suffering impacting on the future of fashion design and manufacture.

Architecture on the Carpet: The Curious Tale of Construction Toys and the Genesis of Modern Buildings * Modernist Complexity on a Small Scale: The Dandanah Glass Building Blocks of 1920 from an Object-based Research Perspective

Architecture on the Carpet: The Curious Tale of Construction Toys and the Genesis of Modern Buildings * Modernist Complexity on a Small Scale: The Dandanah Glass Building Blocks of 1920 from an Object-based Research Perspective

Investigating the Blusa: The Cultural and Sartorial Biography of an Algerian Dress

This essay describes the evolution of the garment known as a blusa, worn by urban women in north-western Algeria. The blusa, a full-length dress with short sleeves, was conceived and developed in the cities of Tlemcen and Oran. It incorporates locally meaningful traditions as well as fashion styles in conjunction with different cultures. Its transformation illustrates how Algerian women resisted cultural assimilation through dress while creatively appropriating western European textiles, techniques and aesthetics in their clothing, during the French colonial period (1830–1962) and its aftermath. The exploration of the contemporary blusa variations reveals how the relationship between clothing and identity is still highly complex in Algerian cities. To date, the invention, the rituals, the design, and the production of the blusa dress has been little studied. This paper reconstitutes an historical puzzle based on recent object-based research and anthropological investigations. It seeks to interpret the blusa as an interface between tradition and modernity.

Object-based attention: A tutorial review

This tutorial provides a selective review of research on object-based deployment of attention. It focuses primarily on behavioral studies with human observers. The tutorial is divided into five sections. It starts with an introduction to object-based attention and a description of the three commonly used experimental paradigms in object-based attention research. These are followed by a review of a variety of manifestations of object effects and the factors that influence object segmentation. The final two sections are devoted to two key issues in object-based research: the mechanisms that give rise to the object effects and the role of space in object-based selection.

Media and materiality: extending the boundaries of object research

Articles included in this volume focus on the social role of “things” to examine the relationships between material and media artefacts, the construction of social identities, and the production and use of culture. As a collection, the articles reiterate a shift in contemporary object-based research which sees the study of things as an expanded discourse in which the thing itself is neither tethered to its material properties or a sole narrative. Faced with the challenge of contemplating the object as a virtual moving target, contributors have produced a collection of articles that extend “the object” beyond any singular or delimited site of investigation. In many cases the “artefact” explored is both media and material, and where this is the case, contributors argue that expressions of cultural production can be effectively analysed in relation to other empirical cultural dynamics as well as social and historical structures. Each contributor employs a case-study approach that raises “questions of precedent and futurity, of canons of contextualization” in order to challenge disciplinary norms and boundaries. The resulting volume seeks, in the final instance, to make a contribution to the ongoing processes of formation and reflection that characterise interdisciplinary culture studies.

Precision Patchwork: Nineteenth-Century Military Quilts

In 2007 the Victoria and Albert Museum acquired a nineteenth-century military quilt which will be displayed in a major exhibition in spring 2010. This exhibition aims to examine the historic, social and cultural context of British quilt production and seeks to challenge popular misconceptions, including the assumption that quilt making was 'women's work'. This article will draw on published sources and research carried out in a quilt documentation project to consider the role of men in quilt production in the nineteenth century. Using primary sources, it will examine the provision of skills workshops and the learning of trades in the army. In considering both primary and secondary sources, this paper outlines the difficulties in undertaking object-based research that is dependent on oral testimony.