Journal & Book Publications

A case-study on temple architecture in Tamil Nadu, India presents the tensions posed by globalisation to discuss and explore the development of design tools, evaluation of the design process, and the creation of a design-based framework for intangible culture and heritage. This paper introduces a future mode for designing cultural experiences through community engagement by identifying four key design principles guiding the preservation and sustainability of endangered cultural traditions, practices, and spaces. 

Citation:
Chon, Harah. ''Defining Heritage and Cultural Preservation through Design: A Framework for Experience Design.'' Proceedings of IASDR 2021, Hong Kong 12/2021, Springer, 2022.

The report discusses the history of telematic performance and explains how this research is using some of those established approaches to open up alternative possibilities for theatre and dance companies working in and beyond the current pandemic. To date, the project has shown how a range of telematic chromakey systems can be employed to bring a whole new level of creativity to videoconference-based performance work, freeing the performers’ bodies from the entrapment of Zoom boxes and co-locating them in specially designed 3D environments. Drawing on case studies from some of the project’s eight residencies with professional performance groups, the authors discuss how existing techniques have been adapted for different levels of experience, and how the project has offered new ways of working. Whilst the pandemic is expected to be a time-limited issue, these techniques hold value for performers and creators of theatre and dance well beyond ‘lockdown’.

Citation:
Dixon, Steve, et al. ''A Telepresence Stage: Or How to Create Theatre in a Pandemic.'' International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, vol. 18, no. 1, 2022, pp. 48-68, doi: DOI: 10.1080/14794713.2021.2015562.

Working across different genres and platforms, from live stage works to CD-ROMs, interactive theatre projects and telematic performances, for over thirty years the Chameleons Group have been exploring Artaud’s notions of the double, cruelty, physical hieroglyphs and the fragmented body. Employing the manifesto form’s obligatory exclamation marks and ‘calls to arms’, it demands that you confront yourself! change your skin! be delirious! don’t care what people think! deliver darkness with light! and reanimate Artaud’s ideas for the digital age!

Citation:
Dixon, Steve. ''The Performer and Their Digital Double: A Chameleons Group Manifesto!.'' Scènes numériques. Anthologie critique: Digital stages. Critical anthology, edited by Izabella Pluta, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2022, pp. 291-298, ISBN / ISSN: ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-2753583184.

Technologies have always been heralded and celebrated, and feared and despised in equal measure, from the Luddites to contemporary digital naysayers, and the same is found to be true for performance practitioners.

Citation:
Dixon, Steve. ''The Twists and Turns of Peripeteia.'' NÉ QUI, NÉ ORA: PERIPEZIE MEDIALI DELLA PERFORMANCE CONTEMPORANEA [Neither Here, Nor Now: Medial Peripeteias of Contemporary Performance], edited by Ester Fuoco, Rome, Ledizioni, 2022, ISBN / ISSN: ISBN: 9788855267502.

The four of us (together with Rayya El Zein) proposed a stream titled ‘Ends’. Our initial thinking in connecting our stream to a larger conference on ‘Crises of Care’ was to articulate connections between our work with collaborative methods for thinking, doing and writing (or care for one another) with our shared interests in ideas related to extinction, eschatology, planetarity, mourning and the non-human (or the crises of care themselves).

Citation:
Dixon, Steve, and Rustom Bharucha. ''Collaboration and Co-finitude: An Agenda of Care and Ends.'' Performance Research, vol. 27, no. 7, 2022, pp. 15-25, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2022.2197430.

What benefits for design students and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to participate in industry-led projects? How can those be implemented, considering the recovery state in which many design programmes currently are? Through a survey with students who participated in this brief (N=32), and interviews conducted with the alumni who mentored them during the project (N=8), this mix-methods approach will refine the framework used in this project, involving industry partners and design programmes, providing insight on how students can benefit from such projects, creating another approach to connect them with the industry, other than a traditional internship. 

Citation:
Fernandes, Clara, et al. ''By Invitation Only: A Multidisciplinary Framework for an Industry-Led Design Approach.'' DRS2022: RESEARCH PAPERS, edited by D. Lockton, et al., Bilbao, Design Research Society, 2022, doi: 10.21606/drs.2022.192.

During the pandemic, podcasts have been exhausted, leaving space for new digital media business opportunities. We look at how sound has grown, assuming a prominent role in the new media ecosystem due to podcasts consumption. We explore NFTs and their evolution in different markets over the years, highlighting the space that sound content has gained on these platforms as new possibilities for dissemination, promotion, and sale. We use content analysis on marketplaces that provide sound NFTs to understand what audio content consumers can find and future opportunities.

Citation:
Fernandes, Clara, and Ricardo Morais. ''Do NFTs Sound Good? An Exploratory Study on Audio NFTs and Possible Avenues.'' Informatics, vol. 9, no. 4, 2022, doi: 10.3390/informatics9040094.

Furthermore, we seek to understand if research roles are distributed equally gender-wise among cohorts in research units, as well as if deans’ genders are a factor of influence in such role attributions. We will look at the research roles in academia, particularly research units fostered by HEIs, to observe gender distribution based on total cohorts. Using univariate and bivariate tests, our research aims to assess gender distribution in leading research roles in public and private institutions. We take the specific case of Portugal; therefore, we cannot extrapolate the results to other countries. However, outcomes point out resisting differences in fields of research and coordination and role distribution among R&D units, as well as in fundamental relations between power positions in academia and research. 

Citation:
Morais, Ricardo, et al. ''Big Girls Don’t Cry: An Assessment of Research Units’ Leadership and Gender Distribution in Higher Education Institutions.'' Social Sciences, vol. 11, no. 8, 2022, doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11080345.