Eighteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

This paper describes the emergence of a framework of collaboration to support creative practice in the service of ecological alliances. This framework has been developed in a post-colonial, intersectional and embodied context, and as an entanglement between two visual arts practitioners working in very different but connected contexts. Can reparative indigenous practices inform a framework of collaboration and exchange in the Global North, without adding a further burden to the colonised? I suggest that collaborative, cross-cultural and post-colonial dialogues can inform cultural practices with the aim of decentering the captalist and imperialist ideologies of the Global North and creating a 'reverse flow" of decolonising forces. These ideas are explored through the undertaking of a creative long-distance collaboration with U.K based artist Becky Nunes and indigenous artist Maraea Timutimu (Tūhoe, Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui) to explore the possibilities of dialogues between both artists and landscapes. How can these kōrero (dialogues) contribute to a greater understanding of our connectedness to land, and assist in reparations for the exhausted landscapes here in the Global North? The outcomes of this collaboration are reflected on and insights drawn upon to suggest an innovative methodological framework for collaborative post-colonial practice.

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Unravelling Motherhood

Tammie Leong
Innovation Showcase

The "Unraveling Motherhood" project is a pilot study that began as a personal visual diary documenting the transition into motherhood while living abroad. It explores the diverse experiences of postcolonial Southeast and East Asian migrant mothers, whose voices are often overlooked. The project collaborates with these mothers through a co-design process to create an engaging online storytelling platform that combines their narratives and photographs with animations. The research utilises practice-based and participatory methods inspired by the feminist ethnography approach. The approach practises ethical transparency and reflexivity and empowers migrant mothers to frame their narratives. It examines cultural creolization, highlighting how migrant mothers blend Eastern and Western cultural practices to navigate societal expectations. The project uses polyphonic storytelling and scrolly-telling techniques—including hypertext, poetic elements, and parallax narratives—to present a non-linear, multi-layered portrayal of migrant motherhood. The research aims to challenge traditional notions of motherhood by engaging with the cultural, racial, and economic contexts of migrant mothers. The co-design approach empowers participants, giving them agency in shaping their narratives, resulting in a platform that authentically reflects their lived experiences. The project also contributes to UX/UI design and digital storytelling by showcasing innovative interactive features that address historical and social issues. Overall, "Unraveling Motherhood" challenges dominant narratives, promotes shared authorship, and enhances understanding of the complexities of migrant motherhood in a globalised world.

ROOM 3 (Galerie Dumas D633) : 2025-09-12 14:40

Shaping Perception

İpek Köprülülü
Workshop Presentation

Text is often seen as a straightforward carrier of information, with typographic forms typically considered only for their letter meanings, while their shapes and existence as visual objects are overlooked – missing their potential to reflect deeper interpretations. This workshop aims to demonstrate how typographic treatments can transform a single word into a dynamic, emotionally resonant expression, revealing typography as an independent visual language that communicates beyond conventional meanings. Participants will work with the same word but explore it through different thematic prompts. Using a blend of analog (e.g., hand-cut letters, ink, lighting, collage, cyanotype) and digital (e.g., manipulation in design software) image-making techniques, they will reimagine the word’s form to reflect their assigned themes. The workshop will culminate in a sharing session where participants can view and discuss diverse outcomes, exploring how each treatment uniquely conveys emotional and conceptual interpretations, altering the word’s meaning. Through this exploration, participants will gain firsthand experience and a deeper understanding of typography’s transformative power to shift perceptions and create new layers of meaning beyond the text’s original intent. Ultimately, the workshop invites audiences to engage with the text more thoughtfully, embracing type as a visual form and expanding its potential in communication as a powerful and expressive visual language.

Plenary Room (Amphithéâtre Lefèbvre) : 2025-09-12 10:30

Vertical Picturesque

Lisa Martinez
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

In a globalized, digital marketplace, the shaping of the urban metropolis and its architecture finds its invention through the production, marketing, and commodification of images. Beginning in the last century, the power of images in the generation of urban environments, such as New York City, has reached its zenith thanks to proliferating image technologies serving global real estate markets. The concern for architecture, in our contemporary culture-ideology of consumerism, becomes an increasing requirement for the image-ability of vertical architecture, threatening the palpable spatial experience of buildings themselves. Reflecting upon spatio-visual techniques, either past or present, available to architects that prioritize an experiential account of space is worth investigating. While largely considered a historical aesthetic, the eighteenth-century Picturesque may offer contemporary techniques for orchestrating durational, spatio-visual encounters, exemplified at the urban scale in New York's Central Park. By manipulating the viewer’s movement, perspective, and positioning, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux offer a replicable model for reframing the role of the image in the city. Using John Macarthur's text "The Picturesque: Architecture, Disgust, and Other Irregularities" to frame a discussion around the function of 'picture,' 'disgust,' 'irregularity,' 'appropriation,' and 'movement' in the design of Central Park, this investigation proposes a possible transfer of technique from the horizontal axis of the park to New York City's vertical architecture. Rather than privileging the exterior representation of architectural objects and flattening spatial experience, a vertical picturesque may satisfy the need for image-ability while prioritizing an empirical account of architectural content across time and space.

The Eye in the Tip of the Fingers

Orisel Castro López
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Starting from the distinction between the “culture of the eye” and the “culture of the hand” by Fina García Marruz, the analysis vindicates a tactile and sensorial cinema, linked to a feminine sensibility that has been undervalued in favor of a rational and objective vision. Through films by directors such as Miñuca Villaverde, Agnès Varda, Chick Strand, Helke Sander and Sara Gómez, the work traces a cinematic lineage based on haptic perception, materiality and sensory experimentation, highlighting the persistence of these expressive forms in different moments and geographies.

ROOM 2 (Galerie Dumas D632) : 2025-09-11 16:40

Humanscape in Geopoetics

Yue Hu
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

This practice-based artistic research employs diagnostic methods of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)- “Watching, Listening, Asking, and Feeling”- to represent artificially manufactured landscapes. By applying multi-sensory perspectives of “seeing” , this project creates a new terminology ‘Humanscape’ and tries to represent it through photographic language with my “earth writing” experiences inspired by geopoetics studies. Rather than asserting the lands are “sick”, it illuminates how nature and ‘Humanscape’ permeate and disrupt each other, exploring the potential openness of the habitable land and wilderness. The whole exploration is rooted in my intimate and intuitive walks in reclaimed landscapes from the sea in my homecity in China. The artworks focus on the tensioned boundary and dynamic balance between ‘Humanscape’ and deserts, mountains, and sea. Through intervening in humanly regulated environments, this project depicts landscapes with aerial photography and collage, electron scanning, moving images, cyanotype prints, and sounds. Replying to the open call, this project experiments with innovative methodological framework and the terminology in depicting and representing specific landscapes I encountered in the contemporary society. My personal walking and human gaze into the landscape examine how individual experiences orient photographic practice for me as a wanderer, researcher, and artist. By using a variety of images, I also approach and investigate boundaries of visual language in deciphering the landscape visually, verbally, and even emotionally.

ROOM 3 (Galerie Dumas D633) : 2025-09-12 12:05

The Mask of the Ciberbandido

Colton Campbell
Poster Session

Xicanx people are indigenous to Aztlán, an internal colony with irredentist claims to the southwest territories of The United States of America. Under the Trump Administration, state sponsored terror in the form of digital psyops, surveillance, disappearances, and immigration raids threaten a protracted insurgency that desperately needs a way to protect its collective identity. The Guy Fawkes Mask is used to both protect the identities of the hacker collective Anonymous, as well as unify them under a single symbol. There needs to be a Xicanx version, more brown, less blush. This mask can unite Xicanx people in protest, rasquache constructed, with images indiscernible in basic form from the racist mannequins that dance across the red, white, blue, silver, and digital screens. Built as resistance, this research develops El Pachuco’s cyber camouflage: a Güey Fawkes Mask. The Mask of the Ciberbandido. This symbol informs a decolonial pedagogical model while also being a practical tool for protest.

ROOM 1 (Galerie Dumas D631) : 2025-09-12 10:30

Picture This

Katherine Horlock, Cindy Melton
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

In a world where K12 students are surrounded by images, visuals have become essential tools for teaching and learning. This study explores how the thoughtful use of images can deepen comprehension, sustain attention, support memory, and promote inclusivity across learning environments. Drawing from cognitive learning theories, visual literacy, and classroom practice, this presentation will highlight how images help translate abstract concepts into accessible, engaging content. Whether through infographics, visual storytelling, or interactive simulations, images offer learners new entry points to understanding and remembering key ideas. Also, images serve to widen access to learning for students with varied language proficiencies and reading abilities. By shifting the focus from text-heavy content to multi-modal instruction, educators can create more equitable learning experiences for the eyes, minds, and imaginations of all learners.

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