itinerant space: a journal of art, design and communication research practices, is an experimental online platform for doctoral researchers at RCA.

Editor-in-chief: Professor Teal Triggs
Founding editors: Nick Bell, Karen Bosy, Kirsty Smith
Editors, Issue 1: Nick Bell, Karen Bosy
Editors, Issue 2: Nick Bell, Karen Bosy, Kam Rehal
Editors, Issue 3: Nick Bell, Kam Rehal, Yunqi Peng
Editors, Issue 4: Yunqi Peng, Rowena Liangru Lu

Contact: itinerant.space@rca.ac.uk
itinerant space, School of Communication, Royal College of Art, Steven’s Building, Kensington Gore SW7 2EU

Peer review panel, Issue 4: Yunqi Peng, Rowena Liangru Lu, Bryan Wu (School of Communication); Jim Ziming Wang (School of Design); Zhigang Ye (School of Arts and Humanities).

Website design: Regular Practice.
Site development: Mads Kullberg

Contributor Biographies

Issues

Issue 4 foregrounds doctoral research that is themed around the following set of keywords: ambiguous, transformation, speculative, generative and 0 & 1. These reflect the contemporary social, political, economic, and cultural conditions in which we now live, work and research. And perhaps they are themes which increasingly align with how we might approach understanding future relational paradigms: obvious/ambiguous, stagnation/transformation, factual/speculative, unyielding/generative, dialectical/binary.

What binds Issue 4 together is the multifarious ways in which creative practice centres the human experience to make sense of our individual places within these new environments. Through a range of art, design, and communication practices, researchers set out to critique and question the complexities of the modern world: at times making them visible, auditory and experiential.

‘Using the keywords described above, and the binaries they provoke, new methodologies can emerge based on moving away from conventional methods to those that are more agile, adaptable and speak more readily to current conditions.’ – Teal Triggs

‘Alongside technological misuse exists a less visible but equally influential force: the biases through which humans perceive and frame technology, often concealed beneath broader public concerns and debates. As the seemingly unconventional subject of this issue, ‘0 & 1’ may initially appear to echo contemporary trends. However, its scope reaches far beyond a particular set of technological practices. Encoding and decoding may be read as technical operations, and as processes of narration and interpretation, opening up multiple trajectories for future modes of practice.’ – Yunqi Peng

‘Two numbers and a punctuation mark. Whatever your native language may be, chances are you understand 0 & 1. Yet our understandings of them may be entirely different: In computing, 0 & 1 form the foundation of all digital technologies; In information theory, neither 1 nor 0 carries meaning on its own, meaning emerges only when difference appears, when 0 meets 1; From Daoism’s perspective, 0 is non-being and 1 is being. All things are born from being, yet being is born from non-being… The universe emerged from the void, and so did you and I. We, too, are 0 & 1.’ – Rowena Liangru Lu

The Editorial Team would like to thank the eight contributors whose research is featured in this issue. As with other issues of the journal, the scope of their research reflects a breadth and diversity of approaches that is at once inspiring and forward-facing.

A hyper-proximal, participatory placemaking strategy infrastructured by a cross-community network of institutions evolving protections for shared concerns.
Nick Bell

Project overview —

Chatterhood: cross-community and intercultural connection nurtured offline in asynchronous dialogues that are contactless, inclusive, and longitudinal. Employing a prefigurative participatory methodology of a constructionist orientation, this longitudinal ethnographic study prototypes contactless relational and durational communication methods that widen access to community-based social participation for seldom-heard voices. Inspired by the pandemic, chatterhood explores the impacts of inclusive participation on cross-community cooperation and neighbourhood resilience. It probes theories purporting that neighbourhoods teeming with social connections – especially those bridging cultural and community boundaries – can better improvise responses to opportunities and threats, protecting shared concerns. Neighbours engage offline in asynchronous dialogues without meeting face-to-face. Inviting adoption and creative appropriation by community leaders and neighbourhood charities, chatterhood offers a safer, more secure, yet playful and co-produced form of citizen engagement existing outreach activities are not providing.

Biography

I am a communication researcher/designer working alongside community leaders and charities employing contactless participatory practice methods and tools to widen participation in local social infrastructure. We invite neighbours into intracultural and cross-community communication, the ethnographic study of which I am carrying out on a PhD at Royal College of Art. For many years before this, I ran an award-winning design studio specialising in exhibition and editorial design. I am a member of AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale), Special Consultant to Eye magazine, the international review of graphic design, and a founding co-editor of itinerant space, the PGR-run experimental academic research platform at RCA.

Conversation: where critical friends of itinerant space are invited to comment on journal submissions as part of an ongoing research dialogue.

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itinerant space

Issue 4: 0 & 1

A hyper-proximal, participatory placemaking strategy infrastructured by a cross-community network of institutions evolving protections for shared concerns.
Nick Bell