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
Copyright © 2021-2026, Royal College of Art
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.