UCL Press has launched a brand new open access book: Drawing Futures: Speculations in Contemporary Drawing for Art and Architecture, edited by Laura Allen and Luke Caspar Pearson.
Drawing Futures brings together international designers and artists for speculations in contemporary drawing for art and architecture.
Despite numerous developments in technological manufacture and computational design that provide new grounds for designers, the act of drawing still plays a central role as a vehicle for speculation. There is a rich and long history of drawing tied to innovations in technology as well as to revolutions in our philosophical understanding of the world.
In reflection of a society now underpinned by computational networks and interfaces allowing hitherto unprecedented views of the world, the changing status of the drawing and its representation as a political act demands a platform for reflection and innovation. Drawing Futures will present a compendium of projects, writings and interviews that critically reassess the act of drawing and where its future may lie.
Drawing Futures focuses on the discussion of how the field of drawing may expand synchronously alongside technological and computational developments. The book coincides with an international conference of the same name, taking place at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, in November 2016. Bringing together practitioners from many creative fields, the book discusses how drawing is changing in relation to new technologies for the production and dissemination of ideas.
A limited number of print copies of this book are also available from https://goo.gl/kmCXs1.
It will also be available as an open access title via OAPEN library and JSTOR.
Download free: https://goo.gl/kmCXs1
JSTOR launches open access ebooks platform
JSTOR has introduced a new program to make Open Access monographs available on its platform. At the moment, 63 monographs across the Humanities and Social Sciences are available from UCL Press, Cornell University Press, University of California Press, and University of Michigan Press. JSTOR are planning to announce additional partners and hundreds more Open Access titles in the coming months.
The ebooks are freely available for anyone to use, and carry one of six Creative Commons licenses. The titles are DRM-free, and users will not need to register or log in to JSTOR to access the titles.
For further details and the full list of titles, please visit:
http://about.jstor.org/open-access
You can also access ebooks via DiscoverEd, the library catalogue, and by exploring some of our databases such as Berg Fashion Library. The best route into our subject specific databases is via the library subject guides webpage or the databases by subject page.
A book 5 storeys high…
For the month of November, 2016, Artist in Residence Susie Wilson exhibited her new artwork, “Bookwork in 69 parts”, which completed her 2016 research residency in ECA Library.
“Bookwork in 69 parts” was hung in the stairwell of Evolution House, and was accompanied by a display of Susie’s new bookworks, inside the Library. The fragile 5 storey-tall drawing in 69 sections reached from level 5 all the way down to level 0, and gave visitors to the building pause for thought.
We would like to thank Susie for all her work during her research residency and congratulate her on this beautiful new piece of work created for the ECA Library artists’ books collection.
Bookwork in 69 parts, by Susie Wilson, 2016
This is Information Security Awareness Week!
Monday 3rd – Friday 7th October 2016:
This week is Information Security Awareness Week 2016. This year the focus will be on why information matters to all University students and staff, and how you can take some simple steps to quickly protect your personal data and research content.
The main event on the afternoon of 5th October will see invited internal and external speakers present and discuss some of the issues. These will be very accessible and are aimed at all audiences, regardless of technical abilities. Bookings are now open via the following event channel:
https://www.events.ed.ac.uk/index.cfm?event=book&scheduleID=21717
The Security team will also be active on Twitter during the week, with hints, tips and useful guidance. Follow them on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/UoEInfoSec and with #UoEInfoSec
Explore the University art collections
Find out more about the amazing art and object collections that the University cares for, at http://collections.ed.ac.uk/
The collections include artworks, photographs, musical instruments, rare books, manuscripts, archives and special collections.
To find out how to access these wonderful collections, contact the Centre for Research Collections (CRC):
Centre for Research Collections
Edinburgh University Library
George Square
Edinburgh
EH8 9LJ
Tel: +44(0)131 650 8379
is-crc@ed.ac.uk
Digital skills training
Information Services Group (ISG) at the University of Edinburgh offer a wide range of courses to support digital skills development. Their current programme encompasses a variety of workshops on working with data, including:
- Creating a Data Management Plan for your Grant Application (Wednesday 12-Oct-2016, 12:00 – 13:30)
- Good Practice in Research Data Management (Friday 07-Oct-2016, 09:30 – 13:30)
- Handling Data Management using SPSS (Monday 12-Sep-2016, 09:30 – 12:30; Monday 14-Nov-2016, 09:30 – 12:30)
- Introduction to NVivo (Tuesday 27-Sep-2016, 09:30 – 12:30; Tuesday 01-Nov-2016, 09:30 – 12:30)
- Introduction to Visualising Data in ArcGIS (Wednesday 28-Sep-2016, 14:00 – 17:00)
- Introduction to Visualising Data in QGIS (Thursday 01-Dec-2016, 14:00 – 17:00)
- Managing your research data: why is it important and what should you do? (Monday 10-Oct-2016, 11:30 – 13:00)
- NVivo: Beyond the Basics – Queries (Monday 03-Oct-2016, 14:00 – 17:00; Monday 14-Nov-2016, 14:00 – 17:00)
- Using EDINA Digimap (Wednesday 28-Sep-2016, 09:30 – 12:30; Thursday 01-Dec-2016, 09:30 – 12:30)
- Working with personal and sensitive data (Friday 14-Oct-2016, 12:00 – 14:00)
All courses must be booked via the Digital Skills website
If you are unable to attend a course you have booked, you should cancel through the Event Booking channel. Attendance is recorded, and failure to attend without prior notice may affect your future bookings. For over-subscribed courses ISG frequently offer standby places to people on the waiting list, so please ensure you arrive in good time or your place may be reallocated as a standby.
RSA Open: ECA Library Prize winner announced
Cecile Simonis awarded the ECA Library Prize at this year’s RSA Open Exhibition.
We are happy to announce that the Royal Scottish Academy judging panel has chosen artist and printmaker Cecile Simonis, as the recipient of the 2016 ECA Library Prize, for her work “Drones”. Cecile has won a year’s free borrowing membership at ECA Library. Cecile studied in Belgium and Italy, and is now resident in Edinburgh. She teaches drawing and printmaking and has strong connections with Edinburgh Printmakers Workshop. More information about her work can be seen at
We look forward to welcoming Cecile to ECA Library.
‘Drones’, by Cecile Simonis, with permission of the artist.
Thought for the day
“Art conveys through colours, the soul’s prayers”.
– Agathias of Myrina.
ECA professor wins Antoinette Forrester Downing Book Award
The Society of Architectural Historians has announced the 2016 recipients of the SAH Publication Awards.
The Antoinette Forrester Downing Book Award, honouring excellence in a published work devoted to historical topics in preservation, has been won by Miles Glendinning, for his book, The Conservation Movement: A History of Architectural Preservation (Routledge, 2013).
Miles Glendinning is professor of architectural conservation at the University of Edinburgh (ESALA at ECA), and director of the Scottish Centre for Conservation Studies.
The Conservation Movement: A History of Architectural Preservation will shortly feature in a display in the Art & Architecture Library, at Minto House, Chambers Street, Edinburgh.
Congratulations to Professor Glendinning.
Thought for the day…
“Painting, sculpture, any act of artistic creation, has a special relationship with slowness. As the American writer Saul Bellow once noted, “Art is something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes… the eye of the storm… an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction”.
– Carl Honore, In Praise of Slowness: challenging the cult of speed, HarperCollins, 2005.
