Every face on Vanity Fair’s Hollywood covers 1995-2008

‘Every face on Vanity Fair’s Hollywood covers 1995-2008’ renders an ethnographic-like study of Hollywood celebrity as a cinematic experience. Viewers are presented with constantly mutating portraits that violently twist and shear into other faces, while an immersive soundscape echoes the turbulent painterly surface. Through technical processes of scaling, looping and image morphing; the work explores a positive affectual response to the seductive power of celebrity imagery. Conceptually, given Vanity Fair magazine’s prestigious stature, the work also performs an ethnographic-mapping of the popularity of Hollywood stars over time, while at the same time creating in-between, ‘mutant’ versions of their visages. The installation explores the potential for fan-based responses to pop culture to lead to artworks that enable a more critical response to the subjective and intersubjective dynamics of celebrity portraiture. Questions are raised about how these cultural forms impact pop culture fans, and their role in the mapping of culture and social experience.

Envisaging change: Supporting grassroots efforts in Colombia with agonistic design processes

Design has become increasingly engaged with bringing about social change. Shifting domains and perspectives to conflict stricken contexts yield opportunities to explore emerging forms of design that enable the expression and articulation of difference in productive ways, which can contribute positively to efforts related to civic issues and struggles in urban settings from developing countries. We explore the recently developed notion of Adversarial Design to support the integration of diverging perspectives and grassroots voices in the design process. This paper presents the findings and design insights from our study with two grassroots organisations in Bogota, Colombia. We present three themes that expose ways in which conflict motivates bringing about change, the importance of the social and physical features of the urban landscape, and the way in which social change acts as catalyst for acquiring new knowledge. To finalise, we discuss two design areas and how design could be used to integrate dissimilar worldviews.

Management characteristics and the decision to internationalize : Exploration of exporters vs. non-exporters within the Chilean wine industry

The objective of this exploratory study was to identify the key factors that enhance and inhibit the export activities of wineries and identify differences between exporters and non-exporters. Based on data collected from Chilean wineries, the findings of this study suggest that the major constraints for non-exporters are the lack of financial resources, limited quantities of stocks for market expansion, management’s lack of knowledge and experience, and the high cost of travelling and participating in trade shows. In addition, the main international markets for Chilean wineries were not psychically close markets as has been found for Australian or other wine industries. For domestic market oriented wineries cellar door sales were an important source of revenue. Finally, the results show that managers have educational levels and international experience exceeding those of other comparable New World wineries.

Víctimas de un experimento: Conflicto multicultural en el programa de oportunidades

This article presents a reflection of the application of multiculturality principles into tertiary educational programs at the University of Los Andes, Bogota Colombia. The main focus of this paper is debating the concept of 'positive discrimination' as a challenge taken by educational centres in societies with cultural diversity populations.

A study on the evolution of regional structure of foreign engineering consultation industry in China [我国对外工程咨询业区域结构演变研究]

Based on the construction industry of 27 province over the period of 1995-2008,this paper analyzes the evolution of regional structure of foreign engineering consultation industry.It is found that this industry translates weak overall strength,unbalanced regional structure to a more developed and balanced status,keeps pushing this change can improve the strength of our country’s engineering consultation industry,improve the international competition of construction.