Mark Leahy

Bio: Mark Leahy is an academic researcher from Dartington College of Arts. The author has contributed to research in topics: Film studies & Reading (process). The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 4 publications receiving 4 citations.

Plantation and Thicket: a (double) sight reading of Sir Thomas Browne's 'Garden of Cyrus'

Abstract: This article was invited for the 'On Form' issue of Performance Research, edited by Dr Ric Allsopp. It considers patterns and structures as perceived by readers and viewers. Starting from an essay by Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), it links discourses of close reading with visual arts theory and film studies. The position of the reader towards a text is juxtaposed with questions of pattern and point of view. Contemporary poetic writing is examined visually, and aspects of visual production are considered syntactically. This research was further developed in a performance, 'from among the smocks …'. Initially presented at Dartington (November 2005), it used digital mediation and live action to present a movement between the textual and the visual, between word and image.

Glossing Speakers, or bookmaking for amateurs

Abstract: Speakers: performance, photography and the loud page is a book made by the performance company These Horses (Emma Bennett, Lucy Cran, Bill Leslie) in collaboration with photographer Anne Tetzlaff, published in 2007 by Bonfire Books as the first in a series of book projects by artists working in the field of performance and time-based media. My paper takes the form of an illustrated glossing of this book, proposing the book as performance, as a site, as a labour of love. The paper engages with discussions around the definition of artist's book and bookworks, and with questions of reading and reader-response criticism. While avoiding defining an artist's book, in the same gesture the paper situates Speakers in relation to works by Ed Ruscha, Bernhard and Hilla Becher, and John Baldessari. The form of the glossary considers particular uses of words in These Horses' text, and plays with the cross referencing and recurrence of terms through the book. The book is placed in a discursive and critical context, while remaining open to different disciplines and conventions of engagement.

Private Public Reading: Readers in Digital Literature Installation

Abstract: Leahy's contribution was invited by the editors of this volume, which was conceived as part of an authoritative international series by Blackwell. The aim of the Companion is to extend discussion around the intersection between digital humanities and digital literature. It draws together essays on digitisation, digital archives, encoding languages, and digital poetics. Leahy's chapter draws on theories of visual arts (site specificity) and film studies (concrete cinema) and on his research on modes of reading (see Outputs 1 and 2) to develop a discussion of the genre of installed digital literature. Works by poets, visual artists, computer artists and filmmakers are brought into relation with some examples of works of digital literature intended to be experienced or engaged with spatially or in a particular site.

Disrupting the Market in Echoes

Abstract: This essay considers questions of writing in its relation to voice, technology and performance through a reading of voiced and printed work by Hannah Weiner and Holly Pester. The essay focuses on t...

Doing language together : collaborative writing practice for design teams in higher education

Abstract: This thesis offers and evaluates collaborative writing practices for teams of Design students at M-Level in Higher Education (HE). The research begins by asking why writing is included in current art and design HE, and identifies an assumption about the role of writing across the sector derived from a misreading of the 1960 and 1970 Coldstream Reports. As a result, drawing on recommendations that were made in the Reports for non-studio studies to be complementary to art and design practice in HE, I focus on how teams of design students can complement their design skills with collaborative writing. Some studies for addressing how design students learn from writing in HE already exist, but none have established a practice-centred teaching method for collaborative writing for design teams at M-level. My research captures the effects of my Approaches, Practices and Tools (APTs) across three case study workshops. I compare these with the most common writing model in HE designed for text-based study in the humanities. My APTs use participants' designerly strengths to redesign how they can use writing to complement their practice. This provides learners with a means of identifying and creating their own situated writing structures and practices. I document how my practice-centred APTs position collaborative writing practices as a designerly mode of communication between design practitioners working in teams. I show it to be more complementary to practice and so more effective in comparison to models imported from the humanities. My explorations are carried out through two thesis sections. Section One is an in-depth literature-based rationale that critically informs my investigations. Section Two presents my methodologies and reports three case studies, in which I explore the emergent data collected through a range of qualitative methods, mapping and evaluative techniques. The findings are of importance to those teaching M-Level design courses.