ENCOUNTERING ECHOES: ECHOING ENCOUNTER
Following Rolf Hughes’ notion of exposition (2015) as the act of creating a field of encounter, this inaugural issue reframes exposition as a space of echoing—a resonance between the seen and unseen, the said and unsaid. To encounter is to come up against what resists assimilation—an idea, a material, a history, a theory, or another being. To echo is to let that encounter reverberate and transform. Between encountering and echoing lies an ethics of care, speculation, and reciprocity—a willingness to stay with what is incomplete, uncertain, or even misread.
In line with the Arts of the contact zone (Pratt 1991), encounters are never neutral; they unfold in zones of tension, translation, and transformation. Similarly, Studio Note treats encounter and echo as creative and critical forces that shape our practices, pedagogies, and therefore our identities.
We invite contributions that explore encountering and echoing as speculative and performative acts of research.
Studio Note Journal Nº 1
Editors-in-Chief | Alphabetic Order:
Niloofar Amini
Gareth Jones
Jorge Valdovinos
Laura Yuile
Associate Editors | Alphabetic Order:
Eman AlHabashneh
Francesca Brunetti
Ruehl Muller
Mohammed Ali Sharieff
Raynal Somiah
Yvan Tina
Zihong Yue
Typeset in:
Editorial Team
Copy Editing:
Editorial Team
Proof Reading:
Editorial Team
Design:
Editorial Team
Published by:
University for the Creative Arts | ICI
Publication location:
Farnham, Surrey, UK
Xiamen, Fujian Province, China
Online publication date:
Summer 2026
ISSN: 2978-8080 (Print)
E-ISSN: 2978-8099 (Online)
studionote@uca.ac.uk
www.studionotejournal.org
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Encountering Echoes: Echoing Encounter
Niloofar Amini - niloofar.amini@uca.ac.uk
Creative practices often begin with encounters: between materials and bodies, histories and futures, disciplines and unfamiliar forms of knowledge. Yet an encounter is rarely complete at the moment of contact. Its significance unfolds through what follows—through the traces, transformations, and relationships that continue to shape how we perceive, interpret, and create. The inaugural issue of Studio Note Journal, Encountering Echoes: Echoing Encounter, emerges from a simple but persistent question: how do encounters continue to act after they occur?
This question resonates with Walter Benjamin’s (1999) figure of the flâneur, whose knowledge emerges through movement, attention, and the collection of fragments within the urban environment. Like ‘the tangent that touches a circle’ at a single point yet continues along its own trajectory, an encounter does not end at the moment of contact (Benjamin, 1996, p. 261). Instead, it generates new paths of observation, interpretation, and connection. The flâneur does not seek to understand the city through a complete or predetermined system; rather, knowledge emerges through fragments, overlooked details, and unexpected relationships. Benjamin’s Arcades Project (1999) extends this method through montage, assembling quotations, images, and historical fragments into new constellations of meaning. These constellations do not provide fixed interpretations, but create conditions where relationships can emerge through juxtaposition.
However, as Adorno’s critique reminds us, fragments do not speak for themselves; they require acts of interpretation and critical engagement to produce knowledge (Adorno and Benjamin, 1999). Creative practice therefore exists within a productive tension between observing and collecting, and transforming and interpreting. To notice what remains is only the beginning; we must also consider how these traces continue to act, what relationships they carry, and what possibilities they generate. In this sense, echo is understood not as repetition, but as the trajectory through which an encounter extends beyond its initial moment, producing new interpretations, relationships, and forms of knowledge. Following these echoes requires attention to residue: the material, social, and conceptual traces through which encounters remain active.
The contributions in this issue explore different forms of this persistence. A drawing carries the memory of previous architectural decisions; a craft technique preserves collective histories embedded within material processes; an overlooked object reveals hidden systems of value; a pedagogical encounter reshapes how knowledge is produced. These traces are not passive remnants of the past, but active conditions through which new forms of understanding emerge. The featured article by Prof. Bart Verschaffel develops this inquiry through his reflection on Albrecht Dürer’s The Hands of St. Dominic (1506), where the trace of the hand becomes a mark of contact and ‘the beginning of presence.’ This reflection establishes a conceptual entry point for the issue: shifting attention from encounter as an isolated event towards the residues through which encounters continue to generate meaning. Across architectural histories, craft practices, infrastructures, artistic interventions, and creative pedagogies, the contributions gathered here examine what persists beyond contact—forgotten histories, overlooked objects, inherited practices, and alternative forms of knowledge.
This understanding also shapes the editorial structure of Studio Note Journal. If knowledge emerges through connections, transformations, and traces rather than isolated ideas, then the organisation of the journal becomes part of the inquiry itself. Rather than presenting contributions through a single hierarchy of disciplines or as completed arguments, this issue brings together different forms of attention—Notecards, Fieldnotes, A Note On, and Exchange Notes—as interconnected fragments.
Inspired by Benjamin’s (1999) montage method, these sections do not attempt to create a complete picture. Instead, they form a constellation in which different perspectives encounter one another, producing unexpected relationships, tensions, and questions. Yet fragments gain meaning through interpretation, comparison, and dialogue. The editorial arrangement therefore becomes an active form of research: a process of tracing connections, creating encounters, and allowing different forms of knowledge to transform one another.
This approach acknowledges that research often begins within uncertainty: through questions that remain unresolved, fragments that resist immediate explanation, and encounters whose meanings unfold over time. To remain with uncertainty is not a failure of knowledge, but a method through which new forms of understanding can emerge. The title Studio Note reflects this position. A note is not a final statement or a completed argument; it is a fragment, an observation, a trace of thinking in progress. Like a fieldnote, it records encounters, follows emerging relationships, and preserves moments that might otherwise disappear.
The inaugural issue of Studio Note Journal therefore does not seek to capture encounters as completed events. Instead, it follows their echoes and residues—the traces through which creative practices continue to question, transform, and generate new possibilities.