This article examines street-based ondel-ondel performances in Jakarta through the perspective of street ethnomusicology. It addresses the tension between ondel-ondel as an officially recognized icon of Betawi–Jakarta identity and its use as a mobile street performance frequently associated with informal cultural labor, busking, and urban public-order concerns. The study employed an interpretive qualitative approach with an ethnographic orientation. Fieldwork was conducted from January to June 2025 and involved semi-structured interviews with eight purposively selected informants, field observations across several areas of Jakarta, and analyses of policy documents and media reports concerning raids on and restrictions against ondel-ondel busking. The data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis, while interpretive credibility was strengthened through comparison across interviews, observations, visual documentation, and documentary sources. The findings indicate that street ondel-ondel cannot be understood solely as cultural degradation. The practice also encompasses ritual memory, musical labor, intergenerational knowledge transmission, livelihood strategies, and spatial mobility. Nevertheless, marked differences were identified between groups that maintain live musical ensembles and embodied musical knowledge and groups that rely primarily on recorded accompaniment for economic and logistical reasons. The article proposes street ethnomusicology as an approach to musical practices shaped by mobility, informality, public interaction, and urban regulation. It also develops sonic negotiation to describe how performers adjust sound, movement, accompaniment, routes, and stopping points in response to audiences, spatial conditions, and regulatory pressures. The preservation of ondel-ondel should therefore address not only the puppet as a visual icon but also its music, performers, instruments, performance knowledge, public spaces, and the broader socio-economic ecosystem that sustains the practice.
The studio culture learning model is an essential pedagogical approach in design education, holistically shaping student competencies through professional practice simulations. Beyond focusing solely on final project outcomes, this framework strengthens critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and the professional identity of prospective designers. However, in the digital era, implementing studio culture presents contemporary challenges due to the dominance of Generation Z students, whose interaction patterns and knowledge acquisition are deeply mediated by technology. This study aims to investigate these evolving dynamics, identify core challenges, and propose innovative solutions to ensure studio-based learning remains effective, inclusive, and contextual. Employing a descriptive qualitative approach reinforced by quantitative metrics, this research utilizes a single case study within the Interior Design Study Program at the Faculty of Visual Arts, ISI Yogyakarta. The investigation involved 30 survey respondents and 20 students participating in in-depth interviews. Data collection integrated questionnaires, direct studio observations, and semi-structured interviews, followed by rigorous data triangulation. The empirical findings reveal that studio culture operates as a vital pedagogical and cultural ecosystem, profoundly steering students’ cognitive mindsets, behavioral attitudes, and creative trajectories. Open peer discussions and critique sessions emerged as critical central elements for forging mental resilience, aesthetic sensitivity, and professional standards. Quantitatively, 45% of students affirmed that studio culture accommodates their learning preferences, with 10% expressing strong alignment, while 60% indicated that the studio structure actively stimulates both productive competition and peer collaboration. Furthermore, the findings highlight a paradigm shift in Generation Z learning habits that demands heightened flexibility, where conventional collaboration evolves into a hybrid framework. This model blends intensive physical studio engagement with synchronous digital platforms. Consequently, this study formulates targeted hybrid spatial adaptations and restructured group dynamics, successfully bridging modern digital learning tendencies without sacrificing the indispensable depth of face-to- face interaction, thereby safeguarding sustainable design education.
This study examines musical glocalization in dangdut Makassar and its relationship to urban cultural expression in the city of Makassar. A qualitative musicological approach was employed through the analysis of audio recordings, musical transcriptions, rhythmic and melodic structures, vocal ornamentation, instrumentation, and lyrics from selected dangdut Makassar songs. Contextual data were obtained through observations at museums in Makassar and interviews with representatives of the Makassar City Tourism Office and practitioners of dangdut Makassar. The findings indicate that glocalization emerges through the negotiation of global, dangdut, and local musical elements. Global influences are evident in the use of accordion timbres rooted in European musical traditions and rock-derived rhythmic patterns associated with American popular music. The identity of dangdut as a genre is maintained through characteristic ketipung, drum, and bass patterns, while Makassar locality is articulated through vocal cengkok, Makassar langgam, the local language, and oral traditions closely related to pakacaping and pasinrilik practices. Song lyrics further represent urban social experiences concerning marriage, honor, gender relations, trust, and everyday economic life. The findings also demonstrate that the glocalization of dangdut Makassar cannot be attributed solely to digitalization, as it is rooted in Makassar’s long history as a port city shaped by cultural encounters and the negotiation of external influences. The study concludes that dangdut Makassar constitutes an urban cultural expression that recontextualizes global musical elements while sustaining local aesthetic and cultural characteristics. This study contributes to a broader understanding of glocalization as both a musicological and socio-cultural process in the development of Indonesian regional popular music.
Photographs that are shared on social media influence the way people imagine public spaces since identical visual patterns keep appearing. This study examines how three public spaces in Jakarta come to be represented on Instagram, what visual patterns are present at each location, and what meanings these patterns convey. The visual data comprise 60 personal posts, 20 from the sky deck at the Bundaran HI bus stop, 20 from the Sudirman pedestrian bridge (JPO Sudirman) and 20 from Lapangan Banteng Park. The posts were obtained by using hashtag and geotag searches, and this was further supplemented by field observations and a questionnaire. The analysis is interpretive and qualitative, is based on a multi- site case study approach, and interprets the collection of images through Roland Barthes’s three levels of meaning: denotation, connotation, and myth. The degree of visual uniformity differs among the three sites and develops within each one as a local visual grammar. At the Bundaran HI skydeck the space functions as a stage for expressing urban identity, with the body filling the frame and city icons serving as a background. JPO Sudirman is presented as a technological setting using one-point perspective, low angles, exposed steel and LED lighting. Lapangan Banteng Park seems more dynamic and historically significant: the techniques vary considerably throughout the corpus and the captions often tell the history of the site. This visual grammar shaped by four things: the physical form of the space, landscape photography techniques already in use before Instagram, the habit of shooting for Instagram, and the rules on camera use at each site. The aestheticisation of public spaces has reached ordinary urban facilities and helps decide which image of public space circulates, gets recognised, and is remembered.
Hong Kong, a super modern city that is one of the world’s trade centers, is experiencing a major transformation in its social and cultural landscape, where tradition meets innovation in various forms of artistic expression. This study aims to describe the meaning contained in the HSBC and Friends painting from a visual metaphor perspective. The HSBC and Friends painting by a contemporary Hong Kong painter named Wilson Shieh is studied using the Visual Metaphor approach. The stages carried out in analyzing visual metaphors are as follows: (a) examine the image and identify the focus on metaphorical visual element, (b) describe the visual element, (c) identify the source and target domain, (d) identify the type of metaphor, and (e) infer the meaning of the metaphor. The results of the study show that Wilson Shieh’s painting shows human figures that are not only representations of form, but also symbols of issues in Hong Kong as a city that is growing into a super modern city. His works are not only rich in technical details, but also full of social meaning and cultural criticism. The HSBC and Friends painting is interpreted as a critical voice against the dominance of capitalism and patriarchy that makes women’s bodies objects of image and commodity in contemporary visual culture. The HSBC and Friends painting invite the audiences to reflect on the changes in identity—both at the individual and city levels—in the midst of increasingly massive urbanization and globalization. Furthermore, visual discourse can critically encourage a more sensitive perspective on issues of gender, capitalism, and urban space in contemporary art practices everywhere.
