| 1. |
- Berríos-Negrón, Luis, 1971-
(author)
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Breathtaking Greenhouse Parastructures : a supplement to the Arcades Project from a Caribbean Perspective [and a call for a careful practice of epistemológica].
- 2020
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Artistic work (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Breathtaking Greenhouse Parastructures is a doctoral work that supplements the unfinished modern opus The Arcades Project [in German Das Passagen-Werk (Mit Bindestrich und Werk mit Capital W) ]. The supplement takes the form of a sculptural, historical, and technological deposition of ‘greenhouse’ that presently oscillates between a past-background and future-foreground to Walter Benjamin's ‘theatrical’ handling of the Parisian arcades. From my Caribbean perspective, that oscillating treatment of ‘greenhouse’ affords me a prop from which to activate the following question: is colonial memory the drive of Global Warming? That core question has led me to retrospectively hypothesise that the technology of ‘greenhouse’ is—beyond metaphor—the illusory (dis)embodiment of the toxic binaries of interior & exterior that are still shaping various influential frameworks such as the modern & Marxian ideas of superstructure, as well as the past & future of Western natural sciences (and their histories). Because of that illusory, spectral, if paranormal power, ‘greenhouse’ becomes at once the Western colonial enframing to both the messianic promise for conserving biological history, as well as the messianic remedy to suppress the traumæ that are destining Global Warming. Also, because of that potent (dis)embodied character, the robust analysis of the manifold instrumentalisation of ‘greenhouse’ is set to play a primary role in deposing the geological timeline of the Anthropocene. Now, while the book-supplement is itself the dissertation (as an unpacking of the aforementioned hypothetical findings), the PhD also relies on two other research devices that are worth mentioning: an installation (titled Anarquivo Negantrópico), and an online journal (titled Intransitive Journal). Altogether, the dissertation offers a field from which to asses my broader experimentation with infrastructures, epistemic things, and social pedestals. Moreover, the dissertation revises the so-called forgotten list of ‘Epistemologica’ (the categorical of Western display preparations and phenomenotechnologies) so to format my study and practice into an adaptable, careful, and differentiated kind of epistemológica…a careful study and practice that we may share as object-relations that proportionately (dis)play more-than-human perspectives for (re)mediating the forms and forces of the climate crises.
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| 2. |
- Sattari, Amir, 1980-
(author)
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Investigations of Flow Patterns in Ventilated Rooms Using Particle Image Velocimetry : Applications in a Scaled Room with Rapidly Varying Inflow and over a Wall-Mounted Radiator
- 2015
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Artistic work (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis introduces and describes a new experimental setup for examining the effects of pulsating inflow to a ventilated enclosure. The study aimed to test the hypothesis that a pulsating inflow has potential to improve ventilation quality by reducing the stagnation zones through enhanced mixing. The experimental setup, which was a small-scale, two-dimensional (2D), water-filled room model, was successfully designed and manufactured to be able to capture two-dimensional velocity vectors of the entire field using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). Using in-house software, it was possible to conclude that for an increase in pulsation frequency or alternatively in the flow rate, the stagnation zones were reduced in size, the distribution of vortices became more homogeneous over the considered domain, and the number of vortices in all scales had increased. Considering the occupied region, the stagnation zones were moved away in a favorable direction from a mixing point of view. In addition, statistical analysis unveiled that in the far-field occupied region of the room model, stronger eddies were developed that we could expect to give rise to improved mixing. As a fundamental experimental study performed in a 2D, small-scale room model with water as operating fluid, we can logically conclude that the positive effect of enhanced mixing through increasing the flow rate could equally be accomplished through applying a pulsating inflow.In addition, this thesis introduces and describes an experimental setup for study of air flow over a wall-mounted radiator in a mockup of a real room, which has been successfully designed and manufactured. In this experimental study, the airflow over an electric radiator without forced convection, a common room-heating technique, was measured and visualized using the 2D PIV technique. Surface blackening due to particle deposition calls for monitoring in detail the local climate over a heating radiator. One mechanism causing particle deposition is turbophoresis, which occurs when the flow is turbulent. Because turbulence plays a role in particle deposition, it is important to identify where the laminar flow over radiator becomes turbulent. The results from several visualization techniques and PIV measurements indicated that for a room with typical radiator heating, the flow over the radiator became agitated after a dimensionless length, 5.0–6.25, based on the radiator thickness.Surface properties are among the influencing factors in particle deposition; therefore, the geometrical properties of different finishing techniques were investigated experimentally using a structured light 3D scanner that revealed differences in roughness among different surface finishing techniques. To investigate the resistance to airflow along the surface and the turbulence generated by the surfaces, we recorded the boundary layer flow over the surfaces in a special flow rig, which revealed that the types of surface finishing methods differed very little in their resistance and therefore their influence on the deposition velocity is probably small.
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| 3. |
- Unander-Scharin, Carl, 1964-
(author)
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Extending Opera - Artist-led Explorations in Operatic Practice through Interactivity and Electronics
- 2015
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Artistic work (other academic/artistic)abstract
- How can we re-empower opera singers, extending their control over accompaniment and vocal expressivity? To answer this question, I have opened a novel design space, Extending Opera, consisting of interactive artist–operated tools to be used on-stage. The research has its methodological groundings in Research through Design (RtD) and Research through the Arts (RttA). This particular method is coined "research-throughthe- art-form-opera" – as I have worked within the realms and traditions of opera, probing its boundaries by designing, researching and creating through its own artistic toolbox.Originally conceived for personal use, the artifacts were later used by other singers and incorporated in performances of opera in small and large scale. By composing and designing for the requirements in operatic productions, high demands on robustness were explored in and through custom-built interfaces.The work resulted in ten novel artifacts and performances exploring the expressivity of these tools. Extending Opera is guided by and probed through three questions:1. How can the design and creation of interactive, artist-operated instruments be informed by deep musical knowledge and be probed by the particular conditions surrounding an operatic production?2. What impact can interactive, artist-operated instruments have on the opera singers themselves and on their vocal technique?3. How can interactive, artist-operated instruments empower opera singers, thus challenging contemporary power hierarchies – thereby reconnecting to the explorative practice in opera's early days?My knowledge contribution has surfaced through artistic practice and consists of the exemplars and the artworks, as well as three abstractions – one procedure, one requirement and one experiential quality.Sensory Digital Intonation highlights how the fine-tuning of technologies and real-time interactivity is incorporated in a feed-back loop with artistic concerns and creativity.Performative Stamina ("The Premiere-Factor") highlights how the traditional procedures leading up to a premiere in opera influence the demands on robustness and reliability within the components and the overall design of the novel artifacts.Vocal Embodiment is an experiential quality that describes how the interactive artifacts change the singing itself.In the conclusion, Artistic Re–Empowerment is discussed, proposing that power structures in opera have been probed through the use of the novel artist-operated interactive instruments.
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| 4. |
- Worbin, Linda
(author)
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Designing dynamic textile patterns
- 2010
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Artistic work (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Designing Dynamic Textile Patterns Progress in chemistry, fibres and polymers technology provides textile designers with new expressive materials, making it possible to design dynamic textile patterns, where several different expressions are inherent in the same textile, textiles that, for example, could alternate between a striped and checkered pattern. Textiles are traditionally designed and produced to keep a given, static expression during their life cycle; a striped pattern is supposed to keep its stripes. In the same way textile designers are trained to design for static expressions, where patterns and decorations are meant to last in a specific manner. However, things are changing. The textile designer now deals also with a new raw material, a dynamic textile, ready to be further designed, developed and/or programmed, depending on functional context. This transformation in practice is not an easy one for the designers. Designers need to learn how to design with these new materials and their specific qualities, to be able to develop the full expressional potential inherent in “smart textiles design”. The aim of this thesis is to display, and discuss, a methodology for designing dynamic textile patterns. So far, something that mainly has been seen in different experimental and conceptual prototypes, in artistic expressions and for commercial efforts etc. In terms of basic experimental research this thesis explores the turn in textile design practice through a series of design experiments with focus on contributing to identifying and characterizing new design variables, new design methods and new design techniques as a foundation for dynamic textile patterns.
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| 5. |
- Backman, Erik, 1972-
(author)
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Friluftsliv in Swedish Physical Education – a Struggle of Values : Educational and Sociological Perspectives
- 2010
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to examine some of the educational and sociological conditions underlying the production of teaching in friluftsliv within the Physical Education (PE) subject in Swedish compulsory school. Despite the value awarded to the Scandinavian outdoor practice friluftsliv, in both the national PE curriculum document and in Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) in Sweden, it does not seem to be thoroughly implemented in compulsory school teaching. Through analyses of interviews with PE teachers and PE teacher educators, as well as of curriculum documents, using the perspectives of Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bourdieu, I explore conditions underlying the expressions of friluftsliv teaching in Swedish PE. The pedagogic discourse for friluftsliv in Swedish PE is described as a teaching that should take place in a natural setting remote from civilisation, involve risks, and require time, technical equipment, financial resources, and cooperation. This discourse for friluftsliv is shown to be similar to the values emphasised in friluftsliv education in PETE. Although proven to be difficult to implement in school, this discourse appear to form the conception of friluftsliv teaching for PE teachers in Sweden. Under the influence of the performance code, friluftsliv is transformed into outdoor activities with which the PE teachers are familiar, or is totally left out of PE teaching. A turn towards options that are seen as unthinkable in relation to the current pedagogic discourse may benefit the achievement of the aims set out in the national PE curriculum. Values such as environmental awareness, sustainable development and cultural perspectives on the landscape could strengthen the classification of friluftsliv and PE in compulsory school. Further, an increase of socially critical and constructivist perspectives during PETE could make unthinkable options in friluftsliv thinkable and contribute to a break with the reproduction of teaching practices in PE.
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| 6. |
- Bedford, Sofie
(author)
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Islamic Activism in Azerbaijan : Repression and Mobilization in a Post-Soviet Context
- 2009
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Post-Soviet Azerbaijan is often portrayed as a very secular country. Thus the mobilization of mosque communities in the late 1990s and their conflictual relationship with the authorities came as a surprise. The main aim of the dissertation is to shed light on this mobilization, focusing on the Sunni Abu Bakr and the Shi’ite Juma mosque communities in Baku. On the premise that Islamic mobilization may be interpreted as a “social movement”, internal, contextual and interactional aspects of mobilization have been studied. The analysis is chiefly based on interviews conducted in Baku in 2004/2005 with Imams, worshippers, religious and secular authorities. The study finds that young people looking for new approaches to religion have been drawn to these communities, where they encounter an independent, educated, conscientious clergy and, indeed, a “new” religion. This “sovereign” Islam does not go down well with authorities who fear politicization of religion. The Soviet heritage has provided them with a view of religion as something that should not be publicly displayed and with the institutions to control religion. Another key feature whose impact on state policy towards religious organizations cannot be underestimated is the fear of imported radicalism. A look at Islamic mobilization in North Caucasus, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan reveals many similarities, yet one momentous difference is the harsher repression in these contexts, which decreases the chances of a non-radical mobilization. The thesis concludes that the role of the state in mobilization processes in non-democratic contexts is crucial but counterintuitive, as the regimes’ efforts to stop the mobilization of movements actually leads to its intensification. In Azerbaijan, official pressure brings community members closer together and strengthens their resolve, rather than putting an end to mobilization. It also puts a spotlight on these communities which lights up the way for others in search of something new.
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| 7. |
- Bergholm, Adam, 1977-
(author)
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Key Notes on the Unruly City : Social, Material, and Spatial Transgressions
- 2023
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Artistic work (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This research departs from three intersecting field studies in Berlin, Copenhagen, and Paris, and includes both my interventions in the urban texture and integrations with existing communities working in the subject field of the Right to the City (Lefebvre 1968). The projects explore the mutable “nature” of cities and build on political philosophies which describe egalitarian actions that have shaped what those places could be. Laid out across three chapters (X, Y & Z) are descriptions of work processes for multiple projects that locate a social and spatial phenomenon which I call “the unruly city.”Manufactured keys, trapdoors, dug-out tunnels, informal dissemination, bricolaged furniture, loopholes, pulleys, hatches, and shacks recur throughout the thesis; each of these tools, methods or architectural elements support a praxis of transgressivism and stealth. Even if the practical constructions, historical investigations, and cultural theory analyses explored in the thesis do not give access to the physical places themselves, they unlock rooms in the reader’s political imagination, by showing that such spaces exist. At the core of Lefebvre’s philosophical and political argument is the call for action. Praxis is understood here as holding the potential of critical performativity: the possibility to merge culture and politics with claims of creating access to the urban and the production of space. A promise of going beyond philosophy and theory to arrive at praxis. Jacques Rancière (2019) theorizes that which is recognized as (im)possible through sensation. In effect, Rancière addresses a regulation of what can be done. By departing from such an aesthetic order of distributed sensibility, there is the possibility to make a true politics; one which can peel off the foreclosing façades of Western democracy, where the order of things is contested by, as Rancière frames it, the part which has no part. This would be an active politics that challenges the policed order of inclusions and exclusions regarding of what is felt, seen, heard, and perceived. A politics of affect, accomplished by spatial, material, and theoretical practices. In order to imagine the unimaginable—whether it is about spaces, living conditions, or coded systems—imagination must transgress into praxis: speech acts that contributes to our perception, and the other way around. Here, each work becomes a monument to the is-possible—a concrete, non-abstract refutation of any arguments which claim another way of creating or engaging with the city beyond that which is commercially sanctioned to be impossible.
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| 8. |
- Halldórsson, Halldór Björn, 1971-
(author)
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Tacit : A research journey into the methods, processes and knowledge of graphic designers
- 2022
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Artistic work (other academic/artistic)abstract
- By exploring the potential effects of digitisation on graphic design methods, this thesis aims to highlight some of the tacit knowledge possessed by graphic designers and to show that this knowledge can both be externalised and made communicable. Beginning with an interview study where professional designers’ views were gathered and analysed, the work continued through a participatory study where designers’ knowledge was highlighted in a documented design project. Finally, alternative ways of externalising knowledge were employed in an exhibition, displaying the creative outcomes of this thesis. The work shows that the hitherto largely hidden knowledge of graphic designers can be uncovered and made more communicable, strengthening designers’ professional identity and making the field more accessible to students. Furthermore, using versatile approaches in a design project can encourage conceptual development and even professional enjoyment, as well as increasing historical awareness. The thesis uses an experimental approach to research method design and thus contributes to the development of graphic design research methodology. As such, in addition to expanding our understanding of graphic design knowledge, this work will enable a deeper exploration of methods, identity, and the definition of the profession’s taxonomy.
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| 9. |
- Hållen, Nicklas, 1983-
(author)
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Travelling objects : modernity and materiality in British Colonial travel literature about Africa
- 2011
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This study examines the functions of objects in a selection of British colonial travel accounts about Africa. The works discussed were published between 1863 and 1908 and include travelogues by John Hanning Speke, Verney Lovett Cameron, Henry Morton Stanley, Mary Henrietta Kingsley, Ewart Scott Grogan, Mary Hall and Constance Larymore. The author argues that objects are deeply involved in the construction of pre-modern and modern spheres that the travelling subject moves between. The objects in the travel accounts are studied in relation to a contextual background of Victorian commodity and object culture, epitomised by the 1851 Great Exhibition and the birth of the modern anthropological museum. The four analysis chapters investigate the roles of objects in ethnographical and geographical writing, in ideological discussions about the transformative powers of colonial trade, and in narratives about the arrival of the book in the colonial periphery. As the analysis shows, however, objects tend not to behave as they are expected to do. Instead of marking temporal differences, descriptions of objects are typically unstable and riddled with contradictions and foreground the ambivalence that characterises colonial literature.
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| 10. |
- Johansson, Viktor, 1979-
(author)
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Dissonant Voices : Philosophy, Children's Literature, and Perfectionist Education
- 2013
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Dissonant Voices has a twofold aspiration. First, it is a philosophical treatment of everyday pedagogical interactions between children and their elders, between teachers and pupils. More specifically it is an exploration of the possibilities to go on with dissonant voices that interrupt established practices – our attunement – in behaviour, practice and thinking. Voices that are incomprehensible or expressions that are unacceptable, morally or otherwise. The text works on a tension between two inclinations: an inclination to wave off, discourage, or change an expression that is unacceptable or unintelligible; and an inclination to be tolerant and accept the dissonant expression as doing something worthwhile, but different.The second aspiration is a philosophical engagement with children’s literature. Reading children’s literature becomes a form of philosophising, a way to explore the complexity of a range of philosophical issues. This turn to literature marks a dissatisfaction with what philosophy can accomplish through argumentation and what philosophy can do with a particular and limited set of concepts for a subject, such as ethics. It is a way to go beyond philosophising as the founding of theories that justify particular responses. The philosophy of dissonance and children’s literature becomes a way to destabilise justifications of our established practices and ways of interacting.The philosophical investigations of dissonance are meant to make manifest the possibilities and risks of engaging in interactions beyond established agreement or attunements. Thinking of the dissonant voice as an expression beyond established practices calls for improvisation. Such improvisations become a perfectionist education where both the child and the elder, the teacher and the student, search for as yet unattained forms of interaction and take responsibility for every word and action of the interaction.The investigation goes through a number of picture books and novels for children such as Harry Potter, Garmann’s Summer, and books by Shaun Tan, Astrid Lindgren and Dr. Seuss as well narratives by J.R.R. Tolkien, Henrik Ibsen, Jane Austen and Henry David Thoreau. These works of fiction are read in conversation with philosophical works of, and inspired by, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell, their moral perfectionism and ordinary language philosophy.
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