| 1. |
- Avila, Martin, 1972
(författare)
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Devices. On Hospitality, Hostility and Design
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis studies and speculates upon the interrelations of artefacts with human and nonhuman agents. These interrelations form assemblages, some of which have emergent properties, becoming manifestations of processes that we cannot fully control or understand. The work started by exploring the theme of hospitality and hostility with the ambition to better understand the ecological complexity of the design process and its results. As an assemblage, this work combines different literary, philosophical and theoretical discourses and traditions with experimental design in order to develop and articulate the concept of device. A device organizes, arranges, frames our environment and thereby defines and limits possibilities of relation. Since relations can only be thought through a so-called natural language such as English, they must be taken into consideration through the process of languaging, understood by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela as communication about communication”, and as the most characteristic feature of the human species. My focusing on linguistic and biological phenomena is a response to this concern, in an attempt to understand how this process influences our perception of the world. Through a series of design projects, the thesis examines the potential range of an artefact’s relations. It does so by exploring grammatical associations that affect design onceptualizations, creating tools (prepositiontools) as well as studying and articulating forms of symbiosis that an artefact might develop in and with its environment (¡Pestes!).
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| 2. |
- Broms, Loove, 1977-
(författare)
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Storyforming : Experiments in creating discursive engagements between people, things and environments
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis introduces and critically reflects on a design programme, Storyforming, that explores ways to design objects and places to enrich daily life narratives. Using an experimental design approach, the goal is to exemplify and explore this idea with discursive artefacts that, through their physical and temporal form, act as catalysts in the construction of meaningful experiences.In the current sustainability discourse, behavioural change has been pointed out as a key factor in achieving a sustainable society. Historically, design has been very effective in increasing production and consumption behaviours by creating new types of needs and, in a way, manufacturing desire (Forty, 1986). Drawing on this, the overarching aim of this thesis is the investigation of the ways design, through a suggested programme, can afford alternative types of meaningful experiences in contrast to the prevailing consumer culture.The empirical work reported in the thesis stems from several research projects looking into the matter of energy use in relation to design. In addition, two of the projects have been carried out in the author’s own design practice. Some concepts are explored more in-depth—involving events such as field studies, situated interviews, workshops, prototype building, design interventions in the form of domestication probes, and contextual studies ranging from a few weeks up to a year—while other concepts exist only as sketches or photo montages. The diversity of these concepts, the design experiments, helps span a design space becoming a new provisional design programme. The idea for this programme has evolved from observations and reflections made throughout the experiments presented in the thesis.The general results are the suggested approach of Storyforming, which focuses on the design of artefacts supporting daily narratives that can be used to create engagement, meaning, and alternative values applicable to the discourse of sustainable behaviour.Specific contributions are the selection of design experiments. In the thesis, the experiments have first been examined from the perspective of stories and forming as a basis for the new programme formulation. Through this articulation of the programme, the experiments are revisited through three leitmotifs, part of the provisional programme focusing on different properties related to the aspect of forming. From the perspective of the user, these themes—seeing and accessing designs, exploring and expressing complexity, and sharing experiences and negotiating use—are finally elaborated on in relation to other theoretical concepts as well as their implications for future research.
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| 3. |
- Bärtås, Magnus, 1962
(författare)
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You Told Me – work stories and video essays : Verkberättelser och videoessäer
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- You Told Me is a practice-based research project and consists of three video biographies (the Who is…? series), and two video essays (Kumiko, Johnnie Walker & the Cute (2007), Madame & Little Boy (2009), an introduction with a contextualization and methodology of the field, and three essays. The dissertation is an observation and analysis of certain functions and meanings of narration and narratives in contemporary art, as well as being an experiment with roles, methods, actions, and narrative functions in an artistic medium – the video essay. Using the methods of “pilgrimage” (Chris Marker) and essayistic practices, and by revisiting and retelling biographies, this work tries to find a place in between collective and personal memory. During the practical process and the reflective theoretical work the different elements or instances of the video essay are identified: the subject matter, the images (the representation), the artist/author, the narrative/text, and the narrator/voice. In documentary film the lack of natural correspondence between these entities is often dissolved or denied – this work instead exposes the instances as separate units. A question arises: What alternative roles can be established between these elements, for example by negotiation and transference between them? The methodological part of the text focuses on the conceptual invention made during the process, which I have called work story [verkberättelse]. A work story is a written or oral narrative about the forming of materials, immaterial units, situations, relations, and social practices that constitutes, or leads to, an artwork. By discussing analogies between storytelling, collecting, and biographical accounts together with examples from conceptual art, the dissertation shows how the work story is not only crucial for the understanding of the artwork but that the act of making and the very order or sequence in which the making proceeds often have symbolic, metaphorical, metonymical, political, and even epistemological meanings. In an extended form a work story disseminates meaning rather than capturing it. This is the essayistic work story that permits a writer/artist to wander off and touch upon a subject as if in passing, reproducing its neglected genealogy and destiny in the detailed materiality of the work story.
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| 4. |
- Göransson, Michelle, 1976-
(författare)
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Materlialiserade sexualiteter : om hur normer framträder, förhandlas och ges hållbarhet
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this dissertation is to analyse how conceptions of sexuality are interlinked with and formed through connections with different types of matter, and also to study what significance matter (that is, bodies, space and things) has in shaping and actuating norms, particularly heteronorms.The study is based on transcribed semi-structured interviews and go-along interviews with persons who deviate from the societal norm of man and the societal norm heterosexual. In addition, the material consists of signposts, spaces, architecture, legal documents and texts found on websites.The dissertation is mainly dedicated to the study of processes wherein bodies, things and space are linked together or separated. Bodies materialise as non-heterosexual (or heterosexual) in processes that entangle movements, spaces, things and language. Apart from analysing bodies as morphous, I also emphasise that the boundaries between bodies and things must be understood as transient. Things can integrate into bodies and limbs can turn into things. I also cast light on the fact that heteronorms are imprinted into matter such as the built environment. Boundaries are materialised, but LGBTQ- defined safe spaces are concurrently being formed. Such spaces tend to be transient in character. This stands in contrast to such things that tie into societal norms, which tend to survive the passing of time whether they be buildings, monuments or urban planning. Thus, norms are both created by and imprinted into matter. The memories, experiences and assumed needs of certain bodies and their ways of living together are given solidity. Spatially organised differences are, on the other hand, primarily accepted when packaged into events, temporary and clearly marked, which inadvertently highlight Sweden’s (imaginary) openness and diversity.
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| 5. |
- Lind, Ulla, 1951-
(författare)
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Blickens ordning : Bildspråk och estetiska lärprocesser som kulturform och kunskapsform
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The main aim of this thesis is to research and discuss the conditions for visual and aesthetic learning processes as forms of culture and knowledge. Poststructural theories are used and the empirical findings are analyzed in relation to visual cultural studies as well as in relation to dominant orders of seeing and regimes of observation in visual pedagogies. The study employs two different research methods for investigating the conditions for children practicing visual languages as communicative and aesthetic learning processes. In the first study, visual and verbal documentation of aesthetic learning processes in four different preschool settings are followed and conducted. In the second study, school children were invited to visually represent their answers to the following question: “Tell in pictures about how it is to be a school child/pupil?” This research contributes to an increased understanding of visual languages, visual culture and aesthetic and creative learning processes contextualized through historical and contemporary meanings of preschools and schools.
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| 6. |
- Nobel, Andreas, 1966-
(författare)
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Dimmer på Upplysningen : text, form och formgivning
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The main part of the dissertation is a text. The other is an exhibition mainly presenting a bow-lathe and some furniture designed and produced in that bow lathe. Interior- and furniture design are disciplines in which sensory qualities are important. Within these disciplines there are well established methods and languages for developing these qualities. However, such development has rarely been achieved through the medium of text. Sensory qualities tend to be ignored in highly textualized knowledge environments. Within education textualized knowledge is often valued higher than forms of knowledge developed through other medias than text. This situation has led to a dichotomized perception of knowledge where textualized knowledge attained through writing and conceptualizing, is valued higher than knowledge developed through physical work. The thesis argues that this hierarchical view on different forms of knowledge also has an influence on the practical profession of the designer, manifest in the paradoxical situation where the form aspects of design is neglected and over shadowed by various forms of textualized knowledge. The central research question posed in the text part is: Which adverse effects might an increasing emphasis on textualized theory have on the design practices? The questions are highlighted from perspectives such as; epistemology, tradition, history and power.The central research question in the exhibition part examines if any possible negative effects on design resulting from the above mentioned scenario, may be prevented through engaging in a highly physical and non-conceptual design- process? The purpose of the exhibition part is to introduce methods and design that may provide the impetus for further development in the fields of design. The bow lathe is presented as an example of a productive tool for the development of relevant contemporary design.
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| 7. |
- Willén, Maja, 1983-
(författare)
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Berättelser om den öppna planlösningens arkitektur : En studie av bostäder, boende och livsstil i det tidiga 2000-talets Sverige
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Since the beginning of the 21st century the open plan dwelling, i.e. open connections between reception areas and kitchen, has become an increasingly popular form of housing in Sweden. The aim of this thesis is to investigate narratives describing the life in open plan apartments, discussing (1) what they contain, (2) how they are constructed and distributed and (3) what social consequences they entail. These three questions have an immediate connection to the three levels of the critical discourse analysis formulated by Norman Fairclough where he analyses every instance of a discourse as simultaneously being text, discursive practice and social practice. The study has been accomplished in the newly built area Hammarby sjöstad in Stockholm through interviews with builders, architects and people living in open plan apartments. Articles in interior magazines describing an open plan lifestyle has also been taken into consideration. Three themes is being discussed, the first describing the social qualities imagined to be naturally embedded in the open plan architecture. The second highlights the idea of cooking as both a way of living and as a factor contributing to the popularity of the open housing design, and the last focuses on the open plan home as a place for self performance. At the text-level the material describes the impact of the open plan dwelling as a result of new interests, as dependent on new social habits and as a desire to put the home and the ongoing life on display. The ideas of what an open plan architecture actually can accomplish may, at a discoursive practice level, be given explanations from three main orders of discourse: the architectural, the market, and the good life order of discourse. The social practice level makes it obvious that the ideals concerning housing and lifestyle simultaneously reproduce old and create new social practices, taking into account cultural notions of gender relations, family life, social habits and questions of class.
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