| 1. |
- Nyström, Ingalill, 1969
(author)
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Bonadsmåleri under lupp: Spektroskopiska analyser av färg och teknik i sydsvenska bonadsmålningar 1700-1870
- 2012
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The objects of this PhD thesis are Southern Swedish painted wall-hangings: folk art paintings from the 18th and 19th centuries. The aim and objective of the study are: to investigate the construction and manufacturing processes of the painted wall-hangings; to identify both the painting materials and other substances employed; and, to document painting techniques used by different painters within this painted wall-hanging tradition. This is to get an increased understanding of the materials and techniques used, and the material development of these painted objects during the 18th and 19th centuries. The study is interdisciplinary in which Art Technological Source Research (ATSR) is combined with conservation science. Non-destructive and non-invasive analytical methods were preferentially used. Therefore spectroscopic methods including multi-spectral imaging systems, FT-Raman with a micro video probe head, FTIR with diffuse reflectance and Electron Microscopy with Elemental Analysis (SEM-EDX) were applied. Most of these chemical and technical analyses are undertaken on site. Supplementing analyses using spot tests and experimental reconstructions of coloring matters from plants and possible binder composition has then been carried out in the laboratory. In order to understand the manufacturing process of the wall-hangings also mock-ups where made. Historical recipes have been used to make these reconstructions. The Results indicate that generally inexpensive pigments such as chalk, red lead, ochres, orpiment, carbon black and woad have been used. Some artificial pigments such as; Prussian blue, emerald green and chrome yellow were introduced in the wall-hangings in the latter part of the era. The binding media in the paint contains egg and in some cases also starch. The paint is normally painted on reused linen cloth prepared with starch containing glue. During 19th century also paper has been used as a support. Representative for these painted objects is also that templates were adopted for the figures in the picture scenes and motifs. The significance of this study is that the materials science and knowledge of the technology used is important to be able to predict degradation risks, and to develop preventive and remedial conservation strategies for these objects. The technological material knowledge not only is crucial for preservation but also can supplement previous studies and previous attribution of Southern Swedish painted wall-hangings without signature.
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| 2. |
- Eriksson, Thommy, 1967
(author)
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A Poetics of Virtuality
- 2016
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- How is virtuality represented in fiction, and what does that say about our anticipations and fears about what the virtual is and will be? This text, a poetics of virtuality, explores fictional representations of virtuality, primarily in movies and literature, but also in media productions done by the author. The aim is to study the dream of virtuality. What are we promised? What do we anticipate? What do we fear? This is why the study has focused on fictional virtualities, where the storyteller is somewhat free to represent the virtual, and let cultural ideas emerge, untethered by the technical constraints that govern real-life virtuality technology.The study has two methodological approaches. One is the analysis of a large number of fictional narrative texts representing virtuality, primarily movies but also a few novels and short stories. The other is the study of the author’s own work producing media products involving virtuality. The chosen research design utilizes the author’s position as both an academic and a computer graphic artist. The studied fictional narratives have been analyzed using semiotics, a method to study signs and sign production. A self- and auto-ethnographic approach has been used to observe the author’s media productions.The contribution of this study is a deep and detailed understanding of how virtuality is represented in fiction, presented as a poetics of virtuality. Seven topologies of virtuality are presented: #surrealism, #containment, #engineered space, #artificial light, #immateriality, #control, and #virtual artificial intelligence.In summary, the results show that:It was advantageous to combine film studies with auto-ethnographic observations, but also highly time consumingFictional representations of virtuality are largely based on real-life technology, especially older computer technologyFictional representations of virtuality are quite highly constrained by production circumstances and storytelling requirementsVolumetric displays are highly anticipated, but the need to use augmented reality to implement the vision might surprise usVirtuality is often thought of as being in opposition to the real and the natural; it is also often thought of as being a lesser copy of the actualA major theme is breaking out of the virtual, and this falsely promises that there can be an escape from the virtual, and from technology.
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| 3. |
- Linscott, Kristina, 1954
(author)
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Interpretations of old wood, Figuring mid-twelfth century church architecture in west Sweden
- 2017
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The thesis explores mid-twelfth century church architectures in west Sweden. The architectures are investigated in the light of a case, five parish churches’ naves, in particular their attics and surviving mid-twelfth century roofs. Working from the insight that these roofs were most likely visible from the rooms below, the thesis presents in-depth analysis of the sites, buildings, and their organisation of forms and volumes. The archaeological evidence is approached with architectural perspectives, and the study brings together a partly new view of the mid-twelfth century church architectures. The churches’ attics and roofs have seldom been in the focus in studies that interpret the historical church architectures. Thus, even if the uniquely old roofs are well preserved, we understand only fragments of how they may have been significant. The naves were created in a period before we have specific documentary evidence. Thus, as a study system, the idea that the archaeological physical remains establish ‘iterated, performed, articulations’ guide the work throughout. The physical evidence is approached with architectural perspectives. The historical architectures are viewed as a matrix for peoples’ beings and doings, which means that the architectures were both essential, present ‘everywhere’, and routine, ‘everyday’. The thesis presents relationships between the remains and architectural perspectives. Based on investigations in the buildings, and a 3D laser scan of one church, the analysis first focus on walls and roofs respectively and thereafter explores relationships between these. The interpretations show that the naves’ masonry walls formed a firm and ‘cave-like’ setting, and that the roofs contrasted with a light and ‘lively’ character. The roof in one nave, in Gökhems’ church, articulates or marks ‘zones’ in the room below, interpreted as the ‘west’, ‘middle’ and ‘east’. Thereafter the thesis focus attention on four architectural themes in a sequence of events, i.e. ‘discovery and approach’, ‘portal and doorway’, ‘entry and exploration’ and finally, ‘recalled in visual memory’. In these, the focus is on the same church in Gökhem however, some investigations connect to stave churches in Norway, as well as to a woven picture of a church, in a tapestry from north Sweden. In the last part, the thesis cast light on some important subsequent changes. The results provides a basis for future projects, pointing to the importance of the wooden built remains in Sweden and Norway, working from ‘site topology’, and analysis of medieval built environment from the viewpoint of preserved textiles. The five churches are part of a Swedish national heritage and they were, together with many other small churches in Sweden, extensively restored during the twentieth century. In this process, they lost some of their local diversity. As we now try to fit these monuments, which have a national identity, into an increasingly complex world with many identities, new understandings of the churches’ varying pasts are important. The thesis seeks to strengthen archaeological and architectural perspectives within conservation, and argues to include roofs as particularly significant, in future monument assessments.
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| 4. |
- Nilsson, Rangnar, 1974
(author)
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God vetenskap. Hur forskares vetenskapsuppfattningar uttryckta i sakkunnigutlåtanden förändras i tre skilda discipliner.
- 2009
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Rangnar Nilsson: Good science: How researchers’ conceptions of science expressed in peer review documents change in three different disciplines (God vetenskap: Hur forskares vetenskapsuppfattningar uttryckta i sakkunnigutlåtanden förändras i tre skilda discipliner). Ph.D. Dissertation in Swedish, with a summary in English. Department of Literature, History of Ideas and Religion, University of Gothenburg, 2009. ISBN: 978-91-7346-638-7. This dissertation examines the variety in perceptions of science and research in the academic communities of political science, literature studies and physics in Sweden 1950-1995 as expressed in expert evaluations of professorship candidates. The study relates commonalities as well as differences in these perceptions to internal conditions of the research field, and to the extramural settings and conditions of Swedish academia. Research is thus considered as a historically situated, socially entangled and contingent societal activity that produces knowledge in close concurrence with the surrounding society. The analysis of quality assessments for each discipline examines which of the following aspects of the works reviewed by expert panels are focused in their evaluation reports: problem, method, theory, object, results, writing, the totality of the work or the researcher him- or herself. Based on the panelists’ treatment of these aspects the thesis highlights the concomitant internal perceptions of science and research in each case. It is found that early on in expert evaluations, political science tends to be depicted as a research field largely focused on the research methods. The methods frequently define areas of research, and credibility is typically attained through proper use of reliable methods. Towards the end of the 1900s, political scientists took a new interest in theory, while the knowledge produced was described in less definitive or absolute words. Expert panels reviewing literature studies were traditionally more inclined to focus on the object of research or its material, whereas the methods used were rarely diagnosed. With time, however, one finds a theoretical turn, in as much as theory gained a new appreciation in this discipline as well, and it is, moreover, clearly considered as an active ingredient in knowledge production in the 1990s. As in political science, the descriptions of results - as depicted in evaluations - change from rather final pronouncements to ones that are more tentative. Such a trend may also be seen in the physicists’ evaluations. In that case evaluation reports largely home in on the results in general, but they also - when actual results are described - make explicit references to linkages with external actors or industry. The respective differences identified are analyzed as products of the history of each discipline, inherent requirements and differential relationships to the society outside of the academia.
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| 5. |
- Törnberg, Petter, 1987
(author)
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Worse than Complex
- 2017
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis engages with questions on the boundary between what has traditionally been understood as social and natural. The introductory essay contextualizes the specific contributions of the included papers, by noting and exploring a reinvigoration of "naturalism" (the notion of a continuity between the human realm and the rest of natural phenomena) under the banner of Complexity Science. This notion is put under explicit light, by revisiting the age-old question of naturalism and connecting ideas in complexity science with the work of e.g. Roy Bhaskar, Mario Bunge, William Wimsatt, and David Lane. A philosophical foundation for a complexity science of societal systems is thereby sketched, taking the form of an integrative and methodologically pluralist "complex realism". The first two papers provide a theoretical perspective on the distinction between social and natural: Paper I notes that societal systems combine two qualities that are commonly referred to as complexity and complicatedness into an emergent quality that we refer to as "wickedness", and that is fundamentally and irreducibly different from either quality in isolation. This explains the recalcitrance of societal systems to the powerful approaches that exist for dealing with both of these qualities in isolation, and implies that they indeed ought to be treated as a distinct class of systems. Paper II uses the plane spanned by complexity and complicatedness to categorize seven different system classes, providing a systematic perspective on the study of societal systems. The suggested approach to societal systems following from these conclusions is exemplified by three studies in different fields and empirical contexts. Paper III combines a number of theories that can be seen as responses to wickedness, in the form of evolutionary developmental theories and theories of societal change, to develop a synthetic theory for cultural evolution. Paper IV exemplifies how simulation can be integrated with social theory for the study of emergent effects in societal systems, contributing a network model to investigate how the structural properties of free social spaces impact the diffusion of collective mobilization. Paper V exemplifies how digital trace data analysis can be integrated with qualitative social science, by using topic modeling as a form of corpus map to aid critical discourse analysis, implying a view of formal methods as aids for qualitative exploration, rather than as part of a reductionist approach.
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| 6. |
- Driesse, Moniek, 1983
(author)
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Leaving dry land: Water, heritage and imaginary agency
- 2023
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This doctoral dissertation explores the interplay between water, heritage and the agency of the imagination. Instead of seeking how to map subjects or heritage, the research focuses on the ways in which mapping and the cartographic gaze have produced subjects in specific categories. It seeks to create moments of orientation and reorientation to experience the effects, affects and possibilities to imagine ways beyond these fixed geocodes and the taken for granted. As such, this dissertation contributes to broader discussions regarding critical design practices alongside critical heritage studies, while channelling design’s ability to shape the world and to explore potential approaches that foster collective imagination and planetary care. Two iterations of a fluid methodology were conducted in Mexico City and Gothenburg, foregrounding precarious issues in heritagisation processes and exploring aquatic agency. The methodology provides a tool for bridging different epistemologies, disciplines and perspectives, fostering transdisciplinary collaboration and knowledge permeation. By engaging with water as a subject and employing imaginative techniques, the research aims to actively (re)imagine the past, present and future of urban environments, enabling diverse infrastructures, ecologies and cosmologies to emerge. Heritage is reconceptualised as a navigational system that traces diverse relations in the world. In this sense, the research challenges modern heritage paradigms by acknowledging the ephemerality of water.
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| 7. |
- Nairat, Malik, 1973
(author)
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Generative comics - A computational approach to creating comics material
- 2021
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Digital storytelling can be employed as a tool that incorporates human creativity with technology. It synthesizes multimedia based elements to create engaging stories and compelling narratives. To this end, this research presents an approach that can be used as an assistant tool for comics artists. It focuses on generating comics-based narratives through a system that integrates three main components in the creation process, which are: agent-based system which generates raw narrative material based on the behavior of the system’s agents, an interactive evolution process where the author participate in the creation process, and comics generating engine that creates final comics as outputs. The general scope of the research is to construct a generative system that has the ability to create comics and fictional characters. The research utilizes the method of Research through Design (RtD) which favors evolution and iteration of the construction of the artifact based on trial and error to better solve complex design problems (Smith & Dean, 2014). Relevant aspects of computer science, visual arts, comics and storytelling have been combined together to form a unified research project that can answer the research questions: how can digital technology be employed in generating comics; how can it contribute to the creation of novel art forms; and how can it help artists in their creative practice. Through a review of generative comics researches, four categories are identified: Unified Comics Generators which investigate methods for generating both the story structure and its visual comics-based representation, Comics Elements Generators which explore various techniques for generating or employing particular comics elements such as panels, splashes, speech bubbles, and others, Visual Representation Generators which rely on importing the content from other narrative sources such as video games, video streaming, or chatting conversations through social media, and Generative Comics Installations which produce and present comic stories in a form of exhibited installations by capturing and manipulating live pictures of the audience. Research findings are discussed in terms of story characterization, the generated stories, and the comics visual representation. The constructed system showed high flexibility, scalability, competency, and capability that entitle it to be employed in various applications for different purposes.
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| 8. |
- Panariello, Claudio
(author)
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Converging Creativity : Intertwining Music and Code
- 2023
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Artistic work (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This compilation thesis is a collection of case studies that presents examples of creative coding in various contexts, focusing on how such practice led to the creation and exploration of musical expressions, and how I in- interact with the design of the code itself. My own experience as a music composer influences this thesis work. By saying so, I mean that although the thesis places itself in the Sound and Music Computing academic tradition, it is also profoundly founded upon a personal artistic perspective. This perspective has been the overarching view that has informed the studies included in the thesis, despite all being quite different. The first part of the thesis describes the practice of creative coding, creativity models, and the interaction between code and coder. Then I propose a perspective on creative coding based on the idea of asymptotic convergence of creativity. This is followed by a presentation of five papers and three music works, all inspected through my stance on this creative practice. Finally, I examine and discuss these works in detail, concluding by suggesting that the asymptotic convergence of creativity framework might serve as a useful tool that adds to the literature on creative coding practice, especially for situations in which such work is carried out in an academic research setting.
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| 9. |
- Behdadi, Dorna, 1988
(author)
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Nonhuman Moral Agency: A Practice-Focused Exploration of Moral Agency in Nonhuman Animals and Artificial Intelligence
- 2023
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Can nonhuman animals and artificial intelligence (AI) entities be attributed moral agency? The general assumption in the philosophical literature is that moral agency applies exclusively to humans since they alone possess free will or capacities required for deliberate reflection. Consequently, only humans have been taken to be eligible for ascriptions of moral responsibility in terms of, for instance, blame or praise, moral criticism, or attributions of vice and virtue. Animals and machines may cause harm, but they cannot be appropriately ascribed moral responsibility for their behavior. This thesis challenges the conventional paradigm by proposing an alternative approach where moral agency is conceived as the competence to participate in moral responsibility practices. By shifting focus from intra-individual to contextual and socially situated features, this practice-focused approach appears to make the attribution of moral agency to nonhuman animals and AI entities more plausible than commonly assumed. Moreover, considering the current and potential future prevalence of nonhuman animals and AI entities in everyday settings and social contexts, a potential extension of moral agency to such entities could very well transform our social, moral, and legal practices. Hence, this thesis proposes that the attribution or withholding of moral agency to different entities should be carefully evaluated, considering the potential normative implications.
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| 10. |
- Ilinykh, Nikolai, 1994
(author)
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Computational Models of Language and Vision: Studies of Neural Models as Learners of Multi-modal Knowledge
- 2024
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis develops and evaluates computational models that generate natural language descriptions of visual content. We build and examine models of language and vision to gain a deeper understanding of how they reflect the relationship between the two modalities. This understanding is crucial for performing computational tasks. The first part of the thesis introduces three studies that inspect the role of self-attention in three different self-attention blocks of the object relation transformer model. We examine attention heatmaps to understand how the model connects different words, objects, and relations within the tasks of image captioning and image paragraph generation. We connect our interpretation of what the model learns in self-attention weights with insights from theories about human cognition, visual perception, and spatial language. The three studies in the second part of the thesis investigate how representations of images and texts can be applied and learned in task-specific models for image paragraph generation, embodied question answering, and variation in human object naming.The last two studies in the third part examine properties of human-generated texts that multi-modal models are expected to acquire in image paragraph generation as well as perceptual category description and interpretation tasks. We analyse discourse structure in image paragraphs produced with different decoding methods. We also inspect whether models of perceptual categories can abstract from visual representations and use this knowledge to generate descriptions that exhibit discriminativity levels important for the task. We show how automatic measures for evaluating text generation behave in a comparison of model-generated and human-generated image descriptions. This thesis presents several contributions. We illustrate that, under specific modelling conditions, self-attention can capture information about the relationship between objects and words. Our results emphasise that the specifics of the task determine the manner and context in which different modalities are processed, as well as the degree to which each modality contributes to the task. We demonstrate that while favoured by automatic evaluation metrics in different tasks, machine-generated image descriptions lack the discourse complexity and discriminative power that are often important for generating better, human-like image descriptions.
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