This dissertation explores matters of collectivity, drawing from the experience of working with the Amsterdam-based collective Hackers & Designers (H&D). The main thesis of this research is... Show moreThis dissertation explores matters of collectivity, drawing from the experience of working with the Amsterdam-based collective Hackers & Designers (H&D). The main thesis of this research is that conventional design vocabularies are not capable of sufficiently expressing and accounting for collectivities‘ resistance to fixation and stabilization. Collective design as it is discussed here challenges notions of individual authorship, differentiations between disciplines, between product and process or between the user and maker. While collectives shape particular affiliations and commitments, design approaches and aesthetics, they also require perspectives on working and designing together that resist linearity, and a progress-based understanding of a design process. By means of several case studies, it is argued that the fragmentation of social and work relations is as much a characteristic of collective practice as the effort to sustain long-term relationships.Thus, collective practice is not fully deliberate, at least not in the same way as for instance ‘teamwork’, ‘the commons’, or ‘cooperativism’, are purposeful organizational frameworks for living, working or being together. Collective Collective design processes take part in and are a result of particular (often fragile) socio-economic, socio-technical conditions that pervade and shape the ways collectives function. Show less
Four artist-researchers associated with the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden University discuss their manners of documenting and observing their performing selves. What role can... Show moreFour artist-researchers associated with the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden University discuss their manners of documenting and observing their performing selves. What role can intuition play in research? Can self-reflection and performance coinhabit the same corporeal space? Although the participants share points of view, their practices, the materials they engage with and the intended outcomes differ. Show less
In this research project I analyze and reflect on taqsīm recordings by two leading figures of ‘ūd playing who were pillars of modern Arabic music, namely the Egyptians Muḥammad al-Qaṣabjī (1898... Show moreIn this research project I analyze and reflect on taqsīm recordings by two leading figures of ‘ūd playing who were pillars of modern Arabic music, namely the Egyptians Muḥammad al-Qaṣabjī (1898-1964) and Riyāḍ al-Sunbāṭī (1906-1981). I decode and underline their most significant traits in order to:1) enrich and develop my melodic-rhythmic vocabulary;2) deepen my understanding of the structural, melodic and rhythmic processes underlying the genre;3) design a structural framework or a model for pre-composing taqsīm-like pieces of music.To put it another way, the dissertation discusses the creation of pre-composed taqāsīm. The pieces follow a specific model of pre-composition that was designed while taking al-Qaṣabjī and al-Sunbāṭī’s taqsīm practice as a reference and a source of inspiration. This model contributes to both artistic research and practical knowledge, and provides new insights into structural, melodic and rhythmical processes of the genre. The artistic outcome of this project includes five new works for solo ‘ūd. Show less
This research project adresses the question how local and traditional European forms of parrhesiastic theater—by which I mean events, actions, and performances staged by characters who courageously... Show moreThis research project adresses the question how local and traditional European forms of parrhesiastic theater—by which I mean events, actions, and performances staged by characters who courageously speak their minds through scenes of excess and laughter, that take place in public view and incite the spectator’s agency to speak their own minds—possibly relate to and/or provide new insights into critical artistic practices today. In this context, the project also examines the place and role of caricature today.I approach the issue as an artist-researcher concerned with socially engaged artistic practices. The experience of the playful, humorous, and sharply critical attitude of Gezi Park protesters speaking their minds in Istanbul in 2013 led me to critically reconsider my own courage in positioning myself within contemporary artistic production. Throughout the dissertation I work along a Moebius strip schema, which continually shifts from me as individual artist to dialogic collaborations to writing about the process. The research subject is investigated through a circulation process within which concepts such as communication, dialogue, and listening are continuously performed and put to the test. The dissertation aspires to provide new insights into how tensions between the roles of individual and group, “I” and “we,” may open up a parrhesiastic space for critical artistic practices. Show less
This essay explores possibilities for enactive imagining and criticism. It observes how recent enactive accounts of cognition see no divide between imagination and everyday perception, and forego... Show moreThis essay explores possibilities for enactive imagining and criticism. It observes how recent enactive accounts of cognition see no divide between imagination and everyday perception, and forego representationalism. It examines somatosensory responses and effortless vivacity for some animal-related imagery in Terence Cave’s cognitive literary criticism Thinking with Literature (2016). Next, it finds that today’s enactive criticism resonates with Francis Junius’s early modern notion of energia, a loose blend of vividness (enargeia) and vivacity (energeia), and concludes that, with its emphasis on energeia’s ‘life force’, energia goes beyond the viewer’s participation in an image’s pictorialist illusion. Pictorialist-style imagining, the essay claims, aligns with a pre-enactive representationalist understanding of cognition. To better explore enactive imagining, the essay entangles discursive writing and artistic work, animated by bird wings. Show less
The Guava Platform, which is at the centre of this PhD thesis, was initiated in 2014 as a conceptual framework of my art practice and research. The aim of the Guava Platform is to research and... Show moreThe Guava Platform, which is at the centre of this PhD thesis, was initiated in 2014 as a conceptual framework of my art practice and research. The aim of the Guava Platform is to research and create possible techniques of art-actions that are part of my quest to continue to live in the conflicted landscape, east of the Mediterranean, as an artist.This dissertation assembles the Guava art-actions: i.e. a series of three short films, an online radio station, two performances, a geotagging website, and a scent collection as well as the research into a combined space. Both the art-actions and the research convey the Guava Platform. The leading questions of the thesis are: How can time-based art-actions in a conflicted landscape induce and take part in an embodiment of constructive political imagination? If both physical and conceptual ‘movement’ are the actions’ impetus, how can these actions adjust the socio-political impasse of the landscape? And how can they contribute to a socio-political discussion of the landscape I live in?The outcome of this research is presented on a website. Here, the different components, the art-actions and texts, are not bound to a hierarchical relationship between theory and practice that might restrict their possibility to interact. Instead, the website enables the visitor to navigate between the different artistic and discursive elements in a nonlinear way. Show less
This dissertation commences from the concept of poiesis, informed chiefly by Hannah Arendt’s use of the term in The Human Condition (1958) to indicate a form of creativity married to craftsmanship.... Show moreThis dissertation commences from the concept of poiesis, informed chiefly by Hannah Arendt’s use of the term in The Human Condition (1958) to indicate a form of creativity married to craftsmanship. This poietic framework will then be used throughout the dissertation to inform a practice-based analysis of the learning process involved with physically polyphonic notations (herein defined as notations of dissynchronous physical actions within a single performative body). Despite polyphonic asynchrony, the unifying performative demands of these pieces are the learning strategies necessary to accomplish this eventual reassembly of instrumental practice within a single, performing body. The following essays will explore the physically polyphonic repertoire of the trombone specifically as a laboratory for problematizing this poietic approach to the learning process. Show less
This dissertation explores the question of what contemporary mapmaking practices can reveal about the ever-evolving field of graphic design.The shift towards digital modes of production has... Show moreThis dissertation explores the question of what contemporary mapmaking practices can reveal about the ever-evolving field of graphic design.The shift towards digital modes of production has fundamentally changed the field of graphic design, to the extent that a clear distinction between the producers and users of visual information no longer exists. The evaluation of graphic design’s recent developments is too strongly focused on what happened to the persona of the graphic designer. In this research an alternative model is introduced that focuses on the technologies that have shaped the field.Graphic design and cartography have different origins and concerns, but their contemporary practices have much in common. In this research, cartography is considered a testing ground to understand the transformations of graphic design. Adopting notions from post-representational cartography, three mapmaking practices of amateurs and technology companies were selected to survey, analyse and test that transformation.The dissertation contains of a series of visualizations that embody an alternative documentation of the research. The development of alternative and complementary languages is considered to be an essential aspect of artistic research. This parallel visual documentation of the research questions the discursive text, and all the prejudices and histories contained within it. Show less
The research explores what and how sound does in certain art practices; it lends an ear to so-called material-discursive events that come into expression as in/determined sonic occurrences. The... Show moreThe research explores what and how sound does in certain art practices; it lends an ear to so-called material-discursive events that come into expression as in/determined sonic occurrences. The dissertation has three main objectives. Firstly, it describes sonic art practice as experimental research and makes a case for curating such practices as a form of research; it positions this type of research as a contribution to new forms of knowledge and provides a resource for future research-creations and evaluation practices. Secondly, it brings together philosophy and art to elaborate a genuine manner of working with sonic matter (mattering); it conceptualizes and materializes novel ways of thinking, and creates a case for writing itself as practice and curating/producing art as theory; that is, it seeks to practice what it theorizes and vice versa. Thirdly, it advocates a certain transformation of self that lets us side-step ourselves, intervene and invent possible worlds or future fabulations. Practicing a process-oriented exploration complexifies as it advances; it creates resonances between theory and practice, between audience and sound art, between the written thesis – inclusive of presented artifacts – and the reader. It wants not to reduce but foster awareness of the ongoing complexity of life. Show less
This thesis presents the research process behind the project Rupestres Sonoros, by the São Paulo-based musical group Mawaca, that recreated indigenous Brazilian songs, and the Cantos da... Show moreThis thesis presents the research process behind the project Rupestres Sonoros, by the São Paulo-based musical group Mawaca, that recreated indigenous Brazilian songs, and the Cantos da Floresta tour of the Amazon, involving an intercultural exchange with six different indigenous groups. The thesis also addresses the projects’ outcomes, such as the publication of didactic books, creation of websites, workshops and new projects that seek to shed light on indigenous musical expressions. The thesis is about the journey of going up on stage, organizing intercultural activities, producing books, records and videos that transformed me and Mawaca, in a postmodern context, into artists that create in order to help raise awareness on the current political issues concerning the indigenous communities in Brazil. The purpose of this thesis is to reveal how music performance and research can be conducted by “anthropophagizing” knowledge, that is, consuming from a broad range of cultural sources, regurgitating and reinventing multicultural musicalities. Show less
Ambient sound is a standard term used by sound practitioners to denote the site-specific background sound component that provides a characteristic atmosphere and spatial information in a sound... Show moreAmbient sound is a standard term used by sound practitioners to denote the site-specific background sound component that provides a characteristic atmosphere and spatial information in a sound work. In this project I set out to examine how ambient sound is used as a site-specific element to create spatial awareness in sound production. Taking a critical attitude towards the notions of diegetic sound, mimesis, presence, artistic transformations of soundscapes, and technological innovations, the project highlights the inherent similarities and differences between the ways ambient sounds are used in film and sound art; the aim has been to investigate how the latter practice informs the former and vice versa. The dissertation cites examples from a substantial number of representative Indian films and focuses on three of my recent sound artworks. These case studies are examined via critical listening, historical mapping, and thorough analyses of the sound production processes. The project also draws inputs from prominent sound practitioners in the form of semi-structured interviews. Show less
Sophie Ernst’s doctoral thesis is an artist’s contribution to media art theory. It focusses on the role of projection as material for sculpture. Her research addresses the question in what... Show more Sophie Ernst’s doctoral thesis is an artist’s contribution to media art theory. It focusses on the role of projection as material for sculpture. Her research addresses the question in what manner are projections applied in contemporary art and what image traditions does this relate to. She considers projections to be either immersive, like a cinematic experience, or augmentative, in the sense of a mixed reality. Immersions, the dominant mode in projection art and large parts of the theoretical discourse, presuppose a willing suspension of disbelief. Augmentation, on the other hand, can be seen as ‘magical’. It is a technique in art to ‘make strange’ by creating a distance that can be either pleasant or unsettling. Ernst argues that augmenting projections are persuasive, not because they are materially ‘real’, but rather since they make visible what we could imagine as real. Show less
The House of I. Ideology and Theory in the Netherlands' Design Education is based on the hypothesis that Dutch Art Academies, which since the emergence of (applied) art education have focused... Show moreThe House of I. Ideology and Theory in the Netherlands' Design Education is based on the hypothesis that Dutch Art Academies, which since the emergence of (applied) art education have focused expressly on training the professional artist type - in stead of a focus on the dependent artist type (the artisan) or the distanced artist type (the bohemien) - have used and/or developed forms of theory that are relevant for the current and future design education. The hypothesis is examined for Dutch art schools of Amsterdam, Arnhem, Breda, The Hague, Eindhoven, Maastricht, Rotterdam and Utrecht between 1921 and the present. Where relevant, information about the academies of Den Bosch, Enschede, Groningen and Tilburg has been added. The tree artist types and the various forms of theory are examined in the boardrooms of the art school and in the classrooms and workplaces for education in graphic, product and fashion design. Show less
Due to the low quality level of visual input they receive in the form of printed text, beginning visually impaired readers are at a disadvantage in comparison to their peers. In the past,... Show moreDue to the low quality level of visual input they receive in the form of printed text, beginning visually impaired readers are at a disadvantage in comparison to their peers. In the past, typography has often been looked upon as a useful instrument to improve the legibility of the printed reading material that is being offered to children with low vision. However, the legiblity research efforts that were at the base of this conception were not always of good quality. In cognitive science for example, many efforts were made that were methodologically correct, yet the test material (the used typefaces) had little to do with reality. Many typefaces that were supposed to improve legibility were also suggested by typographers themselves, but the reasoning behind them was hardly ever sufficiently methodologically supported. Moreover, most legibility research focused on people with low vision in general, ignoring the fac t that visually impaired children constitute a very particular group with specific issues. This doctoral research project in design seeks to shed a light on legibility in the context of visually impaired beginning readers. Starting from these findings and from a legibility research a first step is given to design a typeface that will be able to provide support for the target group of visually impaired children in the first stages of the reading process. Show less
The thesis is about artistic research – what it is, or what it could be. And it is about the place that artistic research could have in academia, within the whole of academic research. It is also... Show moreThe thesis is about artistic research – what it is, or what it could be. And it is about the place that artistic research could have in academia, within the whole of academic research. It is also about the ways we speak about such issues, and about how the things we say (in this study and elsewhere) cause the practices involved to manifest themselves in specific ways, while also setting them into motion. In this sense, the thesis not only explores the phenomenon of artistic research in relation to academia, but it also engages with that relationship. This performative dimension of the thesis is interwoven with its constative and interpretive dimensions. If the thesis succeeds in its aims, it will not only advance knowledge and understanding of artistic research, but it will further the development of this emerging field. Show less
This research focuses on a new field of artistic research in which a visual artist takes on the role of researcher. The main research question is whether performance art integrated in an ecumenical... Show moreThis research focuses on a new field of artistic research in which a visual artist takes on the role of researcher. The main research question is whether performance art integrated in an ecumenical service, combined with artistic directions from the artist, can enhance the religious experience of those taking part in the church service. I set my research against theology and Ritual Studies by describing my ideal image of a liturgical service and by comparing this personal view with the viewpoints of several theologians. Furthermore I examined the theories of the psychology of religion to search for an description of the concept of religious experience.The artistic experiment I set up in order to answer my main research question comprised a set of church services with several integrated performances. In this research I counted, described and analysed a total number of seven religious experiences. From the description and analyses of the experiences it became clear that these were indeed brought about by the performance rituals in the church services. Show less
