Doctoral Theses / Doktorsavhandlingar Högskolan för design och konsthantverk
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Item Devices. On Hospitality, Hostility and Design(2012-03-14) Avila, MartinThis 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!).Item Kroppar under träd - en miljö för konstnärlig forskning(2010-02-02T10:45:27Z) Benesch, HenricThis dissertation in the field of artistic research is an articulation, in words and images, on the experience of working with a notional environment for artistic research. It is not a reflection on or a description of the process which the work has involved, but above all an articulation, characterisation and development, in words and images, of the conceptual and pictorial world constituted during, through and in the course of the actual work on an environment for artistic research in Vasaparken, Göteborg. The work is the design of a design process or, in the words of Aristotle, a form of poetic, in which great importance has been attached to making the special relationship between the concrete project and the text as clear as possible. Underlying this concrete work is an interest in the fundamental issue of the dynamic relation between activities (people), environments (buildings) and outward circumstances in perspectives of change. These issues are of a general nature but are especially relevant in relation to the emergence of new fields and practices, as in the case of artistic research. That is to say, fields, activities and practices which are more open by nature and more amenable to change than is usually the case with established fields, activities and practices. This work can also be viewed as a form of travel report, both general and specific, in the hope that it can be used as a form of guide book, to be read by those similarly interested and wishing to undertake corresponding journeys, but it can also serve as travel literature for those interested in the places or in travel as such.Item Concrete Fashion: Dress, Art, and Engagement in Public Space(2009-12-11T11:41:02Z) Eriksson, Kajsa G.This dissertation is an example of artistic research that explores the border between fashion design and contemporary art, in order to place situated bodily practices within the larger field of exploration and ideology, and to discover new formats. The activities engaged in explore the dressed body as a contemporary art medium, and the performances are carried out in public space and within everyday life. The research utilizes ‘the itinerary’, put forward by Certeau, as a metaphor for its prevailing methods. Three extensive art projects are presented within the dissertation: THREE, the Mirror Brooch, and Transformers. The first project concerns exhibition of the intermediate art form of the dressed body in the institutions of art, in this example, the gallery space; the second involves the presentation and use of the Mirror Brooch and examines art as an everyday life experience; and the third entails performances, staged in various locations and featuring the Transformer Jackets, and which are viewed as explorations into public space. The relationship between experience, on one hand, and representation and documentation, on the other, is treated as a translation; a translation meant to be ‘haunting’, and one which feeds energy back into the ongoing artistic process. The conclusion is that, both, performances and translations can be used to strengthen identity and engagement in public space.Item Paper-Composite Porcelain. Characterisation of Material Properties and Workability from a Ceramic Art and Design Perspective(2006) Kim, Jeoung-ahPaper-composite porcelain is a type of paper clay which is made by combining any kind of porcelain with paper. Paper is added to clay to improve low green strength and plasticity - two of the main practical problems of working with porcelain. Despite widespread interest in the material, the characteristics of paper- composite porcelain have remained undetermined. The purpose of this research was to understand the artistic applicability of, and obtain reliable knowledge of the properties of paper-composite porcelain. The research involved a combination of practical artistic experiments and laboratory experiments used within material science. The artistic experiments investigated the workability and applicability of paper-composite porcelain with different amounts of paper in various casting models. The technical studies qualitatively investigated the material characteristics and microstructures using Xray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. The qualitative physical properties tests involved different casting body recipes, production methods and firing temperatures. Quantitative studies were used to measure and analyse the properties of porcelain and paper-composite porcelain. The artistic experiments involved the development of a slip casting method which recycled the excess water from the process. Slip casting of various tableware models showed that there was significantly less cracking, warping, bending and deformation of the paper-composite porcelain than of the mother porcelain. Furthermore, sharp angles and fine lines and surfaces were obtained even with the highest paper-fibre content used (90% in volume). Paper-composite porcelain had the same whiteness as ordinary porcelain, but it had a silkier lustre and was more translucent when glazed. Fibrous structures were identified in both green and fired states. It was proved that the presence of paper fibre, the paper type and the paper-fibre content were the factors behind the increased green strength of the paper-composite porcelain. In comparison, paper-composite porcelain has higher green strength, lower shrinkage, lower deformation degree and wider firing range. The results provide new knowledge of paper-composite porcelain by identifying the reinforcement role of paper fibre in the formation and fabrication stages. They also demonstrate a practically tested and documented method for slip casting which shows some of the potential application of paper-composite porcelain in artistic practice.Item Fashion-able. Hacktivism and engaged fashion design(2008-09-22T09:32:02Z) Busch, Otto vonThis thesis consists of a series of extensive projects which aim to explore a new designer role for fashion. It is a role that experiments with how fashion can be reverse engineered, hacked, tuned and shared among many participants as a form of social activism. This social design practice can be called the hacktivism of fashion. It is an engaged and collective process of enablement, creative resistance and DIY practice, where a community share methods and experiences on how to expand action spaces and develop new forms of craftsmanship. In this practice, the designer engages participants to reform fashion from a phenomenon of dictations and anxiety to a collective experience of empowerment, in other words, to make them become fashion-able. As its point of departure, the research takes the practice of hands-on exploration in the DIY upcycling of clothes through “open source” fashion “cookbooks”. By means of hands-on processes, the projects endeavour to create a complementary understanding of the modes of production within the field of fashion design. The artistic research projects have ranged from DIY-kits released at an international fashion week, fashion experiments in galleries, collaborative “hacking” at a shoe factory, engaged design at a rehabilitation centre as well as combined efforts with established fashion brands. Using parallels from hacking, heresy, fan fiction, small change and professional-amateurs, the thesis builds a non-linear framework by which the reader can draw diagonal interpretations through the artistic research projects presented. By means of this alternative reading new understandings may emerge that can expand the action spaces available for fashion design. This approach is not about subverting fashion as much as hacking and tuning it, and making its sub-routines run in new ways, or in other words, bending the current while still keeping the power on.