It became very obvious, during my research, that alchemy was much more than just aspects of practical metallurgy and much more relevant in terms of symbolic and psychic investigations into the significance of the unconscious mind, the individual and the journey to discover the 'centre.' I use the concept of alchemy as a means to explore the unknown mystery of existence, being and the inner self. 'One Square Inch Between the Eyes' is a phrase used by Taosists to describe that area of the body that contains the highest form of energy and is the centre of spiritual development and transformations. Important aspects of true alchemy appear through Taosist manifestations and is expressed by the unity of nature and humankind. It is seen as a principle of universal understanding and a means to get behind or within appearances. This thesis begins to inquire into aspects of how alchemical notions have developed, both on a practical and symbolic level and how both have impacted on our lives. In the research process, several definitions of alchemy have been identified together with how these definitions have been adopted culturally. I begin to look at areas of art and creativity, science and chemistry, medicine and illness and how people see these aspects of cultural necessities through alchemical concepts and notions. / Master of Arts (Hons) (Visual Arts)

<p>Den här studien syftar till att undersöka vad det är i en persons ansökningshandlingar som är attraktivt för en arbetsgivare samt vad som skiljer dessa åt från dem som inte blir kallade till en anställningsintervju.</p><p>Undersökningen genomfördes genom ett tillfällighets urval där tio personer med kunskap inom området intervjuades. Data transkriberades sedan från ljudfilerna och en tematisering skedde därefter av det utskrivna materialet.</p><p>Resultatet av undersökningen blev att den sökande allra först måste uppfylla de grundläggande krav som ställs på tjänsten men därutöver är det en subjektiv bedömning som sker. Utifrån ansökningshandlingarna, och eventuella telefonsamtal, skapar rekryterarna sig en bild av personen vilket sedan ligger till grund för urvalet.</p> / <p>This study aims to explore what it is in a persons work application that are attractive for an employer and what separates the attractive applications from those who isn’t called for a job interview.</p><p>The study was conducted through opportunity sampling where ten persons with first hand knowledge from the area were interviewed. The data was then transcribed from the sound files and a thematic analysis where thereafter conducted on the written material.</p><p>The results from this study are that the applicants first have to meet the basic demands for the job but after that is a subjective judgement taking place. From the applications, and phone calls, the employer creates an image of the applicants witch will be the foundation for the selection.</p>

<p>The telecommunication business has changed in Sweden during the recent years. From being a monopoly, the market has switched into a more competitive market with more competitors that offer more services. <em>TeliaSonera </em>is one of the largest telecommunication providers in Sweden. <em>TeliaSonera </em>is a co-operation between the companies <em>Telia</em>, which was one of the leading telecommunication companies in Sweden, and the Finnish counterpart <em>Sonera</em>. At the present time of this thesis, they provide their customers with services like Broadband, TV, Stationary phone and Mobile phone. These services are provided both to residential and business customers.</p><p>The aim of this research project is to understand the switching behaviour of former <em>TeliaSonera </em>customers by investigating the background of the customers' motivation to switch. Through analysing the findings, the researchers will be able to make assumptions about customer switching processes.</p><p>The research has been conducted with an explorative research approach and qualitative interviewing via telephone with 22 former <em>TeliaSonera </em>customers. The questions were related to their behaviour before, while and after the switching from <em>TeliaSonera </em>to a competing provider. From the interviews, the researchers seek to get a better understanding what triggers sway customers to switch. Additionally, it is equally important to understand the switching process customers go through.</p><p>The theoretical framework is based on prior research on customer behaviour and customer relationship management in the field of service management and marketing. Theories as triggers, active and passive customers or suggestions like the unconscious decision-making are being discussed. Triggers are the point where the customer begins to be aware of a possible switch of services. An active customer searches for the information oneself and a passive customer often are influenced by a third party. The theory about unconscious decision-making questions if the human subconscious can make decision for customers before they are even aware of it. This theory is being applied to the collected data.</p><p>The results of the research show that there can be found two different switching paths of interviewed customers, which are generated based on the collected customer stories. The two different paths are categorised into a <em>reactional </em>and <em>situational </em>switching path and an <em>influenced </em>switching path.</p>

The telecommunication business has changed in Sweden during the recent years. From being a monopoly, the market has switched into a more competitive market with more competitors that offer more services. TeliaSonera is one of the largest telecommunication providers in Sweden. TeliaSonera is a co-operation between the companies Telia, which was one of the leading telecommunication companies in Sweden, and the Finnish counterpart Sonera. At the present time of this thesis, they provide their customers with services like Broadband, TV, Stationary phone and Mobile phone. These services are provided both to residential and business customers. The aim of this research project is to understand the switching behaviour of former TeliaSonera customers by investigating the background of the customers' motivation to switch. Through analysing the findings, the researchers will be able to make assumptions about customer switching processes. The research has been conducted with an explorative research approach and qualitative interviewing via telephone with 22 former TeliaSonera customers. The questions were related to their behaviour before, while and after the switching from TeliaSonera to a competing provider. From the interviews, the researchers seek to get a better understanding what triggers sway customers to switch. Additionally, it is equally important to understand the switching process customers go through. The theoretical framework is based on prior research on customer behaviour and customer relationship management in the field of service management and marketing. Theories as triggers, active and passive customers or suggestions like the unconscious decision-making are being discussed. Triggers are the point where the customer begins to be aware of a possible switch of services. An active customer searches for the information oneself and a passive customer often are influenced by a third party. The theory about unconscious decision-making questions if the human subconscious can make decision for customers before they are even aware of it. This theory is being applied to the collected data. The results of the research show that there can be found two different switching paths of interviewed customers, which are generated based on the collected customer stories. The two different paths are categorised into a reactional and situational switching path and an influenced switching path.

Den här studien syftar till att undersöka vad det är i en persons ansökningshandlingar som är attraktivt för en arbetsgivare samt vad som skiljer dessa åt från dem som inte blir kallade till en anställningsintervju. Undersökningen genomfördes genom ett tillfällighets urval där tio personer med kunskap inom området intervjuades. Data transkriberades sedan från ljudfilerna och en tematisering skedde därefter av det utskrivna materialet. Resultatet av undersökningen blev att den sökande allra först måste uppfylla de grundläggande krav som ställs på tjänsten men därutöver är det en subjektiv bedömning som sker. Utifrån ansökningshandlingarna, och eventuella telefonsamtal, skapar rekryterarna sig en bild av personen vilket sedan ligger till grund för urvalet. / This study aims to explore what it is in a persons work application that are attractive for an employer and what separates the attractive applications from those who isn’t called for a job interview. The study was conducted through opportunity sampling where ten persons with first hand knowledge from the area were interviewed. The data was then transcribed from the sound files and a thematic analysis where thereafter conducted on the written material. The results from this study are that the applicants first have to meet the basic demands for the job but after that is a subjective judgement taking place. From the applications, and phone calls, the employer creates an image of the applicants witch will be the foundation for the selection.

I set out to learn something basic about architecture, something foundational on which to situate the conceptual and rhetorical exercises played within the studio. In settings both academic and professional I had been encouraged to reduce my study of architecture to a cerebral and retinal game of sorts played out via ever-increasingly seductive imagery. It seemed apparent that in order to think about architecture I should have been involved in an act of architecture. My intentions, albeit naïve, were to engage architecture on its own terms, through its own medium, to return to first principles, if there ever were any, and to acquire a form of embodied architectural knowledge inseparable from its material becoming. There was no amount of hypothesizing, theorizing, no amount of digital sophistication that could supplant the basic educational experience gained from involving myself with real materials, in a real place, with a fully engaged being. With this in mind I journeyed into Ontario’s North, with little more than a hammer and saw and a desire for experience, that most brutal of teachers. I would engage in a basic act of building as a method of acquiring a deeper understanding of the subject I had been studying for several years yet whose essence I felt I knew very little about. The resultant document, informed by traditions of the primitive hut, records a journey towards architectural embodiment; it resides as an argument for the reintroduction of embodied forms of learning into the education of the architect.

A descent into the ravine is a step through a tear in urbanity. The terrain vague is a foil to the capitalist city; against a demand for order, specificity, and integration, it is disorienting, banal, erratic. Operating outside the constraints of dominant social structures, it harbours the unconscious of the city, not only an inevitable, but also a necessary rupture in the urban fabric. In this subterranean realm, the striated and measured plots of land are sporadically smoothed over by persistent nature, reclaiming its territory. These perceived voids invite projections of desire, both at a civic scale and on an individual level, that consequently shape the space. These are grounds of negotiation, a political realm often driven more by visceral impulses than economics. They aggravate tensions typically suppressed in the city, including those wrought by violence and melancholy. This is a portrait of the Don Valley in Toronto. Fragments of representation reveal the role of this space in the collective memory of the public. Beyond the infrastructure that binds them, the city and the valley are integrated through their opposition: one fuels the experience of the other.

The thesis explores how elemental architecture in collaboration with the Shield can manifest a threshold condition in which a modern day hero myth can be enacted in the Canadian wilderness. Through the lens of Joseph Campbell, Tom Thomson and the archetypal structures of the Finns and Algonkians, a design proposal is derived for a Waterway Park in the Algonquin region that expands the mandate of the Ontario Parks System. In the realm of psychology, Carl Gustav Jung defines individuation as a universal quest that encourages facing and overcoming ones internal demons in order to live a more integrated existence. Located in Oxtongue River Ragged Falls Provincial Park, this proposed experimental pilgrimage retreat connects a series of primary and secondary paths to cabins, a sweat lodge and a chapel. This model illustrates a method of inhabiting a protected wilderness site that can be applied to existing and future Parks to inspire a condition of corporeal and spiritual rejuvenation in Ontario’s near North.

The thesis explores how elemental architecture in collaboration with the Shield can manifest a threshold condition in which a modern day hero myth can be enacted in the Canadian wilderness. Through the lens of Joseph Campbell, Tom Thomson and the archetypal structures of the Finns and Algonkians, a design proposal is derived for a Waterway Park in the Algonquin region that expands the mandate of the Ontario Parks System. In the realm of psychology, Carl Gustav Jung defines individuation as a universal quest that encourages facing and overcoming ones internal demons in order to live a more integrated existence. Located in Oxtongue River Ragged Falls Provincial Park, this proposed experimental pilgrimage retreat connects a series of primary and secondary paths to cabins, a sweat lodge and a chapel. This model illustrates a method of inhabiting a protected wilderness site that can be applied to existing and future Parks to inspire a condition of corporeal and spiritual rejuvenation in Ontario’s near North.

<p>Consumers often lack objective information about product acquisition costs. In such cases, consumers must rely on estimates of acquisition costs in making their choices. The current work examines the influence of mental simulations of product acquisition on estimates of acquisition costs. We suggest that simulations of product acquisition lead estimates to reflect the influence of consumers' current physical states on the experience of a particular cost. Specifically, carrying a heavy burden leads consumers to estimate higher distances to targets when they engage in simulation of walking to targets, but not when they do not engage in such simulation.</p><p>Simulation can be either deliberate or spontaneous. Deliberate simulation is engaged when consumers intentionally simulate an action. Spontaneous simulation requires particular conditions for its occurrence, but does not require conscious intent. The specific conditions for the occurrence of spontaneous simulation are the availability of situational inputs and that action be possible in the given situation. We support these ideas in a series of studies.</p><p>Study 1 demonstrates preference shifts that occur as a consequence of participants carrying heavy burdens. Participants in this study shifted their preference from an option located a visible but undefined distance away towards one that was available at their current location. Study 2 supports the theory that this shift occurs as a consequence of alterations in estimates of acquisition costs by showing that burdened participants estimate distances as greater than do unburdened participants. </p><p>Study 3 provides evidence for the role of mental simulation in producing such changes in estimated acquisition costs by showing that the distance expansion first demonstrated in study 2 occurs when targets are visible, but not when targets are not visible. This result is consistent with the central contention of this dissertation that visibility is critical for spontaneous simulation. Together, the studies support the role of spontaneous simulation in burden leading to distance expansion. Study 4 provides further support for the role of simulation in producing the effects of physical state on estimated acquisition costs by showing deliberate simulation results in similar distance to that of spontaneous simulation. </p><p>Studies 5 and 6 further demonstrate the dual roles of spontaneous and deliberate simulation on distance expansion. They show that expansion does not occur when targets are not reachable because they are up in the air (study 5). However, deliberate simulation of realistic (climbing - study 5) or unrealistic (flying - study 6) action restores distance expansion in those circumstances, supporting the role of simulation in leading to consideration of physical state in estimated acquisition costs.</p><p>The final study ties together these results by demonstrating the effects of both spontaneous and deliberate simulation in a single setting. Varying both the availability of conditions supporting spontaneous simulation and instructions for deliberate simulation the study allows an examination of the comparative effects of the two types of simulation and of their potential interaction. The study finds that deliberate simulation may produce effects that are larger than those of spontaneous simulation, but spontaneous simulation does not seem to enhance the effects of deliberate simulation.</p> / Dissertation