Examensarbetet genomfördes av Philip Wockatz utan stöd och handledning. Detta ledde fram till att Kip Smith tog över som handledare strax innan presentationen.

A concept of underworld runs through many cultures. These realms of spirits and the dead generally share several key characteristics, despite their varied and separate traditions. The commonalities among these different mythological places make it possible to generalize certain characteristics as chthonic for descriptive and analytical purposes. The underworld has appeared widely in video games throughout their history. I argue that the remarkable prevalence reflects a formal relationship between the underworld and video games; specific elements in mythic underworlds comprise a chthonic poetics that resonates with video game worlds and affordances. Video games uniquely support the spatial, thematic, and narrative elements that characterize underworlds and the philosophical questions they engage. Embodiment binds these elements together; they are unintelligible without this core perspective. The body sits at the axis of experience in mythic underworlds like the one described by Dante in the Divine Comedy and in game worlds like the one in World of Warcraft. It provides the medium through which we can experience these simulations as worlds rather than mere information structures. Other formal elements give context and direction to that embodied experience, and exploring how these interact with embodiment can expand our understanding of chthonic embodiment and the experience of space in virtual worlds. Three primary forces acting on the agency, subjectivity and control of the body structure that experience, which in turn reflects the ways of being that emerge from chthonic contexts. By incorporating these forces into their gameplay and narrative structure, games provide more direct access to the mythic power associated with the underworld than previous media forms.

En undersökning av estetiska projekt i skolmiljö. I undersökningen intervjuas en musiklärare, en förskoleklasslärare och en musikterapeut som representanter för olika yrkesgrupper som arbetar med estetiska projekt i skolmiljö. Studiens syfte är att undersöka vilka påverkansfaktorer och kvalitetskriterier som beskrivs i forskning eller av studiens informanter. Perspektivet är musikpedagogiskt men även estetiskt verksamhet med andra estetiska uttryck än musik undersöks och skillnader och likheter diskuteras. I analys och diskussionsdelarna används bl.a. Anne Bamfords och Tomas Saars forskning för att förklara och sätta in informanternas utsagor i ett större sammanhang.

Seen from abroad, Tokyo appears as a huge, vibrant metropolis where 21st-century Japan meets the traditional side of the country. Tokyo´s skyline is a diverse jumble of traditional houses and shrines, and modern architecture from skyscrapers of glass to 1970´s living capsules. Since the beginning, Tokyo has had great prerequisites for creating a city with amazing urban environment. Water was the first reason for people to settle down in Tokyo Bay. During Edo period (1603 – 1867), Tokyo was always described as a picturesque city with well-planned hydrology and a harmonic relationship with nature. With its canals full of water, it was a city comparable to Venice. The distribution and exchange relied almost entirely on water transport. With the expansion of the city, the water system had to be upgraded, which led to creating a complex network of waterways. Unlike in Western countries, where the economic, social and cultural life of the city developed around rather formal places as plazas and squares, in Japan, the lifeblood of the city developed in close connection with the water and nature. These places, also known as “meisho” (名所, lit. “famous places”) used to be linear open structures such as streets, river shores and bridges. During the transformation of Tokyo into a modern capital, the city cut many ties with the past. The unused canals suddenly became redundant and started belonging to the “wrong” side of the city. By the 1980s, many of the waterways were so polluted that the government began filling them up or covering them with elevated highways in preparation for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. The modernization and its transformation also meant that most of the network of “meisho” and greenery have disappeared. “From dameisho to meisho” is inspired by series of woodblock prints “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo” (名所江戸百景, Meisho Edo Hyakkei) completed by the Japanese artist Hiroshige Ando (1797–1858), depicting a matrix of famous public spaces in Tokyo. My project examines the possibilities of recasting “meisho”, a spatial representation in Japanese culture, into a new, modern context via editing different layers of the city and its fabric. It explores linear, thread-like spaces such as Edo waterways, its transformations roads, as well as recently built elevated highways in order to search for contaminations and new collaborations, unexpected conditions and create new, green urban stitches. As one of the tackling tools, the project also looks at demographic trends shaping Japan and benefits from aging society and shrinking Japanese population. Last but not least I investigate ways of graphical reinterpretation of the series of woodblock prints using Tokyo and its new “meisho” spaces as a rolemodel.

No description available.

How can an experience have such an impact that it can be described with the words “wow effect”? Though not a scientific term, it is often used vividly in the business world as an aspirational goal. The purpose of this thesis was to explore the structure behind positive experiences that lead to a so-called “wow effect” by combining cognitive theories and consumption-based emotion theories to create a method for assessing satisfaction in postpurchase experience. In collaboration with the Volvo Car Corporation, this thesis aimed to identify the relevant antecedents for such a possible experience and create a method for measuring it. The automobiles product category has shown high levels of variation in affect (Oliver, 1993) and as such, it has become increasingly important for automobile companies to be able to identify relevant antecedents of positive affect.

Nyckeln i att utveckla ett bra flerspelar-spel ligger i spelets möjlighet till samarbete. Det är därför viktigt att veta hur olika spelsätt skiljer sig åt ur ett samarbetsperspektiv. Tidigare forskning har endast studerat samarbete för en given spelstil, till exempel spelare som möter andra spelare eller spelare som möter datorstyrda spelare, och har inte gjort någon direkt jämförelse mellan dessa. Bristen kring detta område har inspirerat till den aktuella undersökningen, som ämnat att undersöka eventuella skillnader på samarbete i spelet World of Warcraft. Det har utförts ett antal experiment, där deltagare fått möjligheten att spela World of Warcraft i slumpmässiga grupper. Dessa experiment har observerats för att analysera olika utslag som uppstått i samarbetet gentemot bestämda bedömningskriterier. Undersökningen har visat på stora skillnader i samarbete och har även visat vikten av social kompetens när det kommer till att interagera med sina medspelare. / The key to developing a good multiplayer game lies in the possibilities for cooperation. Therefore it is important to know how different playstyles differ from a collaborative perspective. Previous research has only studied cooperation within a given playstyle, such as player versus player or player versus environment and has not made a direct comparison between different playstyles. The lack of information about this topic is the inspiration for this study, which examines the difference in collaboration between the aforementioned playstyles in the game World of Warcraft. A number of experiments were carried out in which randomized groups of participants played the game World of Warcraft. The results of these experiments have been analyzed according to specific criteria and show large differences in cooperation as well as the importance of players’ social skills when interacting with other members of a team.