With the enlightenment thought in the 18th century, progress of man’s development grew to something better. Throughout this era all the way to the 19th century, the thought that the human kind can develop and evolve was every man’s pursue. It was believed that with the help of education, deaf and blind people could be given a chance for a normal set of life. That given the right tools they could be removed from the outline of society and brought into the social world. Throughout this time-period there where two different active ways of education that inspired educationalists in Europe and America. The German school, which focused on the development and use of speech and the French school which taught and focused on the visual language, i.e. sign language. This report puts interest in the development of the Swedish teacher Elisabeth Nordin’s chosen education system and its results. It was essential to study the background of education and care for the deaf and blind, in order to understand its progress. Furthermore, it gives a comparison of Sweden’s development in this area. Presenting a result of which the system of education for deaf and blind has gone from crippling them, to enchanting them a life of independency.

In this paper I try to inquire into what I find to be similarities between the field of Critical War Studies and the thought of Suzuki Daisetz Taitaro. These two would seem to be near opposites, the former is an academic field of research, the latter a Zen Buddhist thinker. Yet while separated by time, location, and genealogy, they connect in the similarity of the phenomena they research. Through a hermeneutic study of Suzukis thought during the Japanese Empire and contrasting and comparing it to the thought of several social scientists of Critical War Studies, I find an increasing similarity between the Baudrillardian and Suzukian conception of war and fighting as a loss of the subject. From this I posit that even in completely different contexts, the study of the same phenomena may produce very similar theories – something that may impact the how we think of faith versus science.

This study investigates the perceptual effect of ceiling painting on the viewer in relation to spatiality. Three case studies have been conducted of ceiling paintings by Johan Sylvius from 1690, Karl XI's gallery at Drottningholm Palace; Karl Axel Pehrson Transfigurata from 1978, at Thielska Gallery; and by Malin Gabriella Nordin from 2021, at the restaurant Ricordi, all in Stockholm Sweden. The objects represent ceiling paintings with different mediums, pictorial expressions, and motifs. This study presents how ceiling painting's formal and aesthetic structures and mechanisms activate the viewer's perception and performative action. Together with the room, these elements shape the viewer's overall experience of the ceiling painting and the spaciousness. The perceptual influence takes place in interaction with the individual's subjective psychological make up, which filters the mentally and physically perceived information. This means that each individual's experience is characterized by subjective perceptions: the same colour, expression or form can generate different impressions in different individuals – depending on the individual's previous experience with similar elements. The aim is not to find a common experience, but to track which elements and how they activate the viewer. These elements are the ceiling painting's internal and external factors, which activate the senses and shapes the viewer's movements in the room. Sensations together with the viewer's choreography create an overall experience within the viewer. The thesis in the essay postulates that these structures and mechanisms are conditioned in the ceiling painting's particular placement in the inner ceiling of the room, its materiality and spatial relationship. The perceptual impact is the initial awareness of the art, before the intellectual, ceiling painting is not sought to be interpreted but to be experienced. Most of the research in the visual arts and especially on ceiling painting is devoted primarily to narratology, the narrative content. The purpose of the essay is therefore to highlight ceiling painting as an art form and shed light on its perceptual impact on the viewer and the spatiality, as an introductory part to the subsequent intellectual interpretations. This pre-narratological stage conveys both the sensuous potential of the ceiling painting itself, and knowledge that can contribute with extensions of the narratological content.