This thesis explores musical form and examines the possible relationship between structures of mythology and musical form, especially with modern musical parameters in mind, all based on the ancient structures of myth. One method for working with musical form is also presented, which attempts to show how musical material can be transformed in the confines of this form template. The approach taken to study musical form and to understand and manipulate it in composition work in this thesis attempts to find patterns for musical form outside of established musical concepts. This thesis explores the structure of ancient mythology collected by the American writer Joseph Campbell and draws conclusions between that and musical form, which attempts to showcase the relations between traditional musical forms and ancient structures of myth, and also presents methods of working with these premises in contemporary music.

In the report Ungar & Medier 2012/13, statistics show that the users of social media are becoming increasingly younger at age and that social media has become a natural part of children and young people's everyday lives (Statens medieråd, 2013). The purpose of this study is to examine how five teachers experiencing and think about social media's impact on their students and teaching. And also what effects the teachers describe that social media has contributed to in students' identity work. I have, based on the purpose of this study issued following questions: What is social media, according to the teachers?, How do the teachers think about their students' use of social media?, How do the teachers think that social media has influenced their teaching? And how do the teachers describe / experiencing the impact that social media has contributed to in the students' identity work? This study is made through a qualitative method based on interviews with five teachers. The results show that all of the teachers agree that social media is a part of our present. The teachers’ talk about various ways social media has affected their teaching, but most often the discussion has been about values, laws and regulations, concerning the etiquette on social media. The teachers’ believe that social media has had an effect on the children's identity. They believe that children today, focus on appearance, perfection, performance and material objects, which automatically will affect children’s self-image. According to the teachers, social media has created a new way to show appreciation between individuals, where they are appreciated by comments and likes. But let’s all agree that social media is a social place, where children can feel part of their social togetherness and culture.

Due to a recent increase in usage of the concept of intimacy within social scientific research, the overarching aim of this work is to investigate its meaning and significance in contemporary social life. The first part of the thesis reviews research on intimacy. Intimacy is perceived as being vaguely defined as a concept, leading to insufficient discussions concerning the significance of intimacy both as a social concept and as a social phenomenon in contemporary western society. In order to become more clearly defined as a social concept to use in future research, intimacy needs to be investigated as a social phenomenon. The second part explores and analyses intimacy as a social phenomenon by way of three partly phenomenological and partly theoretical analyses: the phenomenology of intimacy, the arithmetic of intimacy and the dark sides of intimacy. The three analyses result in a definition of intimacy understood as a kind of sociality, or mode of social being, characterized by an oceanic experience, mutual and complete directedness between the ones being in relation, an experience of mental as well as physical closeness, and an experience of time as “durée”. The third part discusses the proposed definition of intimacy as sociality in relation to contemporary social theory. In relation to an understanding of contemporary western society as late modern or radicalized modern, intimacy as sociality is discussed as a radicalization of a rational sociality, characteristic for modern society. The discussion takes the form of a dialectic critique of modern dualistic theories, proposing a triadic (dialectic) alternative for understanding basic forms of sociality and social relations. The vague notion of intimacy as a concept suited to characterize social life in contemporary western society is supported by this proposition.

Nutida musik kan initialt upplevas som svåråtkomlig men upplevelsen kan förändras till mycket intressant och känsloväckande med hjälp av kunskap som en väg in i musiken. Detta arbete handlar om att lära sig förstå, ta till sig och interpretera nutida musik samt om samarbetet mellan musiker och kompositör och målet är att på så sätt utvecklas som musiker och som lyssnare. Den nutida musiken har utvecklats under 1900-talet och formats av avsteg från traditionen i form, harmonik och rytm, två världskrig, politiska strömningar och den elektroniska teknikens utveckling. Musikern i projektet heter Emma Granstam och studerar tredje året på kandidatprogrammet klassisk musik med inriktningen trumpet på Kungl. Musikhögskolan och kompositören i detta projekt heter Ylva Fred och studerar komposition på Kungl. Musikhögskolan i Stockholm. Under hösten 2017 genomfördes några möten mellan musiker och kompositör där musikaliska tankar och idéer och trumpeten som instrument med dess kvaliteter och begränsningar diskuterades, utforskades och testades. Som resultat av mötena skrev kompositören ett stycke, At night, stars will show. Stycket repeterades och studerades in för att framföras på examenskonsert i maj 2018. Samarbetet mellan musiker och kompositör har varit mycket lärorikt och har bidragit till en ökad förståelse och uppskattning för nutida musik hos musikern. Samarbetet har gett mersmak för liknande projekt i framtiden.

Jag har valt att utforska ett nyskrivet stycke som flöjtist och interpret, genom att samarbeta med tonsättaren Jörgen Häll som för detta projekt skrivit stycket Permanence för flöjt, elektroakustisk stämma i fyra högtalare och video. För att närma mig ämnet har jag läst på om, och funderat kring, vad som är nutida musik idag och varifrån dagens tonsättare får sin inspiration. Musikens utveckling efter 1970 och fram till idag är inte lika väldokumenterad som den klassiska musikhistorien, som ofta slutar med John Cages musik, och den audiovisuella konsthistorien som jag kort beskriver var tidigare okänd för mig. Jag utgår ifrån mig själv som interpret och studerar styckets elektronikstämma och video, går igenom styckets delar och extended techniques bit för bit och upptäcker att användning av teknisk utrustning såsom mikrofon och click track för en klassisk flöjtist kommer med både tekniska och byråkratiska svårigheter.

Denna studie handlar om modern konstmusik och hur instuderingsprocessen skiljer sig från den av mer klassisk musik, samt vilka musikaliska och tekniska fördelar det går att erhållaunder den. Jag har i denna studie valt att skriva om sångsamlingen Sex sånger om ljus och mörker, skrivet 1975 av Carin-Malmlöf Forssling.  Metoden för denna studie består av en textlig och musikalisk analys av verket, samt en loggbokföring av personliga reflektioner under inlärningsprocessen. Metoden innehåller även en intervju med sångerskan och författarinnan Margareta Jonth. Sex sånger om ljus och mörker dedikerades åt henne, vilket har gjort att jag inte bara har kunnat få teknisk och musikalisk rådgivning från en förstahandskälla, men även fått ta del av personliga minnen från Margaretas instuderingsprocess, sångernas uppkomst och utveckling samt relationen till Carin.  Resultatet jag kom fram till var att mitt gehör, som tidigare har varit relativt vältränat, förbättrats ytterligare och jag har fått ett extra skarpt öra för detaljer samt utvecklat röstens elasticitet. Jag har även fått en större förståelse för en viss sorts tonalitet. Jag hoppas att denna studie ska kunna väcka intresse för Carin Malmlöf-Forssling och annan 1900-tals musik och göra nytta för den som inspireras att göra nya upptäckter gällande den moderna sångkonsten. / <p>Verk: Sex sånger om ljus och mörker</p><p>Kompositör: Carin Malmlöf-Forssling</p><p>Medverkande: Ella Vahtras - sopran, Elektra Oikonomi - piano</p>

The following study investigates how recent games (2014 - 2018) visualize health and health changes, with a focus on the player character’s health, the player character taking damage and the graphical user interface (GUI). 50 games were coded via gameplay videos on YouTube and then analysed. The codes were then grouped together based on patterns and theoretical grounding. These groups were then examined with other studies and game design practices. / Följande studie ämnar att undersöka hur spel från senaste tiden (2014 - 2018) visualiserar hälsa och hälsoförändringar, med ett fokus på spelarkaraktärens hälsa, när spelarkaraktären tar skada och GUI. 50 spel kodades via s.k. “gameplay” videor på YouTube och har sedan blivit analyserade. Koderna var sedan grupperade baserad på mönster och teori. Dessa grupper var sedan undersökta med andra studier och speldesign sedvänjor.

The aim of this essay is to investigate the meaning and importance of the female friendship within Ellen Moers tradition and theory regarding the female gothic. In this essay, I argue that the female friendship has played an important role in the portrayal of the Gothic fiction as socially critical of women’s position in the society, mainly by examining the two works Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. The essay is also interested in how the female gothic has developed over time and whether the notion can be applied while analysing more contemporary gothic, and thus, considers the works’ different time periods.

The aim of my degree project has been to study the process of combining two artistic disciplines, music composition and textile art. My partner in this collaboration has been Finnish textile artist and clothing designer Riikka Peltola. In the text I set out to answer the following questions: What methods are there to work with music and textile art? How can textile/knitting patterns be translated into music? How to deal with the problem of the language barrier between a composer and a textile artist, and between music and textile art? In addition to a brief overview of relevant projects by other composers and artists, two related works which are part of my degree project are examined: an acoustic concert piece titled Five-Minute Forests and an installation piece Five-Minute Forests II consisting of electroacoustic music played back through headphones and a textile sculpture made by Peltola. Based on the review of the processes, there are two primary ways of working: One is establishing so called loose connections between music and the textile element – for example, agreeing on common themes and concepts but not having the musical and textile objects correlate in a constant way. The other is mapping the music to the textile element such as a textile pattern, for example, in a way in which the musical objects and textile objects do correlate in a constant way. Of the two works which are part of the degree projects, Five-Minute Forests is based on conceptual discussion between me and the textile artist. In the installation piece, I employ both a loose connections approach and a mapping-based approach. The language barrier proved to be challenging to break within the time allocated to the project.

Nilsson, S. 2007: Skogsgeografi II. Om odlingslämningar i skogsbygd (Forest Geography II. On Remains of Agriculture in Forest Settlement Districts) In this thesis issues on remains of agriculture in the county of Värmland, Sweden are discussed. The aim is to use a holistic approach when examining such remains, which goes beyond their mere morphology. Instead focus is put on their inner and outer geographies: the internal relations between different elements of a single remain, and the external relations between the remain and its local context. Also, it is argued that it’s necessary to approach this kind of remains with an open perspective regarding time. The diorama principle as expressed by Torsten Hägerstrand is used. It focuses more on closeness than on similarity. Four separate studies are enclosed to the thesis as appendix’s I–IV. The thesis ends with an outlook to a concept of relational landscape, derived from this work, with outlines future studies. In Appendix I registered remains of agriculture are examined. In Appendix’s II and III the role of agricultural remains for settlement geography studies are analysed. The role of agricultural remains as bearers of meaning in both history and present, and views and values of antiquarians and researchers as well as the public, is examined in Appendix IV. Hopefully a holistic view will illuminate agricultural remains as research source material and bearers of meaning, including both expert and lay knowledge, history as well as present time and the future. This is desired in order to handle such remains in a fair manner. Stefan Nilsson, Department of Geography and Tourism, Karlstad Uni-versity, SE 651 88 Karlstad, Sweden.