This dissertation follows an interdisciplinary approach that weaves practice and theory in the disciplines of visual communication, semiotics, cultural studies, linguistics, and new media art. The research methodology is practice-based located within a historical and contemporary context that allows for artistic experimentation and new knowledge to be generated through reflected creative practice This research proposes a context within which society can develop a transcultural means of communication with the objective of gaining completely unambiguous forms of understanding. This research explores the possibility of an open source scaffold for pictorial language that fosters self-enhancing diversity of production models, communication paths, and interactive communities. The dissertation explores research strategies and visual practice in relationship to a proposed global use of a common system of visual semantic decoding that would allow for visual synthesis by individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds. It is proposed that a shared collective knowledge of signs, symbols, and pictographs, supported by the advancement of future communication and information systems, can lead to a visual communication system that will be universally accepted. There is a historic, on-going and collective consensus on the need for a universal language in the near-future posthuman condition. In answer to this need, this dissertation contextualises and goes on to explore a realised case study of a practice-based solution for a universal pictorial communication system. The system may at times seem ambitious and abstract, however, it aims to include all cultures of the world, seeking to establish a direction that identifies and locates cultural similarities over cultural difference. This practice-based enquiry proposes a direction that should maintain coherence, logic, and veracity in order to develop a pictographic communication system that is a valid representation of the human experience in a posthuman condition.

This paper is a comparative analysis between two digitally mediated live poetry performances: Frikativ by Jörg Piringer and This Loud by Amy X Neuburg. More specifically, I examine how these poets use digital technology in their live performances to challenge traditional notions of the human voice. My main argument is that their modes of exerting controlling over their voices ultimately serve similar purposes; those of establishing the voice as a relationship between speaker and listener, a phenomenon rather than a discreet object or bodily organ possible to observe on its own. This phenomenological point of view draws on Karen Barad’s concept of posthumanist performativity as well as on philosophical works on the voice, such as Mladen Dolar's A Voice and Nothing More. Moreover, I give an historical account of sound poetry, tape poetry and tape loops as they relate to Frikativ and This Loud. In this, I also discuss live-looping; a technique used by both Piringer and Neuburg and connect it to Gilles Deleuze's ideas of difference and repetition. Finally, Piringer's and Neuburg's works is compared based on how they attempt to control the voices-as-relations in their performances. My conclusion is that Frikativ constantly destabilizes the establishment and recognition of voice-as-relation. This Loud, due to the extensive and focused use of live-looping, does not destabilize as much as it multiplies the possible configurations of voices-as-relations.

Une mise en contexte présente l’évolution de la prise de décision du créateur dans des environnements où la technologie est sans cesse plus impliquée et autonome. Un survol des techniques génératives, de ses origines en musique jusqu’aux arts numériques, est présenté. Trois œuvres réalisées dans le cadre de ce projet de recherche-création sont ensuite analysées. Les outils et les techniques utilisés pour la réalisation de ces projets à dominante générative sont expliqués et commentés. Verklärter Rohr fait l’objet d’une analyse plus poussée sur l’aspect comprovisationnel de mon travail. Le développement de mon langage audiovisuel tel qu’il se rapporte au concept de synchrèse sera aussi examiné. L’analyse de Machine In The Shell, sert de terrain d’investigation pour expliciter des stratégies de spatialisation et de techniques d’écriture. L’analyse de Gu(I)t(A)rs développe sur l’utilisation de diverses technologies dont le Leap Motion, la synthèse par modélisation physique et l’intelligence artificielle. / Questions related to the evolution of creative decision-making are discussed, in relation to technology that is becoming more and more involved. An overview of generative techniques, from its origins in music to contemporary digital arts, is then presented. Then, three works produced as part of this research-creation project are analyzed. The different tools and techniques I used in making these works are explained and commented. Verklärter Rohr is the subject of a more in-depth analysis. The comprovisational angle of my work, as well as the development of my audiovisual language as it relates to the concept of synchresis will be discussed. An analysis of Machine In The Shell explain the strategies of spatialization and writing techniques I used. The analysis of Gu(I)t(A)rs expands on the use of various technologies including Leap Motion, physical modeling synthesis and artificial intelligence.

This thesis is concerned with an analysis of how David Foster Wallace's treatment of technology defines his understanding of the self in late 20th-century and early 21st-century America. With a primary focus on how this understanding evolved between the publication of his major novel Infinite Jest (1996) and his posthumously published unfinished novel The Pale King (2011), this thesis also takes into consideration Wallace's ideas as expressed through his many short stories, non-fiction works, and critical essays, most prominently "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction" (1993). This thesis first briefly places Wallace in the context of contemporary literary scholarship, evaluating the state and extent of the nascent field of Wallace Studies. It then proceeds to examine and map out the philosophical underpinnings to Wallace's conception of the self, emphasising the importance of existential thought and the notion that the self is to be created rather than pre-existing in the individual. Technology as it is presented in Infinite Jest and The Pale King is then examined in relation to this philosophical understanding of the self, proving itself consistently to be an impediment to the existential self-becoming valorised in the novels. Wallace's early interest in entertainment technology as...

This essay applies human-animal studies in relation to the Swedish author Kerstin Ekman's books Guds barmhärtighet (1999), Sista Rompan (2002) and Skraplotter (2003) together called Vargskinnstrilogin. Kerstin Ekman's authorship is characterized by a coexistence between human, nature and animals where the stories entangle them into a dense complexity. As a reader, one is constantly reminded of this coexistence through Ekman's narrative approach as her stories contain many contact zones between humans and animals, which creates space for problematizing this entangled coexist from a posthumanistic perspective. The animals in the stories are at different distances to the human being based on their characteristics of being regarded as wild, domesticated or ferral. Based on these three categories, the wolf as a representative of the wild animals is analyzed in a theoretical context focusing on the function of different power structures within the anthropocentric paradigm. Ferral conditions are analyzed on the basis of, among other things, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's theories of animal-becomings, escape lines and rhizom where the dog mainly exists when it is embodied in close interaction with humans in Ekman's stories. The domesticated animals are analyzed on the basis of the tension between rural and urban, where the progress of the civil society are rapidly changing during the 20th century which creates changed relations between people and agricultural animals.

Our impact on the planet's functioning has allegedly become so profound that during the last years the scientific community has been considering assuming a shift from the Holocene - our current geological epoch - to the Anthropocene, the Age of Man. According to philosopher Bernard Stiegler, this "era of Humans" is not only visible in the devastation of natural ecosystems, but also through the destruction of human skills and methods of transmitting knowledge. The Anthropocene, which was initiated by the industrial revolution, thus passed through the industrialization of culture, and has disrupted our understanding of the world. Philosopher Rosi Braidotti proposes that with the advent of this new era, we ought to be aware of not only the ever-present environmental catastrophes, but that we also ought to use it as a tool for reappraising what it means to be Human. According to her, the Western subject was created as a product of the Humanist cultural hegemony which defined it within a logic of binary opposition. In light of these ideas, this Master's thesis attempts to show that art can provide us methods for redefining our relationship to each other, as well as to the wider world, and help us navigate the contours of the ongoing crisis. The work uses Posthumanist thought and its affiliated...

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This thesis is an exploration of the humanimal entanglements between humans and pigeons in the urban setting. It traces human-pigeon histories from pigeons’ domestication forward to the contemporary conceptions of pigeons as a pest animal. Pigeons are made visible in all of their cultural, socio-political, and symbolic and aesthetic dimensions, exposing their deep entanglements with humans across space and time. Using a combination of multi-species ethnography through ‘flaneur’ walks in Uppsala, Sweden and conceptual frameworks drawn from post-humanism, philosophy, and animal studies, pigeon-human relationships are problematized. The pigeon's ability to interrogate dualistic paradigms of nature/culture, wild/domestic, and human/animal are explored. It is argued that pigeons are active in the co-constitution of the urban space alongside humans, and are participating in reciprocal humanimal relations - they are not simply objects to be acted upon but have their own agency. From pigeons we can learn valuable stories about ourselves, and the more-than-human world.

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Det här examensarbetet speglar tankar och erfarenheter genom posthumanistisk och transhumanistisk teori i hur vi uppfattar klassrummet som pedagogiskt rum, specifikt kring de praktiskt estetiska ämnena och tillhörande undervisning. Undersökningen ämnar bearbeta elevers uppfattning kring det rumsliga i eftermälet av en tid där det fysiska har fått ge plats för det digitala under covid-19 pandemin. Är klassrummet ett pedagogiskt rum, som är en fysisk plats som upprätthålls genom vår närvaro, eller är det en socialkonstruktivistisk överenskommelse som vi kan skifta mellan det fysiska och icke-fysiska? Genom att åberopa tankegångar från allt mellan Foucault, Harraway och Claire Bishop ämnar arbetet synliggöra elevens perspektiv kring hur undervisning har uppfattats, tillgodogjorts och senare bedömts utifrån distansundervisningens parametrar. Genom att kombinera kvalitativa undersökningsmetoder såsom ideografisk etnografi, A/r/ tography och bildelicitering, ställer studien elever inför frågeställningen som ett gestaltandeproblem. Detta dels för att kunna frambringa ett tydligt empiriskt material i form av semiotiskt bildspråk, dels för att producera kvalitativa data som i förlängning kan formuleras och kontextualiseras till uppsatsen; men även ett gestaltande arbete. Gestaltningen har skett parallellt och kan och ska tolkas som ett direkt kommunikativt sätt att kontextualisera elevernas och författarens uppfattning kring det pedagogiska rummet. Relevansen för det bildpedagogiska fältet kan således direkt tolkas genom ett elev- och lärarperspektiv. Ett mångfacetterat sätt att se på en relativt enkel frågeställning - Hur uppfattar elever det fysiska rummet, i eftermälet av en pandemi där distansundervisning har dominerat.    Resultatet går av att avläsa i empirin som eleverna har frambringat och senare tolkats i en gestaltning som speglar två utbildningar genom pandemin - Författaren och deltagarnas.