11/02 – kl 10-12 – Medea
Luca Simeone, PhD Candidate in Interaction Design
Translator, traitor? Translational processes and academic entrepreneurship in design labs – 75% Seminar
Discussant: Scott Brown, Parsons DESIS Lab – The New School

This study builds upon the concept of translation in order to investigate three academic labs and their entrepreneurial dimension: Medea at Malmö University, MIT SENSEable City Lab and metaLAB (at) Harvard. The three labs are headquartered within academia, but use design to foster coordinated actions with different stakeholders (industry, government, NGOs, citizens).
This dissertation argues that in these situations design can (1) favor translational processes, where ideas, concepts, requirements, needs, interests of multiple stakeholders are translated into different languages or articulations, for example through the production of sketches, visual representations, prototypes, and (2) consequently connect and align the stakeholders to a point where coordinated actions can be carried out.
Findings – Findings emerge as perspectival constructs and illustrate that design-based translational processes favor entrepreneurship in the specific form of coordinated action. As the Italian adage ‘traduttore, traditore’ (‘translator, traitor’) suggests, these translation processes unfold through relations of power and resistance, cultural slippages, appropriations and remixes of meaning.

If you are interested to read the entire text or a 30-page extract please send an email to luca.simeone@mah.se

18/02 – kl 10-12 – Room E203 (Aktersalongen)
Katarina Karlsson, University of Gothenburg
Det essentiellt ”feminina” – en kartläggning genom konstnärlig praktik av det feminina territorium som den tidigmoderna musiken erbjuder

I vårt samhälle pågår ett ständigt namngivande av vad som är “kvinnligt”. Att använda ordet ”feminin” i kombination med ”essentiell” är provocerande. Samtidigt används begreppet ständigt till exempel i tv-programmen ”Trinny och Susannah stylar om”, där olyckliga kvinnor kläs upp och stylas till “femininare” versioner av sig själva. Men begreppet ”femininitet” har inte alltid gjort kvinnor lyckliga. För fyra hundra år sen i England förknippades kombinationen kvinnlighet och musik med horaktighet och lättja. I debatten som föregick det engelska inbördeskriget (1642-1651) ansågs musik leda till dålig moral genom att vissa element i musiken, som drillar, falsettsång och kromatik, förkvinnligade män. I denna sociokulturella kontext uppstod genren lutsång, en tonsatt text där en förskjuten älskare begråter sitt öde och anklagar kvinnan för falskhet, svek och grymhet. Sångerna skapar en matris för kvinnans beteende där hon fråntas möjlighet att vara vänlig, rädd eller ointresserad. Kärlek eller hat är de enda alternativen. I många sånger övergår anklagelserna till hot om självmord och i ett fåtal till hot om våld.
När verbal aggression har belysts i kombination med musik har det hittills handlat om rap och rock. Tidigmoderna lutsånger har betraktats som kärlekssånger. Att verbal aggression som gränsar till ett dysfunktionellt beteende ingår i lutsångernas retorik är uppmärksammat av litteraturhistoriker, exempelvis Cynthia E Garretts artikel Sexual Consent and the Art of Love in the Early Modern English Lyrics, 2004. Trots detta är det ignorerat både av de som utför musiken och/eller skriver om den. Den luckan vill jag fylla med det här projektet.
Allt oftare framförs tidigmodern musik i genreöverskridande sammanhang, men knyts sällan till andra discipliner som genusteori och psykologi.
I det här projektet synliggörs det kulturella bagaget som medföljer begreppet ”femininitet” från tidigmodern debatt för att förstå något om maktstrukturer idag.
Genom att många sångtexter på några få rader går från avvisad kärlek till besatthet och hot, vill projektet kartlägga hur psykologiska mönster sammanfaller med tidigmoderna kärlekssånger. Den retorik lutsångerna representerar jämförs med textmeddelanden mottagna av offer för stalking för att synliggöra en grå-zon som kan skapa igenkänning genom publika framträdanden. Detta är viktigt för att många människor någon gång kan ha varit i närheten av ett sådant beteende eller blivit utsatta för det. Med den kraftfulla emotionella kommunikation som musik innebär kan projektet leda till större förståelse för hur en strategi av detta slag uppstår. Genusteori kommer att användas för att se hur kön görs i tidigmodern musik. Lutsångernas retorik analyseras och jämförs med textmeddelanden mottagna av kvinnor utsatta för verbal förföljelse via sms, facebook, mail mm.
Två kvinnliga tonsättare åter-komponerar tidigmoderna musiken för solist och vokalensemble Med hjälp av publika framföranden i Sverige och England kommer de utmaningar och provokationer som uppstår ur detta nå många och helt andra människor än de som nås av vetenskapliga artiklar.

25/02, 26/02 – Medea, Malmö University and Malmö Slottsträdgården
Living Archives Research Project
Somatic Archiving Symposium: performance and discussion event around the body, somatics and archiving

SCHEDULE

Wednesday 25 February
18:00 performance by Joan Laage followed by warm drinks in the Slottsparken Greenhouse, Malmö, located next to Slottsträdgårdens kafé.

Thursday 26 February
9:30 coffee and registration. Roundtable and performances from 10:15 until 16:30, at the Medea Studio, Malmö University.

The “somatic” refers to a deep layer of the body, radiating outwards through physical and affective exchanges with the wider world. This symposium/event opens questions around the somatic, archiving, memory and cultural heritage. Performances by Joan Laage (USA), Boaz Barkan (Denmark) and Luanda Carneiro Jacoel (Brazil/Norway) will be interspersed by round-table discussions with contributions from academics, students and independent professionals.
We do not yet know what Somatic Archiving means. Expanding a performative mode of artistic research, we invite you to join us in posing questions or offering performative provocations to explore the zone where archiving, cultural memory and the body converge.
How does the body record and archive memories?
How can we access body memories through dance and somatic practices?
How can we archive, collect or disseminate corporeal memories?
What is activated in the body of a performer when they connect with people, memories and experiences of the past?
Does reawakening the past “pre-mediate” or anticipate future physical and cultural forms?
What political and social implications are revealed when historical memory is accessed and restaged through the living body?
For detailed schedule, registartion and more information please visit: http://livingarchives.mah.se/2015/01/somatic-archiving-symposium-feb-2015/

!!!OBS!!! The Seminar is Cancelled!11/03 – kl 10-12 – Room E203 (Aktersalongen)
Fredrik Strömberg, PhD Candidate in Media and Communication Studies
Muslim Superhero Comics – Genre vs. Content – presentation of a work-in-progress paper

“During the last decade, there have been at least two attempts in the Middle East at establishing publishing houses with a focus on superhero comics: AK Comics in Egypt and Teshkeel in Kuwait. These two publishing ventures were started with similar intent: to use the popular genre of superhero comics to promote Muslim ideas and beliefs, as well as a general idea of benevolent coexistence between different religions and cultures across the world. Both ultimately faltered in their endeavours. An analysis of the comics published, and the debate that has surrounded them, indicate that the genre specific qualities of superhero comics limits it from being used commercially to communicate across cultures.”

16/03 – kl 10-12 – Medea
Raiford Guins, Associate Professor of Culture and Technology, Stony Brook University, New York
Arcade Video Games and Design History

This talk will argue for an expanded view of ‘game design’ to account for the industrial and graphic design of the historic coin-operated arcade video game cabinet. Attention is afforded to machines produced between 1971 and 1979, before color monitors and multicolored graphics became prevalent. Focusing on a period before the ‘video game craze’ hit full swing with its major ‘stars’ on the horizon and with the design paradigms of older electromechanical games still prevalent, it provides a look into machines for which cabinets played a much larger role in ‘filling in the gaps’ when the modified TVs behind the bezel still radiated in black and white. Technological constraints compelled cabinet design to play a contributory if not constitutive role in defining the game and gameplay. The talk closes with a brief introspective discussion of the particular problems facing the research of coin-op history while signaling the importance of Design History to the critical historical study of video games.

Raiford Guins is an Associate Professor of Culture and Technology within the Department of Cultural Analysis and Theory at Stony Brook University. He is also Founding Curator of the William A. Higinbotham Game Studies Collection at Stony Brook University and Principal Editor with the Journal of Visual Culture.  He has recently published Game After: A Cultural Study of Video Game After (MIT Press, 2014) and is currently researching his next book, tentatively entitled Serving History: A Pre-History of an Analog Computer Game Posthumously named Tennis For Two, 1941-1958. His writings on game history appear in the following journals and magazines: The Atlantic, Cabinet, Design and Culture, Design Issues, Game Studies, Journal of Visual Culture, and Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture. He has also edited Debugging Game History: A Critical Lexicon, with Henry Lowood. The collection will be published in 2016 with MIT Press.

18/03 – kl 10-12 – Medea
Seminar on Openness
Politics, practices, problems and potentials of openness: the debate spans Open Data Creative Commons, Open Knowledge, Access, Inclusion, Participation, Appropriation and Privacy.
Join the Living Archives group to discuss the manifold dimensions of openness. Anyone is invited to offer statements or provocation to launch the discussion.

http://livingarchives.mah.se

25/03 – kl 10-12 – Room E203 (Aktersalongen)
Berndt Clavier, Senior Lecturer, Malmö University
Pale Kings of the bios politikos: Wallace, Barth, Pynchon and the Politics of Literary Form

Berndt Clavier holds a PhD degree in American Literature but has also published in various other fields, including migration studies and cultural studies. In 2007, he published John Barth and Postmodernism: Spatiality, Travel, Montage (Peter Lang). The seminar is a continuation of that work and addresses the way literary form might be understood as a technē for the crafting of ethics and politics. The focus of the seminar is on the ways the cultural and historical techniques of the novel may be brought to bear on recent American postmodernist fiction, Wallace’s posthumous The Pale King (2011), Barth’s The Development: Nine Stories (2008) and Every Third Thought: A Novel in Five Seasons (2011), and Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge (2013).

08/04 – 10-12 – Room E203 (Aktersalongen)
Bo Reimer, Professor in Media and Communication Studies, Malmö University
Media Interventionism – presentation of an on-going book project

29/04 – 10-12 – Room E203 (Aktersalongen)

06/05 – 10-12 – Room E203 (Aktersalongen)
Workshop on K3 Publication Series – Staffan Schmidt

15/05 – 13-15 – Room E203 (Aktersalongen)
Eric Snodgrass, PhD Candidate in Media and Communication Studies – 50% dissertation seminar

This dissertation investigates “media ecologies” approaches to understanding media. Media ecologies as a theory and practice has been understood from a variety of different angles (several of which will be examined in the dissertation). Broadly speaking, a media ecologies approach considers media as dynamic and processual expressions of co-evolving configurations of humans, animals, things, technologies, networks, institutions, ideologies, material environments, etc. The dissertation will aim to show in what ways a media ecologies approach can be productive or act as a helpful tool or entry point for considering media, with a focus on both everyday and also artistic/critical practices that explore certain tensions and sensitivities that can be seen to emerge within the dynamic, media-saturated environments of the contemporary moment.

20/05 – kl. 10-12 – Room E203 (Aktersalongen)
Oscar Hemer, Professor, Anders Høg Hansen, Assistant Professor, Malmö University
Memory on Trial, Media, Citizenship and Social Justice

27/05 – kl. 10-12 Room E203 (Aktersalongen)
Jacek Smolicki, PhD Candidate in Media and Communication Studies – Work-in-progress Seminar

Latest technological advancements result in certain dichotomised picture of where we might be heading when it comes to practices of archiving and documenting our lives. On one hand we are confronted with a technophilic vision of the total recall; a scenario in which everything can be technologically tracked, recorded, databased and hence recalled and used for the betterment of individuals and societies. The other side of the same coin presents us with a technophobic scenario of societies entirely colonised by algorithmic weaponry of vast, commercial corporations, state run agencies or there no longer dividable amalgamations deciding for us, how our lives are to be documented. In either case, we can agree that today life becomes ever more inseparably bound to practices of (digital) archiving.  These, metaphorically speaking, seem to constitute today the ‘back-ends’ of numerous social, cultural, professional or leisure-related activities that we engage ourselves on a daily basis. Against the dichotomised scenario in my research I  propose another path. I look into artistic/aesthetic practices concerned with personal data collection (or as I refer to them, practices of sous-veillance, self-tracking) examining them as forms of contemporary, personal archiving practices that can constructively inform current debates on big data (exhaust), automation of recording practices and increasing surveillance mechanisms.

09/06 – kl. 10-12 Room E203 (Aktersalongen)
Martin Farran-Lee, Staffan Schmidt, Richard Topgaard
Proposing a K3 publication series – a discussion

During the spring the formation of a K3 in-house produced publication series now results in a platform to be shared and discussed.

We have been looking at web-publication, shaping a graphic design identity and questions related to what kind of material would be relevant, and make sense of it in an academic context, and outside.

Please join us for a presentation and a discussion on openings and possibilities.

 

10/06 – kl. 10-12 Room E203 (Aktersalongen)

Linda Hilfling

30% PhD seminar 

Respondents: Temi Odumosu & Tobias Denkus

The research project examines the hidden global politics and economics underlying information architectures – which manifest themselves in choices and legacies of programming technologies and network services. Based on Linda’s field work in India last Autumn, this seminar will focus on cultural and geopolitical implications related to her case study, CODE. A narrative emerges exploring how local spatialities in the West are materially dependent on a complex mixture of ‘un-dead’ machines and software, while at the same time, a new kind of re-colonised information territory is appearing inside the global.

If you are interested in reading the text material for the seminar please contact Linda at linda.hilfling@mah.se