197 research outputs found
Searching for Themes in a Chamber full of Noise? How Language Affects United Nationsâ Actions and Decisions
Against a scholarly mountain of literature on the United Nations, it is astounding how profoundly little we know about the decision-making processes of its most powerful and secretive body, the UN Security Council. In particular, no study has systematically investigated the rhetoric in the Council and assessed its impact on actions and decisions in authorized resolutions. Since diplomats, lawyers, and policymakers held almost 80,000 speeches in public debates between 1995 and 2018 alone, one has to wonder, do these speeches matter? Do they affect intergovernmental decision-making procedures? Do they amount to anything in world politics? And if so, what is their effect? The lack of answers to these questions shows the need for a theory-driven systematic, and rigorous empirical investigation of Council rhetoric
Grounds for a Third Place : The Starbucks Experience, Sirens, and Space
My goal in this dissertation is to help demystify or âfilterâ the âStarbucks Experienceâ for a post-pandemic world, taking stock of how a multi-national company has long outgrown its humble beginnings as a wholesale coffee bean supplier to become a digitally-integrated and hypermodern cafĂ©. I look at the role Starbucks plays within the larger cultural history of the coffee house and also consider how Starbucks has been idyllically described in corporate discourse as a comfortable and discursive âthird placeâ for informal gathering, a term that also prescribes its own radical ethos as a globally recognized customer service platform. Attempting to square Starbucksâ iconography and rhetoric with a new critical methodology, in a series of interdisciplinary case studies, I examine the role Starbucksâ âthird placeâ philosophy plays within larger conversations about urban space and commodity culture, analyze Starbucks advertising, architecture and art, and trace the mythical rise of the Starbucks Siren (and the reiterations and re-imaginings of the Starbucks Siren in art and media). While in corporate rhetoric Starbucksâ âthird placeâ is depicted as an enthralling adventure, full of play, discovery, authenticity, or âromance,â I draw on critical theory to discuss how it operates today as a space of distraction, isolation, and loss
Being White in Pluralist Proximity: Concerning postcolonial art, education and research in Scandinavia
This combined doctoral thesis comprises 50% theory and 50% art practice. It emerges through the intersections of art, education and research. I share my evolving understanding of working processes in those fields as the sum of history, geographical context, materiality and an imaginary. It includes three peer-reviewed texts (Eriksen, 2022; Eriksen et al., 2020; Ulrichsen et al., 2021), three exhibitions (Dijkstra & de Bie, 2018; Eriksen et al., 2018a, 2018b) a film (Solmaz, 2022) and other artist practices such as drawing, collage and object-making. Its content takes a form that seeks to disrupt the binary division between academic text/practice and artistic research practice. I explore the paradox of how the majority of Scandinavians denounce racism while reconciling themselves with the fact that it exists (cf. Wekker, 2016). I explore this through my entanglement, as a White European female artist, with a working-class background in art, education and research. I discuss how artists generally and my-self specifically experience aesthetic decision-making in post-colonial Scandinavia. My position as the subject-researcher is located not only through peer-reviewed texts but also in vignettes included in the metatext based on my memories, private journals, and field journals/notes from my professional life. I use a diffractive method based on the theory of agential realism (Barad, 2007). This method inspired me to think through and with post-colonial scholars (Ahmed, 2021; Khanna, 2020; Said, 1994, 2003; Spivak, 1988) and thinkers in critical race and Whiteness theories (Bayati, 2014; Ignatiev, 2009; Matias, 2016; Wekker, 2016; Werner & Björk, 2014). I explore the significance of the embodied colonial cultural archive (Said, 1994; Wekker, 2016) and emotion (Khanna, 2020) and their role in the cultural production of racial stereotypes. Dominating European practices in art, education and research emerge as complicit in the structures of White 10 11 supremacy and rooted in the philosophical foundations stemming from modernity. Globally dominating aesthetic/ethic ideologies of artistic autonomy and freedom and academic ethical norms are seen to converge in a âsafe ethical spaceâ to protect dominating White knowledge production and exclude other knowledges (Eriksen et al., 2020). It is only in the proximity of other knowledges, in uncomfortable situations of conflict, that my Eurocentric White understanding of these practices is challenged (Ulrichsen et al., 2021) and is conceptualised as being in pluralist proximity. I would like to consider this thesis a decolonising praxis (Kuokkanen, 2010; Walsh, 2018), as it is hopefully an intervention in the context in which it is researched, supervised, and published. The form of the final 100% thesis itself can be seen as an insistence on the right to question what Biggs and BĂŒchler (2010) identify as very different dissemination practices of artistic and academic communities. It is a thesis that bulges in every direction. I aim to disseminate the same textual and visual materials to different audiences and maintain the complexity and entanglements within them.publishedVersio
Iliad ad Nihilum: PsychĂȘ, Conscience, Wonder
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Kaijus as environments: design & production of a colossal monster functioning as a boss level
Boss fights are a staple in most video game genres. They are milestones in the adventure, designed and intended
to test the skills that the player has acquired throughout their adventure. In some cases, they even define the
whole experience of the game, especially one type of enemy that has appeared in several instances and every
genre: colossal bosses, monsters of giant proportions usually used as a matter of spectacle and a simple yet
effective way to showcase the sheer power that players have achieved up until that point in the adventure. Titles
like God of War, Shadow of the Colossus and even many Super Mario titles use this concept in their video
games in imaginative ways to create Kaiju-like creatures working as a living environment the player has to
traverse to defeat them. However, what is the process behind creating a colossal boss that works as a breathing
environment, and how can it be achieved?
This project aims to study the process of colossal boss creation and design and apply level design and asset
creation. To do this, the author will investigate the main aspects and key-defining features of these bosses,
analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of existing bosses in videogames such as God of War 3âs Cronos and
Shadow of the Colossus and Solar Ashâs bosses in terms of art production and game design. From this study
and following the art process for creating creatures in the video game industry, the author will conceptualize,
design and produce a working, playable prototype of a boss fight, showcased in the final presentation
Those common everyday things we all know : Roger Brown\u27s American Art
Roger Brown (1941â1997) was an American artist associated with the Chicago Imagists. Borrowing elements from American visual culture to construct an idiosyncratic language of motifs, Brownâs paintings demand a mode of attentionâof looking, searching, recognizing, identifyingâthat parallels the structures of feeling that constitute being in America
Volupté 5.2 Vernon Lee: Full Issue
Volupté 5.2 Vernon Lee: Full Issu
James Monroeâs White House: The Genius of Politics and Place
This research endeavor has discerned the origins of an enduring American nationalistic distinctiveness perpetuated by President James Monroeâs White House. A careful scholarly examination of Monroeâs White House as a cultural landscape enquires into the genesis of interdependence between place and politics. It also studies the depth of the American peopleâs ability to embrace, as their own, the symbolism and national vision fashioned in these spaces. The juxtaposition of James Monroeâs election as the first United States president after the War of 1812 with the resurrection of the White House manifested for him an exclusive opportunity, still fraught with perils, to define national identities and interiors for the early republic and its posterity. Early attempts to write about the White House compartmentalized the historical context by architecture, social aspects, executive functions, political power, and biographical literature. Self-imposed confinement in historical discourse prohibits a comprehensive narrative while encouraging the autonomy of places, events, ideals, and people. Interpreting the White House as a cultural landscape illuminates the agency of culture as a force in shaping the visible features within those spaces. Reciprocally, the physical environment retains a central significance as the medium through which human cultures act. Consequently, Monroeâs White House transubstantiated disaffection into a maturing national consciousness. Emphasizing and interpreting primary resources permits the examiner to expose a seemingly mutually exclusive trajectory of James Monroeâs early political career with the White Houseâs architectural evolution. In contrast, their paths reveal a diminishing parallel. At the point of infinity, the newly elected President Monroe refurbished the interiors and nurtured administrative protocols to foster domestic public and foreign diplomacy while encouraging national respect and integrity for the country
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