Category: Doctoral School

Mark Gottdiener’s public lecture “Postmodern semiotics” will take place on September 15th as part of the Training School seminar “Local Stories and Visual Narratives”.

The lecture will take place 15.09.2021 at 18.00–20.00 via Zoom and is open to the public in the lobby (A101).

Mark Gottdiener (b 1943) is a professor of sociology at University at Buffalo, specialising in urban sociology. He is called one of the most important Urban Sociologist in U.S.

Training School Local Stories and Visual Narratives for international PhD students will take place on September 15th – 16th in Estonian Academy of Arts. It is organised by EU COST action CA18126 Writing Urban Places.

The action proposes an innovative investigation and implementation of a process for developing human understanding of communities, their society, and their situatedness by narrative methods. It particularly focuses on the potential of narrative methods for urban development in European medium-sized cities. This COST action has 35 European countries as participants.

The Training School in EAA will focus on local urban stories, taking the city of Tallinn as an example. Participants will engage in site visits, analysis workshops, discussions and lectures. Participants will discuss historical, semantical and archetypal settings of the narratives.

Organising team:

Klaske Havik (TU Delft), Panu Lehtovuori (Tampere University), Jüri Soolep, Andres Ojari, Irene Hütsi, Tiina Tammet (EAA Tallinn)

The event is supported by the European Regional Development Fund

Jaana Päeva, PhD student of the Estonian Academy of Arts, Curriculum of Art and Design, will defend her thesis ‘Everyday Companions. Meaning-Making Process Through Handbag Design’ („Igapäevased kaaslased. Tähendusloome protsess käekotidisaini näitel“) on the 9th of September 2021 at 15.00 at Põhja pst 7, room A501.

The defense will be held in English.
Please, register HERE

Supervisor: Dr Nithikul Nimkulrat (OCAD University)

External reviewers: Dr Rosita Nenno, Dr Malcolm Barnard (Loughborough University)

Opponent: Dr Malcolm Barnard

The subject of this thesis is handbag design. The recent decade has witnessed significant growth in the handbag market since handbags have become an essential everyday accessory, a portable manifestation rather than a functional product. The emphasis is on the cultural construction of the meanings of bags because handbags reflect changing everyday needs and the thinking of the time being relevant both on personal and cultural-historical levels. Handbags are the focus of this thesis and are taken as independent sculptural and functional objects that are close to but separate from the human body; the thesis concentrates on handbag design and designing and excludes the meaning-making involved in product marketing.

The doctoral thesis applies research through design and the semiotic approach to connect the past and the present of handbag design in order to explain the communicative potential and the cultural production of meanings of handbags through linkages between the physical characteristics of bags and their perception past and present. The study asks: How is it possible for a handbag to communicate meaning and how can the designer generate meanings in the handbag he/she designs?

The thesis presents three creative cases. The first case focuses on the novel characteristics of bag design; in particular, those considered innovations and their meanings. In contrast to the novel, the second creative case aims to define a classic bag and concentrates on the most enduring features of handbags. The third creative case focuses on the Estonian-origin handbag designs and the case aims to find specific features of handbag design, which can be identified as Estonian design, or that defines handbags as ‘local’.

Each creative case consists of three phases. First, the historical research examines handbag design in Estonia from 1918 to 1940. The historical period between the world wars was the first period of the independence of Estonia but, more importantly, the period bursting with innovative designing and first social rules towards carrying handbags, both locally and internationally, was chosen as the most inspiring and highly relevant in handbag history from the viewpoint of a designer and a practitioner. Second, the creative outcome of the cases includes three collections of bags whose design processes are informed by the most outstanding features from the historical analysis. The second phase explains the principles of the design process, describes and presents images of prototypes in detail and reflects on the bag making. The third phase collects and analyses contemporary feedback from respondents on the created handbags. Feedback observations and interviews allowed to compare past and present perceptions to detect characteristics of bags in which meanings have remained similar or changed over the years. Feedback analysis helps understand how handbags are perceived and interpreted, thus revealing the potential of meaning-making through handbag design.

Members of the Defence Council: Dr Liina Unt, Dr Anu Allas, Dr Kristi Kuusk, Prof Kirke Kangro, Prof Indrek Ibrus, Dr Danielle Wilde, Dr Kärt Ojavee, Dr Kristina Jõekalda

Please find the PhD thesis HERE

On Friday, August 13th at 11.00, pre-reviewing of Art and Design programme PhD student Darja Poplitova’s exhibition “Tactilite: Stone that Tickles the Gaze“ will take place at Hobusepea gallery. Exhibition is part of the artistic (practice-based) doctoral thesis of Darja Popolitova.

Supervisors: Prof. Kadri Mälk and Dr. Raivo Kelomees
Pre-reviewers: Keiu Krikmann and Dr. Maarit Mäkelä (Aalto University)

Exhibition opening: 5 August, 6 PM
The exhibition is open from 5 August to 30 August 2021, 10-18 every day (except Tuesday)

If you come to the exhibition, you will receive:
1) a practical guide on how to create a silver jewellery yourself
2) —— ″ —— ″ —— ″ —— ″ how to invoke intimacy into your life
3) —— ″ —— ″ —— ″ —— ″ how to speak a foreign language without mistakes
4) —— ″ —— ″—— ″ —— ″ how to exercise self-control in dealing with a manipulator
5) —— ″ —— ″ —— ″ —— ″ how to make another person important
6) talisman as a gift (only on Wednesdays)

#C21witchcraft #contemporaryjewellery #technopaganism #hapticvisuality

Artist Darja Popolitova aims to mix ritual features of jewellery with the theme of digitality. At her show “Tactilite: Stone that Tickles the Gaze“ video works, jewellery, and installations create a fictional world where the witch Seraphita helps to cope with the frustrations of everyday life.

“Seraphita is a fictional character who helps me to expand the usual functions of jewellery. For example, to shoot the jewellery so that the viewer would be much more interested in watching a video clip rather than a stand-alone artifact attached to the stand,” the author notes.

Kelly Riggs, a contemporary critic and curator, writes about Darja’s work: “Though the physical jewellery objects are the crux of what Popolitova creates, they are also just a part of the total picture, or the collective persona she presents when she shares that jewellery online.”

Darja Popolitova was born in 1989 in Sillamäe and lives and works in Tallinn. She is also doing a PhD at Estonian Academy of Arts. Darja’s practice includes contemporary jewellery, digital craft and video art. Recently, Darja Popolitova has participated in exhibitions at the Museum Arnhem in Holland (2020), Art and Design Museum in New York (2019), the Kunstnerforbundet gallery in Oslo (2018). Darja Popolitova is represented by the following galleries: Marzee in Nijmegen, Beyond in Antwerp, and Door in Mariaheide. Her work is included in the collection of the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design, Museum Arnhem, and private collections. The work of Darja Popolitova was awarded the Annual Awards of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia in 2020, scholarships of the Ministry of Culture and Adamson-Eric in 2018. She also received the scholarship of Young Jewellery in 2015.

The exhibition is done in collaboration with Jakob Tulve (VFX) and Andres Nõlvak (sound design).

Artists’s gratude goes to: Aleksandr Popolitova and Nadežda Popolitova, Ando Naulainen, Anastasia Dratšova, Doctoral School of Estonian Academy of Arts, Jewellery and Blacksmithing Department of EAA, Estonian Artists’ Association, Elnara Taidre, Karl Kivinurm, Kadri Mälk, Karmo Järv, Keiu Krikmann, Kristo Pachel, Norman Orro, Pire Sova, Raivo Kelomees.

Sponsors: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Academy of Arts, Moe OÜ, Õllenaut OÜ, Hobusepea Gallery, Orbital Vox Studios.

Pre-reviewing of Art and Design PhD student Dila Demir’s first design case-study “SQUEAKY/PAIN” will take place via Zoom on Friday, May 14th at 15.00.
Case-study “SQUEAKY/PAIN” is part of the artistic doctoral thesis of Dila Demir.
Please register for the pre-reviewing HERE

Peer Reviewers: Dr. Danielle Wilde and Dr. Claudia Núñez-Pacheco
Supervisors: Dr. Nithikul Nimkulrat and Dr. Kristi Kuusk

Online Exposition “SQUEAKY/PAIN”: https://dilademir.com/PhD-Porjects

Dila is a Ph.D. student at the Estonian Academy of Arts. She is working in the field of interactive textiles, bodily engagements, soma design, and somaesthetics. She will be presenting her first case study on the 14th of May. Her first design case titled “SQUEAKY/PAIN” is an inquiry into the possibilities of wearable interactive textiles to facilitate somaesthetic awareness through movement-based bodily interactions. The project utilizes bodily disturbances as a design material for bodily engagements, specifically, pain is adopted as a bodily disturbance in this design case. “SQUEAKY/PAIN” is the name of the interactive wearable artifact that externalizes pain by mimicking its qualities. With this project, Dila is exploring the ways of promoting somaesthetic awareness via sensory bodily interactions by mimicking the pain experience. The research question of the project is:

How pain can be externalized through interactive textiles and how interactive textiles that externalize pain can facilitate somaesthetic awareness?

In addition to the peer review event, Dila is presenting her work in a form of online exposition (https://dilademir.com/PhD-Porjects). In this online exposition, you can explore the research and design process, and findings of her study.

The annual Conference of EKA Doctoral School will take place on April 15th, 2021.

Performers, discussants and moderators will participate via ZOOM, all other participants are welcome to follow the conference via EKA TV https://tv.artun.ee/eka. 

Viewers are welcome to ask questions via the link under the EKA TV broadcast window.

Please register by April 13th at the latest.

Conference is supported by European Regional Development Fund

TIMETABLE

10:00 gathering to Zoom and EKA TV

10:05 welcoming words: Vice rector for research Dr. Anu Allas

10:20 introduction from Visiting professor Dr. Danielle Wilde 

10:30 keynote talk: 

Dr. Lina Michelkevičė, associate professor Dr. Vytautas Michelkevičius (Vilnius Academy of Arts) “Atlas of Diagrammatic Imagination: How Can Maps Transfer Knowledge in Artistic Research”. Moderator Dr. Anu Allas

11:30 coffee break

Art and Design
Moderator Dr. Liina Unt

11:40 Britta Benno “Thinking in Layers, Worlding in Layers. Posthuman Landscapes in Extended Drawings and Prints” (supervisor Dr. Elnara Taidre). Discussant Ulvi Haagensen

12:15 Ulvi Haagensen “An Unravelling Line: A Story of Cleaning” (supervisors Dr. Liina Unt, Jan Guy). Discussant Britta Benno

12:50 lunch break

Cultural Heritage and Conservation
Moderator Dr. Anneli Randla

13:30 Maria Hansar “How Do We Make New Knowledge in the Conservation and Cultural Heritage Domain?” (supervisor Prof. Hilkka Hiiop). Discussant Nina Stener Jørgensen

14:05 Triin Talk “The Changes in the Community and Functionality of Tallinn Old Town” (supervisor Dr. Lilian Hansar, Caludio Milano). Discussant Mattias Malk

14:40 stretch break

Architecture and Urban Planning
Moderator Dr. Jüri Soolep

14:50 Mattias Malk “The Urban Fabric, Rail Infrastructure and Fit – A Rail Baltic Case Study From Tallinn” (supervisor Prof. Maroš Krivý). Discussant Triin Talk

15:25 Nina Stener Jørgensen “The Power of the Tower: Nicolas Schöffer’s Tour Lumière Cybernetique for La Défense 1962–1973” (Supervisor prof. Maroš Krivý). Discussant Maria Hansar

16:00 concluding discussion:

Vice rector for research Dr. Anu Allas, Visiting professor Dr. Danielle Wilde, Dr. Liina Unt, Prof. Krista Kodres, Dr. Anneli Randla, Dr. Jüri Soolep

16:45 break

Evening programme:

17:30 Screening of a research movie “Ruinenlust Lasnamäel: ettekanded kunstnik-uurijale” by Britta Benno. The movie is in Estonian.

For more information:
Sirja-Liisa Eelma
sirja-liisa.eelma@artun.ee

Conference is part of the project “EKA LOOVKÄRG – Eesti visuaal- ja ruumikultuuri õppe- ja teaduskeskus (Sisutegevuste projekt)” nr 2014-2020.4.01.16-0045.

Situated Writing as Theory and Method – Or Why Don’t You Write a Novella Instead of an Article?

Lecturer: Prof Mona Livholts

22-23 April 10.00-15.00

Registration fo PhD students HERE:
Registration is open until March 15.

How can we create spaces for writing and language in the academic world that are inclusive to diverse ways of knowing and life forms, textually, materially and visually? This seminar invites you as participants to engage in thinking, conversations and practices of writing as art-based practice in dialogue with your own research projects. It is inspired by the ideas and practices from my book Situated writing as theory and method. The untimely academic novella (Routledge 2019), where I theorise writing as a situated practice that are embodied and spatially located across spaces, institutions, and landscapes. The methodological tool is the writing of untimely academic novellas, composed by literary fiction and creative narrative life writing genres such as diaries and letters, memory work, poetic writing, and photography.

The seminar is designed to inspire your own novella writing. It begins with an introductory lecture where I talk about the departures of situated writing and diffraction as a key conceptualisation for multiple forms of writing, with exemplars from the untimely academic novellas “The Professor’s Chair”, “The Snow Angel” and “Writing Water”. It continues with hands-on writing practices and small and large group conversations based on selected reading and individual preparations (see separate document).

Mona Livholts [pronouns: hon/hän/she] is Swedish Language Professor of Social Work in the Department of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki; founder and leader of The Network for Reflexive Academic Writing Methodologies (RAW) 2008–2017. Research focuses on creative writing and art-based methods, in particular auto/biographical and narrative life writing genres such as diaries and letters, memory work, poetry, and photography. Research themes include media narratives on rape, gender, space, and communication, social art and glocal- and post-anthropocentric social work.

Selected publications: Situated Writing as Theory and Method. The Untimely Academic Novella (Routledge 2019), Discourse and Narrative Methods: Theoretical Departures, Analytical Strategies and Situated Writing (Sage with Tamboukou 2015), Emergent Writing Methodologies in Feminist Studies (Routledge, 2012).

Blogposts on writing: https://bsapgforum.com/2019/10/07/situated-writing-as-theory-and-method-or-why-dont-you-write-a-novella-instead-of-an-article-dr-mona-livholts/

http://www.urbariablog.fi/tracing-urban-exhaustion-through-slow-writing/

This event is organised by the Graduate School of Culture Studies and Arts, supported by the ASTRA project of the Estonian Academy of Arts – EKA LOOVKÄRG (European Union, European Regional Development Fund)

On Monday, 14 December at 16.00, pre-reviewing of Art and Design programme PhD student Britta Benno’s exhibition „ Ruinenlust: Lasnamägi” will take place at Hobusepea Gallery (and via Zoom). Exhibition is part of the artistic (practice-based) doctoral thesis of Britta Benno.

Audience is welcome to join via Zoom. Link HERE

The exhibition is open until 14 December, 2020.

Supervisor: Dr. Elnara Taidre
Pre-reviewers of the exhibition: Dr. Elo-Hanna Seljamaa, Andreas Trossek

When waking up from a lunch-time nap, it had transformed to a gigantic future dinosaur that no one had ever seen before. One can imagine the soaked bulks of houses thrown on a hillocky landscape behind the fog. These are the ruins of concrete panel houses that have luckily survived in a spot that once was called Lasnamäe.

The cuboids had no windows nor doors, darkness smirked its toothless grin behind the cavities. And yet, there was no emptiness there – new life had moved in Lasnamäe. Creatures like the dinosaur were living there – huge, miraculous animals whose ancestors originated from the Anthropocene.

Ruinenlust in Lasnamäe is a science fictional prospective to post-human urban landscape where jungle and mountaneous terrain with the future creatures have taken over the ruins of a former bedroom community. Pleasure of looking at the ruins, Ruinenlust, is projected to the district of Lasnamäe that has lost the heavy burden of meanings. The message has been expressed through the models of houses characteristic to Lasnamäe have been used in puppet animation as well as the etching drawings that look like findings from an ancient civilisation.

Marginal and old-time arts, printmaking and stereoscopic puppet animation accompanied by harpsichord music form a staged installation. Concern about the dystopian state of our environment motivates to imagine the post-human future. Hybrid art and layered combination becomes the tool of such imagination and depiction.

Current exhibition also serves as Britta Benno’s second peer-reviewed creative output of her studies in the Doctoral School at the Estonian Academy of Arts. In her artistic research, Benno concentrates on depicting science fictional landscape in the extended field of drawing and printmaking.

Britta Benno (b. 1984) is an artist mainly working with drawing and printmaking, she lives and works in Tallinn. She is intrigued by various hybrid techniques and materials as well as the new perspectives that start to emerge when juxtapose and combine the abovementioned techniques and materials. Benno’s exhibitions of the past few years function as a series while depicting post-human urban landscapes. Conceptual keywords are: memory, power, fugacity of meanings (ruins), visualisation (worlding), mental tools of a graphic artist (layered thinking) and posthumanist philosophy.

Benno’s last pop-up exhibition Of Becoming a Shape of a Land(Scape) was completed during a residency in Iceland and was opened for a few days in Outver gallery, Iceland. In Tallinn the same exhibition project, titled as Once I Had, was held together with Heather Beardsley in Kraam Project Room in the autumn of 2019. The most prominent personal exhibition Dystopic Tallinn was open in Tallinn Art Hall gallery in the summer of 2019.

The artist expresses her gratitude to: Ragnar Neljandi (cameraman, animator, post-production), Heigo Eeriksoo (puppet master), Mait Eerik (prop master), Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Nukufilm LLC.
Exhibitions in Hobusepea gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia,

Estonian Ministry of Culture and Liviko Ltd.

Siim Tuksam, PhD student of the Estonian Academy of Arts, curriculum of Architecture and Urban Planning, will defend his thesis „Modulated Modularity – from mass customisation to custom mass production“ („Moduleeritud modulaarsus – masskohandamisest kohandatud masstootmiseni“) on the 22nd of December 2020 at 13.00 EET (UTC +2).

Audience is welcome to follow the live-stream on the link below: https://tv.artun.ee/doktoritoodekaitsmised

The defense will be held in English.

Supervisors: Dr. Renee Puusepp (Eesti Kunstiakadeemia) and Dr. Antoine Picon (Harvard University)

External reviewers: Andrew Witt (Harvard University) and Dr. John Harding (University of Reading)

Opponent: Andrew Witt

The digitalisation of the construction industry is in full swing. The infrastructure for the computer-aided fabrication of buildings is here, yet mass customisation by robotically manufactured infinitesimally variable components, as suggested by the early digital architects of the 1990s, is still not viable on an industrial scale. Architecture is seemingly forced to adapt to the industry rather than the other way round. How is it possible, within this context, to maintain the autonomy of the architectural discipline, facing the realities of extensive standardisation, automation, and artificial intelligence?

Digital architecture as a critical discourse was largely built upon Gilles Deleuze’s idea of folding, proposing a continuous formation of matter based on intensities. Folding in architecture resulted in an almost frictionless combination of topology and tectonics, where the whole consists of continuously variegated adaptive details. It is this continuous adaptation that is contested within the thesis in which modulation is proposed as an active intervention rather than frictionless optimisation – subverting the prevailing ideology from within by taking the system more seriously than the system takes itself, to paraphrase Slavoj Žižek.

Looking at modularity in architecture, starting with the professor of architecture at the École Polytechnique Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand and the analytical method at the beginning of the 19th century, and studying mid-twentieth century modular structures inspired by system theory, a lineage is traced towards the digitisation of architecture. The introduction of modularity into digital architecture produces an internal tension that constrains the formation of matter. In the 1960s the German architect Eckhard Schulze-Fielitz explored this type of emergent formation through the term Raumstruktur (structure of space), a macro material capable of modulation. By modulating the conditioning circumstances into a model of the Raumstruktur, a design space is created that governs formation – not a mould, but an emergent structure of space.

These internal tensions manifest themselves in the formal qualities of this macro material as an expression of the underlying structure. Through this expression, the communicative and political dimensions of modulation are explored in the thesis, suggesting an ornamental quality within the work and therefore a differentiation from mere construction.

The study is projective and reflective at the same time – experimental research by design that turnsinto both practice research and theoretical research. Through a series of projects in collaboration with the Estonian wooden house manufacturing industry, this exploration has evolved from looking at mimetic algorithms and variable tectonics towards a pre-rationalised design approach – modulated modularity.

Members of the Defence Council: Dr. Jüri Soolep, Dr. Anu Allas, Prof. Klaske Havik, Prof. Panu Lehtovuori, Dr. Suzie Attiwill, Prof. Toomas Tammis

Please find the PhD thesis HERE

Sille Pihlak, PhD student of the Estonian Academy of Arts, curriculum of Architecture and Urban Planning, will defend her thesis “Prototyping Protocols, Protocolling Prototypes: A Methodological Development of Somatic Modularity for Algorithmic Timber Architecture in Estonian Context” („Prototüüpides protokolle, protokollides prototüüpe: Somaatilise modulaarsuse metodoloogia kujunemine puitarhitektuuris“) on the 21st of December 2020 at 10.00 EET (UTC +2).

Audience is welcome to follow the live-stream on the link below: https://tv.artun.ee/doktoritoodekaitsmised

The defense will be held in English.

Supervisors: Dr. Jüri Kermik (Eesti Kunstiakadeemia) and Dr. Roland Snooks (RMIT University)

External reviewers: Prof. Michael U. Hensel (Vienna University of Technology) and Dr. Jan van Schaik (RMIT University)

Opponents: Prof. Michael U. Hensel and Dr. Jan van Schaik

This practice-based thesis posits the methodology of somatic modularity as a tool to manage complex, multilayered and highly collaborative workflow processes associated with algorithmic timber architecture. Based on computational modularity and variable resolutions, this methodology is systematized and articulated through the dynamic relationship between the detail and the whole, intending to implement that throughout the design process, including its output. The key objective of the proposed methodology is to identify design “protocols” (a set of design parameters) according to different levels of tectonic complexity introduced in the process of the “prototype” (the preliminary version ) development. The scope of resulting workflow models and their potential to adequately support new algorithmic design approaches is analysed specifically in Estonian context.

For nearly 90 years, the Estonian construction industry has been neither particularly sustainable nor automated. However, our recent work in the architectural practice PART indicates the possibility of positioning renewable materials again at the heart of the large-scale building economy with digital collaborative workflow between architects, engineers and fabricators. My dissertation addresses the question of how to robustly embed architects’ design intentions in the entire production chain of architecture from design to fabrication, combining bottom-up and top-down design workflows, which will allow more sustainable and design-led contemporary timber architecture to emerge.

I argue for a specific algorithmic workflow, with a central, agile, common platform that has proven to be an advantageous solution in pavilion scale construction, with design implications both in tectonics and for the way we work together. My dissertation maps the development of architectural practice PART, which collaborates closely with Estonian timber house manufacturers, and whose design research has developed from bespoke (2015-2017) and standardized design systems (2017-2018) towards methods of somatic modularity (a variable modular system) since 2018. In each of these periods of development I identify the negotiation between automated design protocols and tangible prototypes and show their potential for contributing to a more articulated, collaborative and material-driven architecture.

I conclude that the systematization of digital design techniques also responds to the changing position of the creative practitioner in relation to algorithmic workflow, and that the application of somatic modularity as a design methodology provides for a strategy to better facilitate design ideas in the rapidly-automating construction industry.

Members of the Defence Council: Dr. Jüri Soolep, Dr. Anu Allas, Prof. Klaske Havik, Prof. Panu Lehtovuori, Dr. Suzie Attiwill, Prof. Toomas Tammis

Please find the PhD thesis HERE