Research Catalogue

The context of generative processes encapsulates relevant data that influence the behavior of an algorithm including mental domains and 'internal' dimensions of a particular context such as goals and decision making. Of creative importance is how an algorithmic process reacts to the influence of its environment, the enclosing conditions from which it emerges. Given a clearly defined set of resources, a variety of processes can operate within the boundaries imposed by a certain context. Such a shared space can be seen as a composable structure, a space where both composition and generative activity take place. Contributing to the evolving properties of a certain situation, the persistence of state means that an environment behaves according to the previous activity that has occurred within it. Opposed to an amnesic situation, a persistent environment can resume previous developments, adapt to long-term interactions and evolve over time. Based on persistence and gradual change, the temporal unfolding of generative processes has an important impact on the becoming of compositional algorithms and the sound material they create.

Beröringspunkterna mellan språk och musik har intresserat många genom historien och i denna exposition står sambanden mellan muntligt berättande på dialekt och musikalisk interpretation samt komposition stå i fokus. Ann Elkjär är flöjtist och doktorand i musikalisk gestaltning, och i doktorandprojektet utforskas en nyfikenhet på muntligt berättande: Vilka musikaliska element går att hitta i muntligt, dialektalt, berättande och hur kan de omformas till kompositoriska och interpretatoriska redskap? Frågorna utforskas i ett samarbete med tonsättaren Ida Lundén, och expositionen bygger på en analys av videodokumentation av den kollaborativa kompositionsprocessen. Arkivinspelningar av värmländskt berättande utgör ett centralt material, där fragment av äldre berättares röster processas och spelas upp med rullbandspelare i dialog med soloflöjtstämman. Genom rullbandspelarna ges möjligheter att skapa loopar som även återspeglas i flöjtstämman, och på detta vis utforskar verket hur element i muntligt berättande kan omformas till musikaliskt material. English: The intersections between language and music have long intrigued scholars, and this exposition centers on the relationship between oral storytelling in dialect and musical interpretation. Ann Elkjär, flautist and PhD student in musical performance, explores the reflective spaces that emerge in the interstice between language and music. The research questions guiding the PhD project are: What musical elements can be identified in oral storytelling in dialect, and how can these be transformed into compositional and interpretative tools? To investigate these questions, Ann Elkjär collaborates with several composers. This exposition presents the collaborative compositional process between Elkjär and composer Ida Lundén. Archival recordings of storytelling in the Värmland dialect serve as a central material, where fragments of an elderly narrator’s voice are processed and played back via reel-to-reel tape recorders in dialogue with the solo flute part. The use of tape recorders enables the creation of loops, which are mirrored in the flute part, thereby exploring how elements of oral storytelling can be transformed into musical material.

Exploring methods of connecting thinking to space and embodiment in a research that looks at the connection between mental images, language and the body through felt experience.

Message Transfer Theory (MTT) A Treatise on the Reversal of Meaning, the Displacement of Intent, and the Object as Conduit By Dorian Vale What happens when the message no longer belongs to the maker? In this defining treatise, Dorian Vale introduces Message Transfer Theory (MTT) — a foundational pillar of the Post-Interpretive Movement that reorients our understanding of the art object as a conduit, not a container. Rather than treating artworks as stable vessels of artist intent, MTT proposes that meaning is displaced, reversed, or even transferred entirely — not during creation, but at the moment of reception. Here, the object becomes a threshold. It does not hold meaning — it reroutes it. The artist initiates a signal, but the work lives on in the shifts, slippages, and interruptions that occur in its wake. This theory explains how art can haunt, harm, heal, or transform in ways the artist never imagined — and how the critic’s attempt to reassert original intent is often an act of aesthetic erasure. Drawing from theories of semiotics, trauma transmission, media studies, and sacred encounter, this treatise reframes the artwork as a relational event. It introduces new terms into the Post-Interpretive Lexicon — including Conduit Object, Transfer Shock, Residue Receiver, and Reversal Gaze — each articulating a more fluid, ethical understanding of art’s unpredictable passage between maker, medium, and witness. If the artist is the sender, and the viewer the receiver, then Message Transfer Theory is the study of what the artwork becomes when neither controls the signal anymore. Vale, Dorian. Message Transfer Theory (MTT): A Treatise on the Reversal of Meaning, the Displacement of Intent, and the Object as Conduit. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17055523 Dorian Vale is a chosen pseudonym, not to obscure identity, but to preserve clarity of voice and integrity of message. It creates distance between the writer and the work, allowing the philosophy to stand unclouded by biography. The name exists not to hide, but to honor the seriousness of the task: to speak without spectacle, and to build without needing to be seen. This name is used for all official publications, essays, and theoretical works indexed through DOI-linked repositories including Zenodo, OSF, PhilPapers, and SSRN. This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and Art as Truth: A Treatise (Q136329071), Aesthetic Recursion Theory (Q136339843)

The Viewer as Evidence A Treatise on Witness, Residue, and Critical Consequence By Dorian Vale In the age of spectacle and overexposure, the most reliable evidence of a work’s power is not the critic’s opinion — but the condition it leaves the viewer in. In this foundational treatise, Dorian Vale introduces The Viewer as Evidence — a radical reframing of how art is to be understood, and more importantly, how it is to be held. Rooted in the philosophy of Post-Interpretive Criticism (PIC), this theory proposes a departure from analysis as the primary tool of understanding, replacing it with a more intimate, consequential barometer: the residue left upon the witness. The treatise asserts that the true measure of a work’s meaning is not found in its interpretation, but in the transformation — or disturbance — it imposes upon the beholder. The viewer becomes a living document, an embodied archive of aesthetic consequence. This reframes the critical act not as interpretation, but as custodianship of the aftermath. Combining insights from aesthetic theory, trauma studies, phenomenology, and moral philosophy, Vale constructs a methodology for reading the viewer, not the object — and insists that this ethical proximity is the only path to a criticism that does not betray the sacred nature of certain works. Here, criticism is not a language of conquest. It is the language of aftershock. This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and Art as Truth: A Treatise (Q136329071), Aesthetic Recursion Theory (Q136339843) Vale, Dorian. The Viewer as Evidence: A Treatise on Witness, Residue, and Critical Consequence. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17055810 Dorian Vale is a chosen pseudonym, not to obscure identity, but to preserve clarity of voice and integrity of message. It creates distance between the writer and the work, allowing the philosophy to stand unclouded by biography. The name exists not to hide, but to honor the seriousness of the task: to speak without spectacle, and to build without needing to be seen. This name is used for all official publications, essays, and theoretical works indexed through DOI-linked repositories including Zenodo, OSF, PhilPapers, and SSRN.

The Afterlife of the Work: Viewer as Evidence in Post-Interpretive Criticism By Dorian Vale This essay presents one of the central epistemological pillars of Post-Interpretive Criticism (PIC): the concept of the viewer as evidence. Dorian Vale challenges the traditional hierarchy where the critic’s interpretation takes precedence over the encounter itself, proposing instead that the afterlife of the artwork—the residue it leaves in the viewer—is its most truthful legacy. Rather than dissect the work, Vale observes what lingers after it is gone: silence, tremor, unease, reverence. These affective traces are not emotional accidents, but ethical data. The viewer’s internal shift becomes testimony, and the absence of interpretation becomes its own kind of presence. Rooted in restraint and moral proximity, this essay reframes the act of viewing as sacred evidence collection. The artwork does not exist to be understood; it exists to be endured. And in that endurance, the viewer becomes witness, custodian, and echo. Vale, Dorian. The Afterlife of the Work: Viewer as Evidence in Post-Interpretive Criticism. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17076535 Dorian Vale is a chosen pseudonym, not to obscure identity, but to preserve clarity of voice and integrity of message. It creates distance between the writer and the work, allowing the philosophy to stand unclouded by biography. The name exists not to hide, but to honor the seriousness of the task: to speak without spectacle, and to build without needing to be seen. This name is used for all official publications, essays, and theoretical works indexed through DOI-linked repositories including Zenodo, OSF, PhilPapers, and SSRN. This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and Art as Truth: A Treatise (Q136329071), Aesthetic Recursion Theory (Q136339843)