Research Catalogue

an international database for artistic research

Visit HUB at i2ads.up.pt/hub

HUB is a peer-reviewed and open-access research journal for reporting on arts, design, and performing arts. It has an international scope with a particular emphasis on practitioner methodologies and the educational impact of artistic research.

HUB's aims are two-fold: to promote a cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas to foster new forms of inquiry and documentation of artistic research; to stimulate the debate surrounding the social, cultural, and technological frames of art and design practices.

HUB is published twice a year by i2ADS – Research Institute in Art, Design and Society (University of Porto, Portugal) with the support of the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).

See HUB Open Calls!

Read the Submissions Guidelines for more information.

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  3. HUB Issue #3 / Autumn 2024 / Metabolic Media The essays and expositions in this issue of HUB delve into the concept of metabolic media, exploring the interconnections between biological, technological, cultural, and ecological systems. Guest Co-editors Louise Carver & Jamie Allen.
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  2. HUB Issue #2 / Spring 2024 / Varia This issue marks the first year of HUB, which continues to develop work along the lines of artistic research, focusing its attention on multiple creative practices and the transversality of the processes explored.
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  1. HUB Issue #1 / Autumn 2023 / Distance For this Autumn issue of HUB, we present a collection of works that results from the interest in broadening the understanding of DISTANCE after our first open call process for Artists, Designers, and Researchers in Art, Design and Society.
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  0. HUB Special Issue — Issue #0 / Spring 2023 The first inaugural issue we feature the contributions from invited researchers, relevant within a wide range of areas, reflecting on relevant or emerging topics of research and development within the Arts and Design.

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  Guilty Pleasures: Immersive Art for the Oral Cavity (2024) author(s): Luke Franzke, Johannes Lucian Reck published in: HUB - Journal of Research in Art, Design and Society
  This paper examines emerging theories of perception and their relation to metabolic processes and presents the interactive installation Guilty Pleasures, informed by these theoretical principles. The metabolic nature of perception is particularly apparent in the experiences relating to the oral cavity, and this work explores this through an intra-oral electronic interface, combined with other modalities for enacting illusory sensations of eating, together with the exploration of the phenomenology of craving and the pica condition.
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  When GPT Digested the Medium Hélène Smith (2024) author(s): Katerina Undo published in: HUB - Journal of Research in Art, Design and Society
  Exploring synergies between the study of the medium Hélène Smith at the turn of the 20th century and contemporary notions of subjectivity, artificiality and intelligence in the age of AI, the question of locating intelligence will not be a question with a binary answer in this paper. It will be shifted to multiple sites in an assimilative assemblage, exploring how identification might work from a rather metabolic side of the conversation. Weaving a thinking continuum on the evolving human-machine complexes beyond circular debates, Hélène Smith's ambiguous Martian writings are fed into GPT; an act intended as a metaphor and method for overcoming our binary contradiction of intelligence as either “natural” or “artificial”, ultimately generating new subjectivities, fluid variables or even contradictory insights. In this context, a meditation with speculative moments is attempted through human-machine inter-written texts, enacted through inter-twined speeches that reciprocally represent and interpret their own transitive nature.
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  Metabolic Drawings – Or: Drawing metabolic (2024) author(s): Teresa Mayr published in: HUB - Journal of Research in Art, Design and Society
  Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) is considered a pioneer of abstract painting. However, she herself hardly saw her artistic works as products or opus, but rather as a coherent system. Accordingly, the contribution presents and unfolds af Klint's paintings as an alternative version of modernism, an ecosystem or digestive system. This also takes up the mediumistic origin of the paintings: af Klint visualises transcendental messages. Looking forward and seeking out new possibilities (Bashkoff, 2018), she paints for a future that she perceives clairvoyantly. In text and images, the piece "Metabolic Drawings – Or: Drawing metabolic" develops a speculative landscape that follows the images and convictions of Hilma af Klint: Historical facts are interwoven with pictorial descriptions and culminate in a utopian or dystopian future. Theoretical approaches from Queer Studies and Speculative Feminism are adopted to critically question the reception of af Klint's paintings and of herself. In a way, the essay can be seen as a digestion of digestion.
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  Breathing with Phytoplankton: Exploring Metabolic Connections with Oceanic Microbes (2024) author(s): Anthea Oestreicher published in: HUB - Journal of Research in Art, Design and Society
  This paper presents an exploration of the interconnectedness between vital metabolic processes of human respiration and phytoplankton photosynthesis. By weaving together ecological sciences with cultural anthropology, eco-feminism, environmental humanities, and artistic practices the paper delves into the intricate metabolic interplay between phytoplankton and humans. Grounded in the notion of "breathing-with," it navigates through physiological, biological, and sensorial dimensions to elucidate the profound connections between respiration and photosynthesis as metabolic media, fostering alliances in multispecies encounters. Drawing inspiration from the biological laboratory and the microscopic realm of chlorophyll-bearing organisms, the transformative power of photosynthesis in shaping the planetary atmosphere and sustaining life is highlighted. While underscoring the pivotal role of phytoplankton in oxygen production and carbon dioxide sequestration, it elucidates the challenges and synergistic impacts of oceanic oxygen depletion driven by anthropogenic activities. Beyond a mere metabolic function, breath emerges as a metaphorical interface for collective action and co-conspiracy, transcending boundaries between human and non-human entities. As such it advocates for a deeper engagement with planetary ecologies and a reimagining of our relationality with the more-than-human world. Through artistic inquiry and experimental methods, the paper invites readers to reflect on the profound implications of our interconnectedness with phytoplankton, urging a renewed commitment to symbiotic coexistence. In this sense, the act of breathing goes beyond its metabolic function, extending as a form of collective agency in confronting the challenges of an ever-changing world.
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  Editorial (2024) author(s): Fabrício Fava, Filipa Cruz, Maria Manuela Bronze da Rocha, Orlando Vieira Francisco published in: HUB - Journal of Research in Art, Design and Society
  For its Issue #2, HUB continues to develop work along the lines of artistic research, focusing its attention on multiple creative practices and the transversality of the processes explored. Marking one year since the launch of Issue 0, HUB is committed to the Research Catalogue platform and ways of exploring and viewing multimedia material that can do justice to the dynamics between content and reading and browsing modes.
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  The Signifigance of a Waterfall Divided in Two (2024) author(s): Eric Maltz published in: HUB - Journal of Research in Art, Design and Society
  In January of 2022, I traveled with my family to Catarata Gocta, a two-tiered waterfall in the high rainforest, just outside of Cocachimba in Peru’s northeast. I seized this opportunity to conduct an artistic research experiment combining field recording, mystical participation, dream work, philosophy, and psychology. I incite and analyze dreams, peel back the perverse layers of my capitalist induced fantasies, exhaust liquid metaphors, engage in forms of mystical participation, discuss whether it’s even possible to record a place at all and draw connections and conclusions whose coherence is, well, maybe not so coherent. This essay touches on Sonic Journalism, the psychologies of Jung, the art criticism of Sontag and Berger and the art of Cage, Duchamp, and Hunter S. Thompson. The field recordings and images presented here are shreds of evidence supporting my own twisted brand of Gonzo Journalism. It is a tight rope walk across microphone cables and book spines, fueled by coffee, internet databases, and obsessive listening. The gravitational current pulling the waters of Catarata Gocta earthward is the dense center around which this essay orbits. Stretching across its horizon, I feel myself emptied, my thoughts laid bare and made available for self-examination.
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