Research Catalogue

Visual communication for ARMADIO ANTI-BORGHESE, Elisa Nicoloso's fashion collection. “With perhaps a somewhat radical spirit I want to destabilize the boring bourgeois schematic. For my collection, the starting point was the typical garments that characterize the bourgeois wardrobe of a classic bank employee. Double-breasted jackets, shirts, pleated trousers and trench coats are broken down into their component simple elements and then reassembled through a different scheme that introduces an unpredictable conflictual element. Garments that try to reconstruct their integrity will fail. So I attempt to annoy composure and morality through the same means they adopt, the scheme.” Elisa Nicoloso In the same way the box in which this display project is contained has been sectioned to his structural elements, attached to the same white cotton fabric the designer used for the collection and reassembled. The integrity however has been lost as the box collapses and dismounts as it gets opened. Not even when it’s closed it restores its initial integrity. The box alters his shape at every use as the overflowing fabric can’t be contained. It’s up to the user to decide whether to try to contrast this incomposture or accept it in the performative act of closing the box. Gloria Furlan

Nine research groups from HKU, Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Fontys, and Utrecht University of Applied Sciences are joining forces with UvH and UMCU to bring a new perspective on healthcare through the arts, supported by the SIA-SPRONG grant. Using a transdisciplinary approach, this research group and its partners are developing new methods, practices, and scenarios within healthcare and well-being contexts—not for, but with each other.

Artworks through the years using traditional tecniques (oil paint, wax, wood, watercolors, graphite).

Sounds created through reflection played a key role in the belief and ritual traditions of Fennoscandia up until recent times. The Indigenous Sámi considered echoing rocks and mountains to be sacred places where spirits could be met and conversed with. This article examines the role of sound reflections in these historical, little-known traditions using source material gathered from archives and old ethnographic accounts. We analyze the source material using concepts developed by sound studies and the philosophy of sound. We also apply a new materialist approach, which allows echoes to be regarded from a perspective more suitable to the source material: as sound energies transforming reflective material bodies into vibrant and interactive more-than-human beings. Moreover, the new materialist approach enables us to outline a philosophical basis for a materialist understanding of sound reflections and reflective material bodies, as well as the acoustic spaces associated with them. The concept of acousphere is proposed to understand this kind of space of correlation, confluence, and interchange between the human and more-than-human worlds.

This short essay opens ArteActa’s issue AI (and) Art: Poetics of Prompting by proposing to understand generative algorithms as fundamentally metabolic: a dynamic entanglement of data, energy, affect, attention, and ecology. It argues that, given their ubiquity, generative materials can no longer be understood primarily as representations or discrete outputs. Instead, they function as metabolic processes that devour cultural material, extract planetary resources, and reshape perception below the threshold of consciousness. Prompting itself is always an act of transformation rather than merely a symbolic command, and intentional artistic experiments represent only a fraction of a larger infrastructure. The essay thus advocates for a multiscalar understanding of generative media: every prompt is already an ecosystem; every image is already a node in a planetary metabolism.

Through a series of photographic assemblages that focus on texture, depth, and atmosphere, “The Oracle of Delphi” documents interactions between these assemblages and AI language models. The work demonstrates specific ways that current AI systems struggle to comprehend material qualities and contextual relationships in personal narratives, particularly when dealing with dimensionality, surface qualities, and emotional resonance. By analyzing these limitations, the work reveals the gap between human and machine perception of materiality and affect, while suggesting potential approaches for developing more nuanced human-machine encounters. Through these material encounters and a deliberate “kinking” of established patterns, the work demonstrates how algorithmic systems might be recrafted from processes of reduction into expansive sites of co-creation and possibility.