recent activities
Kamara Obscura
(2025)
MARIA DARMOY
This performance seeks to form visually narratives about gender fluidity, identity, vulnerability, and the sense of the fragmented self in this fast changing world monitored by cameras, frames and the feeling that we are constantly observed . Body is the main research tool, a moving diary. On its surface are imprinted all the stories, desires and fears experienced during the years. They are collected, and then, interpreted kinetically, blurring the boundaries between the material reality, and the reality of the unspoken. A keeper of all the intimate and domestic moments, trying to protect them from the external world.
In this journey, Camera obscura is a companion and an opponent.
Improvisation Based on Yoga Listening Practices and Philosophies
(2025)
MELISA YILDIRIM
This research endeavours to reveal the transformative potential of artistic creativity by combining musical improvisation and yoga-based embodied listening practices. The study incorporates three listening practices: humming and self-observation, listening only with the right ear, and listening to the space within the heart. The effects of these experiments are documented in a journal and recorded as audio files. In addition to improvisation as a musical practice and embodied listening, this research also considers how yoga, - which has become an important part of Indian culture over the centuries with its roots in Vedic culture - can shape artistic identity through its philosophical understanding of sound, and its perspectives on the human body as a cosmos.
The research emphasizes subjects such as the healing power of humming, chakra energy, collective consciousness, energetic centers of consciousness in the human body and their potential role in transforming the artist's identity. The thoughts and experiences in this research are personal, but the content of this article has been written based on these experiences as an attempt to present visions for global musicians to transition their musicianship into a more universal form, and to pose multifaceted questions to the reader.
This paper draws attention to different improvisation techniques makam terminology and explores existing literature to open innovative doors based on holistic experience. The findings reveal the vibrant and energetic connections between the effects of music and vibrations on human life and the body, and the various philosophies that nourish the artist's identity and expression.
This thesis encourages improvisation as a form of existence to establish deep spiritual connections with experiences from the past and present. Highlighting dimensions of music that are unnoticeable due to existing industrial structures and education models, the most importantly, esoteric knowledge of the body, inviting the reader to be open-minded for all sonic possibilities.
Context and Scope
(2025)
Bjarni Gunnarsson
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.
recent publications
The First Break Since Postmodernism: The Rise of Post-Interpretive Criticism
(2025)
Dorian Vale
The First Break Since Postmodernism: The Rise of Post-Interpretive Criticism introduces a groundbreaking movement in contemporary art criticism that formally departs from postmodernism and post-criticism. Post-Interpretive Criticism (PIC), developed by writer and founder Dorian Vale, redefines the role of the critic through five foundational frameworks: Absential Aesthetics, HauntMark Theory, Stillmark Theory, Viewer-as-Evidence, and Message Transfer Theory. These concepts prioritize ethical presence, moral restraint, and reverent witnessing over traditional interpretation or theoretical dominance.
Structured as a philosophical reorientation, PIC positions criticism as an act of custodial attention, not conquest. It emphasizes proximity without possession, silence without erasure, and writing as transformation rather than performance. Unlike movements born from academic consensus, PIC was authored and launched independently through the Museum of One, with formal infrastructure including DOI-linked publications, public archives, and a living lexicon.
This work argues that Post-Interpretive Criticism is the first fully articulated philosophical school of aesthetic thought to emerge since postmodernism—complete in theory, practice, and authorship. It reclaims criticism not as explanation, but as responsibility.
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)
Duchamp's Second Cut: Duchamp made the first cut. This is the second, and it bleeds differently.
(2025)
Dorian Vale
Duchamp’s Second Cut: This One Bleeds Differently
By Dorian Vale
A Post-Interpretive Reassessment of the Readymade
Duchamp made the first cut.
This is the second — and it bleeds differently.
In this radical essay, Dorian Vale returns to the surgical table of modernity, where Marcel Duchamp first incised the body of art with the invention of the readymade. But where Duchamp’s cut was conceptual — clean, ironic, institutional — Vale’s is existential, ethical, and slow to clot. This second cut is not a gesture. It is a wound. And in its bleeding, it reveals what the first incision left behind: the soul of the object.
“Duchamp’s Second Cut” is not a rejection of the readymade — it is its haunting. It asks what happens when irony dries up and presence remains. It dares to reanimate the art object as sacred remnant rather than institutional provocation. In this essay, Vale does not interpret Duchamp — he answers him.
Through the lens of Post-Interpretive Criticism, Vale reframes the legacy of the readymade, arguing that the true violence was never in the urinal, but in the severance of proximity, touch, and moral presence. This second cut restores what Duchamp rendered sterile: the possibility of witnessing an object without dissecting it.
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.
Vale, Dorian. Duchamp's Second Cut: Duchamp made the first cut. This is the second, and it bleeds differently.. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17056223
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)
Dorian Vale, Duchamp Second Cut, Post-Interpretive Criticism, readymade reinterpreted, Duchamp critique, art and ethics, sacred object theory, witness in art, Marcel Duchamp reanalysis, post-critical art theory, anti-irony in art, phenomenology of the object, ethics of viewing, non-interpretive criticism, presence in art, ontology of the readymade, conceptual art criticism, reanimating art objects, museum ethics, slow aesthetics, art and reverence
Language as a Blade: The Ethics of Precision in Post-Interpretive Criticism
(2025)
Dorian Vale
Language as a Blade
The Ethics of Precision in Post-Interpretive Criticism
A Treatise by Dorian Vale
Language reveals. But it also wounds.**
In this incisive treatise, Dorian Vale turns his attention to the sharpest tool in the critic’s arsenal — language — and the quiet violence it enacts when left unchecked. Language as a Blade explores the ethics of writing in the context of Post-Interpretive Criticism (PIC), exposing how words can either guard a work’s sanctity or slit its meaning wide open.
Vale develops the central premise that all criticism leaves a mark — but not all marks are made in reverence. The essay introduces critical concepts such as The Interpretive Incision, Lacerated Presence, and Forensic Reading, arguing that even well-meaning interpretations can displace, distort, or dominate the very thing they claim to witness. Through this lens, the work becomes not a subject to be carved open, but a body to be held — with care, clarity, and ethical precision.
Language as a Blade is not a rejection of criticism, but a reframing of it as custodial labor. Vale calls for a new art-critical vocabulary that replaces spectacle with stewardship, analysis with attention, and cleverness with moral proximity.
This treatise is a foundational text within the Post-Interpretive Movement, sharpening the very language we use to approach art, and reminding critics: every word is a blade. Use it as if the wound remains.
Vale, Dorian. Language as a Blade: The Ethics of Precision in Post-Interpretive Criticism. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17052152
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)
Language as a Blade, Dorian Vale, Post-Interpretive Criticism, ethics of art writing, language and trauma in art, art and violence, descriptive precision, critical restraint, moral aesthetics, semiotics in art criticism, ethics of naming, language as wound, poetic accuracy, reverent writing, critical interpretation ethics, witness-based criticism, presence in criticism, aesthetic linguistics, post-linguistic art theory, interpretive violence, art writing and harm