Research Catalogue

In our exploration of the spatiality of language and, specifically, the activation of the site where writing "makes" rather than takes place, we propose a multilayered experience of the book as an object, as well as a geometrical, topological, and especially performative space, which we understand as an "ecology of the book". Extending this practice beyond the book's margins, yet simultaneously embedding it within the material and technical affordances of the book’s medial articulations, we evoke a "new" ecology—one unfolding alongside the interaction-landscape and its actual and invented inhabitants, as well as the techniques of its production. Texts, drawings, figures, figurations, methods, and both human and non-human authors weave together the heterogeneous texture of the book’s "new" ecology. In our monographs, "Fauna. Language Arts and the New Order of Imaginary Animals" (2018), "Flora. Language Arts in the Age of Information" (2020), and "Fiction Fiction. Language Arts and the Practice of Spatial Storytelling" (2023, De Gruyter/Edition Angewandte), we explore and map the territory of language arts. This approach manifests, on the one hand, through the transgression of traditional scientific methodologies and a shift in models—from thinking-of-the-other toward thinking-with-the-other, and on the other hand, through the agency of our eponymous characters, Fauna and Flora, who not only title our books but also act as conceptual operators—figures that navigate, perform, and activate the very spaces our texts explore. Applying Michel Serres' methodology of thinking by inventing personae, these characters move within and percolate through the margins of text (written, figural) and space (concrete, fictional), reconfiguring the notion of authorship and placing literary texts and digital drawings within the frame(less) collective of more-than-human and more-than-organic actants.

This conference will explore how emerging technologies—especially generative AI and blockchain—reimagine the current notions of creative agency. Conveners: Adam Łukawski, Martin Zeilinger Artificial intelligence (AI), with its learning algorithms operating at scale, can mimic human creative agency, and blockchain technologies, through smart contracts, can augment works of art with more or less autonomous behaviours that correspond to the agency of human participants in socio-economic interactions. While such developments can destabilise traditional notions of ownership, provenance, and agency in musical practices, they can also empower artists. Those working creatively with sound and music are today increasingly becoming system-builders and curators of musical ecosystems, turning their focus from the creation of singular, standalone musical works (in any traditional sense of the term) to the design of systems capable of generating artworks. This suggests an evolving role of music-producing systems today: from fixed intellectual constructs and creative expressions to dynamic, more-than-human technological networks that not only actively participate in the production of artworks with increasing levels of agency, but which can themselves be considered as artworks that constitute generative, expressive assemblages. This shift is further emphasised in distributed contexts, where varying levels of automation blur the boundaries between human and non-human contributions, creating environments where agency is negotiated and shared across diverse actants.

Olskroksmotet Blues är den avslutande delen i mitt autoetnografiska projekt som i olika former pågick mellan 2014-2021, och där jag bland annat publicerat två artiklar (Kroon 2015 och 2016). RC expositionen består av tre delarbeten - arkivblad, arkivmönster och göteborg grid – jämte bakgrund och teori & metod. Utifrån min historia som fosterbarn söker jag fånga såväl mina egna erfarenheter och uttryck, som att sätta dessa i ljuset av större samhälleliga skeenden. Olskroksmotet Blues var också del av Mikrohistoriers fysiska grupputställning på Konstfack, Stockholm i september 2021.

Hauntmark Theory The Lingering Weight of Words A Treatise by Dorian Vale What if language didn’t just describe art — but scarred it? In this piercing treatise, Dorian Vale introduces Hauntmark Theory, a philosophical framework that confronts the violence embedded in language when used to name, contain, or explain a work of art. The theory proposes that every word leaves a residue, a trace that either preserves presence or disfigures it — and that careless interpretation is not neutral, but haunting. Drawing on post-linguistic philosophy, trauma theory, and Post-Interpretive Criticism (PIC), this work reframes criticism as a moral event, where each act of description leaves behind a mark: some delicate, some damaging, all irreversible. It introduces key concepts such as Hauntmarks, Linguistic Overreach, Descriptive Violence, and the Silent Custodian, arguing that the deepest form of reverence lies not in what we say about art — but in what we choose not to say. Where previous treatises in the Post-Interpretive Movement reimagined the role of the viewer and the critic, Hauntmark Theory addresses the unspoken aftermath of critique: how words linger in the air around the work, often louder than the work itself. This is not a call for silence. It is a call for sacred restraint — for a new vocabulary of witness, where words do not eclipse the art, but kneel beside it. Vale, Dorian. Hauntmark Theory: The Lingering Weight of Words. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17052531 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. Hauntmark Theory, Dorian Vale, Post-Interpretive Criticism, art criticism ethics, language and art, trauma in art writing, aesthetic linguistics, descriptive violence, semiotics of witnessing, residue in criticism, moral restraint in language, art and silence, linguistic harm in interpretation, reverent art criticism, critical writing and ethics, sacred language, philosophical aesthetics, phenomenology of critique, ethics of naming, poetic restraint, custodial criticism 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)

Stillmark Theory A Treatise on Presence, Vanishing, and the Discipline of the Fleeting By Dorian Vale Can something fleeting leave a mark deeper than permanence?** In this paradigm-shifting treatise, Dorian Vale presents Stillmark Theory, a foundational pillar in the Post-Interpretive Movement and a radical aesthetic philosophy that places presence above permanence, and vanishing above possession. Stillmark is the name given to a mark that does not remain physically, but remains ethically — a residue of presence that lives on not through its duration, but through the way it demanded your attention. Like a footprint in water, or a pause in ritual, it is a mark felt rather than seen. And it asks not: what did you see? but were you there when it passed? This treatise explores how the fleeting — the ephemeral artwork, the disappearing gesture, the unsaved voice — disciplines the viewer into reverent attention. Through philosophical engagement with ritual, silence, and the aesthetics of loss, Vale outlines how fleeting experiences, if witnessed properly, can alter perception more profoundly than enduring monuments. Stillmark Theory is not about minimalism or aesthetic reduction. It is about ethical witnessing: the ability to stay present before something that will not wait for you to interpret it. It urges a return to encounter, to stillness, to restraint — and proposes a new mode of value: not what lasts, but what requires moral presence while it lives. This is a crucial contribution to Post-Interpretive Criticism, and a necessary framework for curators, critics, artists, and institutions seeking to engage works of art that resist documentation, defy collection, and demand presence without possession. Vale, Dorian. Stillmark Theory: A Treatise on Presence, Vanishing, and the Discipline of the Fleeting. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17051528 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. Stillmark Theory, Dorian Vale, Post-Interpretive Criticism, presence in art, vanishing aesthetics, ephemeral art theory, discipline of the fleeting, witnessing the temporary, aesthetic philosophy of presence, art and impermanence, sacred vanishing, fleeting art criticism, minimal art ethics, ritual in art, memory and disappearance, absence in aesthetics, presence-based value, art of witnessing, non-permanent art theory, anti-collectible aesthetics, slow attention, temporality in art 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 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)