Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Everyday sound'

The starting point for this project was my MPhil thesis (University of Leeds, 1995) Aural Geographies. An Investigation of Sound In Everyday Space, which has as its subject matter the concept of sound in everyday space. The MPhil thesis argued that in considering everyday space more attention should be paid to the aural experience. The argument did not try to `bolt on' what is heard to what is seen. Rather it contemplated the intricate relationships between the visual and aural senses within everyday space. Following from the work which was undertaken for the MPhil it became clear that further and more substantial research into the area of sound and space was merited. This research has been carried out at the University of East London as a PhD programme, under the supervision of Professor Andrew Blake, who introduced me to numerous aspects of music analysis. The thesis acknowledges and expands upon the work on sound carried out by the limited number of social theorists who have addressed this issue such as Adorno, Attali and in particular Schafer and his work on soundscapes. There is discussion throughout of the inspirational ideas of John Cage. The aim of the thesis, which is explored through many inter-related pieces of analysis and empirical work, is to expand upon our knowledge of the role of sound in everyday life. The thesis contributes towards knowledge by providing many new insights about the soundworld and its place in human experience. As befits a thesis which centres on the aural, the research methods are also innovatory allowing the readers/listeners themselves to experience sound worlds. The thesis therefore relies 111 heavily on newly-developed new recording/mapping techniques, using high quality audio recordings which are then used to produce digital sound maps in the form of hypermedia made available on a CD-ROM. The thesis demonstrates how these maps enable us to comprehend some of the complex sensory processes associated with sound worlds. Sound worlds are the main focus here, and in particular the way in which sound worlds are constructed by individuals. Where the MPhil examined sound in public spaces, this thesis further reflects on that investigation before going on to investigate the sound worlds generated in the living room (a key everyday space). This enables us to hear/see how the sound worlds associated with the living room link up with other everyday spaces. The contention is that sound is crucial for the organisation and operation of everyday space Though the thesis is persuasive in indicating the importance of the aural in everyday life, the question arises as to how the relationship between the aural and the visual can be represented in academic work, and especially in the discipline of geography. This question is addressed in the thesis by the presentation of a number of specially developed aural terms, such as `sonic order' and `sound maps'. The thesis describes how people organise their activities around sonic order, and explains how conflicts arise over sonic order. The thesis concludes that sound maps are present in everyday space and that people use them to navigate everyday space. This sensitivity to sound spaces generates geographical (aur/imagin)ations, which are in turn subject to study from within the discipline of geography.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, 2009.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-176).
Nearly all listening environments-indoors and outdoors alike-are full of boundary surfaces (e.g., walls, trees, and rocks) that produce acoustic reflections. These reflections interfere with the direct sound arriving at a listener's ears, distorting the binaural cues for sound localization. Yet, human listeners have little difficulty localizing sounds in most settings. This thesis addresses fundamental questions regarding the neural basis of sound localization in everyday reverberant environments. In the first set of experiments, we investigate the effects of reverberation on the directional sensitivity of low-frequency auditory neurons sensitive to interaural time differences (ITD), the principal cue for localizing sound containing low frequency energy. Because reverberant energy builds up over time, the source location is represented relatively faithfully during the early portion of a sound, but this representation becomes increasingly degraded later in the stimulus. We show that the directional sensitivity of ITD-sensitive neurons in the auditory midbrain of anesthetized cats and awake rabbits follows a similar time course. However, the tendency of neurons to fire preferentially at the onset of a stimulus results in more robust directional sensitivity than expected, suggesting a simple mechanism for improving directional sensitivity in reverberation. To probe the role of temporal response dynamics, we use a conditioning paradigm to systematically alter temporal response patterns of single neurons. Results suggest that making temporal response patterns less onset-dominated typically leads to poorer directional sensitivity in reverberation. In parallel behavioral experiments, we show that human lateralization judgments are consistent with predictions from a population rate model for decoding the observed midbrain responses, suggesting a subcortical origin for robust sound localization in reverberant environments. In the second part of the thesis we examine the effects of reverberation on directional sensitivity of neurons across the tonotopic axis in the awake rabbit auditory midbrain. We find that reverberation degrades the directional sensitivity of single neurons, although the amount of degradation depends on the characteristic frequency and the type of binaural cues available. When ITD is the only available directional cue, low frequency neurons sensitive to ITD in the fine-time structure maintain better directional sensitivity in reverberation than high frequency neurons sensitive to ITD in the envelope. On the other hand, when both ITD and interaural level differences (ILD) cues are available, directional sensitivity is comparable throughout the tonotopic axis, suggesting that, at high frequencies, ILDs provide better directional information than envelope ITDs in reverberation. These findings can account for results from human psychophysical studies of spatial hearing in reverberant environments. This thesis marks fundamental progress towards elucidating the neural basis for spatial hearing in everyday settings. Overall, our results suggest that the information contained in the rate responses of neurons in the auditory midbrain is sufficient to account for human sound localization in reverberant environments.
by Sasha Devore.
Ph.D.

The aim of this thesis project has been to explore stages for performance that promotes situational displacement and questions cultural containment and inclusion. By implementing stages that merges with and leaks out in to the surrounding urban environment the aspiration has been to manipulate adjacent urban spaces and by doing so offer an alternative spatial imagination that provokes public consciousness and the possiblity of new subjective and collective engagement within our built environment.

This thesis presents a sociological investigation of the everyday relationship between Generation Y individuals and music through the mobilization of music technologies. First, it aims to reinscribe the digital age of music reception within a historical, cultural and material context, in order to provide an understanding of the multiple uses of music technologies (vinyl discs, CDs, magnetic cassette tapes, MP3 files). Rather than constituting a ‘revolution’, the digital age of music technologies is characterized by the coexistence of various artefacts. In looking at how recorded music has evolved from the advent of the phonograph to the latest digital technologies, I argue that the contemporary state of music can’t be separated from previous eras. Hence the evolution of music technologies, coupled with economic, demographic and cultural variables, points towards an increasing multiplication and fragmentation of music audiences. In this account of contemporary listening practices, I focus on Generation Y individuals (those born between the late 1970s and the early 1990s) who have been exposed to different music technologies throughout their lives. Born at the time of the magnetic cassette tapes and during the golden age of the CD, Generation Y listeners were also introduced to digital music files (MP3s) at a young age, and were among the first to illegally download music from the internet. Their uses of music technologies are differentiated by how they reflexively need music. Their practices correspond to a ‘circuit of practices’ (Maggauda 2011) between different music technologies that are utilized by listeners, and that help them create and manage different listening practices in their everyday lives. A key argument in this thesis is that the successive music technologies do not replace, but rather complement one another. Thus, in focusing on their characteristics, or ‘affordances’ (Gibson 1979; Hutchby 2001a; Bloomfield, Latham and Vurdubakis 2010), it is clear that mobilizing different music technologies enables listeners to create and manage an everyday ‘sound environment’ (Martin 1995). In fact, the ‘affordances’ of music technologies are contextualized within ‘pragmatic interactions’ (Dant 2008). Thus the meaning of music is contingent on the situation of the music listening practice. The sound environment is defined by a number of variables (place, time, music technology, music content, listener’s state of mind and so on) that interact within the timeframe of everyday life.
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School of Humanities
Arts, Education and Law
Full Text

In this essay I will describe my working method as an artist with a political perspective, talking about what political art can be and how it can have an effect. I also write about the development of my work, from the interest in the independent nature person to the contrasting role as a citizen. I contextualize my artistic method by raising some questions that I find interesting when dealing with the public in relation to my method; I am recording sound in the city.
Erla Silfá Þorgrímsdóttir

Este estudo propõe que nos debrucemos sobre o ambiente sonoro da cidade, a fim de investigar o que dele pode emergir, que seja chave para a compreensão da sociabilidade contemporânea em aglomerados urbanos. Investigamos o som como elemento central de um processo de territorialização, constituindo uma tática de apropriação do espaço público. O recorte apreendido foi o vendedor de um biscoito chamado chegadinho, os percursos que ele empreende para cobrir extensas áreas da cidade de Fortaleza em sua atividade, e o hábito de tocar um instrumento musical – o triângulo – para comunicar sua passagem e estabelecer contato com a população. Foram mobilizados informantes para localização desses eventos sonoros, formando um mapa de pontos de escuta. Paralelamente, ambulantes foram entrevistados e itinerários, traçados. Foi também realizada uma pesquisa histórica e memorial que forneceu um panorama da constituição daquele território e dos sons da capital a partir da primeira metade do século XX, assim como dos antecedentes, rebatimentos e reverberações da própria prática ambulante observada. Identificou-se que os vendedores abordados, quando em atividade, tendem a realizar um movimento do Centro em direção ao bairro Aldeota, reproduzindo ou acompanhando o vetor de deslocamento de residências e varejo característicos de camadas mais altas que se estabeleceu na dinâmica urbana de Fortaleza a partir da segunda metade do século XX. Foi possível perceber também a tendência de que os fluxos que emergiram dessas enunciações pedestres partem da zona oeste para a zona leste de Fortaleza, de áreas residenciais das camadas populares para áreas residenciais de camadas de média e alta renda. A partir da investigação, chegou-se à conclusão de que a passagem dos vendedores de chegadinho em Fortaleza se conforma como um padrão de fenômeno social associado à hierarquização do espaço físico como espaço social. O estudo se dedicou ao cotidiano, especialmente ao espaço banal de Milton Santos e à historicidade cotidiana de Michel de Certeau, para analisar como práticas humanas não apenas envolvem o uso do espaço mas também o criam. Assim como sugere Certeau, para quem a cultura popular é um conjunto móvel de táticas, os relatos de espaço coletados junto aos vendedores de chegadinho serviram de base de análise para entender o uso que esse grupo de sujeitos faz do repertório oferecido pelo sistema urbanístico – uso que é assumido como produção do espaço e que, para o autor, é uma atividade cultural de sujeitos não produtores de cultura convencionais.
This study proposes to look into the urban soundscape, to investigate what it may emerge from it that it might be the key to understanding the contemporary sociability in urban conglomerates. We investigated the sound as a central element of a process of territorialization, constituting a tactical appropriation of public space. The selected object was the seller of a cookie named chegadinho, the routes he takes to cover large areas of the city of Fortaleza with the intention of performing his job, and the habit of playing a musical instrument - the triangle - to communicate his passage and establish contact with the population. Informants were mobilized to locate these sound events forming a map of listening points. In addition, vendors were interviewed and routes traced. We also carried out a historical and memorial research that provided an overview of the constitution of that territory and sounds of the capital from the first half of the twentieth century as well as the background, repercussions and reverberations of the observed peddler activities. We identified that the approached vendors, when performing their activities, tend to make a move from Downtown towards the Aldeota neighborhood, reproducing or following up the displacement vector of residences and retail characteristic of higher classes that was established in the urban dynamic of Fortaleza from the second half of the twentieth century. It was also possible to notice the trend of the flows that emerged from these pedestrians utterances start from the west to the east of Fortaleza, from lower classes residential areas to the middle and high class residential areas. From the research, we came to the conclusion that the passage of the chegadinho vendors in Fortaleza conforms to a pattern of social phenomenon associated with the hierarchy of physical space and social space. The study is devoted to daily life, especially Milton Santos banal area and the everyday historicity of Michel de Certeau, to analyze how human practices not only involve the use of space but also create it. As Certeau suggests, for whom popular culture is a mobile set of tactics, the spacial stories collected from the chegadinho vendors formed the basis of analysis to understand the use that this group of subjects makes of the offered urban system's repertoire – a use which is assumed as production of the space, and that for the author is a cultural activity of subjetcs who are non-producers of conventional culture.

This PhD submission contains a select portfolio of practical works that have been created in answer to my research questions. This Thesis contextualises those works in a theoretical framework, linking them explicitly to the academic discourses with which they are inexorably bound. The introduction of this Thesis examines the research context in which research questions were formed. Evaluating a complicated previous project and describing a seminal, difficult encounter with the realm of sound art, this section explores some of the problems involved with presenting everyday sounds to audiences and proposes that these problems might in part be solved by forming new presentational strategies. Problems discussed include the difficulty of presenting everyday sounds to audiences who do not have access to the same information and knowledge that the work’s creator(s) have; presenting everyday sounds to audiences in conditions which offer limited scope for interaction and participation; and presenting everyday sounds to audiences which rely specifically on the primacy of those sounds alone to communicate a message to listeners. The questions that are formed in order to begin solving these problems include looking to feminist art practices of the 1960s/70s for inspiration regarding how theories concerning the value of everyday sounds might be practically applied to artmaking in domestic contexts; exploring ethnographic or Anthropological models to see how everyday sounds might be presented to audiences through investigative, participatory formats; investigating the possibilities for subverting or expanding the frameworks through which sound art is typically disseminated so that that territory might better accommodate the specific resonances and associations of everyday sounds; and proposing Internet-based strategies for presenting everyday sounds to audiences which are inherently intertextual, participatory, and social. The first Chapter of this Thesis examines how the home might be re-envisioned as a sound art site and brings the theories of John Cage together with feminist art thought to reinvent that space as a specifically sonic site. In the second Chapter, investigative anthropological approaches to the everyday are the focus of the discussion. This Chapter explores the context of radio as an inherently domestic medium, and discusses how it might be used as such for the presentation of everyday sounds to audiences. In the third Chapter of this thesis, I position my research in relation to the established tenets of contemporary sound art. Exploring ideas of subversion and critique, this Chapter looks at the proposed revisions to those established tenets which I have offered throughout my research. The final Chapter explores how I have used the Internet both in specific instances and more generally within my practice, connecting my research with emergent recording technologies and Internet platforms which allow everyday sounds to be socially shared. In the conclusion, I discuss what the key findings of exploring these questions have been.

Being storied; a lived experience of time discusses selected aspects of the research and studio practice undertaken in the course of the year 2008. Central to the process has been attending to the mundane acts of everyday life in the rural environment in which I live. It discusses actions such as walking, listening, collecting and documenting as well as experiments with a waste material, used baling plastic that is installed in various ways into the landscape. Parallel to this are investigations with sound and text, which have drawn on my varied musical background. There is an exploration of time - the idea of durée, human experience of time, quality of attention through intense focus, and memory as it accumulates over time. Art of the everyday has also been a key area of research. Life changing events have occurred during the course of the year. The death of parents has substantially influenced the work. The practice described is multi-faceted, involving the use of text, sound, photography and film.

O sons da cidade são objeto de reflexão recente. O final da década de 70 do século XXI é o período onde são identificadas obras fundadoras do estudo dos sons no e do espaço urbano na literatura vinculada às ciências sociais puras e aplicadas. Mesmo como objeto de reflexão recente e ainda pouco divulgado, os sons da cidade estão presentes em pesquisas, se não como foco central, como aspecto central da cidade e da vida na cidade. A presente dissertação propõe-se identificar a presença dos sons da cidade como temática de pesquisa no Planejamento Urbano e Regional (PUR) brasileiro através da busca de palavras-chave nos textos da área. São dois os momentos de análise: primeiro ao demarcar o alcance espaço temporal da pesquisa é lançado um olhar amplo ao PUR através do conjunto de trabalhos apresentados nas ultimas quatro edições dos encontros da ANPUR (X, XI, XII e XIII ENANPUR, ocorridos respectivamente nos anos 2003, 2005, 2007 e 2009) e das dissertações e teses defendidas no PROPUR/UFRGS desde a fundação do programa em 1970 até 2009. Em seqüência são tratados em profundidade os trabalhos apresentados no XIII ENANPUR (2009), evento onde se identificou a maior recorrência de palavras-chave com potencial associativo a temáticas sons da cidade. Esta análise permite inferir que os sons são tema cada vez mais freqüentes na área PUR, sendo que se destacam como formas de tratar os sons a apresentação destes como elementos constitutivos da experiência urbana, como práticas cotidianas, e como aspectos enunciados por serem apreendidos como um problema.
The sounds of the city are subject of recent discussion. The 70th decade of the XXI Century is the period where the founders works in the study of sounds and of urban space are identified in literature linked to the social sciences, both pure and applied. Even being object of recent reflection and still little known, the sounds of the city takes themselves present in researches, if not as a central focus, as a constituent aspect of the town and the life in this place. This dissertation aims to identify the presence of the city sounds as theme of research in the Brazilian field of Urban and Regional Planning thru keywords searching in the studies of this area. The moments of analysis were two: former, to demarcate the temporal scope, was launched a broad look at PUR covering both dissertations and theses presented in Post-Graduation Program on Urban and Regional Planning (PROPUR/UFRGS) from the foundation of this program in 1970 until 2009, and the set of papers presented in the last four editions of the meetings of National Association of Post-Graduation in Urban and Regional Planning - ANPUR (X, XI, XII and XIII ENANPUR, that occurred respectively in the years 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009).In sequence were treated in depth the papers presented at the XIII ENANPUR (2009), because the biggest recurrence of keywords with associative potential with the research theme named sounds of the city was identified in this event. This analysis allows us to infer that the sounds are increasingly frequent topic in the PUR area, being identified as ways of dealing with the sounds the presentation of them as a constitutive part of the urban experience, as everyday practices, and as a aspect that is enounce because is apprehended as a problem.

Med detta kandidatarbete vill vi skapa en koppling mellan vårt lyssnande och de osynliga processer som omringar oss i den digitala teknik vi använder vardagligen. Med Salomé Voegelins okonventionella syn på hur vi lyssnar på vår omgivning samt teorin kring AlgoRHYTHMS som utgångspunkt har vi genomgått en djupgående utforskning av denna relation.Genom att tillämpa Critical Making i en experimentell skapandeprocess med ambitioner´ att hitta en materialitet i det subliminala hittade vi istället ett samspel mellan två osynliga medier som tillsammans bildar en digital materialitet.
With this bachelor thesis our aim to establish a connection between our listening and the invisible processes that surrounds us inside the digital technology we use on a daily basis. With the unconventional views of Salomé Voegelin on how we listen to our surroundings together with the theory of AlgoRHYTHMS as a starting point we have undergone a in-depth exploration of this relation.By applying Critical Making in an experimental creative process with the ambition to find a materiality in the subliminal we instead found an interaction between two invisible mediums which together forms a digital materiality.

This dissertation seeks to expand our understanding of AIDS activism by adding to the historical register the stories of individuals who engaged in everyday acts of protest through their endorsement of unorthodox etiological and therapeutic responses to the disease. By focusing on the histories of two poorly understood New York City based organizations – the People with AIDS Coalition (PWAC) and Health Education AIDS Liaison (HEAL) – it both supplements and challenges scholarship which has to date focused predominately on the public protests organized by the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). Resisting a common scholarly bias that masks and marginalizes unorthodox, everyday acts of resistance, I map the larger sociocultural currents that gave birth to and sustained their expression amongst individuals living with, responding to, and dying from AIDS in New York City through the 1980s and 1990s. In so doing, I strive to achieve a true social history of AIDS better able to capture diverse expressions of patient resistance than those organized about professional norms and institutional taxonomies. It is my hope that its methodology and conclusions may not only deepen our understanding of the late 20th Century’s most studied epidemic disease, but indeed more broadly inform historical scholarship investigating patient engagement with other infectious and chronic diseases.

Sarah Pink (2009) e Michel Chion (2008) defendem que apesar de vivermos numa sociedade dominada pela visão em detrimento dos outros sentidos, o quotidiano deve ser entendido de forma multisenorial. Parti do conceito de etnografia sensorial desenvolvido por Pink (2009) e da teorização da música no quotidiano feita por Tia DeNora (2004), para investigar e discutir a importância que as paisagens sonoras domésticas assumem no quotidiano atual. Para esta investigação defini um estudo de caso, circunscrito a quatro habitantes da cidade de Lisboa. Procurei deste modo compreender a relevância dos sons na construção do quotidiano doméstico, funcionando como proporcionadores de conforto e do sentimento de lar, dando sentido à realização de rotinas e funcionando como uma prótese na construção da identidade. Esse papel que os sons assumem no quotidiano doméstico apenas é possível devido ao seu poder evocativo (Turkle 2007). Defendo, durante este processo e neste tipo de investigação, uma atitude de escuta evocativa, em que os participantes convidados pelo investigador, fazendo uso da audição, da memória sensorial e da imaginação conseguem trazer até si o poder que os sons, que fazem e/ou fizeram parte das paisagens sonoras da história individual de cada um, têm de os transportar para sítios e situações mais ou menos distantes. Este poder é possível devido à criação de significados e saberes construídos a partir das relações do indivíduo com o contexto onde eles foram experienciados. A partir desse poder evocativo dos sons em relação com o contexto, são produzidas e encadeadas rotinas que constituem o quotidiano e a vida social. Com base nestas premissas e naquilo que foi a minha experiência do quotidiano dos quatro participantes, concebi quatro composições sonoras que foram depois usadas por cada um deles na construção de novas rotinas e experiências, levando a questões sobre a categorização entre música, arte sonora e música ambiente, levantadas a partir da direção do foco auditivo e da atenção que foi dada a estes objetos e a maneira como cada um deste indivíduos interagiu com eles. Esta dissertação pretende assim demonstrar como as paisagens sonoras são elementos chave na construção do ambiente sonoro e do quotidiano domésticos e como podem ser usadas na construção de novos modelos de comunicação e produtos audiovisuais, concebidos com o propósito de serem um elemento de preenchimento e de decoração do espaço doméstico.
Sarah Pink (2009) and Michel Chion (2008) argue that although we live in a society dominated by vision to the detriment of other senses, everyday life should be understood in a multisenorial way. I started with the concept of sensorial ethnography developed by Pink (2009) and the theorization of music in everyday life by Tia DeNora (2004), to investigate and theorize the importance that the domestic soundscapes of four people with whom I have a relation of friendship, inhabitants in Lisbon, can have in the construction of the domestic daily life, functioning as comfort and home makers, giving meaning to the performance of routines and functioning as a prosthesis in the construction of the identity. This role that sounds assume in domestic everyday life is only possible because of its evocative power (Turkle 2007). During this process and in this type of investigation, I advocate an evocative listening attitude in which the research participants invited by the researcher, making use of hearing, sensory memory and imagination, can bring to themselves the power that sounds, which make and / or were part of the soundscapes of each individual history have, to transport them to places and situations, more or less, distant. This power of sounds is possible due to the creation of meanings and knowledge built from the relationships of the individual with the context where they were experienced. From this evocative power of sounds, in relation to context, are produced and chained routines that constitute daily and social life. Based on these premises and in what was my daily experience of the four participants, I conceived four sound compositions that were later used by each of them as any other object in the construction of new routines and experiences, leading to questions about the categorization between music, sound art, and ambient music raised from the direction of auditory focus and the attention paid to these objects and the way in which each of these individuals interacted with them. This dissertation aims, although based on four specific cases, to show how soundscapes are key elements in the construction of the sound environment and domestic everyday life and how they can be used in the construction of new audiovisual products and models of communication, designed for the purpose of being an element of filling and decorating the domestic space.

This inquiry has been concerned with identifying aesthetic languages that make visible relationships and processes that connect body and world beyond the surface of the skin. It hypothesised that aesthetic language provides a material connection which co-enables this exchange. Examining the aesthetic dimension of the embodiment-environment intersection, this inquiry reasoned, could make tangible the material continuum generated through transient processes of living. The key sites of the home and the landscape framed the scope of this research. The methodology used to undertake this research combined multi-artform practice spanning sculpture, video, installation, and drawing, visual diary-led observation and critical reflection, theoretical research, and critical engagement with the work of other artists and practitioners working in two- and three-dimensions. An examination of subjectivity and of aesthetics as an intersection of body and world centres this research. A new materialist perspective provides a logic and drive for scrutinising this intersection. New materialism unsettles traditional assumptions about the passivity of matter. It provides a framework for re-imagining the materiality of the world and the position of human subjectivity within it: a re-imagining, this research contends, that the current ecological crisis demands. The notion of aesthetics used in this inquiry is an embodied aesthetics that refers to the meaningful sensuousness that adheres and orients the body in the world. Ideas from John Dewey and the field of everyday aesthetics informed critical engagement in this embodied aesthetics through creative practice. This approach enabled a dialogue between special aesthetic experiences, everyday aesthetics, and habitual perception to emerge in the research. This research used aesthetics to examine how spaces are demarcated and different experiences enabled. Over time, the home as it is situated within the landscape became analogous for the body’s intertwining with the environment. In this context, the material passage of water through the home provided a powerful and instructive embodiment of this intertwining, revealing both the demarcation and the continuity of disparate spaces. The final body of artwork is an installation that integrates the key aesthetic languages developed through this inquiry to form a three-dimensional river that is animated with the everyday sounds of water and the textures of domestic warmth. It is titled Oikos, the Greek root for ecology. ‘Oikos’ means ‘whole house and dwelling place’. The artwork reflects the multi-layering of aesthetic relationships through which our bodies fuse with this world.