This study explores how classical painting techniques, particularly those rooted in the Renaissance tradition, can produce illusions of depth that vary with the viewer's position. Focusing on a work rich in soft shading and subtle tonal transitions, we investigate how movement across the frontal plane influences the perception of spatial structure. A sequence of high-resolution photographs was taken from slightly offset viewpoints, simulating natural viewer motion. Using image alignment and pixel-wise difference mapping, we reveal perceptual shifts that suggest the presence of latent three-dimensional cues embedded within the painted surface. The findings offer visual and empirical support for concepts such as and dynamic engagement, where depth is constructed not solely by the image, but by the interaction between the artwork and the observer. Our approach demonstrates how digital analysis can enrich art historical interpretation, offering new insight into how still images can evoke the illusion of spatial presence.

This article builds on the argument that design for complex interactive systems should shift from creating transactional interactions to ‘organizing relational complexity’. Grounded in agential realism, we reframe computational agents from black-box predictors to material-discursive apparatuses. We utilize a standard reservoir computing architecture, conceptualized here as the Affective Reservoir, as a diffractive instrument to visualize the co-constitution of gameplay. In doing so, we replace the teleological concept of a fixed ‘goal’ with the agential realist concept of a ‘yearning’: the continuous negotiation of situated tension. By analyzing the reservoir’s dynamics, we show how coherent regimes of interaction emerge within the agent’s internal state space, not from error minimization but from Dynamical Friction; the intense interference pattern generated when the agent’s Re-membered Inertia (habitual momentum) resists the Affective Gradients (situational forcing) of its environment. Ultimately, we argue that by orchestrating an agent’s capacity to be affected via its resistance to and resonance with the environment, designers can move beyond transactional logic to sustain emergent relational phenomena.

This article builds on the argument that design for complex interactive systems should shift from creating linear transactional interactions toward organizing relational complexity. Grounded in Karen Barad’s agential realism, we argue that a designer’s role can benefit from not predefining interactions but from curating the material-discursive conditions under which meaningful relations can emerge. To explore the empirical and temporal dimensions of this practice, we conducted an exploratory workshop setting the conditions for emergent gameplay dynamics and discussions on agential realist anticipation. Participants utilized a custom-designed game and built their own physical controllers to anticipate and adapt to shifting gameplay conditions. Our results demonstrate how alterations in relational constraints, rather than explicit pre-programmed goals, drove the emergence of non-predefined gameplay rhythms. The findings provide empirical grounding for an agential realist understanding of anticipation, showing that an interactive system’s identity lies in its unfolding processual patterns rather than a static final state. Based on these findings, we propose three design principles for further exploration: Design for Relational Emergence, Design for Re-membering, and Design for Emergent Patterns. Consequently, we conclude by outlining a conceptual approach for non-linear computational architectures, drawing on principles from Enactive AI and reservoir computing.

With this paper we want to contribute to both anticipation studies and game studies by addressing how futures get made. By exploring the concept of anticipation in relation to game design, using Karen Barad's agential realism, we argue that anticipation should not be confused with prediction but rather seen as a fundamental force that shapes our experience of the world.

By using agential realism as a framework and games as context, we show how subject/object relations are continuously (re)configured through intra-actions, and how agency arises in specific situations. An experimental game, Lightning Dice illustrates how anticipation and measurements interact to create different future possibilities. By changing the game's rules and measurement methods, it demonstrates how different patterns and power dynamics can emerge.

The paper concludes by revisiting a design approach called re-verb, outlining a collaborative design workshop in which participants will explore anticipation and agency. The workshop aims to spark questions and further research on anticipation with respect to AI.

With the advent of AI- and robot-systems, the current Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) paradigm, which treats interaction as a transactional exchange, is increasingly insufficient for complex socio-technical systems. This paper argues for a shift toward an agential realist perspective, which understands interaction not as an exchange between separate entities, but as a phenomenon continuously enacted through dynamic, material-discursive practices known as ‘intra-actions’. Through a diffractive reading of agential realism, HCI, complex systems theory, and an empirical case study of a touring exhibition on skateboarding culture, this paper explores an alternative approach. A key finding emerged from a sound-recording workshop when a participant described the recordings not as “how it sounds,” but as “how it feels” to skate. The finding reveals the limits of traditional HCI and it illustrates how interacting parts are co-constituted through the intra-actions of entangled agencies. An argument is made that design for interactive complex systems should change from focusing on causal transactional interaction towards organizing relational complexity, which is staging the conditions for a rich scope of emergent encounters to unfold. The paper concludes by suggesting further research into non-causal explanation and computation.

As the bridge between intelligence and action, decision-making reflects how humans adaptively interact with complex world. Thus, modeling decision-making process have become a key component for AI agents to handle dynamic environment. In our previous work, human decision-making process was modeled on a Decision Map, in which human decision strategies (in terms of individual or a group) are characterized by a decision distribution. In this paper, we apply the personal Decision Map with Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm to generate action sequences as a stochastic process. Based on the generated sequence, a Markovian transition matrix is estimated as a dynamic model for artificial agents to generate behaviors. The proposed method is inspired by the theory of agential realism, where the phenomenon of lightning is illustrated and manifested that its path is not fully random, but indeterminate caused by electromagnetic factors in the environment. In this sense, the generation of action sequence is considered as a lightning path, and different Markovian transition matrices can configure the dynamic indeterminacy for generating agent behaviors. 

Inspired by technoscientific insights from Karen Barad, Donna Haraway and Gilles Deleuze, this paper will discuss affect and intimacy and how they fuel generative places. The paper starts off through a short story about a series of events around a square in Europe. The events taking place at the square serve as input to discuss (digital) media in terms of effects and affects. Our short story recurs throughout the text, providing real-life examples in our discussion. By introducing landing sites (Arakawa & Gins, 2002, pp. 5) and happy objects (Ahmed, 2010), we present an alternative on how to understand what happens when (digital) media is made part of our everyday lives. This is in contrast to how (digital) media traditionally have been studied as something separate from the natural and the real, and as artifacts aimed to solve predefined problems with readymade affects and effects. The paper wraps up by combining landing sites and happy objects in an attempt to create a theoretical foundation to a design framework for a recently started research cooperation with a regional museum. The framework emphasize on understandings of affect and intimacy in generative places.

Sustainability is a priority objective for the Swedish municipal government that forms the setting for this paper. Based on the triple bottom line the government has adopted an action program with associated sustainable development indicators (SDIs), designated to measure and act as a driving-force for sustainable change. As a result from the action program, almost all employees and elected have group-wise undergone a participatory project with semi-structured conversations based on the SDIs, supported by moderators. Processes of change were expected to arise as participants ‘learned’ about sustainability from the conversations. An evaluation of the project has on the one hand shown that the conversation-based approach was successful in generating knowledge. On the other hand ‘real change’ was found to be missing, indicating a gap between knowledge and action. Likewise, EEA’s (European Environment Agency) second ‘late-lessons’-report indicate such a gap [7]. By turning to Karen Barad’s agential realism [3], the gap between knowledge and action is discussed as a representationalist misconception of separating epistemology from ontology. The discussion then makes a retrospect of thing and indicator, where the etymology of the words leads to an elaboration of indicators in sustainable development. SDIs are reconfigured, no longer representations but the engagement of agents (human and non-human) in ’pointing out sustainability’, which implies a redesign of current SDIs. Sustainable development is suggested as the staging of locally situated sustainability Things, in which digital media may be able to expose the agency of SDIs.

Hållbarhet är ett prioriterat mål för den svenska kommun som utgör grundkontexten för denna artikel. Baserat på "triple bottom line" har myndigheten antagit ett handlingsprogram med tillhörande indikatorer för hållbar utveckling. Indikatorerna är tänkta att användas för att mäta och fungera som en drivkraft för ett hållbart förändringsarbete. Som en följd av handlingsprogrammet har i princip samtliga anställda och förtroendevalda gruppvis deltagit i ett projekt med semistrukturerade samtal baserade på hållbarhetsindikatorerna. Förändringsprocesser förväntades uppstå allt eftersom samtalen fortlöpte och deltagarna "lärt sig" om hållbar utveckling. En utvärdering av projektet har visat att den samtalsbaserade metodiken har varit framgångsrik i att skapa kunskap. Å andra sidan har "verklig förändring" visat sig utebli. Detta tyder på ett glapp mellan kunskap och handling. Samtidigt visar EEA:s (European Environment Agency) andra "late lessons-rapport" ett liknande glapp [7]. Genom Karen Barads agential realism [3] kan glappet mellan kunskap och handling förstås som sprungen ur en representationalistisk uppfattning om en separation mellan epistemologi och ontologi. Artikelns diskussion ger en historisk återblick för begreppen "ting" och "indikator", där etymologin för orden leder till en rekonfiguration av konceptet indikatorer för hållbar utveckling. Indikatorer blir då inte längre representationer, utan ett aktivt engagemang av agenter (människor och icke-människor) i att "peka ut hållbarhet". Hållbar utveckling presenteras till slut som iscensättningen av lokalt belägna hållbarhetsTing, där både människor och ting har agens.

Utgångspunkten för min forskning är ett upplevt glapp i IT- och e-förvaltningsutveckling. Policys och strategier har långtgående visioner om hur IT kan och kommer att förändra allt ifrån vårt vardagliga arbete och privatliv till att förändra samhällsstrukturer och maktordningar. För att möta detta görs stora investeringar varje år inom kommunal IT. Ändå är upplevelsen att ”det händer inget”. Syftet med forskningen är att presentera förståelser för abstrakta och komplexa ting som e-förvaltning, innovation (förändringsarbete), design och infrastruktur. Forskningen presenterar olika perspektiv för dessa ting och utmanar normerade förståelser för dem. Ett exempel på detta är hur infrastruktur med en normativ förståelse som abstrakt och passiv också visar sig vara påtagligt konkret och performativt. Målsättningen är sedan att dessa förståelser skall ligga till grund för att praktisera en IT- och e-förvaltningsutveckling, som inte känns ”glappande” eller stagnerad. Den forskning, som presenteras och prövas i denna avhandling, är situerad i en kommunkontext och bygger på deltagande aktionsforskning. Deltagande aktionsforskning innebär, att jag har försökt att reflexivt praktisera forskning i syfte att skapa kunskap och förändring tillsammans med andra och direkt i de samanhang jag har verkat. Aktionsforskningen innebär, att jag inte forskar om utan med olika kommunala praktiker. Denna typ av forskning är inte knuten till en specifik metod utan behöver anpassas och utvecklas i sitt sammanhang. I detta ingår en återkommande utmaning av befintlig verksamhetspraktik och förgivettaganden, inte minst mina egna. Licentiatavhandlingen, som är ”ett steg på vägen”, handlar mer om förståelser än om förklaringar. Avhandlingen är skriven som en form av sammanläggningsavhandling, som bygger på fyra artiklar och en delvis fristående kappa. Mitt skrivande och därmed den text, som utgör avhandlingen är ”essäistisk”. Essäformen har gjort det möjligt för mig att använda avhandlingsskrivandet som en fortsatt prövning av de olika perspektiv, som artiklarna presenterar.