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The concept of identity has been ever-present since humans have been living in societies. People have identified themselves with their work, their families, their church, or religion as well as with their Nation or state. All of these identities that people have adopted throughout time have had various impacts on how those people have seen and understood themselves as well as how they have orga nized themselves and acted. As such an influential concept it has been of particular interest to many artists, which have explored it in their own artworks and have also analyzed and re searched it as well. This research relies on the findings and works that have come before, such as Bachelor’s and Master’s Theses, research papers, lectures, ex pert interviews, articles, books as well as on artworks that are informative and relevant to the topic of Identity. The aim of the thesis is to contribute to the awareness of the impact of Identity, show its importance in the field of arts and explain how the author is playing with identity as an artist and a storyteller and to open a semiotic and symbolic discus sion of the author’s artistic work. The findings show the complexities of human identities and how particular indi viduals have creatively formed and shaped their identities in order to serve them. As our identities are constantly in the process of change, and while we continue to ask who we are, we should not forget who is it that we want to become.

Uudet teknologiat otetaan vastaan usein tunneperäisesti, toiset ovat kiinnostuneita, toiset epäilevät. Uudet keksinnöt ja teknologiat oikein käytettyinä avaavat meille uuden maailman, tehostavat toimintoja, lisäävät luovuutta ja mahdollistavat asioita. Tämän työn tilaajat olivat sovelluskehitysyhteisö Viastar ja kulttuurialan toimija Carnivale. Tilaajia kiinnostavat uudet teknologiat kulttuuriperinnön sovelluksissa ja hankkeissa. Tämä kehittämistyö tutki ja tarkasteli, miten voimme paremmin hyödyntää uusia teknologioita sukututkimuksen apuna. Työssä tutkittiin, miten voimme yhdistää perinteisen ja DNA-analyysiin pohjautuvan sukututkimuksen. Tässä työssä käytiin myös läpi muita uusia teknologioita, joita voidaan hyödyntää sukuhistorian ja kulttuuriperinnön tallennuksessa, tutkimuksessa sekä myös yleisemmin kulttuurituotantojen tukena. Kehittämistyötä tehtiin tutkimalla ja kokeilemalla uusia teknologioita sekä käymällä läpi laajasti opinnäytetyön tekijän sukuun liittyviä sukututkimuksia ja niiden kautta esiin tullutta kulttuuriperintöä, vanhoja kuvia, karttoja ja paikkoja. Geneettisen sukututkimuksen avulla tutkittiin isä- ja äitilinjoja eri tekniikoilla ja jäljitettiin eri sukujen kulkureittejä menneiden vuosisatojen aikoina. Tässä opinnäytetyössä analysoitiin tekijän omasta suvusta teetettyjen DNA-testien tuloksia ja osoitettiin, miten ne toimivat käytännössä sukututkimuksen välineinä. Tässä työssä käsiteltyjä muita kulttuurituotannon tekniikoita olivat drone-kuvaus, lidar-kuvaus, virtuaali- ja lisätty todellisuus. Tutkimusmenetelminä käytettiin aineistotutkimusta, DNA-testejä, havainnointia, haastattelua ja kenttätyötä kokeilemalla käytännössä erilaisissä ympäristöissä uusia teknisiä välineitä. Työn tuloksina todettiin, että uudet tekniikat toimivat sukututkimuksessa ja kulttuuriperinnön tallentamisessa erittäin hyvin. Uudet tekniikat avaavat uusia sisältöjä ja osallistavat kulttuurin tuottajan sekä kuluttajan tuotantoihin syvällisesti. Toimenpide-ehdotuksena esitettiin, että sukututkimuksessa ja kulttuurituotannoissa otettaisiin rohkeasti uusia tekniikoita laajasti käyttöön toiminnan parantamiseksi ja tehostamiseksi. New technologies are often embraced emotionally: others show interest and others doubt. It is a fact that new inventions and technologies, when used properly, open up new worlds for us, streamline operations, increase creativity and enable things. This thesis was commissioned by the application development company Viastar and the cultural sector enterprise Carnivale. Both commissioners are interested in new technologies on cultural heritage applications and projects. The objective of this study was to explore and examine how new technologies can better be utilized in genealogy. The study explored how to combine traditional and genetic genealogy research. It also reviewed some other new innovative technologies that can be used on cultural heritage research and in cultural productions. The study was carried out by exploring and experimenting new technologies and going through extensive genealogy and cultural heritage materials, old images, maps, and places that have emerged through genealogy research. In terms of genetic genealogy, lineages have been studied using different DNA techniques and the pathways of different genera have been traced over the past centuries. The study analyzed the DNA research results from the author's own lineage and show how they work in practice as a tool for genealogy. Other cultural production techniques covered in this study include drone imaging, lidar imaging, as well as virtual and augmented reality. The research methods used were document analysis, observation, interview and fieldwork by experimenting new technical tools in different environments. The results indicate that the new technologies work very well in genealogy and in saving cultural heritage. New technologies open up new content and deeply involve producers, researchers and cultural consumers in productions. The thesis proposes that genealogists and cultural sector make widespread use of new technologies to improve and increase their efficiency.

The goal of this thesis was to examine how collaborative projects can be used to facilitate communication and storytelling between generations. Encouraging and developing cross-generationally interactive activities have become increasingly relevant as family structures change and generations diverge. Continually improving and finding new approaches ensures that family heritage and legacies continue to be communicated. Art has been used as a documentational and communicative tool for centuries. The research presented in this thesis shows that collaborative art can incite valuable intergenerational communication and that intergenerationally interactive projects have the potential to preserve familial legacies and cultural heritage, as well as improve general well-being. A combination of elements from analysed artworks and findings on intergenerational legacy work was exhibited in the thesis project Golden Places (2022). Golden Places is a four-part artwork made together with the artist’s grandparents. The working process and outcomes are presented in the form of a case study. The case study demonstrates that collaborative art can be used to bond the grandchild and grandparent and successfully produce art that embodies family stories and legacy. This thesis, specifically Golden Places, is intended to motivate and instruct others to partake in similar projects.

The goal of the thesis study was to create a culture travel concept based on the Finnish-Karelian mythology and the national epic Kalevala. The Kalevala kartalle -project was a pilot to evaluate and demonstrate the concept for Japanese tourists during 01/2020-12/2021. The Stefan Moritz ́s service design model was utilized as the methodology to conduct the product-oriented thesis. Cultural heritage raises emotions and opinions how to utilize it. Although the mutual opinion is, that traditions and immaterial heritage are everyone ́s right and at everyone ́s responsibility, the praxis seems more complicated than that. The tourism industry has developed travel and leisure experiences inspired by cultural elements, stories, and myths. Nevertheless, the Finnish folklore is not widely known among international tourists. Stories are an impactful means to engage, educate and immerse the audience during the travel. Cultural routes demonstrate a journey through time and space; the heritage of a country and its culture contributes to a living and shared cultural heritage. The concept of the travel route was developed in co-operation with stakeholders from the public and private sector and other relevant organizations. Two pilot groups were created: one in the capital region of Finland and the other one in the region of Kainuu. These destinations created the touch points of the route, from Helsinki ending to Kuhmo city. The outcome of the pilot project was the concept of the Kalevala kartalle -culture travel route, digitally and on-site. Two seminars were organized with Visit Finland, a digital trip was produced and piloted for Japanese travellers and the concept launch was organized for the Finnish audience. The Kalevala kartalle -project gained a lot of attention in the media and was raised to the public discussion in March 2021. The IPR conflict with Kalevala Koru Oy underlines the importance and relevancy of mutual understanding of the use of cultural heritage in a commercial context. The development of new services with an ecosystem of stakeholders requires continuous work and financing. The conclusion of the pilot project is that the Japanese market has an interest in travel experiences combining the learning aspect of local culture and nature activities.

Understanding linear perspective is a fundamental skill when the goal is to create the illusion of depth on a flat surface. This requires a lot of analytical thinking, spatial awareness, and good hand-eye coordination. The learning process can feel very technical and distant from the concept of figurative art, and this is one of the main reasons students skip the fundamentals, only to come back later after realizing how important it is. This thesis goes through the basic principles of linear perspective which form the basis for the presented constructive drawing method. Learning to visualize the three-dimensional nature of objects is at the core of this method. The purpose of this thesis was to demonstrate the importance of understanding linear perspective as a part of the creative process when drawing human figures. The focus was to show how to constructively draw the fundamental framework of human figures rather than create detailed and fully rendered artwork. The findings indicated that the tools and methods presented in this thesis can help to create an efficient and progressive learning process. Students and professionals involved with representational drawing can use this thesis as a guideline for the study of drawing human figures in perspective.

This thesis will describe the Great Bell Temple's desire to promote tourism at the Great Bell Temple Museum by designing and selling souvenirs with unique cultural significance, and to attract more visitors to the temple through popular cultural and creative products. A cultural tourism product can be defined as anything that is based on cultural tourism resources and is offered to tourists participating in cultural tourism to satisfy their cultural needs and desires. The question around whether tourism souvenirs can promote tourism in Great Bell Temple. This thesis studies the history of tourist souvenirs, development trends, the development of tourist souvenirs in China, the situation of the Great Bell Temple itself and the development of tourist souvenirs in the Forbidden City. The thesis uses a quantitative survey, using a questionnaire tool for data collection, to draw conclusions. This quantitative study concludes that tourism can be promoted when the design features of tourism souvenirs include a unique culture, are cost effective, have adequate promotion and marketing methods, and have commemorative and collectible value.

This thesis focused on the issues of gender inequality in the Greek art field. The issues of gender inequality are visible throughout the history of art not just Greek but global due to the immense effect that Greek culture has had upon the development of Western civilization and its values through its Hellenic expansion. Hence, these societal issues are not just limited to Greece but are ubiquitous in the majority of the world. The repression of women and patriarchal hegemony are in need of attention in order to evoke changes to our future society. The thesis investigates the causes of inequality, looks at art history through a contemporary gender focused lens, discusses the importance of gender equality and establishes working methods that lead to progression and alteration of archaic values. The research methods chosen are analysis and of professional literature like books and articles relevant to the topic and semiotic analysis. The languages of sources used are English, French, German, Russian, Ukrainian and some limited sources in Greek. This thesis additionally contains a discussion and evaluation of its practical part. It is a creative project based on the researched topic and is titled “Story of a Maiden”. Its discussion serves further to consolidate the importance of women in the society as well as bring attention to how historically underappreciated the women of Greece have been. It utilises the form of performance that has been prior proven to be an effective method in both actionism and activism.

“Mother and Son” portrays the relationship between the photographer Kasper Dalkarl and his mother. It’s a collaboration between the two, consisting of staged and semi-staged photographs pictured in places personally meaningful to the photographer, or to them both. In 2015 my father died, an event that in many ways changed the dynamic in the relationship with my mother. The shared experience of losing a close family member brought us closer together, and, over time, an equal and mutually supporting bond was formed in contrast to the traditional relationship between the parent and the child. Herein lies what the series aims to explore – the portrayal of the relationship between mother and son. With the aid of photography, this Master’s Thesis aims to not only explore and show a relationship between a mother and a son, but also to relate it to how mothers and their adult children have been portrayed throughout art history as well as by other contemporary artists. With this project I wanted to focus on what I have, rather than on what I have lost. In short, this body of work was made by me, for me and for my mother, in what became a personal series of images. kasperdalkarl.com

Dear Artist, is about becoming a visual and conceptual artist. It is an artistic journey, from theory to practice. The text explores an iterative cycle of an artistic series called Journal intime (2022 –). This ongoing series, Journal intime, is based on private visual and textual archives of an artist, her diaries. This Thesis is an attempt to formulate a diaristic practice, a dialogue between past and present, towards a series of emotional and conceptual installations. Journal intime is based on a concept of a camera as a psychological tool, and photographs as tactile and emotional objects. Dear Artist, is mapping out thinking processes around various photographic and visual practices, like auto-portraits and Polaroids, auto-fiction, and autobiographical writing. It is about a private artistic process which is in dialogue with contemporary art, other artists and theoretical concepts like archive and subjectivity.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between the self and the collective from multiple perspectives. Its dialectical relationship will initially be explored from a political perspective, followed by a psychological study on the theme, giving way for a philosophical take and, finally, a scientific view. The artwork that inspired this investigation is featured after this analysis, followed by an analysis on the art that inspired it. The data collected in this thesis mostly come from journals, books, and research papers, all of which deal with the interactions between the individual and itself as well as various manifestations of the collective. The literature utilized here spans from the 19th century all the way to the 2010s and counts with authors such as Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Erich Fromm, and Kierkegaard. It was found that a distorted understanding of the self and its properties is at the root of most dysfunctional relationships between the latter and itself and, in turn, the collective. That collectivity can take the form of society, the sum of the publicly available knowledge produced by our species as well as the values of our civilizations, among others. This suggests that a constructive, self-aware, bilateral, and non-hierarchical dynamics between self, itself and collective would provide solutions for many of these problems.