The Rod and the Ring: Remember the Future and What it Could Bring
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis project aims to radically imagine a possible future for Iraq that’s unshackled from dystopian geopolitical narratives and Western notions of technological progress. I ground my research in the idea that history moves in cycles by referring to ancient Mesopotamia, a region that encompassed Iraq and parts of Turkey, Syria and Iran (7000BC – 500BC). Replete with literary and artistic artifacts set in clay and stone, the vast archeological record reveals a more dialectical worldview than our own. My thesis question asks: What seed of ancient wisdom, buried in deep time, could re-emerge in Iraq’s distant future? \n \nMy visual research of Mesopotamian art and aesthetics lead me to the mysterious recurring motif of the rod and ring. As potent signifiers for relationality, an overarching theme of investigation is that of gender relations in Mesopotamian society, and how it became increasingly patriarchal over the course of millennia - shaping the world we live in today. I also explore Mesopotamian oneiric epistemology, echoed in later regional traditions, to reframe our understanding of time and present dreaming as a speculative vehicle for time travel. \n \nI approach my research through the theoretical lens of Luce Irigaray’s “Sexual Difference”, Riane Eisler’s social systems theory of “partnership” vs “dominator” models, and historians Zainab Bahrani and Gerda Lerner’s critical reading of ancient Near-Eastern scholarship. My research-creation work is also informed by psychoanalyst Carl G. Jung’s multicultural study the language of symbols in dreams. \n \nThis research-creation process is demonstrated in a multidisciplinary exhibit Remember the Future: Oneiric Artifacts from Mesopotamia - presented at OCAD University’s Grad Gallery in June of 2024 – which combines cinema and ceramics. My goals are to contribute to growing feminist scholarship in the arts that incorporates what Irigaray calls “female subjectivity” into male-dominated discourses, and to inspire Arab youth to dream defiantly.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.012 | 0.023 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.015 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".