Sonic autoethnographies: personal listening as compositional context

This article discusses a range of self-reflexive tendencies in field recording, soundscape composition and studio production, and explores examples of sonic practices and works in which the personal listening experiences of the composer are a key contextual and compositional element. As broad areas for discussion, particular attention is given to soundscape composition as self-narrative (exploring the representation of the recordist in soundscape works) and to producing the hyperreal and the liminal (considering spatial characteristics of contemporary auditory experience and their consequences for sonic practice). The discussion then focuses on the specific application of autoethnographic research methods to the practice and the understanding of soundscape composition. Compositional strategies employed in two recent pieces by the author are considered in detail. The aim of this discussion is to link autoethnography to specific ideas about sound and listening, and to some tendencies in field recording, soundscape composition and studio production, while also providing context for the discussion of the author’s own practice and works. In drawing together this range of ideas, methods and work, sonic autoethnography is aligned with an emerging discourse around reflexive, embodied sound work

Thoughtfully selected : case study analysis of brick and mortar, e-commerce, and blended retailers

The American shopping experience has recently shifted from brick and mortar stores, those that exist in physical form, to E-commerce, a relatively new mode of buying goods, and thus there is a potential difference in how clothing retailers communicate and sell products to consumers in stores and now communicate and sell products to consumers via the Web. By way of the case study method, this thesis spotlighted three distinct boutiques and their separate journeys toward communicating and selling products to consumers via brick and mortar stores and the Internet. Major findings include supplementation of traditionally brick and mortar strategies morphed toward the E-commerce platform; increasing and diversified workload for all boutique owners due to technological advances; store strategies reflecting the values, perspectives, and identity of the particular boutique owner who owns the shop; and physical place as unimportant to online boutique retailers in favor of building online community

1001stories+: An effective and affordable multi-media, multi-format communication framework for cultural heritage institutions

Over the last decade, there has been an increasing number of technologies and devices (including smartphones, tablets and alike) able to provide new perspectives for the use of multimedia applications in the field of Cultural Heritage. This work arises from the interest in providing better authoring/delivery possibilities to cultural heritage institutions (small and medium sized in particular). Indeed, often medium and small sized museums do not have the necessary resources to create high quality multimedia productions. Not only have they faced short time and low budget, but a shortage of dedicated staff. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, this thesis focuses on the development of an effective and affordable multi-media, multi-format communication framework. The framework provides institutions with guidelines and methodologies and it is based on an innovative authoring tools (not developed in this thesis, but available). Specific concerns of the framework are: developing multimedia content within a short time span, developing multimedia content with a limited, low-budget, adapting multimedia content to different technologies and to different user experiences, making possible to “reuse multimedia content” (e.g. from websites, to audio guides, to multimedia guides, to YouTube or to paper brochures) This research has been conducted throughout parallel and intertwined processes, requiring a take of perspective. One the one hand, a general investigation (about multimedia formats, technologies and methodologies for production) has been conducted. On the other hand, an empirical work on real-life multimedia productions has been undergone. Indeed, the merging of theoretical knowledge and real fieldwork remains the main characteristic of this study’s methodological approach and of its strength. Its overall result is a fully developed framework (named 1001stories +), providing: multi-media, content information is presented throughout different media, including images, text, audio, and video; effective, the content can have the desired impact on the audience; affordable, content can be created in a short time, within low budget, and can be reused; multi-technology, content is available on different channels (web, smart phones, tablets, You tube, etc…); multi-format, content can be reorganized into various solutions, generating different formats for different user experiences. A more conceptual contribution of this thesis is about consideration of what communication in the Cultural Heritage domain is about, what its purposes are, and what the most appropriate means to reach the potential audience may be

Halfway to paradise: documenting people and place, fictional constructs and considerations for post-documentary

Dr Deverell explored the potential for video art to move past documentary into post-documentary. The research considered how established conventions in documentary practice are being contested and expanded with the growing dispersal and dissipation of audio-visual culture, and how traditional notions of truth and reality are being challenged

The Critical Eye: Re-Viewing 1970s Television

In my dissertation entitled “The Critical Eye: Re-Viewing 1970s Television,” I argue that TV scholars would benefit greatly by engaging in a more nuanced consideration of the television critic’s industrial position as a key figure of negotiation. As such, critical discourse has often been taken for granted in scholarship without attention to how this discourse may obscure contradictions implicit within the TV industry and the critic’s own identity as both an insider and an outsider to the television business. My dissertation brings the critic to the fore, employing the critic as a lens through which I view television aesthetics, media policy, and technology. This study is grounded in the disciplines of television studies, media industries studies, new media studies, and cultural studies. Yet because the critic’s writing reflects the totality of television as an entertainment and public service medium, the significance of this study expands beyond disciplinary concerns to a reconsideration of the impact of television upon American culture. This project offers a history of the television critic during the 1970s, a decade in which the field of criticism professionalized and expanded dramatically. Methodologically, I am incorporating three approaches, including historical research of the 1970s television industry, textual analysis of critical writing, and interviews with critics working during that decade. I’ve identified the 1970s for a variety of reasons, including its parallels with today’s significant technological and industrial transformations. My central texts will be the industry trade publications, Variety and Broadcasting, and national daily newspapers including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune. Viewing TV criticism as a profession, a historical source, and a site of scholarly analysis, this project offers a series of interventions, including a consideration of how critical writing may serve as a primary source for historians and how television studies has overlooked the significance of the critic as an object of analysis in his/her own right

The Essential HBO Reader

The founding of Home Box Office in the early 1970s was a harbinger of the innovations that transformed television as an industry and a technology in the decades that followed. HBO quickly became synonymous with subscription television and became the leading force in cable programming. Having interests in television, motion picture, and home video industries was crucial to its success. HBO diversified into original television and movie production, home video sales, and international distribution as these once-separate entertainment sectors began converging into a global entertainment industry in the mid-1980s. HBO has grown from a domestic movie channel to an international cable-and-satellite network with a presence in over seventy countries. It is now a full-service content provider with a distinctive brand of original programming and landmark shows such as The Sopranos and Sex and the City. The network is widely recognized for its award-winning, innovative and provocative programming, including dramatic series such as Six Feet Under and The Wire, miniseries such as Band of Brothers and Angels in America, comedies such as Curb Your Enthusiasm and Def Comedy Jam, sports shows such as Inside the NFL and Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, documentary series such as Taxi Cab Confessions and Autopsy, and six Oscar-winning documentaries between 1999 and 2004. In The Essential HBO Reader, editors Gary R. Edgerton and Jeffrey P. Jones bring together an accomplished group of scholars to explain how HBO’s programming transformed the world of cable television and how the network continues to shape popular culture and the television industry. Now, after more than three and a half decades, HBO has won acclaim in four distinct programming areas—drama, comedy, sports, and documentaries—emerging as TV’s gold standard for its breakout series and specials. The Essential HBO Reader provides a comprehensive and compelling examination of HBO’s development into the prototypical entertainment corporation of the twenty-first century. Describes the complexities and ambiguities of the channel, its history, its unique business model, and its individual programs. Gary Edgerton and Jeffrey Jones have assembled a dream team of television scholars, some of whom have been paying attention to HBO since its debut in 1972. There are a lot of essay collections about television out there these days --Robert J. Thompson Director, Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture Sy This is a splendid collection of scholarship and critical thinking. The authors have managed to tame and corral a very important aspect of American media history and yet allowed it to remain daring and unconventional. --Terry Lindvall, author of Surprised by Laughter: The Comic World of C. S. Lewis In the ever-expanding universe of cable, satellite and digital broadcasting, the authors explore how HBO fights to remain the frontrunner in innovative programming. Essential reading! --Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, author of At the Picture Show: Small Town Audiences and Coeditors Edgerton and Jones have added a critical component to the study of television and American culture. The result is a fascinating book that is indeed essential reading for anyone with an interest in media history. --Mary Ann Watson, author of Defining Visions: Television and the American Experi Comprehensive and informative on a topic that deserves to be analyzed in-depth. HBO really did write an important new chapter in television history and has not received the scholarly attention that is its due. --Michael T. Marsden, coeditor of In the Eye of the Beholder: Critical Perspectives “An important assessment of the original programming HBO has created in the past few decades—how these programs are derived and what impact they have had. Recommended.”—Choice Because Edgerton and Jones offer such a thorough treatment of HBO\u27s programming, their volume is a useful addition to a growing number of books about American television in the \u27post-network\u27 era. --American Studieshttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_american_popular_culture/1014/thumbnail.jp

Re-thinking multiculturalism: performing the Cronulla beach riot

Since 11 September 2001, Australia&rsquo;s race relations have been an issue of significant cultural concern, particularly relations between Anglo-Celtic and Middle-Eastern Australians. Riots on Cronulla Beach, Sydney, in December 2005 heightened this concern. This paper looks at the events at Cronulla and the debates they catalysed about race relations in Australia, and examines how these discourses have been shaped by arguments from both the Right and the Left. Informed by the discourse of critical multiculturalism, we examine several performance-based arts activities that made the riots their subject matter and argue that these arts practices reflect a larger cultural concern about the currency of traditional forms of multiculturalism, and promote instead an emphasis on understanding racial conflict as a critical negotiation over shared territories and values.<br /

Speaker Park: An intersection of loudspeaker design and post-acousmatic composition

Speaker Park was an internationally curated project which brought together a custom installation of 24 hand built, sculptural loudspeakers made by Roar Sletteland and Jon Pigott, with two composers, Antti Sakari Saario and Mari Kvien Brunvoll, who took up residencies working with the system. The project was conceived as a critique of standardised commercial high-end loudspeaker systems of the type typically used for the electronic production and reproduction of sound. Setting up a conversation between composer and speaker designer / maker the project served as an investigation into unusual resonant and diverse approaches to loudspeaker design and how they affect the compositional and production processes. The project was premiered at Borealis international festival of Sound Art and Experimental Music which took place between 6th – 10th March 2019 in Bergen, Norway. This paper is a first-hand reflection and exposition of Speaker Park by composer Antti Saario and speaker designer / maker Jon Pigott. It will detail the individual approach of each author in developing their part of the project (composition and speaker design) as well as the collaborative insights from the overall process. Pigott will describe the inspiration for his speaker designs as emerging from an investigation into the physical and formal characteristics of resonant objects such as organ pipes, sound systems and architectural environments where spaces, enclosures, ports and materials all serve to develop unique resonant behaviours. The use of coneless moving coil exciters to maximise the physical and material elements of the sculptural loudspeakers will also be explained. The historical and cultural context for the custom and sculptural loudspeaker will be presented with examples including David Tudor’s Rainforest (1968), Francois Bayle’s Acousmonium (1974) and The Ondes Martenot among others. Saario will discuss the commission and production of the fixed media composition A†BSB†R (‘Above the Blackened Skies. Beneath the Remains.’) (2019) for the Speaker Park project and the associated conceptual framework (‘network’). Here, concepts are read as ‘active’ forces of creativity (Colebrook, 2002) and the discussion will map a Deleuzian enterprise; an emergent set of connections pertaining to the production and the sonic-affective intent of the Speaker Park-A†BSB†R assemblage. Key concepts are affect hit (Massumi, 2015), spectromorphology (Smalley, 1997), composition as collaboration (Harrison, 1996) and ecosophy (Guattari, 1989). The work is nomadic (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988) in relation to the ‘state’ apparatus of mainstream loudspeaker design, spatial configurations and formats and its approach to spatial strategies afforded by Speaker Park’s ‘anti-configuration’ and spectral constraints (Magnusson, 2006). These various themes will underpin discussion around predictability within technological design and how this serves to support the model of the technological ‘black box’. It will also explore notions of a hierarchical chain of technological concerns extending from endlessly soft and malleable digital tools through to hard material technologies