The artist speaks: the interview as documentation

Nearly every exhibition catalogue now contains an interview with, or related statement by, the artist. How and why did this become the norm? The increasing popularity of the artist's words is traced back in this article to its roots in Romanticism, the rise of the mass media and the cult of the avant-garde artist. The value and reliability of the transcribed and printed words is questioned and a bibliography of published interviews with artists follows

Book Review: \u3cem\u3eJournal of Vaishnava Studies 20.2 (Spring 2012)\u3c/em\u3e

A review of the anthology Journal of Vaishnava Studies 20.2 (Spring 2012) edited by Stephen J. Rosen and Graham M. Schweig

New media art, participation, social engagement and public funding

This article investigates the current condition of new media art in Britain, examining how cuts to arts funding have affected the art form's infrastructure and capacity for survival and growth. It considers media art in relation to other contemporary art practices, particularly in relation to its inherent capacity for enhanced and sustained user participation, and asks why it is that, though government agendas favour participatory art as ‘socially useful', media art appears to have been hit harder than other art forms. The article puts forward four reasons that could explain this paradox, and argues the importance of the survival of new media art, not as isolated practices invited to exist within mainstream contexts, but as a distinct art form

Emotional Attachment and Its Limits: Mengzi, Gaozi and the Guodian Discussions

Mengzi maintained that both benevolence (ren 仁) and rightness (yi 義) are naturally-given in human nature. This view has occupied a dominant place in Confucian intellectual history. In Mencius 6A, Mengzi's interlocutor, Gaozi, contests this view, arguing that rightness is determined by (doing what is fitting, in line with) external circumstances. I discuss here some passages from the excavated Guodian texts, which lend weight to Gaozi's view. The texts reveal nuanced considerations of relational proximity and its limits, setting up requirements for moral action in scenarios where relational ties do not play a motivational role. I set out yi's complexity in these discussions, highlighting its implications for (i) the nei-wai debate; (ii) the notion of yi as "rightness," or doing the right thing; and (iii) how we can understand the connection between virtue and right action in these early Confucian debates. This material from the excavated texts not only provides new perspectives on a longstanding investigation of human nature and morality, it also challenges prevailing views on Warring States Confucian intellectual history. In the well-known debate between Mengzi and Gaozi in Mencius 6A, Mengzi maintained that both ren and yi are naturally-given 1 in human nature. The figure 1 To say that ren and yi are naturally-given is not to say that they are fully-developed from the start. I use the phrase "naturally-given" throughout the paper to indicate where a particular capacity or resource (ren or yi) may be found, rather than its final polished state

Muscle memory: The inimitable feel of the record

Muscle Memory is a new record I have made in collaboration with pianist Matthew Bourne (playing Memorymoog), and trumpeter Graham South. Comprising two composed sound pieces, it was released on vinyl in 2017. The pieces are structured around recordings made in the houses of each collaborator, documenting the act of listening to records. The compositions include conversation between composer and collaborators, samples of music from records heard/discussed, improvised instrumental sections, and electronically manipulated materials. Muscle Memory has since been presented to a number of audiences attending ‘living-room’ listening sessions - held in small, intimate and domestic spaces across the UK. Participative listening of this type is understood through Simon Frith and Christopher Small as an inclusive, collaborative, compositional action. The tactility (Mike D’Errico) and ‘objectness’ (David Grubbs) of records is also of importance. This text is a document of that listening experience

The Hidden History of \u27Oklahoma!\u27

Daniel Pollack-Pelzner explains that contemporary reinterpretations of the classic American musical Oklahoma! may be getting back to its root: it\u27s based on a play by a gay Cherokee man

17 ways to say yes:Toward nuanced tone of voice in AAC and speech technology

People with complex communication needs who use speech-generating devices have very little expressive control over their tone of voice. Despite its importance in human interaction, the issue of tone of voice remains all but absent from AAC research and development however. In this paper, we describe three interdisciplinary projects, past, present and future: The critical design collection Six Speaking Chairs has provoked deeper discussion and inspired a social model of tone of voice; the speculative concept Speech Hedge illustrates challenges and opportunities in designing more expressive user interfaces; the pilot project Tonetable could enable participatory research and seed a research network around tone of voice. We speculate that more radical interactions might expand frontiers of AAC and disrupt speech technology as a whole

Using the technology of the confessional as an analytical resource: four analytical stances towards research interviews in discourse analysis

Among the various approaches that have developed from FOUCAULT's work is an Anglophone discourse analysis that has attempted to combine Foucaultian insights with the techniques of Conversation Analysis. An important current methodological issue in this discourse analytical approach is its theoretical preference for "naturally occurring" rather than research interview data. A Foucaultian perspective on the interview as a research instrument, questions the idea of "naturally-occurring discourse". The "technology of the confessional" operates, not only within research interviews, but permeates other interactions as well. Drawing on FOUCAULT does not dismiss the problems of the interview as research instrument rather it shows they cannot be escaped by simply switching to more "natural" interactions. Combining these insights with recent developments within discourse analysis can provide analytical resources for, rather than barriers to, the discourse analysis of research interviews. To aid such an approach, we develop a four-way categorisation of analytical stances towards the research interview in discourse analysis. A demonstration of how a research interview might be subjected to a discourse analysis using elements of this approach is then provided

Intermediary's Elicitation and Patron's Retrieval Satisfaction

[[abstract]]An elicitation is a verbal request for information reflecting one's interests, concerns or perplexities in conversation. Elicitation behavior in studies of information retrieval interaction is, in fact, the micro-level of information-seeking behavior in which the user and the intermediary exchange information to fill the gaps in one's internal state of knowledge. This study aims to understand the intermediary's elicitation behavior in terms of linguistic forms, communicative functions (illocutionary force) and utterance purposes (semantic contents) and further to identify the relationship between intermediary's individual differences and search results satisfaction. Research methods include participatory observation, conversation analysis, content analysis and statistical analysis of elicitation frequencies and questionnaires. Our research results successfully identify the three dimensions of intermediary's elicitation behavior and characterize intermediary's inquiring minds and elicitation styles. Further analysis shows that there exists a significant relationship between inquiring minds/elicitation styles and user's relevance judgment of search results.