Interfacing the Network: An Embedded Approach to Network Instrument Creation

This paper discusses the design, construction, and development of a multi-site collaborative instrument, The Loop, developed by the JacksOn4 collective during 2009-10 and formally presented in Oslo at the arts.on.wires and NIME conferences in 2011. The development of this instrument is primarily a reaction to historical network performance that either attempts to present traditional acoustic practice in a distributed format or utilises the network as a conduit to shuttle acoustic and performance data amongst participant nodes. In both scenarios the network is an integral and indispensible part of the performance, however, the network is not perceived as an instrument, per se. The Loop is an attempt to create a single, distributed hybrid instrument retaining traditionally acoustic interfaces and resonant bodies that are mediated by the network. The embedding of the network into the body of the instrument raises many practical and theoretical discussions, which are explored in this paper through a reflection upon the notion of the distributed instrument and the way in which its design impacts the behaviour of the participants (performers and audiences); the mediation of musical expression across networks; the bi-directional relationship between instrument and design; as well as how the instrument assists in the realisation of the creators’ compositional and artistic goals

Perpetual deliberation

Perpetual Deliberation consists of three resonating chambers aligned along a linearaxis. Two of the three forms (the clay bell and the suikinkutsu) are ceramic, while thesecond bell is metal. The idea for the work began around giving form to the push andpull between the traditional modes of making that have influenced me, and modernmethods of fabrication that blur the boundaries between authorship and collectiveproduction. The installation’s linear design emphasizes the polarity between thesemodes and the need to find balance between these extremes. Its axial orientation drawsthe participant from the impersonality of the steel bell’s industrial fabrication, to thecontinuous sounds of the water harp, to the warmth of the ceramic bell with its woodensupport (Figure 1). The continuous sound from the water harp always centers theviewer, even with the perpetual ringing of the bells at the extremities of the work. Thework places the participant in an environment that promotes reflection on finding andholding onto a sense of balance within everyday life

Speak\u27st, Art Sound: The Material Voice in Early Modern England

This thesis argues that early moderns conceived of speech as a material phenomenon; voice struck out from bodies into environments. Early modern voices thus participate in what sound studies scholars call the soundscape, which I link to current new materialist and ecological theories of network and assemblage. Within this soundscape, I pay special attention to the role of language as a semantic system of meaning. Current ecological criticism takes for granted the utter “flatness” of ontology, and as such discards the question of human language so central to previous deconstructive and discursive scholarship. My thesis attempts to account for the role of human language in ecological thought by turning to the early modern voice, which blended sonic and semiotic properties. I contend that the early seventeenth century was a liminal moment in the history of language, as it had not yet lost its sonic properties nor yet fully become textualized and representational. Thus, early modern speech embedded the human in its environmental context, without separating it as a discrete or superior entity. The first chapter, on King Lear, situates the early modern voice in the context of new materialist theory, establishing a “posthuman cosmography” in which humans have no pride of place. The next two chapters refine and even challenge the writ-large generality of their predecessor. The second chapter, on The Alchemist, zooms in to the level of the individual, to explore what life might be like for a single person inside this buzzing network. The third chapter grinds an even finer grain, focusing on both the gendered voice and its relation to technological prosthesis in The Duchess of Malfi

Present-day architect is an urban designer

The range and scope of an architect’s tasks has shifted: from that of a designer burdened with responsibility for the shape and effectiveness of architecture, to that of a director (animator) of urban space, responsible for the smooth and undisturbed direction of the spectacle taking place within the urban space, of the incessant, simultaneous and unbroken continuum of the mutually interactive scenes from the life of the City. Architecture, or rather urban space, has become a scenography for the synergistic holistic/multidirectional activities sustaining the life of the residents and making the uses and functions of architecture more effective. Programmers, directors, animators of culture, city mayors, grassroots initiatives of the residents, wealthy investors – all of these organizers of urban space should have equal rights and prerogatives in the process of ARRANGING URBAN SPACE. Does a present-day city still need architects

CLASSROOM MODIFICATIONS WITH IMPROVED ACOUSTICS MODELED FOR CEHIC, A SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF, IN KELANIYA, SRI LANKA

The purpose of this study was to model a typical classroom in a school for the Deaf inKelaniya,Sri Lanka. Intense effort by teachers provides intervention for students with significant hearing impairment. The school is an oral school, and the philosophy is to utilize the residual hearing of each student through the use of high-powered hearing aids. Like many schools inSri Lanka, the Centre for Education of Hearing-Impaired Children (CEHIC) has many classrooms that have both high ambient noise with long reverberation times. Both noise and reverberation interfere with the sound signal, the teacher’s voice, and provide a poor learning environment where speech discrimination is critical. Before actually modifying a classroom, it is now possible to virtually model a classroom using architectural design software. The modified design can then be assessed through the input of sound into the classroom modelling construction materials used in acoustic modeling, and then generating a sound output that would be nearly equivalent to an actual modified classroom. A room was selected at CECIH, and the modeling process was applied using relatively low cost materials. Word intelligibility was measured with normal listeners for sound files created before and after the modifications. The results indicated a 21.8 percent improvement (p\u3c.0001). Reverberation time for the modeled classroom decreased from 1.96 seconds to .32 seconds

Chapter 7 Listening to the talkies

This chapter examines the choices made regarding film sound—music, sound, and noise—for creating a target-oriented image of Japan for the anticipated German audience in Atarashiki tsuchi (New Earth aka Die Tochter des Samurai, 1937). This Japanese-German co-produced film, produced entirely in Japan, with a binational cast and crew and in a highly politicised context, was supposed to showcase both contemporary Japan and its film industry to the world. The use of sound for the creation of meaning in this film has been largely overlooked in favour of its strong visuals. However, an analysis of selected sections shows that the major messages are actually encoded on the soundtrack and that a focus on sound provides a potent tool for revealing the underlying imbalance regarding cultural power and authority at work in the project

Sonifying Hamlet

Sonifying Hamlet uses data-mining techniques and algorithmic composition to read Shakespeare\u27s Hamlet through sound. In so doing, it attends to pre-semantic, textual data that is only visible when one steps back from reading for narrative and instead focuses on formal details that, being individually small, but collectively numerous, are more visible to computational sorting than they are to human eyes that have been trained to look for broad semantic content. This use of algorithmically generated sound to reconstruct textual data continues the western trend towards ubiquitous quantification, while also challenging that trend\u27s underlying assumption that reality is reducible to fully discrete objects of study. That is, as nonlinguistic sound interacts with the other intonations of a place, it constructs a unique acoustic moment that obscures the distinction between individual datum, and between textual objects and the physical world. In this way, Sonifying Hamlet explores the physical and temporally constrained construction of an environment as a form of reading. By simultaneously engaging with and resisting quantification trends in the digital humanities, Sonifying Hamlet attempts to inject ambiguity into a rising digital empiricism. In this way, it answers a call for such methods posed by digital humanists themselves for whom confrontation with the enigmatic is as potent a mode of knowing as scientific inquiry. Through its imbrication of the unnamable and the enumerated, Sonifying Hamlet attempts to support scholars by facilitating digital inquiry that is commensurate with the expansiveness of what is thinkable and expressible in human discourse

An Overview of MOOS-IvP and a Users Guide to the IvP Helm - Release 4.2.1

This document describes the IvP Helm - an Open Source behavior-based autonomy application for unmanned vehicles. IvP is short for interval programming - a technique for representing and solving multi-objective optimizations problems. Behaviors in the IvP Helm are reconciled using multi-objective optimization when in competition with each other for influence of the vehicle. The IvP Helm is written as a MOOS application where MOOS is a set of Open Source publish-subscribe autonomy middleware tools. This document describes the configuration and use of the IvP Helm, provides examples of simple missions and information on how to download and build the software from the MOOS-IvP server at www.moos-ivp.org.United States. Office of Naval Research (Code 311

An Overview of MOOS-IvP and a Users Guide to the IvP Helm Autonomy Software

This document describes the IvP Helm -- an Open Source behavior-based autonomy application for unmanned vehicles. IvP is short for interval programming -- a technique for representing and solving multi-objective optimizations problems. Behaviors in the IvP Helm are reconciled using multi-objective optimization when in competition with each other for influence of the vehicle. The IvP Helm is written as a MOOS application where MOOS is a set of Open Source publish-subscribe autonomy middleware tools. This document describes the configuration and use of the IvP Helm, provides examples of simple missions and information on how to download and build the software from the MOOS-IvP server at www.moosivp.org