Towards a Practitioner Model of Mobile Music

This practice-based research investigates the mobile paradigm in the context of electronic music, sound and performance; it considers the idea of mobile as a lens through which a new model of electronic music performance can be interrogated. This research explores mobile media devices as tools and modes of artistic expression in everyday contexts and situations. While many of the previous studies have tended to focus upon the design and construction of new hardware and software systems, this research puts performance practice at the centre of its analysis. This research builds a methodological and practical framework that draws upon theories of mobile-mediated aurality, rhetoric on the practice of walking, relational aesthetics, and urban and natural environments as sites for musical performance. The aim is to question the spaces commonly associated with electronic music – where it is situated, listened to and experienced. This thesis concentrates on the creative use of existing systems using generic mobile devices – smartphones, tablets and HD cameras – and commercially available apps. It will describe the development, implementation and evaluation of a self-contained performance system utilising digital signal processing apps and the interconnectivity of an inter-app routing system. This is an area of investigation that other research programmes have not addressed in any depth. This research’s enquiries will be held in dynamic and often unpredictable conditions, from navigating busy streets to the fold down shelf on the back of a train seat, as a solo performer or larger groups of players, working with musicians, nonmusicians and other participants. Along the way, it examines how ubiquitous mobile technology and its total access might promote inclusivity and creativity through the cultural adhesive of mobile media. This research aims to explore how being mobile has unrealised potential to change the methods and experiences of making electronic music, to generate a new kind of performer identity and as a consequence lead towards a practitioner model of mobile music

In Situ Listening:Soundscape, Site and Transphonia

This enquiry represents an exploration of environmental sound and artistic practice from the perspectives of in situ listening and transphonia. The initial term, in situ listening, has been coined by the author in order to constellate a group of intellectual trajectories and artists’ practices that engage with recorded sound and share a common theme: that the listening context, the relationship between mediated sound and site, is an integral part of the engagement process. Heikki Uimonen (2005, p.63) defines transphonia as the, “mechanical, electroacoustical or digital recording, reproduction and relocating of sounds.” The term applies to sound that is relocated from one location to another, or sound that is recorded at a site and then mixed with the sound of the prevailing environment. The experience of the latter, which is a key concern for this thesis, may be encountered during the field recording process when one ‘listens back’ to recordings while on site or during the presentation of site-specific sound art work. Twelve sound installations, each based on field recordings, were produced in order to progress the investigation. Installations were created using a personally devised approach that was rigorous, informed, and iterative. Each installation explored a different environment. These installations, and their related environmental studies, form the core content of this enquiry. In the first part of this thesis the installations are used to explore observations of transphonic audio content in relation to a number of subjective, surprising and intangible phenomena: disorientation, uncanny sensations or even the awareness of coincidence. These observations are supported and contextualised in relation to a wide range of historic and contemporary sources. Works in the second part of the thesis are used to motivate a meditation on the relationship between soundscape, site and time, which was proposed by the initial phase of the research

Developing a hydrofeminist art practice: bodies, spaces, practices

This research presents primary work that has been situated in the city of Plymouth (UK) – Benthic Caress (2017), Hydrosapien (2018) and Manual for Nomads (2020), supported by three bodies of exploratory work (Interim, Rhyne & Huish, Field Notes). Documentation of the work can be found here: https://aquameteor.wordpress.com/ This is a practice led PhD that seeks to make a contribution to knowledge by developing the concept of hydrofeminism, through practice. This work is practice-driven, and consciously situated within Environmental Humanities, and this thesis is foundationally and iteratively entangled with the practice. The thesis is undertaken in an interdisciplinary location of intersecting artistic practices, feminisms, posthumanism and cultural geographies, aiming to fold these entanglements into the emerging field of environmental humanities (Bird-Rose et al 2012). It is done through practice led research, thus extending hydrofeminism from its academic (text based) foundation in the work of Neimanis (2012). Water, specifically oceans, estuaries, rivers and other ‘natural’ bodies of water (including puddles) has been the material signifier across the body of work shared here, which is transdisciplinary and which has investigated hydrofeminism using a wide range of creative tools. The creative practice presented here is about water, explored through feminisms, hydrofeminism, transcorporeality, posthumanism and embodiment. Benthic Caress was a site-specific and site-responsive immersive experience that offered participants a sonic engagement with marine life using silent disco technologies. Hydrosapien was a public performance of a section of Hydrofeminism (Neimanis 2012) that pertains to ecotones, presented by a Silent Choir and two experimental voice artists. Manual for Nomads is a short film exploring community and the climate crisis that brings the languages, codes and methods of communication of differently abled persons together to create new conceptualisations of the ecotone

Come together right now over me: The bush doof - an aesthetic experiment in human being and being together

This thesis goes inside the spectacular and problematic world of the bush doof, giving particular focus to the aesthetic experience it imparts. It exposes a tension latent within an individualistic ideology that over-values individual parts at the expense of the wider social whole, and reveals how the doof is both an expression of and challenge to this ideology and its problematics

Makers' Tale

Makers’ Tale was a research collaborative project between UCA and Salisbury Arts Centre in association with Salisbury Cathedral. The curatorial intention was to highlight the persistence of craft knowledge as well as innovation and experimentation within the context of modern creative practice and investigates co-operation and disciplinary crossovers. In the face of the global pandemic, the delivery of the physical exhibition was postponed, however, Makers’ Tale will be delivered in a virtual format, in May 2020, and will be part of Salisbury 2020 City on the Move digital celebrations. This move to a digital adaptation of the initial program, allowed a triple theme of movement in ideas, movement in engineering/technology and physical movement. Following the digital adaptation, the exhibition was installed at Salisbury Arts Centre in October 2021

Film, Video, and Digitality: An Analysis of Cultural Form in Time-based Media

This thesis examines the material properties of time-based image media, in particular live video. The project is practice-based with a theoretical underpinning drawn from the debates on form and meaning associated with Walter Benjamin

Spectres of minimalism

My thesis plays host to a variety of spectres. Taking the peripheral, overlooked qualities of shadows and reflections as a starting point, I show how discourse can narrow one's perceptual focus. 1960s polemics have concentrated the beam of light by which minimalist objects now appear, obscuring the marginal but tangible effect of Donald Judd's reflections. I ask why such reflections were ignored in his own writings, why they were regarded as problematic by contemporary critics concerned about `illusionism', and why they have remained (largely) unexamined since; I conclude that quandaries about seductive illusion were of a similar order to contemporary worries around immersive spectacle. While these `spectres' of minimalism - unacknowledged optical effects and repressed anxieties - have been omitted in historical discourse, they have re- materialised in later works by Susan Hiller, Mona Hatoum, Joanne Tatham and Torn O'Sullivan, and Jan de Cock - works which can be characterised as parades of reflections, shadows, ghosts and avatars. In these artists' negotiations of their minimalist `inheritance', they acknowledge and engage with the optical illusions, uncanny elements, and unspoken anxieties that inhabit Judd's works. Having experienced something akin to a haunting as hitherto hidden aspects of Judd's work have suddenly come to light, I now adopt an art historical methodology that not only takes account of, but is founded on, such spectral revelations. Seeing through the lenses that later artistic practices provide, I offer a contemporary re- reading of Judd's work: I propose a new set of associations with cinemas, cities, crystals and cars, and argue that, after all these years, Judd's works are still well placed to prompt philosophical reflections on contemporary experience

Design & Cinema: an analysis of the graphic language as a narrative strategy in Hollywood's contemporary films

Graphic design elements have always been part of cinema’s hybrid language, as a material of expression manifested through the visual channel, together with the cinematographic image. This graphic language is present throughout an entire filmic narrative in the form of verbal, pictorial and schematic elements applied to extra-diegetic titles and animations, as well as intra-diegetic printed or handmade graphic props, which together form a movie’s graphic identity and aid in conveying meaning to the narrative. The objective of this research is to investigate the intentional and strategic use of the graphic language in movies – also referred to as graphic configurations – as decisive or secondary elements in unfolding a narrative, contextualised into Hollywood’s contemporary cinema. Through qualitative and quantitative methods, the research develops into historical and theoretical investigations, drawing constant parallels between cinema’s and design’s fields of study, which leads to the proposal of a system for analysing a movie’s graphic strategy, by systematically recording the appearance of graphic configurations in movies and interpreting their meaning based on a set of categories and rules. This system is verified through the application to four detailed case studies, which together with the other findings present in the research, culminate in ten major conventions or guidelines for the further use of graphic configurations in the construction of any narrative film. The major conclusions also include the identification of the three main functions and levels of representation acquired by the graphic language in movies

Urban sound : territories, affective atmospheres, and politics

This dissertation approaches issues related to the territories, affective atmospheres and politics of urban sound. The research methodology, underpinned by the concepts and methods of non- and more-than-representational theories, consists on a participatory approach in which research questions, data, and concepts were co-produced by the researcher and a group of twelve participants. I conducted two sets of experiments with the group of participants. In the first set, I conducted a series of sound diaries followed by conversations. In the second set, I conducted a series of go-alongs, which were followed by group interviews. In addition, I conducted two geoethnographic studies – one in Chiado, Lisbon, and another in Quinta da Piedade, Vila Franca de Xira – with the purpose of exploring the research concepts in ecological contexts. The main objective of this thesis is to explore the phenomenology of the urban sonic experience, and the possibilities to intervene in urban territories through sound. By doing this, the thesis contributes toward advancing knowledge in the field of sonic geographies, namely by increasing knowledge about the urban sonic experience. I argue that the phenomenology of the urban sonic experience emerges from the simultaneity of listening and soundmaking, both of which are more-than-representational acts that intertwine affective sensing and ethico-political reasoning. Furthermore, I show that sonic interventions in urban space that engage with these more-than-representational acts, such as artistic practices or street football, have the capacity of altering urban territories by acting on the distribution of the sensible or by enacting worlds. The thesis is composed by four individual but related studies. Study#1 aims to understand the phenomenology of moments of transition between sonic environments in the urban context through the analysis of a series of experiments conducted with the group of volunteers. I conceptualise the phenomenology of moments of transitions as sonic first impressions, drawing upon the concept of first impression by Tonino Griffero. Study#2 extends the exploration of the sonic first impression by investigating how it can be produced to change the way people understand and appropriate urban space. The study consists on a geoethnographic approach to music and dance performances in Largo do Chiado, Lisbon. I show how these different artistic practices, by producing sonic first impressions, alter the way individuals perceive urban space, and consequently, how individuals appropriate and contribute toward the formation of territories in urban space. In Study#3, I expand the phenomenology of the experience of urban sound by turning into the issue of soundmaking. The objective of this study is to understand the interaction between soundmaking and the situational relations between the individual and the environment, both in terms of the personal or collective cognitive and emotional flows, and in terms of the ethico-political content. On the other hand, Study#4 addresses the consequences of the phenomenology of everyday soundmaking by exploring how it is used to generate worlds and territories in urban space. It consists on a geoethnographic study of street football practices in Quinta da Piedade, Vila Franca de Xira, which explores how soundmaking in urban space is employed by young people to generate micro-worlds and territories. The findings of this research project contribute toward a deeper understanding of the act of listening in everyday life, and open new routes for research by conceptualising the nuances of everyday soundmaking

Sonic, infrasonic, and ultrasonic frequencies : the utilisation of waveforms as weapons, apparatus for psychological manipulation, and as instruments of physiological influence by industrial, entertainment, and military organisations

This study is a trans-disciplinary and trans-historical investigation into civilian and battlefield contexts in which speaker systems have been utilised by the military-industrial and military-entertainment complexes to apply pressure to mass social groupings and the individuated body. Drawing on authors such as historian/sociologist Michel Foucault, economist Jacques Attali, philosopher Michel Serres, political geographer/urban planner Edward Soja, musician/sonic theorist Steve Goodman, and cultural theorist/urbanist Paul Virilio, this study engages a wide range of texts to orchestrate its arguments. Conducting new strains of viral theory that resonate with architectural, neurological, and political significance, this research provides new and original analysis about the composition of waveformed geography. Ultimately, this study listens to the ways in which the past and current utilisation of sonic, infrasonic, and ultrasonic frequencies as weapons, apparatus for psychological manipulation, and instruments of physiological influence, by industrial, civilian, entertainment, and military organisations, predict future techniques of sociospatialised organisation. In chapter one it is argued that since the inception of wired radio speaker systems into U.S. industrial factories in 1922, the development of sonic strategies based primarily on the scoring of architectonic spatiality, cycles of repetition, and the enveloping dynamics of surround sound can be traced to the sonic torture occurring in Guantanamo Bay during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Exploring the use of surround sound speaker techniques by the FBI during the Waco Siege in Texas, this argument is developed in chapter two. In chapter three it is further contended that the acoustic techniques utilised in the Guantanamo torture cells represent the final modality and the logical conclusion of these strategies that have evolved between civilian and military contexts over the past 80 years. In chapter four, the speaker system instrumentality of the HSS ultrasonic beam - occurring post Guantanamo - comes to symbolise an epistemic shift in the application of waveformed pressure; the dynamics of directional ultrasound technology signalling the orchestration of a new set of frequency-based relations between the transmitter and the receiver, the speaker system and architectural context, and the civilian and war torn environment. The concluding proposition of the study submits that a waveformed cartography - mapping the soundscape's territorialisation by the military-entertainment complex - needs to be composed and arranged so that forms of recording, amplification, and resistance can be made coherent. Given the new set of non-sound politics announced by the HSS, this philosophy of frequency-based mapping will have to re-evaluate the taxonomy and indexical nature of spatial relations. This discipline will be a waveformed psychogeography; a frequency-based modality that heuristically charts the spatial concerns of the neural environment as well as the environs of the material and the built. As a field of research it will have a wide-ranging remit to explore the spatial, psychological, physiological, social, economic, and sexual effects that waveforms have upon our subjectivity. Its methodology - as suggested through the structuring of this study - will be multi-disciplined and multi-channelled. It will create new forms of knowledge about LRADs, iPods, Mosquitos, I ntonarumori , loudhailers, and Sequential Arc Discharge Acoustic Generators - the meta-network of speaker systems through which rhythms and cadences of power are transmitted, connected, and modulated