Manifestations of Urban Interiority in Delhi Gate Bazaar of Lahore

In the contemporary debate, the notion of interiority has expanded beyond the confines of the interior, in the urban realm, as a conjunction of urban and interior conditions. This article aims to contribute to the discourse, using the lens of urban interiority to explore the unique spatial character and distinct cultural practices in Lahore’s Delhi Gate Bazaar. The bazaar exists on a linear passageway, the Royal Trail, as a network of interior, exterior, and in-between spaces—establishing a spatial continuum by blurring the boundaries between the public and private and uninterrupted flow of spaces from outside to inside. This urban space has a strong sense of history, culture, and traditions; constructing personal and collective engagement through modes of space inhabitation and appropriation. These practices include temporal improvisation and modification of certain aspects for everyday use and environmental alteration for achieving thermal comfort, along with synchronised occurrences of cultural traditions and commercial activities. This article interprets observations through drawings to describe the experience of space through gradations of interiority and transition through thresholds, constructing visual narratives of diverse uses, activities, and the interaction between people, objects, and space

The Image as an architectural material

There is at present a fashion for the application of images onto building facades. The most common line of comment on this phenomenon is to fetishize "the image". According to such accounts, images have changed their status or locale, and become monstrous hybrids of human consciousness and the Internet. They have come to be on buildings through some will or teleology of their own, lessening the materiality of building and threatening the culture of architecture. Or so the story goes. Few remark on another obvious aspect of this trend, which is that of the relatively recent availability and rapid uptake of the technical means for the application of images onto buildings. As early as the nineteen forties, J L Sert, F Leger and S Geidion were calling for a new civic iconography of kinetic sculpture, which was to include fireworks and large-scale projection and murals. None of this was very practical, however, until the last few years when mega-screens and large-scale banner printing became available. Similarly, we have only recently gone beyond nineteenth century techniques in the etching of images into glass and masonry. To a certain extent, these two observations reverberate within the work of Walter Benjamin and his famous attempt to argue at a most general level for an interrelation of histories of technology and mentality

Defragmenting Beethoven: Sound appropriation as bridge between classical tradition and electroacoustic music

This thesis serves as a written companion for two artistic-based research products built upon the concept of appropriation as connecting bridge between music technology and the classical tradition of music composition. The first artistic work is a set of 9 pieces called "Collages Vol 2", a continuation of a first release meant to be an exploratory work for the present research. The second work is the sound interaction design, and the creation of two compositions for the Network of Intelligent Sound Agents, or "NOISA", built at the Sound and Physical Interaction Research Group from the Department of Media, Aalto University. After providing context and a short survey of influences on music appropriation, I made a comprehensive documentation of each of the pieces created for this thesis, describing form, content, compositional approach and sound processing in a systematic way. I investigated on the diverse forms of appropriation as a technique for electroacoustic music composition. The most influential references for my work are documented in this written work: From the historical approach of appropriation to borrowing in music of the XX century and recent times; including a description of the first volume of my original Collages. Later on, I described my second collection of Collages and the utilisation of appropriation theories in the context of NOISA, a music interface for live performance. Finally, there is a section dedicated to a discussion featuring a commentary of a number of reviews of "Collages” preceding a closing segment with conclusions and further plans to expand this research in the future

A Musical Journey: Music as Gameplay, Meaning and Narrative in Digital Games

This essay presents a detailed analysis of the music and its relations to gameplay, meaning and narrative in the interactive digital game Journey. Taking as its foundation multiple thorough playthroughs of the game, observation and questioning of test subjects has been conducted for greater perspective and objectivity. Combining theories from hermeneutic musicology, narrative ludology and aesthetic theory, it provides a new perspective on music in digital games. Intended as a musicologically inclined complement to the existing studies of digital game music, it applies Jean-Jacques Nattiez’s musical semiology and Nicholas Cook’s model for analysing musical multimedia to digital games. As a development of the visually-inclined studies of digital game theory and ludology, it expounds upon the works of Graeme Kirkpatrick and Henry Jenkins to take into account sound and music. With a focus on play, meaning and narrative, it is argued that music is integral to players’ experience. It is also suggested that this type of study is highly determined by its subject matter, and that a different approach of analysis might be needed for another game. Further research to corroborate the finds is suggested, as well as a general widening of the fields of game music studies and narrative musicology

The Hidden Transactional Wisdom of Media Discrimination in Pre-AWCPA Copyright

Media neutrality in copyright’s subject matter means that works of authorship are protected against copying, or not, regardless of the tangible medium in which they are fixed. For example, the same features of a sculptural work are protected regardless of whether they are fixed in a statue or a photograph of a statue. Media neutrality in subject matter is a fundamental and largely unquestioned copyright principle with a firm policy basis under copyright’s dominant incentive-to-create theory. Media discrimination in subject matter undermines in arbitrary ways authors’ ability to recoup their creativity costs over the sale of multiple copies. This Article identifies a situation in which departure from the copyright principle of media neutrality in subject matter is unexpectedly good policy. The rarely discussed transactional theory of copyright holds that copyright’s goal is to facilitate the market transactions through which authors refine works and commercialize them into the copies that consumers want. When transactional theory, rather than incentive-to-create theory, is copyright’s primary justification, maintaining protection for the medium in which authors develop works and eliminating it for the medium in which the public consumes them preserves copyright’s full benefits while reducing its access costs. To illustrate the argument, this Article looks to architecture as a case study. Copyright for building designs created before the enactment of the Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act (AWCPA) in 1990 employs media discrimination: it protects building designs when fixed in drawings but not when fixed in buildings. As a historical matter, the courts crafted this unusual rule of protected subject matter to accommodate concerns about copyright protection for the functionality of buildings. Yet, for architects who employ the custom design process at the core of the architectural profession, it has a sound transactional justification as well, and it would be good policy even if buildings were not functional artifacts. Copyright’s principal role in custom architectural design is to facilitate the architect–client transaction in which architects create building designs in return for fees that cover design costs. Pre-AWCPA copyright can perform this role just as well as full media-neutral copyright because it protects building designs fixed in architecture’s development medium (drawings). However, it reduces copyright’s access costs because competitor architects can borrow freely from building designs fixed in the consumption medium (buildings)

Audiovision and Gesamtkunstwerk: The Aesthetics of First and Second Generation Industrial Music Video

Michel Chion has famously and provocatively referred to film as a sound art (Chion 2009), developing his earlier reading of cinema in the synaesthetic audiovisual terms of Audio-Vision (Chion 1994). Similarly, it is possible to argue that industrial music from its beginnings with groups like Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, SPK and others was an audiovisual art-form, as much as a musical one, and never simply a generic sonic style. The visual aspects of industrial music were not necessarily limited to film and video and included such things as the development of logos and other design features on record sleeves and as concert backdrops, as well as specific uses of photography and other visual arts. These visual elements were often deployed via strategies of anonymity and ambiguity, generating meanings out of a deliberate and playful constitutive vagueness. However, whenever it was technically feasible to do so, industrial groups made use of both film and video technologies, and in terms of the latter were pioneers in the combination of music and video, before and outside of its commercial codification. This chapter examines this field of audiovisual activity as a form of audiovisuology that goes well beyond the promotion and iillustration of popular music

Audiovision and Gesamtkunstwerk: The Aesthetics of First and Second Generation Industrial Music Video

Michel Chion has famously and provocatively referred to film as a sound art (Chion 2009), developing his earlier reading of cinema in the synaesthetic audiovisual terms of Audio-Vision (Chion 1994). Similarly, it is possible to argue that industrial music from its beginnings with groups like Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, SPK and others was an audiovisual art-form, as much as a musical one, and never simply a generic sonic style. The visual aspects of industrial music were not necessarily limited to film and video and included such things as the development of logos and other design features on record sleeves and as concert backdrops, as well as specific uses of photography and other visual arts. These visual elements were often deployed via strategies of anonymity and ambiguity, generating meanings out of a deliberate and playful constitutive vagueness. However, whenever it was technically feasible to do so, industrial groups made use of both film and video technologies, and in terms of the latter were pioneers in the combination of music and video, before and outside of its commercial codification. This chapter examines this field of audiovisual activity as a form of audiovisuology that goes well beyond the promotion and iillustration of popular music

The Opportunistic House for Tehran: A Design Prototype

This article is an advocacy research for Tehran, promoting an implication of architectural design as a tool for citizen empowerment and positive environmental change. In the article, I am offering a fresh look at Tehran's housing problems by speculating an "opportunistic house” typology as a residential style that would serve much more than just shelter. I am making a case for a new house prototype that applies socially-equitable solutions in design. My study finds applications and significance beyond plain housing design and, mainly, onto the design of ad hoc urban public realm spaces. This is in accord with my overarching mission of supporting new way of thinking about, and ultimately offering, welcoming, safe, and energized places for Tehran's citizens. These will additionally have important implications for inhospitable public spaces worldwide. This research is grounded in my prior, multidisciplinary doctoral studies. The article itself is an initial step in my ongoing research design, of helping to build and revitalize a wide range of urban communities by nurturing their relationship to their built and natural environments. The article is a discussion around the following questions. How can housing design inventions empower citizens? In what manner can design offer progressive living place options whose services go beyond shelter needs? Particularly, in what ways can domestic spaces be designed to also embody other-than-living capacities, for example, for new kinds of public spaces? And eventually, what could a prototype of the opportunistic house look like in the context of a city like Tehran? The article is structured to first present a brief survey of how Tehran house forms and functions have developed historically, with more emphasis on their current state. It will then offer examples of opportunistic uses of domestic spaces in Tehran. This notion is communicated through narrative analysis and photographic vignettes from a few Iranian films. Through the selection, I show, for example, how and where informal economies are shaping inside Tehran apartments. Next, the article will identify possibilities and spaces in current houses that are and have the potentials to be used in resourceful ways. Based on the steps indicated, analyzing people needs and artifact interpretations, I will conclude with a design proposal of a new infill apartment house. The final proposal will include theoretical statements about possible design interventions and a visual prototypical elaboration through imageries and conceptual renderings. The resultant prototype becomes one example of possible houses that could serve as catalysts for informative, inspiring, and state- of-the-art practices, a precedent in Tehran for others to build upon