Reproduction of Analog Record Sound Using Digital Image Captured by a Flatbed Scanner - Comparison of Sound Groove Edge-Extraction Filter for Stereo Records -

We have studied on a non-contact reproduction method of sound signal from phonograph records based on digital image processing. First, we examined whether a groove geometry of stereo-record could be digitized based on a resolution of a flatbed scanner which was commercially available. Next, we investigated three filtering methods to extract the groove edges. As a result, we found that Laplacian of Gaussian (LoG) and Difference of Gaussians (DoG) filter showed relatively superior edge extraction characteristics. From the filtered image, we digitized sound signal. The reproduced sound contained strong high-frequency noise superimposed on the original sinusoidal wave. Among the three filters, the DoG filter showed most preferable time waveform and the LoG filter showed minimum harmonics distortion components. From these results, we have concluded that the extraction accuracy of the groove edges should be improved further in order to reduce the disturbance of the filtered waveform

Experimental turntablism - live performances with second hand technology: Analysis and methodological considerations

In experimental turntablism, sound artists and musicians encounter not only the pre-recorded sound of the vinyl records, as is common in DJ culture and hip hop turntablism, but also accentuate the materiality of the records and turntables themselves. The thesis shows that the record player is itself the key concept within which each experimental turntablist unfolds an intricate dialogue between mediation and materiality. Through these media-specific practices, these sound artists raise to the surface the fact that our listening habits tend to dissolve the reproduction medium from our awareness. This thesis explores experimental turntablism in live performance and presents an innovative methodology that establishes the ideas and tools for a potentially generalisable approach to performance analysis for concerts using live electronics. The analytical framework, disclosing the medial and sensual significance of experimental turntablism performances in a digital era, broadens the perspective on sound with theories of performativity, materiality, mediality and instrumentality in electronic music. The thesis methodology includes performance analysis, artist interviews, video and audio recordings and interactive graphical transcriptions based on the current music analysis software EAnalysis. Three case studies examine three distinct artistic approaches: the specific focus of each experimental turntablist varies from playing techniques, to sculptural objects, to mechanical operations. Joke Lanz’s direct and embodied playing negotiates a sound production between signal and noise, musicalises samples, and leads to spontaneous acts with site-specific aspects. Vinyl -terror & -horror destruct playback devices and vinyl records to re-structure samples in chance processes; the duo accompany their sculptural objects with movie soundtracks and ‘unfinished compositions’ from their own records to engender cinematic soundscapes and imaginary scenes. Graham Dunning’s turntable construction sequences patterned discs, which trigger auxiliary instruments through the turntable’s rotary motor operations. These mechanical movements embody rhythmic loop structures with temporal inconsistencies, creating a mechanical techno. Having been considered redundant following the introduction of digital media, the vinyl record has recently witnessed a revival. As a post-digital tendency, contemporary musicians using live electronics seek to recover tactile and physical actions in performance. This thesis shows the ways in which the turntable allows artists to develop personal instruments from ready-made products and to emphasise specific sensual-bodily aspects

SOUNDCASTLES: Play and process in field-recording composition

Soundcastles: Play and process in field-recording composition is a practice-led research in experimental music, which investigates the medium of field-recording as a contested vanguard between the listener and the listened; the self and the soundscape; the composer and the material. The research consists of a portfolio of nine field-recording compositions and a corresponding commentary exploring the ideas, approaches, and discourses behind. It studies the complex boundary where the listener and the sonic environment meet, and explores the music potential of sounds in the urban everyday between the immediacy of their emergence, and the cognitive-emotional context of their subjective perception. In the tradition of soundscape composition with field recordings, a main focus of this research is the integration of the affective and the effective qualities of being in the world and listening. The music properties of urban soundscapes can thus be both emphasised and transfigured, so as to include the subjective aesthetic perception without losing the unique connection to their place of origin. The resulting compositions—soundcastles—become mediations between subject and object, soundscape and inner-scape, the actualised and the potential. This research investigates this liminal space of convergence where a listener encounters the sonic environment, and explores the potency of this encounter. It thus problematises the perceived bifurcation of subject and object of listening, and treats the soundscape in terms of imbricated processes within a network of relationships. Each soundcastle is a process of reducing the continuous acoustic environment to a concrete form as perceived from a standpoint. In particular, the methodology of this practice utilises modern signal processing and editing tools to highlight the subjective experience of a soundscape, while preserving the connection of the composition to the specific place and occasion of its recording. In this way, the Soundcastles project aims to situate itself at the in-between space between phonography and acousmatic music within the field of soundscape composition

Two Trains Running: Capture and Escape in the Racialized Train Cars of the Jim Crow South, 1893-1930

The role of the railroad in the modern American experience—and its role in making that experience modern—cannot be overstated. This thesis proposes to tell one of many possible railroad stories. By focusing on the historical and cultural relevance of a series of bodies in transit, I examine the implementation of railroad segregation law and the response by African-American performers. The thesis begins at the end of the nineteenth century with the Homer Plessy test case and continues across three decades, meeting along the way novelists Charles Chesnutt and James Weldon Johnson and musicians W. C. Handy, Henry Ragtime Texas Thomas, and Honeyboy Edwards. I find that by studying the train scenes and train sounds produced by these black men under the constraints of the Jim Crow South, we might come to a better understanding of the role of the railroad in American life, the role of segregation law in southern life, and the role of train experience in the expression of protest escaping from an African-American community caught in its nadir

Graphomania: Composing Subjects in Late-Victorian Gothic Fiction and Technology

This dissertation explores the varied phenomena of “automatic writing” in Victorian Gothic fiction, reading the genre’s fascination with the irrepressible signifying practices of the body in light of the medical, criminological and scientific discourses that underwrite the “scriptural economy” of the late nineteenth century with their own arsenal of automatic writing machines. I have titled the project Graphomania, and I consider the term a keyword of late-Victorian culture—one that names a distinctly Victorian pathology of compulsive writing, but that alludes also to the widespread epistemic hope that writing could render objectively the internal and subjective experiences of individuals. In a chapter devoted to Victorian graphomania and the three studies that follow (graphology in Jekyll and Hyde, retinal photography in The Beetle, and phonography in Dracula), the project is particularly interested in convergences and correspondences between graphical machines and human bodies. In this study, Victorian technology and Gothic literature emerge as twin registers of the divided self, joined in their shared strategy of externalizing conflicts traditionally understood as invisible processes, but also in the consequent tendency of each uncanny text to expose its ghostly remainders and excesses in the process of trying to contain them

Environmental Sound Composition, the Phonograph and Intentionality

Environmental sound composition, a term I employ to describe all forms of electroacoustic works in which the core materials are abstracted from real environments through technology, has been practiced in a variety of forms for more than 50 years. A tension exists between environmental sound composition and western art music, one that continues to make this marriage uncomfortable. In short, the use of mimetic materials in environmental sound composition does not fit the prescriptions of formalism, an ideology that electroacoustic composition inherited from western art music. Though attempts have been made to lessen this tension (Emmerson, 1986 and Smalley, 1996), an underlying anxiety persists in environmental sound composition, as the twin legacy of Pierre Schaeffer’s ideas concerning musique concrète and the concerns of acoustic ecology, a movement championed by soundscape composers (Westerkamp, 2002), continues to influence the genre. Recently there has emerged an increasing resistance to the didactic ideology of soundscape theory in particular, as exemplified by Lopez (1997), Ingold (2007) and Kelman (2010). However, soundscape theory continues to influence the production of environmental sound composition, as composers seek to align themselves with such concerns, or place themselves in opposition to them. In my view, the tension between formalism and mimesis has resulted in a widespread fixation on poietic intent in environmental sound composition. As a result, composers have tried to dictate how their works should be heard, while ignoring the complexity of listener response. While a number of fresh perspectives have arisen in recent years looking at environmental sound composition methodology and the role of esthetic analysis in such works, including Voegelin (2010) and Lane and Carlyle (2013), a rigorous investigation into the roles of intentionality, technology and hermeneutic analysis in the production and reception of environmental sound composition remains absent. My thesis explores the nature of the phonograph (an audio recording) and phonography (the act of recording) in broad terms, and then with specific attention to environmental sound composition. Various recording genres and phonograph types associated with these genres are identified, while the attitudes of composers towards technology and the ontological nature of their works are investigated. This approach is applied in making a critical assessment of environmental sound composition, exposing the specificity of the rift between poietic intention and esthetic reception. I argue for a hermeneutic evaluation of the phonograph on similar terms as those set out by Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida (1981). In examining the temporal dimensions of the phonograph, along with its formal and affective traits, my research aims to elevate the phonograph from the role of a passive bearer of composer intentionality, to that of a primary contributor to the listening experience. With this aim in mind, I present a portfolio of creative works as a second volume to this thesis, born of the ideas discussed herein, which explore the nature of the phonograph, its temporalities, the site specific aspects of phonography and compositional intervention with the phonograph. I will refer to my works throughout this thesis, detailing how I have incorporated my theoretical concerns into my compositional practice, especially in chapter four, five and six

Co-creating an Adventure Playground (CAP): Reading playwork stories, practices and artefacts, Gloucester: University of Gloucestershire

This report draws on findings from an action research project carried out with an adventure playground (AP) over a six-month period during summer/autumn 2013. The overall intention was to explore the ways in which playwork practitioners at the playground make sense of and give meaning to their practice in designing and maintaining an environment for play. Working collaboratively with members of the play and playwork team at the University of Gloucestershire, adventure playground workers explored current articulations of design intentions and practices drawing on a range of conceptual approaches and tools. This brought a critical and reflective lens to the production of the AP, its everyday rhythms, routines and habits, and the ways in which adults and children co-create play spaces

Re-thinking crisis in the digital economy: a contemporary case study of the phonographic industries in Ireland.

Many commentators and reports popularly place the record industry in an increasing state of crisis since the advent of digital copying and distribution. This thesis addresses how the interplay of technological, economic, legal and policy factors, particularly the copyright strand of intellectual property law, shape the form and extent of the Internet’s disruptive potential in the music industry. It points to significant continuities regarding the music industry in an environment where it is often regarded as experiencing turbulence and change, and in doing so the thesis challenges the form and extent of the crisis the music industry currently claims to be battling. The thesis questions the impact the internet is having on the power or role of major music companies, their revenue streams, their relationships with other actors in the music industry chain and their final consumers. The thesis further questions the extent to which the internet has evolved to realise its disruptive potential on the organisation and structure of the record industry by democratising the channels of distribution. It also serves to illuminate the impact of the internet on the role of more traditional intermediaries, particularly radio, in the circulation and promotion of music in the contemporary era. For its primary research material, the thesis draws on a series of thirty-nine interviews conducted with record industry management and personnel as well as key informants from the fields of music publishing, artist management, music retailing, radio, the music press, related industry bodies and policy fields, and other key commentators