BitBox!:A case study interface for teaching real-time adaptive music composition for video games

Real-time adaptive music is now well-established as a popular medium, largely through its use in video game soundtracks. Commercial packages, such as fmod, make freely available the underlying technical methods for use in educational contexts, making adaptive music technologies accessible to students. Writing adaptive music, however, presents a significant learning challenge, not least because it requires a different mode of thought, and tutor and learner may have few mutual points of connection in discovering and understanding the musical drivers, relationships and structures in these works. This article discusses the creation of ‘BitBox!’, a gestural music interface designed to deconstruct and explain the component elements of adaptive composition through interactive play. The interface was displayed at the Dare Protoplay games exposition in Dundee in August 2014. The initial proof-of- concept study proved successful, suggesting possible refinements in design and a broader range of applications

Transmateriality: Toward an Energetics of Signal in Contemporary Mediatic Assemblages

This article focuses on signal as an aspect of modern technicity that precedes—or supersedes—codification. Examining DIY drone videos found on YouTube and the video art of Nam June Paik, among other sources, the article explores how each tests the flow of signal and signal processing as forms of transmateriality and transduction. the author draws particularly on the work of Gilbert Simondon and Adrian Mackenzie

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

The Digital Turn in Indian Film Sound: Ontologies and Aesthetics

My project maps film sound practices in India against the backdrop of the digital turn. It is a critical-historical account of the transitional era, roughly from 1998 to 2018, and examines practices and decisions taken ‘on the ground’ by film sound recordists, editors, designers and mixers. My work explores the histories and genealogies of the transition by analysing the individual, as well as collective, aesthetic concerns of film workers migrating from the celluloid to the digital age. My inquiry aimed to explore linkages between the digital turn and shifts in production practices, notably sound recording, sound design and sound mixing. The study probes the various ways in which these shifts shaped the aesthetics, styles, genre conventions, and norms of image-sound relationships in Indian cinema in comparison with similar practices from Euro-American film industries. I analysed nearly 60 hours of interviews I conducted with sound practitioners in India, examined trade magazines, online journals, the personal blogs of practitioners, technological literature from corporations like Dolby and Barco, and, as case studies, analysed the soundtrack of key Indian films from both the analogue and the digital eras. While my research clearly indicated significant shifts from the analogue to the digital era in India – increased stratification of sound recording and editing processes, aggressive adoption of multichannel sounds, wider acceptance of sync sound, the increasing dominance of the sound designer – it also revealed that many of the analogue era practices remain deeply embedded within digital era conventions. Moreover, technologies and practices from the Euro-American context have undergone substantial ‘Indianisation’ during the process of their adoption. I argue that digital technology, while reshaping deeply institutionalized practices of the analogue era, contributed to particularly radical changes in the practices of sound recording and editing in the digital era in India. While this dissertation is an ethnographic investigation of ‘living history’, it is largely informed by film sound theory, and seeks to achieve a balance between empirically grounded historical research and film theory

Music, Race, and Gender in the Original Series of Star Trek (1966-69).

The original television series STAR TREK (1966–69) enacted the social turmoil of the American sixties, as long-existing power structures struggled with progressive ideas, illuminating charged social and political tensions. Though this science fiction program aspired to a liberal stance, championing core tenets of the Civil Rights and Women’s Movements, it nevertheless reinforced the dominant position of the white, heterosexual male in the United States’ social hierarchy. STAR TREK was what Michel Foucault called rupture or break, simultaneously promoting social change while protecting old power structures. This dissertation performs two tasks. First, it explores the pragmatics of soundtrack production within the series using primary source material from archives across the United States, including the collections of series’ creator Gene Roddenberry and series’ composers Alexander Courage, Fred Steiner, Gerald Fried, Jerry Fielding, Sol Kaplan, and George Duning. Through extant interviews, letters, sketch scores, cue sheets, and contracts, this dissertation reveals the roles of several key figures as well as the processes they imagined and implemented in creating STAR TREK’s soundscape and musical score. Understanding the means by which the soundtrack was integrated into the show not only provides new insight into the television production practices of the sixties and the politics of representation present in the administration of STAR TREK, but also exposes the ideological foundations of the series’ treatment of identity and difference. The second portion of this dissertation demonstrates how STAR TREK’s conflicting social stances resonate through its soundtrack, especially regarding race and gender. Women, though given essential roles on the ENTERPRISE, were routinely reduced to mere romantic interests through coded musical cues; aliens and non-white humans, though treated with respect and given command positions, were often scored with orientalist music that marked them as “other.” Inspired by foundational scholarship in race and post-colonial theory, feminist and queer theory, screen musicology, musicological studies of difference, and musical semiotics, this dissertation interrogates the ways in which STAR TREK’s conflicting ideologies are revealed through its scoring of its multi-ethnic and multi-gendered crew, its many and (somewhat) varied aliens, and its leading men, Captain James T. Kirk and Lieutenant Commander Spock.PhDMusic: MusicologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113404/1/jgetman_1.pd

Sonic Elongation: Creative Audition in Documentary Film

This paper investigates documentary films in which real-world sound captured from the location shoot has been treated more creatively than the captured image; in particular, instances when real-world noises pass freely between sound and musical composition. I call this process the sonic elongation from sound to music; a blurring that allows the soundtrack to keep one foot in the image, thus allowing the film to retain a loose grip on the traditional nonfiction aesthetic. With reference to several recent documentary feature films, I argue that such moments rely on a confusion between hearing and listening

From Grain to Pixel

Film is in a state of rapid change, with the transition from analog to digital profoundly affecting not just filmmaking and distribution, but also the theoretical conceptualization of the medium film and the practice of film archiving. New forms of digital archives are being developed that make use of participatory media to provide a more open form of access than any traditional archive has offered before. Film archives are thus faced with new questions and challenges. From Grain to Pixel attempts to bridge the fields of film archiving and academic research, by addressing the discourse on film ontology and analysing how it affects the role of film archives. Fossati proposes a new theoretization of film archival practice as the starting point for a renewed dialogue between film scholars and film archivists.Het bewegende beeld bevindt zich in een overgangsperiode waarin analoge (fotochemische) film geleidelijk vervangen wordt door digitale film. Deze overgang heeft niet alleen diepgaande invloed op filmproductie en -distributie, maar ook op de manier van archiveren van film en de theoretische conceptualisering van dit medium. Van digitale archieven worden steeds nieuwe vormen ontwikkeld. Deze archieven - digitale filmdatabases en YouTube bijvoorbeeld - maken gebruik van media die participatie van vele gebruikers mogelijk maken en worden zo toegankelijker dan ooit. Ondertussen is er nog onvoldoende dialoog tussen archivarissen en filmwetenschappers. From Grain to Pixel slaat een brug tussen archiveringspraktijken en wetenschappelijk onderzoek dat gebaseerd is op relevante debatten in film- en nieuwe mediastudies. Fossati stelt een nieuwe theorie op voor het archiveren en restaureren van film. Dit biedt mogelijkheden voor een hernieuwde dialoog tussen archivarissen en wetenschappers

Four steps in the history of museum technologies and visitors' digital participation

The hypothesis of this article is that the authentic and auratic exhibited objects in museums enter into a dialogue with surrounding paratexts. The paratexts anchor and change the meaning of the exhibited object in the museum context. Recent years have indicated a tendency for museum paratexts to grow increasingly allographic, i.e., visitors generate them both in situ and online as a part of Web 2.0 participation. The verification and documentation of this hypothesis are partly empirical, partly historical. The empirical research consists of an examination of the exhibition and display technologies used today in three different museums and galleries: the Bode Museum in Berlin, the Victoria and Albert Museum and Dr. Johnson's House in London.    The historical verification and documentation in this article describe four steps in the development of exhibition technologies: the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery (1789-1805), the post-photographic museum (the 1850s), audio guides, as well as a special focus on how museum paratexts have become independent today in its digital and participatory form. In this way, the article sketches the historical development of curating towards the digital and paratextual participation of visitors and audience. Here the argumentation is based on how the displayed object creates signification in its position between its autonomy and its contexts. The following display technologies are described and analysed: stipple engraving, photography, the audio guide, and the interactive, digital Anota pen and its Internet server.    In conclusion, the article asks where the place of signification or meaning of the exhibited object has moved to in the face of the increased degree of visitor participation. The tentative answer is that the signification generating process has moved away from the historical context of the object and towards the contemporary world of the visitor. The article connects this change in cultural discourse with Karin Sander's archaeological imagination and in a wider sense with the concept of negotiation from new historicism.The hypothesis of this article is that the authentic and auratic exhibited objects in museums enter into a dialogue with surrounding paratexts. The paratexts anchor and change the meaning of the exhibited object in the museum context. Recent years have indicated a tendency for museum paratexts to grow increasingly allographic, i.e., visitors generate them both in situ and online as a part of Web 2.0 participation. The verification and documentation of this hypothesis are partly empirical, partly historical. The empirical research consists of an examination of the exhibition and display technologies used today in three different museums and galleries: the Bode Museum in Berlin, the Victoria and Albert Museum and Dr. Johnson's House in London.    The historical verification and documentation in this article describe four steps in the development of exhibition technologies: the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery (1789-1805), the post-photographic museum (the 1850s), audio guides, as well as a special focus on how museum paratexts have become independent today in its digital and participatory form. In this way, the article sketches the historical development of curating towards the digital and paratextual participation of visitors and audience. Here the argumentation is based on how the displayed object creates signification in its position between its autonomy and its contexts. The following display technologies are described and analysed: stipple engraving, photography, the audio guide, and the interactive, digital Anota pen and its Internet server.    In conclusion, the article asks where the place of signification or meaning of the exhibited object has moved to in the face of the increased degree of visitor participation. The tentative answer is that the signification generating process has moved away from the historical context of the object and towards the contemporary world of the visitor. The article connects this change in cultural discourse with Karin Sander's archaeological imagination and in a wider sense with the concept of negotiation from new historicism

Four steps in the history of museum technologies and visitors' digital participation

The hypothesis of this article is that the authentic and auratic exhibited objects in museums enter into a dialogue with surrounding paratexts. The paratexts anchor and change the meaning of the exhibited object in the museum context. Recent years have indicated a tendency for museum paratexts to grow increasingly allographic, i.e., visitors generate them both in situ and online as a part of Web 2.0 participation. The verification and documentation of this hypothesis are partly empirical, partly historical. The empirical research consists of an examination of the exhibition and display technologies used today in three different museums and galleries: the Bode Museum in Berlin, the Victoria and Albert Museum and Dr. Johnson's House in London.    The historical verification and documentation in this article describe four steps in the development of exhibition technologies: the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery (1789-1805), the post-photographic museum (the 1850s), audio guides, as well as a special focus on how museum paratexts have become independent today in its digital and participatory form. In this way, the article sketches the historical development of curating towards the digital and paratextual participation of visitors and audience. Here the argumentation is based on how the displayed object creates signification in its position between its autonomy and its contexts. The following display technologies are described and analysed: stipple engraving, photography, the audio guide, and the interactive, digital Anota pen and its Internet server.    In conclusion, the article asks where the place of signification or meaning of the exhibited object has moved to in the face of the increased degree of visitor participation. The tentative answer is that the signification generating process has moved away from the historical context of the object and towards the contemporary world of the visitor. The article connects this change in cultural discourse with Karin Sander's archaeological imagination and in a wider sense with the concept of negotiation from new historicism.The hypothesis of this article is that the authentic and auratic exhibited objects in museums enter into a dialogue with surrounding paratexts. The paratexts anchor and change the meaning of the exhibited object in the museum context. Recent years have indicated a tendency for museum paratexts to grow increasingly allographic, i.e., visitors generate them both in situ and online as a part of Web 2.0 participation. The verification and documentation of this hypothesis are partly empirical, partly historical. The empirical research consists of an examination of the exhibition and display technologies used today in three different museums and galleries: the Bode Museum in Berlin, the Victoria and Albert Museum and Dr. Johnson's House in London.    The historical verification and documentation in this article describe four steps in the development of exhibition technologies: the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery (1789-1805), the post-photographic museum (the 1850s), audio guides, as well as a special focus on how museum paratexts have become independent today in its digital and participatory form. In this way, the article sketches the historical development of curating towards the digital and paratextual participation of visitors and audience. Here the argumentation is based on how the displayed object creates signification in its position between its autonomy and its contexts. The following display technologies are described and analysed: stipple engraving, photography, the audio guide, and the interactive, digital Anota pen and its Internet server.    In conclusion, the article asks where the place of signification or meaning of the exhibited object has moved to in the face of the increased degree of visitor participation. The tentative answer is that the signification generating process has moved away from the historical context of the object and towards the contemporary world of the visitor. The article connects this change in cultural discourse with Karin Sander's archaeological imagination and in a wider sense with the concept of negotiation from new historicism

The cinema of Michael Bay:an aesthetic of excess

The hyper-kinetic action films of Michael Bay have come to exemplify the commercial, technical and aesthetic transformations of contemporary blockbuster cinema during a period in which the dynamic, disorienting effects of media convergence are reconfiguring viewing practices and remodelling cinematic institutions. However, despite their commercial success and cultural visibility, these films remain more or less absent from academic criticism of late twentieth and early twenty-first century global cinema, except in dismissive asides as examples of the aesthetic and intellectual limitations of contemporary, post-classical Hollywood cinema. Through a close analysis of the $130m film Bad Boys II (2003), described in Rolling Stone as ‘the cinematic equivalent of toxic waste’, this article examines the key stylistic and thematic features of Bay’s cinema, arguing that the director’s films are marked by a distinctive ‘aesthetics of excess’. Discussing such features as narrative structure and spatial organization, the highly affective representation of movement and intense colour, and an insistently ironic self-reflexivity, I argue that Bad Boys II is a systematic exploration of inter-related modes of excess in terms of circumstances of production, style, narrative economy, and thematic focus. Drawing on Paul Willemen’s analysis of the ‘Sirkian system’ in Douglas Sirk Hollywood melodramas, this article explores the components of the ‘Bayian system’