Topology of spatial texture in the acousmatic medium

This research explores the dynamic fabric of experienced space in acousmatic music. The topology of spatial texture is a network of concepts treating music as a flexible, textural space, which deforms, shapes, and transforms in time. A comprehensive terminology is introduced, along with five fixed-media electroacoustic compositions, which exemplify a manifestation of spatial texture in composition and musical thinking. The theory draws from research on the cross-modality of texture perception, philosophical discourse on embodied meaning, physics, psychology of visual art, and discourse on space in acousmatic music. Several different structural perspectives are discussed, which reveal how spatial texture incorporates lower sound-structural levels, materiality, states and processes, motion, global networks and terrains, and relationships between space and time. Emphasis is put on visual and physical connections with spatiality in the acousmatic experience: cogency in spatial structure and dynamics reinforces links among modalities. The concepts and terminology are intended as a contribution to theory in the acousmatic medium, relevant to composition, analysis, and listening. The music represents an aesthetic orientation which emphasises materiality and morphology in texture, transformative processes, spatial design, and spatiotemporal polyvalence

The Paradox and Contradictions in Cultural Value and Exchange Worth of Anatolian Hand-crafted Wool Felted Textiles

This thesis seeks to explain the development and implementation of a new model, methods and process of practice required for the rejuvenation of hand crafted woolfelted textile making customs and practices of the Anatolian region of Turkey, which mediates tradition in a contemporary context. In progressing the aims of the research project underpinning the thesis it was necessary to undertake both field work, learning the felt makers' practices, and to undertake empirical design-based product trials which provided insights into the culture and creative potential of the felt making activity thus facilitating the development of the new model of practice. Therefore the thesis examines not only the nature and context, both historical and contemporary, of felt makers and felt making practice in Anatolia but also presents ethnographic and theoretical discourse intended to argue and justify the approaches adopted in the development of the new model of practice and a verification process of its effectiveness. The thesis interrelates strands of changing contexts; research record and theory discourse and argues that the new model of practice enables sustainability and displays ethical responsibility appropriate to, and commensurate with, the felt making culture of Anatolia and its traditions. The thesis argues by demonstration that the perception of an object is determined by location and level of consciousness, which can be reflected upon and, through redesign involving aggregation of qualities and values, purposefully represent an object and recreate its lost aura's root from tradition, transposed into a new diversity of perceptual responses. The thesis concludes that mediatory actions implicit in the new model of practice need not adversely impact upon the traditional culture of the makers in terms of lifestyle choices, since reciprocal exchange is a local transaction, which proffers evolving tradition as cultural values to a diversity of external locations and levels of consciousness. This open-ended mediatory action of anonymous hybridisations will continue by the intervention of other designers through evolutionary integration to elevate the status of the culture object and its related craft activity

Computational and Psycho-Physiological Investigations of Musical Emotions

The ability of music to stir human emotions is a well known fact (Gabrielsson & Lindstrom. 2001). However, the manner in which music contributes to those experiences remains obscured. One of the main reasons is the large number of syndromes that characterise emotional experiences. Another is their subjective nature: musical emotions can be affected by memories, individual preferences and attitudes, among other factors (Scherer & Zentner, 2001). But can the same music induce similar affective experiences in all listeners, somehow independently of acculturation or personal bias? A considerable corpus of literature has consistently reported that listeners agree rather strongly about what type of emotion is expressed in a particular piece or even in particular moments or sections (Juslin & Sloboda, 2001). Those studies suggest that music features encode important characteristics of affective experiences, by suggesting the influence of various structural factors of music on emotional expression. Unfortunately, the nature of these relationships is complex, and it is common to find rather vague and contradictory descriptions. This thesis presents a novel methodology to analyse the dynamics of emotional responses to music. It consists of a computational investigation, based on spatiotemporal neural networks sensitive to structural aspects of music, which "mimic" human affective responses to music and permit to predict new ones. The dynamics of emotional responses to music are investigated as computational representations of perceptual processes (psychoacoustic features) and self-perception of physiological activation (peripheral feedback). Modelling and experimental results provide evidence suggesting that spatiotemporal patterns of sound resonate with affective features underlying judgements of subjective feelings. A significant part of the listener's affective response is predicted from the a set of six psychoacoustic features of sound - tempo, loudness, multiplicity (texture), power spectrum centroid (mean pitch), sharpness (timbre) and mean STFT flux (pitch variation) - and one physiological variable - heart rate. This work contributes to new evidence and insights to the study of musical emotions, with particular relevance to the music perception and emotion research communities

Consciosusness in Cognitive Architectures. A Principled Analysis of RCS, Soar and ACT-R

This report analyses the aplicability of the principles of consciousness developed in the ASys project to three of the most relevant cognitive architectures. This is done in relation to their aplicability to build integrated control systems and studying their support for general mechanisms of real-time consciousness.\ud To analyse these architectures the ASys Framework is employed. This is a conceptual framework based on an extension for cognitive autonomous systems of the General Systems Theory (GST).\ud A general qualitative evaluation criteria for cognitive architectures is established based upon: a) requirements for a cognitive architecture, b) the theoretical framework based on the GST and c) core design principles for integrated cognitive conscious control systems