Exploring the piano accompanist in western duo music ensembles : towards a conceptual framework of professional piano accompaniment practice

This thesis explores the phenomenon of the piano accompanist in Western art duo chamber ensembles, specifically the solo–accompaniment medium. Following a critical examination of relevant literature by practitioners and researchers where changing socio-cultural attitudes towards accompanists are discussed along with related issues about accompaniment and ensemble playing more broadly, two empirical studies are reported. These enquiries aim to investigate the expectations of contemporary professional soloists and pianists about accompanists as well as to explore the skills and roles exhibited by pianists working in the solo–accompaniment duo context, which have yet to be systematically evaluated. Both studies adopt qualitative methodology with interpretative phenomenological analysis, the first comprising interviews with twenty professional musicians, the second involving case study observation of rehearsals and performances using video recalls with three accompanists and three soloists working in different combinations. The data provided insight into the range of musical and other expectations articulated by professional musicians about piano accompanists as well as the nature of the skills and roles involved in achieving ensemble, interpreting soloists’ intentions, dealing with unexpected incidents, achieving balance and communicating with soloists. A novel conceptual framework about accompaniment practice is constructed based upon the data from the two studies as well as the relevant literature which articulates musico-functional and socio-emotional aspects of accompaniment practice

Rewind Italia: Early Video Art in Italy

Published in association with AHRC funded research projects REWIND–Italia Artists Video in Italy in 70s and 80s. "Italy was a vibrant center of video art production and experimentation throughout the 1970s and 1980s, attracting artists from all over the world and laying the foundation for video art as a concept in the global art and film communities. With vibrant illustrations, compelling interviews, and essays by leading scholars in the field, this collection highlights Italy's key place in the history of video as an art form.

Game engines and MAS: tuplespace-based interaction in Unity3D

I Game Engines stanno acquisendo sempre più importanza sia in ambito industriale, dove permettono lo sviluppo di applicazioni moderne e videogiochi, sia in ambito di ricerca, in particolare nel contesto dei sistemi multi-agente (MAS). La loro capacità espressiva, unita al supporto di tecnologie e funzionalità innovative, permette la creazione di sistemi moderni e complessi in maniera più efficiente: il loro continuo avanzamento tecnologico li ha portati ad essere una realtà su cui fare affidamento nella produzione di vari applicativi diversi, come applicazioni di realtà aumentata/virtuale/mista, simulazioni immersive, costruzione di mondi virtuali e 3D, ecc. Ciononostante, soffrono la mancanza di proprie astrazioni e meccanismi che possano essere affidabili e utilizzati per aggredire la complessità durante il design di sistemi complessi. Il tentativo di sfruttare le caratteristiche della teoria dei MAS all'interno degli ambienti di sviluppo dei Game Engines procede secondo questa direzione: integrando le astrazioni costituenti i MAS all'interno dei Game Engines, con particolare riferimento ai modelli di coordinazione tra agenti, può portare a nuove soluzioni, riuscendo a risolvere problemi tecnologici grazie all'aiuto degli engine grafici. Questa tesi utilizza il Game Engine Unity3D proponendo due librerie C#, le quali sfruttano una precedente integrazione dello stesso framework con il Prolog per l'abilitazione di un modello di interazione e coordinazione basato su spazi di tuple, utilizzabile tramite l'implementazione di primitive LINDA. Le librerie offrono interfacce di programmazione (API) sfruttabili dai programmatori C# Unity3D per integrare nelle loro creazioni il supporto a tale modello, con una nuova modalità per la gestione della coordinazione tra oggetti in Unity3D e fornisce importanti proprietà, essendo fondamentale nel contesto dei MAS dal punto di vista dell'ingegnerizzazione di sistemi complessi e della gestione delle interazioni tra agenti

Music Encoding Conference Proceedings 2021, 19–22 July, 2021 University of Alicante (Spain): Onsite & Online

Este documento incluye los artículos y pósters presentados en el Music Encoding Conference 2021 realizado en Alicante entre el 19 y el 22 de julio de 2022.Funded by project Multiscore, MCIN/AEI/10.13039/50110001103

Environmental Storytelling: logiche, elementi e forme della narrazione spazializzata nel videogioco

Con questa ricerca si intende individuare i tratti caratteristici e i meccanismi di funzionamento dell\u2019environmental storytelling videoludico, una tecnica narrativa per la quale il racconto di eventi ed esistenti della storia avviene attraverso il design spaziale degli ambienti digitali del videogioco. Per comprendere in che modo le narrazioni spazializzate operano, si prenderanno in esame i tratti distintivi della dimensionalit\ue0, in quanto differenti dimensioni presuppongono altrettanto differenti organizzazioni dello spazio, e i principi propri del digital storytelling da una parte, e delle pi\uf9 specifiche narrazioni videoludiche dall\u2019altra. Sulla base dei concetti emersi in questa fase, si proporr\ue0 una sistematizzazione degli elementi di cui si compone l\u2019environmental storytelling, seguita dalla descrizione delle sue particolari modalit\ue0 di implementazione e dei suoi obiettivi, sia narrativi che di gameplay. Infine, si prenderanno in esame quelle qualit\ue0 che permettono alle narrazioni ambientali di espandersi in senso transmediale, attraverso l\u2019approfondimento dei casi dei wiki monografici e dei saggi video a tema videoludico. Per mezzo di questa precisa impostazione metodologica, ci si propone di fare emergere logiche, elementi e forme tipici della narrazione spazializzata videoludica

Proceedings of the Seventh Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics CLiC-it 2020

On behalf of the Program Committee, a very warm welcome to the Seventh Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-it 2020). This edition of the conference is held in Bologna and organised by the University of Bologna. The CLiC-it conference series is an initiative of the Italian Association for Computational Linguistics (AILC) which, after six years of activity, has clearly established itself as the premier national forum for research and development in the fields of Computational Linguistics and Natural Language Processing, where leading researchers and practitioners from academia and industry meet to share their research results, experiences, and challenges

Music Encoding Conference Proceedings 2021. 19–22 July, 2021 University of Alicante (Spain): Onsite & Online. Edited by Stefan Münnich and David Rizo

Conference proceedings of the Music Encoding Conference 2021 with Foreword by Stefan Münnich and David Rizo

Street Furniture and the Nation State: A Global Process

In the popular imagination, street furniture has traditionally been understood as evoking a sense of national or local identity. From Paris’ metro entrances, DDR lampposts in Berlin, and London’s york stone pavements, the designed environment has been able to contribute to the unique qualities of a place. In some instances this was deliberate. In postwar Britain for instance, the Council of Industrial Design – a state-funded design organization - often appeared to measure the quality of street furniture on the basis of its national characteristics. On other occasions, the relationship between such objects and identity emerged accidentally. In Britain during the 1980s, for example, the replacement of Gilbert Scott's red telephone box with an alternative BT model provoked considerable debate. For many people, this act was not just a Conservative attack on nationalization and state-ownership, but also on the very fabric of British identity. This understanding of street furniture has retained its currency for many years, and cities across the world have used street furniture to provide a sense of visual coherency for neighbourhoods in need of new identities, strengthening their character and improving the public's relationship to them. In this way, street furniture has been employed as a cipher for the narrative of regeneration, in which - as a means of altering the identity of a space - street furniture can project a new face upon the street. Increasingly however, advertising companies are able to lever themselves into the street furniture market by offering to provide the service to the local authorities for free in return for advertising space. In offering this service, global companies like JC Decaux, Wall and Clear Channel command a huge amount of commercial power within the city. The excessive homogenization of street furniture coupled with the overwhelming presence of advertising which is increasingly sanctioned by local authorities keen to reduce costs, has resulted in the perception of poorer quality streets. Thus, the irony of regeneration is that by seeking to promote the unique identity of a city, many places often end up looking more and more alike. This paper will examine recent developments in the process by which the street is furnished and the agents responsible. It will specifically look at how these changes have affected the relationship between street furniture and identity, and equally the effect this process has had on understandings of national design histories. Clearly, evaluating contemporary street furniture through the lens of the nation-state is of very little value, since the international differences between street furniture are considerably less marked than they used to be. This extraordinary aesthetic convergence is partly linked to economies of scale - after all, just how many different kinds of bus stop can Europe afford to have? Yet it also reflects some of the challenges posed by globalization and privatization of public space. This paper will reflect upon that process, and how these bigger narratives increasingly affect the landscape of the street