As mind narrates body : Virginia Woolfs aesthetic presentation of being in time

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

A practice-based investigation into the process of film reception in the context of the modern era

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The Spectator of Modernity is a practice based thesis that investigates the process of Film Reception from the perspective of the film as experienced by the individual and her/his apprehension of the interaction between the fictional world on screen and the everyday world. The written component of the project positions the historical context and explores the theoretical notions for the understanding of film-viewing as a decidedly modern activity of special significance for the individual's permanent quest for meaning. Accompanying the written element, an original audiovisual piece amalgamates the real life testimonials of memorable film experiences which form the qualitative analysis of the research, with the story of a fictional character wandering in the location of the city. The activity of the character, driven to investigate the memorable film experience and in permanent search for a way to reengage in a meaningful relationship with everyday reality, is argued that is analogous to the activity of film-viewing. Following the considerations of the theory and the findings of the qualitative analysis of the project, the audiovisual piece suggests that watching a film is as a form of flanerie carried out inside the cinema, through which the individual seeks to assign meaning to the transient and fragmented events of modern life.This work is sponsored by the Mexican institutions “Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Mexico” and “Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia”

Aural Auras and Haunting Echoes: Places with complex biographies

The aim of the thesis is to explore the distinct identities of places with complex biographies. In particular, it investigates the processes through which sound can enact dialogues between places and people, thus exposing these identities. Place, and more specifically the history of place, is understood as a field that is involved in a process of continuous negotiation and performance. Throughout the thesis, it is contended that the identities of "charged places" can be experienced similarly to how we experience ambience or background noise. Through the ostensible silence that characterises the places under study – a silence not necessarily acoustic, but rather one that relates to the absence of what was or what should have been there – a noisy narrative may develop in our mental realm. Imagination and daydream is the ultimate condition for creating what Gaston Bachelard (1958) terms the "poetic image", which will enable us to "listen" to the place through its histories and to delve into its "aural aura". The specific topic of investigation is how a sound artist, following a place-specific trajectory, may foster a meaningful conversation between the audience and the place, thus exposing the place's biographical essences, and furthermore how they may "orchestrate" an aural aura in order to establish this communication. The four works presented in the portfolio constitute a practical approach through which a response is given to the above inquiries. Each of the four works addresses fields that involve socio-political, philosophical, cultural and aesthetic concerns relevant to the island of Cyprus, as well as more practical artistic matters, such as interactivity, collaboration and ephemerality. The thesis concludes that place-specific sound art with a guerrilla-art style, can be an effective way of expressing and communicating nuances and concepts that relate to the biography of places

Generation of Variations on Theme Music Based on Impressions of Story Scenes Considering Human's Feeling of Music and Stories

This paper describes a system which generates variations on theme music fitting to story scenes represented by texts and/or pictures. Inputs to the present system are original theme music and numerical information on given story scenes. The present system varies melodies, tempos, tones, tonalities, and accompaniments of given theme music based on impressions of story scenes. Genetic algorithms (GAs) using modular neural network (MNN) models as fitness functions are applied to music generation in order to reflect user's feeling of music and stories. The present system adjusts MNN models for each user on line. This paper also describes the evaluation experiments to confirm whether the generated variations on theme music reflect impressions of story scenes appropriately or not

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING The Autobiographical Subject in the Drama and Memoirs of Ronald Duncan

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/737 on 20.03.2017 by CS (TIS)This study developed after considerable time spent collating and cataloguing data contained in Ronald Duncan's archive. Familiarisation with the material led to my identifying a need to explore the elusive nature of the personality that biographical material should hope to uncover. Duncan was prone to mainly confessional writing, a kind of writing that demands a causal inference between life and work. Furthermore, the archive supplies multiple data sources that serve to aid chronology, trace reliability, provide external corroboration and investigate truth-value. My study follows a loosely chronological structure after discerning shifts in his thematic concerns. The years up until the mid-' 60s are detailed because, from his youth until that time, Duncan is consistently idealistic but expresses preoccupations particularly manifest in society in each period. Chapters 1 and 2 study Duncan's concern with utopian politics (1930s); Chapter 3, his relationship to religion (1940s); Chapter 4, his part in West End Theatre in the 1950s; and Chapters 5 and 6, his tackling of issues of gender and sexuality (1950s and '60s). Each chapter draws upon the autobiography and-related documents of those years. The thesis refers particularly to Duncan's dramatic writing, avoiding serious analysis of the poetry because it has been recently researched. Because theatre movements are imbued with popular cultural codes, these and his memoirs are chosen to convey how his texts centralise the idea of authenticity but also manipulate the idea using subjects and characters caught between idealism and despair, the textual and the historical. Consequently, my approach to Duncan's work emphasises subject-hood rather than a pre-textual authorial presence which prompts the reader to seek an explanation for the work in its producer. Theoretical implications emerge from the association of Duncan's autobiographical personalities with the notion of writerly authority and its creations. With Duncan the 'question' of self-hood is ultimately conceived as a process whereby the text is attributed to the author through a complex and disparate set of operations, not referential simply to a real individual, but to several simultaneous selves and subject positions. Displacing a perception of the author as the origin of meaning, webs of intertextual voices are discerned within the texture of discourse.THE RONALD DUNCAN FOUNDATIO