332 research outputs found
'A hidden art form' the value of sound in UK television idents (1982-2022)
Television idents are hidden in plain sight. Their creativity is often undervalued by
industry practitioners and viewers alike, designated a âhidden art formâ by creative
executive Charlie Mawer (2020). The sound worlds of idents are doubly overlooked,
often ignored in visually-centric discourse on idents in industry journals and in media
and cultural studies. In the production process, composers are often peripheral to the
project, involved only towards the end. This thesis inverts such hierarchies and adopts
a sound-oriented perspective towards idents. The approach brings together previously
disparate strands across musicology, art and design history, and media studies,
aiming to highlight the value of sound in idents as well as the hitherto-neglected
creative labour of composers in the promotion of television channels. The scope is
confined mainly to the UK, examining idents produced for broadcasters and streaming
platforms between 1982 and 2022.
This thesis addresses a central question: What is the value of music and sound in
television idents? To answer this question, it combines textual analyses of idents with
evidence from practitioner interviews. Musicological concepts and theories are
employed in the analysis of idents, highlighting the aesthetic character and functions
of the music and sounds. The method of reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) applied to
the interviews produced new insights into the working environments of the composers
and their creative colleagues, exploring themes of identity, collaboration, creative
process, and artistic value.
The first three chapters set out the aim of this thesis, academic contexts, and
methodological approach respectively. Chapter 4 contains a musicological analysis of
idents, tracing transformations in the aesthetic character and roles of sound in
connection with the changing experience of watching television between 1982 and
2022. Chapter 5 expands on the arguments set out in Chapter 4 by focussing on
production contexts, unpacking themes derived from the qualitative analysis of the
interviews. Chapter 6 synthesises the conclusions and findings from Chapters 4 and
5 and discusses the commercial, artistic, and cultural value of the music and sound of
idents. This thesis culminates with an exploration of future avenues of research and
the implications of this research for practitioners and educators. In sum, this thesis
argues that the artistic labour of ident production and the valuable role of musical
creativity within this commercial and temporally constraining context deserve greater
recognition and attention
Beyond Quantity: Research with Subsymbolic AI
How do artificial neural networks and other forms of artificial intelligence interfere with methods and practices in the sciences? Which interdisciplinary epistemological challenges arise when we think about the use of AI beyond its dependency on big data? Not only the natural sciences, but also the social sciences and the humanities seem to be increasingly affected by current approaches of subsymbolic AI, which master problems of quality (fuzziness, uncertainty) in a hitherto unknown way. But what are the conditions, implications, and effects of these (potential) epistemic transformations and how must research on AI be configured to address them adequately
Gurus and Media: Sound, image, machine, text and the digital
Gurus and Media is the first book dedicated to media and mediation in domains of public guruship and devotion. Illuminating the mediatisation of guruship and the guru-isation of media, it bridges the gap between scholarship on gurus and the disciplines of media and visual culture studies. It investigates guru iconographies in and across various time periods and also the distinctive ways in which diverse gurus engage with and inhabit different forms of media: statuary, games, print publications, photographs, portraiture, films, machines, social media, bodies, words, graffiti, dolls, sound, verse, tombs and more.
The bookâs interdisciplinary chapters advance, both conceptually and ethnographically, our understanding of the function of media in the dramatic production of guruship, and reflect on the corporate branding of gurus and on mediated guruship as a series of aesthetic traps for the captivation of devotees and others. They show how different media can further enliven the complex plurality of guruship, for instance in instantiating notions of âabsent-presentâ guruship and demonstrating the mutual mediation of gurus, caste and Hindutva.
Throughout, the book foregrounds contested visions of the guru in the development of devotional publics and pluriform guruship across time and space. Thinking through the guruâs many media entanglements in a single place, the book contributes new insights to the study of South Asian religions and to the study of mediation more broadly
Computational Stylistics in Poetry, Prose, and Drama
The contributions in this edited volume approach poetry, narrative, and drama from the perspective of Computational Stylistics. They exemplify methods of computational textual analysis and explore the possibility of computational generation of literary texts. The volume presents a range of computational and Natural Language Processing applications to literary studies, such as motif detection, network analysis, machine learning, and deep learning
Selected proceedings of the 50th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages
Synopsis:
The present volume presents a selection of the revised and peer-reviewed proceedings articles of the 50th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL 50) which was hosted virtually by the faculty and students from the University of Texas at Austin. With contributions from rising and senior scholars from Europe and the Americas, the volume demonstrates the breadth of research in contemporary Romance linguistics with articles that apply corpus-based and laboratory methods, as well as theory, to explore the structure, use, and development of the Romance languages. The articles cover a wide range of fields including morphosyntax, semantics, language variation and change, sociophonetics, historical linguistics, language acquisition, and computational linguistics. In an introductory article, the editors document the sudden transition of LSRL 50 to a virtual format and acknowledge those who helped them to ensure the continuity of this annual scholarly meeting
Becoming Soil: Five Contemporary Cases in Eco Materialism (On Art, Fermentation, and Soil Remediation)
This dissertation proposes a new approach to soil remediation that I term becoming soil. Becoming soil seeks to help reclaim soilâs aesthetic dimensions, dimensions where soil is dynamic and alive. I argue that soil remediation is an artistic, creative, and collaborative practice that goes well beyond a romantic attempt to recover a lost fertile ground. Instead, it invites the senses to become invested in the continuous processes that keep soil alive. Furthermore, the dissertation reveals the hidden aesthetic underpinning of soil depletion, a crucial environmental problem, while offering creative means to resist the massive and adverse impact that humans have on soil. To this end, the subject of Becoming Soil is examined through five operational questions: a) What is Value? b) What Hides? c) What Remains? d) What Resurfaces? and e) What is Recovered? That correspond to the five artworks by artists Claire Pentecostâs Soil-Erg (2012), Frances Whiteheadâs SLOW Clean-up (2008-10), Mel Chinâs Revival Field (1991âongoing), Jea Rhim Leeâs Infinity Burial Project (2009âongoing), and Wormfarm Institute creative initiatives on art and agriculture, Fermentation Fest (2010âongoing). I answer these questions in the light of contemporary ecological theory; more precisely, eco criticism and eco materialism, than like fermentation, are methods of transformation (a giving and and taking in reciprocity) that benefit both the aesthetic and scientific aspects of soil remediation. These methods make tangible transdisciplinary collaborations possible. Illuminate the impact of humans on soil, becoming soil reveals the possibilities for new artistic, scientific, economic, social, and political engagements that are soil centric. Moreover, becoming soil amplifies the aesthetic dimensions of soil remediation, helping to restore the sensual experiences of eating nutritious food, standing on solid ground, and the enigmatic return to the soil in death.https://digitalmaine.com/academic/1044/thumbnail.jp
Capitalist Crisis Poetry: Lyric Encounters with Neoliberalism in the Twenty-First Century
This volume brings together twelve empirical studies on ditransitive constructions in Germanic languages and their varieties, past and present. Specifically, the volume includes contributions on a wide variety of Germanic languages, including English, Dutch, and German, but also Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian, as well as lesser-studied ones such as Faroese. While the first part of the volume focuses on diachronic aspects, the second part showcases a variety of synchronic aspects relating to ditransitive patterns. Methodologically, the volume covers both experimental and corpus-based studies. Questions addressed by the papers in the volume are, among others, issues like the cross-linguistic pervasiveness and cognitive reality of factors involved in the choice between different ditransitive constructions, or differences and similarities in the diachronic development of ditransitives. The volumeâs broad scope and comparative perspective offers comprehensive insights into well-known phenomena and furthers our understanding of variation across languages of the same family
Watching the Watchers: Contemporary Television, Complex Seriality, and Media Literacy
Narrative seriality dominates the twenty-first century mediascape, and nowhere is this more apparent than in television, where audiences have on-demand access to hundreds of thousands of unique series. Approaching seriality through the lens of contemporary television programming, this dissertation, Watching the Watchers: Contemporary Television, Complex Seriality, and Media Literacy, joins the growing body of interdisciplinary research on the affordances, limitations, causes, and implications of the serial form in American culture. More precisely, it treats the contemporary television series as a cipher through which it identifies and interprets how series negotiate the contours of their formal identity with its viewers. The dissertation opens with a deep genealogy of television seriality, in which it excavates and interprets the economic, technological, and cultural origins of contemporary television storytelling practices. From there, it moves into two case studies, analyzing the ways in which Westworld and Watchmen speak to the tendency of contemporary television series to theorize their own narrational forms. Where foundational texts in seriality studies have already established the innate reflexivity of all narrative series, this dissertation locates within Westworld a newer trend in âcomplexâ television, which it calls metaseriality, that thematizes the processes by which series stage conversations between contemporary and past expressions of seriality; current series and their serial contemporaries; and the serial form and its audiences. Then, in its chapter on Watchmen, the dissertation explores what it means to watch a series that is simultaneously watching its audiences. Coding the multi-generational inheritance of trauma as a symptom of narrative, cultural, and genetic seriality, Watchmen attempts to remediate that trauma through experiments in narrative form. Finally, this dissertation turns toward the pragmatic goal of developing a critical pedagogy of television seriality. Without targeted instruction in formal and media literacy, consumers become unwitting students of the commercial logic of seriality. Watching the Watchers addresses the urgent demand for such a pedagogy by providing the rationale and resources necessary to support instructors in the creation of courses or units on television seriality.Doctor of Philosoph
The underscore
Amidst the parched and hazy drought and wildfire season in Albertaâs Rocky Mountains and prairies, an AI start-up approaches a famous Instagram influencer to embed her likeness into its avatars. Set beyond the AIâs murky digital landscape, âThe Underscoreâ explores the journey of four characters with interwoven narratives during two critical junctures: the proliferation of AI friendship and the dangers of a looming forest fire in Jasper.
Sophie_Grace is a lauded millennial known for her social media empire who chooses to ignore the warning signs of her AI. Sophieâs best friend Iris risks her personal and professional connections despite her reservations and defends Sophieâs decisions until one event threatens to crater their relationship permanently. Rowan, Irisâs partner, is a Woodlands firefighter and quietly observes the changing social and climate environments before him, until a spark ignites a blaze that threatens to ravage Jasper.
Annie is a young high-schooler enamoured with the Sophie_Grace. When Sophie_Grace uploads her personality into AI, Annie jumps at the chance to have realistic conversations with the famous influencer.
A speculative work of realist fiction, âThe Underscoreâ examines the pernicious elements of artificial intelligence through the very human and messy nature of genuine connection, heartache, and humour
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