2008 SSWC Program

Progra

2012 SSWC Program

Progra

Theatre Noise Conference

Three days of Performances, Installations, Residencies, Round Table Discussions, Presentations and Workshops More than an academic conference, Theatre Noise is a diverse collection of events exploring the sound of theatre from performance to the spaces inbetween. Featuring keynote presentations, artists in residence, electroacoustic, percussive and digital performances, industry workshops and installations, Theatre Noise is an immersive journey into sound

Speaker Park: An intersection of loudspeaker design and post-acousmatic composition

Speaker Park was an internationally curated project which brought together a custom installation of 24 hand built, sculptural loudspeakers made by Roar Sletteland and Jon Pigott, with two composers, Antti Sakari Saario and Mari Kvien Brunvoll, who took up residencies working with the system. The project was conceived as a critique of standardised commercial high-end loudspeaker systems of the type typically used for the electronic production and reproduction of sound. Setting up a conversation between composer and speaker designer / maker the project served as an investigation into unusual resonant and diverse approaches to loudspeaker design and how they affect the compositional and production processes. The project was premiered at Borealis international festival of Sound Art and Experimental Music which took place between 6th – 10th March 2019 in Bergen, Norway. This paper is a first-hand reflection and exposition of Speaker Park by composer Antti Saario and speaker designer / maker Jon Pigott. It will detail the individual approach of each author in developing their part of the project (composition and speaker design) as well as the collaborative insights from the overall process. Pigott will describe the inspiration for his speaker designs as emerging from an investigation into the physical and formal characteristics of resonant objects such as organ pipes, sound systems and architectural environments where spaces, enclosures, ports and materials all serve to develop unique resonant behaviours. The use of coneless moving coil exciters to maximise the physical and material elements of the sculptural loudspeakers will also be explained. The historical and cultural context for the custom and sculptural loudspeaker will be presented with examples including David Tudor’s Rainforest (1968), Francois Bayle’s Acousmonium (1974) and The Ondes Martenot among others. Saario will discuss the commission and production of the fixed media composition A†BSB†R (‘Above the Blackened Skies. Beneath the Remains.’) (2019) for the Speaker Park project and the associated conceptual framework (‘network’). Here, concepts are read as ‘active’ forces of creativity (Colebrook, 2002) and the discussion will map a Deleuzian enterprise; an emergent set of connections pertaining to the production and the sonic-affective intent of the Speaker Park-A†BSB†R assemblage. Key concepts are affect hit (Massumi, 2015), spectromorphology (Smalley, 1997), composition as collaboration (Harrison, 1996) and ecosophy (Guattari, 1989). The work is nomadic (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988) in relation to the ‘state’ apparatus of mainstream loudspeaker design, spatial configurations and formats and its approach to spatial strategies afforded by Speaker Park’s ‘anti-configuration’ and spectral constraints (Magnusson, 2006). These various themes will underpin discussion around predictability within technological design and how this serves to support the model of the technological ‘black box’. It will also explore notions of a hierarchical chain of technological concerns extending from endlessly soft and malleable digital tools through to hard material technologies

Coaching Imagery to Athletes with Aphantasia

We administered the Plymouth Sensory Imagery Questionnaire (Psi-Q) which tests multi-sensory imagery, to athletes (n=329) from 9 different sports to locate poor/aphantasic (baseline scores <4.2/10) imagers with the aim to subsequently enhance imagery ability. The low imagery sample (n=27) were randomly split into two groups who received the intervention: Functional Imagery Training (FIT), either immediately, or delayed by one month at which point the delayed group were tested again on the Psi-Q. All participants were tested after FIT delivery and six months post intervention. The delayed group showed no significant change between baseline and the start of FIT delivery but both groups imagery score improved significantly (p=0.001) after the intervention which was maintained six months post intervention. This indicates that imagery can be trained, with those who identify as having aphantasia (although one participant did not improve on visual scores), and improvements maintained in poor imagers. Follow up interviews (n=22) on sporting application revealed that the majority now use imagery daily on process goals. Recommendations are given for ways to assess and train imagery in an applied sport setting

Tactile Interactions with a Humanoid Robot : Novel Play Scenario Implementations with Children with Autism

Acknowledgments: This work has been partially supported by the European Commission under contract number FP7-231500-ROBOSKIN. Open Access: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.The work presented in this paper was part of our investigation in the ROBOSKIN project. The project has developed new robot capabilities based on the tactile feedback provided by novel robotic skin, with the aim to provide cognitive mechanisms to improve human-robot interaction capabilities. This article presents two novel tactile play scenarios developed for robot-assisted play for children with autism. The play scenarios were developed against specific educational and therapeutic objectives that were discussed with teachers and therapists. These objectives were classified with reference to the ICF-CY, the International Classification of Functioning – version for Children and Youth. The article presents a detailed description of the play scenarios, and case study examples of their implementation in HRI studies with children with autism and the humanoid robot KASPAR.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

My Brain Doesn\u27t Work Like That Creating Success with Non-Traditional (and Traditional) Learners by Accommodating Learning

So many of the kids we identify as “at risk” have learning preferences and needs that may not be an ideal match for the way they are being taught or how they are expected to learn. For adults whose learning styles are somewhat more traditional, it can be hard to understand kids who actually learn and perform better when their preferences look very different from our own. Trying to force kids into a picture of learning or attending that is unnatural for them can create stress for them, result in behaviors that create stress for us, and ultimately interfere with the very goals of learning and achievement we claim to want! This program will explore a number of ways individuals learn, offering dozens of practical strategies for accommodating a variety of learner preferences, and examining at ways to teach students to take responsibility for their own learning needs—without creating problems for anyone else. Great ideas for adults working with non-traditional learners

Between Philosophy and Art

Similarity and difference, patterns of variation, consistency and coherence: these are the reference points of the philosopher. Understanding experience, exploring ideas through particular instantiations, novel and innovative thinking: these are the reference points of the artist. However, at certain points in the proceedings of our Symposium titled, Next to Nothing: Art as Performance, this characterisation of philosopher and artist respectively might have been construed the other way around. The commentator/philosophers referenced their philosophical interests through the particular examples/instantiations created by the artist and in virtue of which they were then able to engage with novel and innovative thinking. From the artists’ presentations, on the other hand, emerged a series of contrasts within which philosophical and artistic ideas resonated. This interface of philosopher-artist bore witness to the fact that just as art approaches philosophy in providing its own analysis, philosophy approaches art in being a co-creator of art’s meaning. In what follows, we discuss the conception of philosophy-art that emerged from the Symposium, and the methodological minimalism which we employed in order to achieve it. We conclude by drawing out an implication of the Symposium’s achievement which is that a counterpoint to Institutional theories of art may well be the point from which future directions will take hold, if philosophy-art gains traction