On Campus, March 22, 1999

A Newsletter for Faculty and Staff of Coastal Carolina University. Volume 9, Number 6https://digitalcommons.coastal.edu/on-campus/1140/thumbnail.jp

Visual Music Composition with Electronic Sound and Video

Abstract This research project investigated techniques for composing visual music and achieving balance in the relationship between sound and image. It comprises this thesis and a portfolio of compositions. The investigation began with an interest in the relationships between colour and sound and later expanded to include form and motion, the remaining factors of Thomas Wilfred’s lumia (1947). Working with a cohesive theme, such as lumia, proved to be an effective way of creating a coherent aesthetic in portfolio pieces. Other themes were therefore investigated including composing with visual and audio materials recorded from the single source of Thailand, the wave phenomena of refraction and diffraction and a filmed natural sunset interpreted in electroacoustic music. Two distinct compositional techniques were used, material transference, where qualities were transferred between sound and image, and compositional thinking, which assisted in creating audio-visual compositions that possessed musical qualities. Material transference proved to be the most productive technique during composing and it was discovered that effectuating it algorithmically created a strong bond between sound and image. Compositional thinking assisted in creating the form of the portfolio pieces and was found to apply to both video and music. Compositional thinking was found to be useful at the macro level, where structural form was designed, and material transference worked at a finer micro level, transferring individual qualities between sound and video objects

Seizing the Catholic Moment: Kairos and the Rhetoric of Diocesan Administration

What can Roman Catholic diocesan administrations in the United States learn from rhetorical studies in the postmodern moment? This dissertation attempts to help American dioceses to respond to a postmodern moment of increasing secularization, changing human resources, and declining institutional trust. In this moment of challenge and uncertainty, it finds Richard Neuhaus\u27s (1987) metaphor of the Catholic Moment to be particularly powerful for diocesan administration because it finds within the tensions of postmodernity a new sense of possibility that both the Christian and rhetorical traditions have understood through the metaphor of kairos. The rhetoric of diocesan administration is best understood not as the implementation of communicative or managerial \u27techniques\u27 but as a form of playful engagement that flows out of the pastoral acknowledgement of the call of a homeless world. \u27Part I: The Call of the Catholic Moment\u27 describes the challenges that American dioceses currently face, frames the rhetorical dimensions of diocesan life, and seeks to ground the rhetoric of diocesan administration in the institutional roots that give it a human face: the stewardship of the gift of the Catholic faith and the pastoral care of persons. In the moment of postmodernity, dioceses that fail to attend to these roots compromise their identity and their ability to respond to the Catholic Moment. In the Catholic Moment, diocesan administrations are constantly invited and challenged to learn how to become better dioceses--more confident, more competent, more caring, and more self-consciously Catholic--than ever before. \u27Part II: The Response of Diocesan Administration\u27 approaches the rhetorical challenges of postmodernity in a constantly constructive fashion. Building on the notion of interpretive play so important to Hans-Georg Gadamer\u27s (1960/2004) philosophical hermeneutics, it will propose an understanding of diocesan rhetoric framed by the metaphor of administrative play that transforms diocesan administration from a bureaucratic structure into a communicative home. By allowing Catholic dioceses to see the historical moment of postmodernity in ways conducive to administrative play, Neuhaus\u27s metaphor of the Catholic Moment--transforms postmodernity into an occasion of kairos\u27-as long as dioceses are open and willing to seize it