The acoustics of concentric sources and receivers – human voice and hearing applications

One of the most common ways in which we experience environments acoustically is by listening to the reflections of our own voice in a space. By listening to our own voice we adjust its characteristics to suit the task and audience. This is of particular importance in critical voice tasks such as actors or singers on a stage with no additional electroacoustic or other amplification (e.g. in ear monitors, loudspeakers, etc.). Despite the usualness of this situation, there are very few acoustic measurements aimed to quantify it and even fewer that address the problem of having a source and receiver that are very closely located. The aim of this thesis is to introduce new measurement transducers and methods that quantify correctly this situation. This is achieved by analysing the characteristics of the human as a source, a receiver and their interaction in close proximity when placed in acoustical environments. The characteristics of the human voice and human ear are analysed in this thesis in a similar manner as a loudspeaker or microphone would be analysed. This provides the basis for further analysis by making them analogous to measurement transducers. These results are then used to explore the consequences of having a source and receiver very closely located using acoustic room simulation. Different techniques for processing data using directional transducers in real rooms are introduced. The majority of the data used in this thesis was obtained in rooms used for performance. The final chapters of this thesis include details of the design and construction of a concentric directional transducer, where an array of microphones and loudspeakers occupy the same structure. Finally, sample measurements with this transducer are presented

From John Farnham to Lordi: the noise of music

In the field of music scholarship in general, it is popular music studies that have engendered the most innovative developments over the last several decades. As an academic formally based in literature and cognate theoretical fields, I would go further and offer the personal opinion that they have made some of the most interesting contributions to the methodologies of cultural studies over that period, fed by prior traditions of ethnomusicology and ethnography. One of the main reasons has a bearing on this article: it is impossible to write effectively about popular music, which is so predominantly independent of the printed score, without at least implicitly questioning the scopic orientations of cultural analysis and theory which dominate other fields (and indeed, sometimes music studies themselves). We can find an unfolding summary of the developments in popular music studies through what I suggest are the three most important academic journals in the field, which are, in order of seniority, Popular Music and Society (founded in the USA in 1971), Popular Music (UK, 1981) and Perfect Beat: the Pacific Journal of Research into Contemporary Music and Popular Culture (Australia, 1992). In its continuing series, Perfect Beat provides a comprehensive and focused exemplification of approaches to the critical analysis of the musics usually designated as ‘popular’ in the Oceanic region. In short, if we want to know what’s going on in Australian popular music studies, this journal is a good place to start

Spartan Daily, September 16, 2008

Volume 131, Issue 10https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/10494/thumbnail.jp

Currents of exchange: HEAD THROAT GUTS the sounding structures of the body in experimental voice practice.

Throughout this Masters research paper and practice I have placed the sounding body in different experimental contexts including live, event-based performances, sound technologies, and installation. My research specifically explores how the human voice sits in a body; how it is used and practiced to produce sound, and projected out to be placed elsewhere. During these moments the body undergoes physical challenges linked to the architecture and technology of a space. Each performance is specific to a site and is devised accordingly. I have conducted a number of experiments and collaborative projects to define and place the sounding body into a contemporary art context. These discoveries have lead to parallel findings and have allowed for a continuous trajectory throughout the MFA degree. My particular focus of research has lead to the investigation to how live experimental performances alter an experience in an audience as opposed to a documented or mediated experience. When an audience is presented with a raw sounding body, I’m interested in how are they affected and how this experience translates from one person to another. Throughout this paper I analyse, discuss and exemplify six of my own live event based works alongside other artists practicing in a similar field and context to highlight the intrinsic bodily experience that is evident when observing and receiving a sounding body in performance

Towards a poetics of criticism: Adornoian negativity and the experiential in the essays and musical marginalia of Virginia Woolf

Through an analysis of the work of Virginia Woolf and T.W. Adorno’s theory of the aesthetic, this dissertation seeks to develop a poetics of criticism that takes account of the philosophy of the non-identical in subjective experience. As the subversion of the positivist and subjectivist tendencies of identity thinking, Adorno’s negative dialectic is read here in parallel with Woolf’s work as an example of a discourse that preserves the particularity of experience. Much of Woolf’s writing about music is in the form of diary entries, letters and notes or jottings and is singularly unfinished. Her writing about music pushes her to the extremes of essayistic practice where she is forced to improvise and invent a musical-critical voice. This dissertation argues that subjectivity and aesthetic experience are constructed negatively in Woolf’s diaries, letters and essays and by reading her tendency to resist describing musical experiences as a resistance to the domination of conceptual subsumption, I hope to show that Woolf’s writing could offer a new perspective on criticism. The present work attempts to develop a three-fold thesis, the presentation of which will constitute a poetics of criticism. Firstly, Woolf’s attempts to write a critical selfhood actually serve as a critique of transcendental subjectivity and undermine the ideology of a priori subjectivity. Secondly, Woolf’s essays complement work done by Adorno on genre theory which asserts that contradiction remains essential to the critical essay, contradiction which secures the identity of negative dialectics and a contradiction that can simultaneously be read as fundamental to the architectonics of a modernist subjectivity. Woolf’s essays, therefore, will be read for their potential status as a means of critique. And thirdly, the technique of parataxis as a form of writing that Adorno thought best expressed the inaccessibility of objectivity will be shown to be decisive in analyzing Woolf’s fragments. What I hope to assemble, therefore, is a constellation of ideas that map several points ofconnection between Adorno and Woolf.By effecting a salvaging of Woolf’s musical marginalia this thesis argues that ostensibly ill-informed or naïve testimony can be given legitimacy within contemporary music criticism. In addition, this thesis presents all the references to music found in Woolf’s diaries and letters, and, as such, the appendices found at the back of the dissertation constitute not only the first attempt to bring this material together, but are also presented in such a way so as to reinforce the paratactical nature of Woolf’s writing about music. That is to say, structurally, the appendices appear as they appear in Woolf’s original texts, and this thesis has, self-consciously, tried to resist the conceptual overdetermination of these fragments. This structural consideration implies that this dissertation fulfils a performative, as well an analytical function

Red Note New Music Festival Program, 2019

The RED NOTE New Music Festival at Illinois State University is a week-long event which features outstanding performances of contemporary concert music.https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/rnf/1027/thumbnail.jp

Practising identity : emerging adults, digital social technologies and contexts for self

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building.The emergence of digital social technologies throughout the lives of digital native emerging adults has had significant implications for the identity practices of these individuals, and consequently creates a diverse and emergent space for researching digitally networked practices. The pervasiveness of digital social technologies across blurred digital and physical boundaries has led to these technologies becoming heterogeneous spaces in which temporal and spatial contexts are destabilised. Now, these individuals are operating within networked publics, where the functions of digital social technologies enable contextual information to flow between individuals and their audiences in the form of visual and textual media. These complex networked social linkages, characterised by the collapse and circulation of context, assist digital native emerging adults in developing a greater understanding of themselves and the identities they present to the world. However, as they traverse their social contexts through the multiplicity of digital social technologies available to them, unfixed contexts mean they are continuously drawing on their locational, material, situational and social contexts to develop identity performances. This research finds that the willingness of these individuals to adopt digital social technologies as part of their daily habits and routines has led to the creation of specific activities that give rise to an enduring context creation practice. There are a number of methodological issues for digital ethnographers. Ethnography in digitally networked circumstances has, so far, been reliant on context as a stabilising factor, however what does it mean when context is destabilised? This research maps out this context creation practice by first asking how do digital ethnographers observe context, then, how do digital ethnographers make sense of context. Situated within the field of design, this research takes a mixed-method approach to analysing the complexity and dynamics of context made visible through the identity performances of digital native emerging adults. It draws on digital ethnography methods, combining visual data analysis and interviews, to interpret the contemporary milieu of networked publics. It specifically focuses on the visual and textual aspects of visual media content produced through Instagram. The key theoretical and methodological contributions of this research are a demonstration of how, through a digital ethnographic investigation exploring the identity practices of first year design students at a university in Sydney, Australia, it is possible to chart how contextual elements are drawn together by these young people within networked publics. Through comprehensive exploration of the ways in which these digital native emerging adults establish activities of practice to negotiate the collapse and circulation of context, the research identifies four core activities that participants demonstrated particular competences in: coping with context collapse, negotiating the network, performing roles and circulating feedback. Exploring these dynamics demonstrates the ways in which digital native emerging adults embrace the changing typologies of digital social technologies as they negotiate the transition from adolescence to adulthood. In tracing a contemporary understanding of the role of context as a key part of emerging adult identities the research contributes to new understandings of digitally networked practices

Western Electric: A survey of recent Western Australian electronic music

This paper surveys developments in recent Western Australian electronic music through the work of a number of representative artists in a range of internationally recognised genres. The article follows specific cases of practitioners in the fields of Sound Art (Alan Lamb and Hannah Clemen), live and interactive electronics (Jonathan Mustard and Lindsay Vickery) and noise/lo-fi electronics (Cat Hope and Petro Vouris) and glitch/electronica (Dave Miller and Matt Rösner)

Sound-Stories: Audio Drama and Adaptation

Although it is one of the most neglected fields of performance culture, throughout its history audio drama has been prolific and impactful. Radio has produced adaptations of fiction which has been as (in)famous as Mercury Theatre on the Air’s ‘War of the Worlds’ broadcast (1938) and as monumental as the BBC’s complete Sherlock Holmes (1989-98). In the twenty-first century, the internet has created a new era of audio drama: there has never been a more fluid range of options through which we can consume network radio and, in addition to this, there are websites streaming archival materials as well as podcasts of experimental or amateur work. In short, there has never been a richer time to be an audio drama ‘listener’. Adaptation has been a central practice in audio drama since the beginning of radio: indeed, the creation of ‘original’ plays for radio is a trend that emerged sometime after plays appeared on radio, which were initially entirely adaptive. This chapter will explore different types of adaptation in audio drama. An enormous range of stage plays, novels and films of every kind of genre have been chosen as sources for audio adaptation. Moreover, the format of these plays has been as diverse as the genres that have been selected. From readings and audiobooks to the complexity of binaural and interactive productions, audio listeners can experience one-off dramas and serializations, differing in length and ambition. In terms of strategy, audio adaptation can be found to use the strategies of allusion or hybridization as much as a more conventional or ‘completist’ approach. A range of case studies will be used for analysis to ensure that the topic is explored in the most diverse way: as well as classic works of radio drama and output from the major radio networks, the essay will also feature analysis of independent podcast audio drama