Aspects of openness and specificity in post-minimal music

This commentary discusses my exploration in applying openness to minimalist compositional methods in the forms of inclusivity, democracy, intuition, improvisation and non-teleology. Additionally, I consider methods of balancing such openness with the specificity of virtuosity, idiom and process within my Master of Arts by Research portfolio of compositions. Each section of the thesis details my approach to different aspects of openness and specificity as a post-minimalist composer and how I have considered them in my music, including; contextualising my music within contemporary and historical manifestations of minimalist music and wider discourse; paradigms of role, format and protocol in the musical process; enculturation in the process of musical learning. I have referred to a wide range of academic and informal literature, music and media to substantiate my research interests as relevant to contemporary music and its practitioners, and widespread in popular and vernacular idioms. I conclude to clarify the position of my compositions and their methodologies in a relevant post-minimalist context and their functions as archetypes of a pragmatic system for future compositions

Direct combination: a new user interaction principle for mobile and ubiquitous HCI

Direct Combination (DC) is a recently introduced user interaction principle. The principle (previously applied to desktop computing) can greatly reduce the degree of search, time, and attention required to operate user interfaces. We argue that Direct Combination applies particularly aptly to mobile computing devices, given appropriate interaction techniques, examples of which are presented here. The reduction in search afforded to users can be applied to address several issues in mobile and ubiquitous user interaction including: limited feedback bandwidth; minimal attention situations; and the need for ad-hoc spontaneous interoperation and dynamic reconfiguration of multiple devices. When Direct Combination is extended and adapted to fit the demands of mobile and ubiquitous HCI, we refer to it as Ambient Combination (AC) . Direct Combination allows the user to exploit objects in the environment to narrow down the range of interactions that need be considered (by system and user). When the DC technique of pairwise or n-fold combination is applicable, it can greatly lessen the demands on users for memorisation and interface navigation. Direct Combination also appears to offers a new way of applying context-aware information. In this paper, we present Direct Combination as applied ambiently through a series of interaction scenarios, using an implemented prototype system

Choosers: The design and evaluation of a visual algorithmic music composition language for non-programmers

Algorithmic music composition involves specifying music in such a way that it is non-deterministic on playback, leading to music which has the potential to be different each time it is played. Current systems for algorithmic music composition typically require the user to have considerable programming skill and may require formal knowledge of music. However, much of the potential user population are music producers and musicians (some professional, but many amateur) with little or no programming experience and few formal musical skills. To investigate how this gap between tools and potential users might be better bridged we designed Choosers, a prototype algorithmic programming system centred around a new abstraction (of the same name) designed to allow non-programmers access to algorithmic music composition methods. Choosers provides a graphical notation that allows structural elements of key importance in algorithmic composition (such as sequencing, choice, multi-choice, weighting, looping and nesting) to be foregrounded in the notation in a way that is accessible to non-programmers. In order to test design assumptions a Wizard of Oz study was conducted in which seven pairs of undergraduate Music Technology students used Choosers to carry out a range of rudimentary algorithmic composition tasks. Feedback was gathered using the Programming Walkthrough method. All users were familiar with Digital Audio Workstations, and as a result they came with some relevant understanding, but also with some expectations that were not appropriate for algorithmic music work. Users were able to successfully make use of the mechanisms for choice, multi-choice, looping, and weighting after a brief training period. The ‘stop’ behaviour was not so easily understood and required additional input before users fully grasped it. Some users wanted an easier way to override algorithmic choices. These findings have been used to further refine the design of Choosers

Optimality and Plausibility in Language Design

The Minimalist Program in generative syntax has been the subject of much rancour, a good proportion of it stoked by Noam Chomsky’s suggestion that language may represent “a ‘perfect solution’ to minimal design specifications.” A particular flash point has been the application of Minimalist principles to speculations about how language evolved in the human species. This paper argues that Minimalism is well supported as a plausible approach to language evolution. It is claimed that an assumption of minimal design specifications like that employed in MP syntax satisfies three key desiderata of evolutionary and general scientific plausibility: Physical Optimism, Rational Optimism, and Darwin’s Problem. In support of this claim, the methodologies employed in MP to maximise parsimony are characterised through an analysis of recent theories in Minimalist syntax, and those methodologies are defended with reference to practices and arguments from evolutionary biology and other natural sciences

Why should syntactic islands exist?

Sentences that are ungrammatical and yet intelligible are instances of what I call perfectly thinkable thoughts. I argue that the existence of perfectly thinkable thoughts is revealing in regard to the question of why syntactic islands should exist. If language is an instrument of thought as understood in the biolinguistics tradition, then a uniquely human subset of thoughts is generated in narrow syntax, which suggests that island constraints cannot be rooted in narrow syntax alone and thus must reflect interface conditions imposed on the output of the computational system and its mapping to external systems

Full Interpretation of Optimal Labeling

This article proposes that the label for each syntactic node/set is fully derivable from Agree operating on edge-features of lexical items. It is also proposed that the derivations of labels transparently carve the path for ?-marking at the semantic interface. When tied with the label asymmetry condition at the Sensorimotor-interface and principles of derivational economy, this theory of labeling/Agree derives effects of what is traditionally called the ?-Criterion at the semantic interface. Ramifications for the principle of Full Interpretation are also discussed

Making space for the future: the importance of deletion for LIS and the information society

The information society generally, and information studies specifically, are understandably concerned with productive actions done with data and information, like preservation, access, and (re)use over time. While such concerns are important and their related activities are clearly valuable, we will soon be facing limits to storage and related resources, and so information scholars and practitioners must more fully consider and support the complementary part of the information lifecycle: deletion. We outline the growing necessity of data and information deletion for social and environmental sustainability through several example concerns. We then consider several challenges of and to deleting that must be considered and addressed, from societal to individual scales, by drawing on works in information behaviour, personal information management, human-computer interaction, and the history, philosophy, and ethics of information. Deletion is an understudied phenomenon of growing importance, and although it has a broadly negative perception in comparison to preservation, it has some notable advantages for individuals and society. Information scholars and practitioners have an important role to play in understanding and supporting deletion; recommendations for each are provided here.Peer Reviewe