Recognition of variations using automatic Schenkerian reduction.

Experiments on techniques to automatically recognise whether or not an extract of music is a variation of a given theme are reported, using a test corpus derived from ten of Mozart's sets of variations for piano. Methods which examine the notes of the 'surface' are compared with methods which make use of an automatically derived quasi-Schenkerian reduction of the theme and the extract in question. The maximum average F-measure achieved was 0.87. Unexpectedly, this was for a method of matching based on the surface alone, and in general the results for matches based on the surface were marginally better than those based on reduction, though the small number of possible test queries means that this result cannot be regarded as conclusive. Other inferences on which factors seem to be important in recognising variations are discussed. Possibilities for improved recognition of matching using reduction are outlined

The alchemy of ideas

This article presents an assessment of the power of ideas and their role in initiating change and progress. The enormous potential cascade effect is illustrated by examining the movement of Modernism in the arts. Next, the immense scope and capabilities of the modern scientific endeavor—with robotic space exploration at the scale of 10⁹ meters at one extreme and the wonders of nanoscience at the scale of 10⁻⁹ m at the other—are examined. The attitudes and philosophies of neurological surgery are related to those involved in the Modernist movement and placed on the defined scale of contemporary scientific activity

Special Libraries, November 1956

Volume 47, Issue 9https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1956/1008/thumbnail.jp

'Go to the forest and move': 1960s American rock music as electronic pastoral

In his song ‘Hijack’ (1970), the Jefferson Airplane’s Paul Kantner demanded “free minds, free dope, free bodies, free music.” Expressed in this way, the preoccupations of the 1960s counterculture were largely humanist and anthropocentric. Yet allied to these concerns was a mystical view of the natural world, bordering on pantheism, which anticipated the more biocentric ecological concerns associated with the deep ecology movement of the 1970s. ‘Flower power’ was a Romantic desire to return to what was perceived as a simpler, more natural form of social life, based on the communal patterns of pre-modern, tribal societies. The rock music associated with the hippy counterculture was integral to this newly emerging subculture of radical environmentalism. Indeed, several of the leading figures in the sixties rock scene went on to become environmental activists in the decades that followed. Joe McDonald became involved in animal rights and whale conservation; after two decades of environmental activism in his own locality, Ed Sanders of the Fugs founded the Woodstock Journal in 1995 with his wife, the writer and painter Miriam R. Sanders; Stewart Brand, former member of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, founded the Whole Earth Catalog in the fall of 1968, and in 1996 became a founder member of the Long Now Foundation, an organisation = dedicated to promoting long-term thinking about the future of global ecosystems

Spartan Daily, February 11, 1949

Volume 37, Issue 79https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/11193/thumbnail.jp

Totem & Ore

A feature documentary about the effects of Nuclear weapons & testing. In Australia, the tragedy of uranium exploration, mining and British atomic testing in 1950’s Aboriginal Australia. Starting at the Hiroshima bomb and ending at the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima. The historic tragedies and fear told by atomic bomb witnesses, activists, filmmakers, artists, actors, writers composers, doctors, professors....Aboriginal Actress, Ursula Yovich reflects on her visit to Hiroshima, her appeal that “No place in the world for Nuclear weapons!