16 research outputs found
The Emergence of an Acoustical Art Form: An Analysis of the German Experimental Horspiel of the 1960s
The Era of the Traditional Horspiel has passed. Although they have an important and welcome place in the repertory of every German broadcaster, the radio plays of Gunter Eich, the lyrical fantasies of Ingeborg Bachmann, the suspenseful stories of Friedrich Durrenmatt, the interior monologues of Heinrich Boll, Dieter Wellershoff, and Peter Hirche no longer influence the creative energies at work in the genre as they did throughout the 1950s. They are in a sense museum pieces to which the term classic has already been widely applied. What has followed the mature classic period possesses the vigor of youth and the freshness of innovation. Called simply das Neue Horspiel, the successor to the traditional German radio play has pulled the genre out of near stagnation by offering through the radio an aesthetic experience different from that available to readers of literature, viewers of film and television, or friends of the concert hall and theater. After more than a decade of active experimentation, there are now signs that a point of transition has been reached in the development of these new forms, and that consequently it may be possible to speak collectively of the first generation of experimental Horspiele without doing excessive violence to the variety of forces at work. Before still newer forces complicate the task, the opportunity should be taken for a critical look at some of the experimental works themselves, including an examination of their generic characteristics and their principal features of form and content. It is my belief that in this process a fresh perspective will be won for a reevaluation of the classic Horspiel and its important theoretical corpus.
The starting point for any attempt to understand the respective natures of the traditional and experimental Horspiel must be the postulate on which the theory of the entire genre has been based. This postulate, as formulated in the wave of generally sound theoretical and practical criticism that emerged in the years 1961 to1964, expressed the belief that there was a necessary relationship between the acoustical medium of radio and the poetic expression of the Horspiel. It became a cliche, echoed uncritically by all the major theorists, that the Horspiel was an exclusively acoustical art form. Armin P. Frank observed Rundfunksendungen im weitesten Sinn, also auch Horspiele, sind ausschliesslich akustische Gestalten. E. Kurt Fischer spoke of the Horspiel as eine rein akustische Darbietungsform, and Heinz Schwitzke of the akustische Wirklichkeit des Horspiels. 1 Not surprisingly, the handbooks of literature seized upon this basic feature as the starting point for their discussion of the genre. Gero von Wilpert\u27s Sachworterbuch der Literatur (4th ed., 1964 and 5th ed., 1969) begins its characterization of the H orspiel accordingly:
HORSPIEL als neue dramatische Lit.gattung seit der Erfindung des Rundfunks (erstes H. 6.10.1923 Glasgow) ist gekennzeichnet durch Wegfall alles Optischen (Szene. Mimik. Milieu. Schauplatz. Kulisse. oft durch sog. Gerauschkulisse ersetzt) zugunsten des rein Akustischen....
The present study will argue that this premise, so reasonable on its face, was in fact premature; that it better characterizes the new variety of Horspiel which, ironically, emerged only after the definition of the classic Horspiel as a rein akustische art form. The consequence of this premature characterization has been a corresponding neglect of the role of the visual dimension in the classic Horspiel and an almost total disregard of the phenomenon of the printed text. The perspective gained by an evaluation of the newer and increasingly acoustical form of the Horspiel will demonstrate that the typical work of the classic era operates aesthetically in visual, not acoustical, terms, and that much of the excellent theory published on the exclusively acoustical Horspiel applies with equal validity to the Horspiel as printed text
Understanding Optical Music Recognition
For over 50 years, researchers have been trying to teach computers to read music notation, referred to as Optical Music Recognition (OMR). However, this field is still difficult to access for new researchers, especially those without a significant musical background: Few introductory materials are available, and, furthermore, the field has struggled with defining itself and building a shared terminology. In this work, we address these shortcomings by (1) providing a robust definition of OMR and its relationship to related fields, (2) analyzing how OMR inverts the music encoding process to recover the musical notation and the musical semantics from documents, and (3) proposing a taxonomy of OMR, with most notably a novel taxonomy of applications. Additionally, we discuss how deep learning affects modern OMR research, as opposed to the traditional pipeline. Based on this work, the reader should be able to attain a basic understanding of OMR: its objectives, its inherent structure, its relationship to other fields, the state of the art, and the research opportunities it affords
The Emergence of an Acoustical Art Form: An Analysis of the German Experimental Horspiel of the 1960s
The Era of the Traditional Horspiel has passed. Although they have an important and welcome place in the repertory of every German broadcaster, the radio plays of Gunter Eich, the lyrical fantasies of Ingeborg Bachmann, the suspenseful stories of Friedrich Durrenmatt, the interior monologues of Heinrich Boll, Dieter Wellershoff, and Peter Hirche no longer influence the creative energies at work in the genre as they did throughout the 1950s. They are in a sense museum pieces to which the term classic has already been widely applied. What has followed the mature classic period possesses the vigor of youth and the freshness of innovation. Called simply das Neue Horspiel, the successor to the traditional German radio play has pulled the genre out of near stagnation by offering through the radio an aesthetic experience different from that available to readers of literature, viewers of film and television, or friends of the concert hall and theater. After more than a decade of active experimentation, there are now signs that a point of transition has been reached in the development of these new forms, and that consequently it may be possible to speak collectively of the first generation of experimental Horspiele without doing excessive violence to the variety of forces at work. Before still newer forces complicate the task, the opportunity should be taken for a critical look at some of the experimental works themselves, including an examination of their generic characteristics and their principal features of form and content. It is my belief that in this process a fresh perspective will be won for a reevaluation of the classic Horspiel and its important theoretical corpus.
The starting point for any attempt to understand the respective natures of the traditional and experimental Horspiel must be the postulate on which the theory of the entire genre has been based. This postulate, as formulated in the wave of generally sound theoretical and practical criticism that emerged in the years 1961 to1964, expressed the belief that there was a necessary relationship between the acoustical medium of radio and the poetic expression of the Horspiel. It became a cliche, echoed uncritically by all the major theorists, that the Horspiel was an exclusively acoustical art form. Armin P. Frank observed Rundfunksendungen im weitesten Sinn, also auch Horspiele, sind ausschliesslich akustische Gestalten. E. Kurt Fischer spoke of the Horspiel as eine rein akustische Darbietungsform, and Heinz Schwitzke of the akustische Wirklichkeit des Horspiels. 1 Not surprisingly, the handbooks of literature seized upon this basic feature as the starting point for their discussion of the genre. Gero von Wilpert\u27s Sachworterbuch der Literatur (4th ed., 1964 and 5th ed., 1969) begins its characterization of the H orspiel accordingly:
HORSPIEL als neue dramatische Lit.gattung seit der Erfindung des Rundfunks (erstes H. 6.10.1923 Glasgow) ist gekennzeichnet durch Wegfall alles Optischen (Szene. Mimik. Milieu. Schauplatz. Kulisse. oft durch sog. Gerauschkulisse ersetzt) zugunsten des rein Akustischen....
The present study will argue that this premise, so reasonable on its face, was in fact premature; that it better characterizes the new variety of Horspiel which, ironically, emerged only after the definition of the classic Horspiel as a rein akustische art form. The consequence of this premature characterization has been a corresponding neglect of the role of the visual dimension in the classic Horspiel and an almost total disregard of the phenomenon of the printed text. The perspective gained by an evaluation of the newer and increasingly acoustical form of the Horspiel will demonstrate that the typical work of the classic era operates aesthetically in visual, not acoustical, terms, and that much of the excellent theory published on the exclusively acoustical Horspiel applies with equal validity to the Horspiel as printed text
Colour Communication Within Different Languages
For computational methods aiming to reproduce colour names that are meaningful to speakers of different languages, the mapping between perceptual and linguistic aspects of colour is a problem of central information processing. This thesis advances the field of computational colour communication within different languages in five main directions. First, we show that web-based experimental methodologies offer considerable advantages in obtaining a large number of colour naming responses in British and American English, Greek, Russian, Thai and Turkish. We continue with the application of machine learning methods to discover criteria in linguistic, behavioural and geometric features of colour names that distinguish classes of colours. We show that primary colour terms do not form a coherent class, whilst achromatic and basic classes do. We then propose and evaluate a computational model trained by human responses in the online experiment to automate the assignment of colour names in different languages across the full three-dimensional colour gamut. Fourth, we determine for the first time the location of colour names within a physiologically-based cone excitation space through an unconstrained colour naming experiment using a calibrated monitor under controlled viewing conditions. We show a good correspondence between online and offline datasets; and confirm the validity of both experimental methodologies for estimating colour naming functions in laboratory and real-world monitor settings. Finally, we present a novel information theoretic measure, called dispensability, for colour categories that predicts a gradual scale of basicness across languages from both web- and laboratory- based unconstrained colour naming datasets. As a result, this thesis contributes experimental and computational methodologies towards the development of multilingual colour communication schemes
Computer mediated colour fidelity and communication
Developments in technology have meant that computercontrolled
imaging devices are becoming more powerful and more
affordable. Despite their increasing prevalence, computer-aided
design and desktop publishing software has failed to keep pace, leading
to disappointing colour reproduction across different devices.
Although there has been a recent drive to incorporate colour management
functionality into modern computer systems, in general this
is limited in scope and fails to properly consider the way in which
colours are perceived. Furthermore, differences in viewing conditions
or representation severely impede the communication of colour
between groups of users.
The approach proposed here is to provide WYSIWYG colour
across a range of imaging devices through a combination of existing
device characterisation and colour appearance modeling techniques.
In addition, to further facilitate colour communication, various common
colour notation systems are defined by a series of mathematical
mappings. This enables both the implementation of computer-based
colour atlases (which have a number of practical advantages over
physical specifiers) and also the interrelation of colour represented in
hitherto incompatible notations.
Together with the proposed solution, details are given of a computer
system which has been implemented. The system was used by
textile designers for a real task. Prior to undertaking this work,
designers were interviewed in order to ascertain where colour played
an important role in their work and where it was found to be a problem.
A summary of the findings of these interviews together with a
survey of existing approaches to the problems of colour fidelity and
communication in colour computer systems are also given. As background
to this work, the topics of colour science and colour imaging
are introduced
Engineering Data Compendium. Human Perception and Performance, Volume 1
The concept underlying the Engineering Data Compendium was the product an R and D program (Integrated Perceptual Information for Designers project) aimed at facilitating the application of basic research findings in human performance to the design of military crew systems. The principal objective was to develop a workable strategy for: (1) identifying and distilling information of potential value to system design from existing research literature, and (2) presenting this technical information in a way that would aid its accessibility, interpretability, and applicability by system designers. The present four volumes of the Engineering Data Compendium represent the first implementation of this strategy. This is Volume 1, which contains sections on Visual Acquisition of Information, Auditory Acquisition of Information, and Acquisition of Information by Other Senses
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Towards a better understanding of sensory substitution: the theory and practice of developing visual-to-auditory sensory substitution devices
Visual impairment is a global and potentially devastating affliction. Sensory substitution
devices have the potential to lessen the impact of blindness by presenting vision via another
modality. The chief motivation behind each of the chapters that follow is the production of
more useful sensory substitution devices. The first empirical chapter (chapter two)
demonstrates the use of interactive genetic algorithms to determine an optimal set of
parameters for a sensory substitution device based on an auditory encoding of vision (“the
vOICe”). In doing so, it introduces the first version of a novel sensory substitution device which
is configurable at run-time. It also presents data from three interactive genetic algorithm
based experiments that use this new sensory substitution device. Chapter three radically
expands on this theme by introducing a general purpose, modular framework for developing
visual-to-auditory sensory substitution devices (“Polyglot”). This framework is the fuller
realisation of the Polyglot device introduced in the first chapter and is based on the principle
of End-User Development (EUD). In chapter four, a novel method of evaluating sensory
substitution devices using eye-tracking is introduced. The data shows both that the copresentation
of visual stimuli assists localisation and that gaze predicted an auditory target
location more reliably than the behavioural responses. Chapter five explores the relationship
between sensory substitution devices and other tools that are used to acquire real-time
sensory information (“sensory tools”). This taxonomy unites a range of technology from
telescopes and cochlear implants to attempts to create a magnetic sense that can guide
further research. Finally, in chapter six, the possibility of representing colour through sound is
explored. The existence of a crossmodal correspondence between (equi-luminant) hue and
pitch is documented that may reflect a relationship between pitch and the geometry of visible
colour space