The time is out of joint: Atmosphere and hauntology at Bodiam Castle

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd Drawing on recent work in emotional and cultural geography, the author brings Derrida's concept of hauntology into communication with thinking about atmospheres. The research deployed a mixed-method approach including audio documentation, observation, focus groups and interviews to look at the use of spectrality in the making of atmospheres associated with A Knight's Peril, an interactive game played at Bodiam Castle in the South East of England. The paper argues that the figure of the ghost is a useful heuristic towards understanding how designers conjure and exploit the emotional and affective power of atmospheres. At Bodiam, these techniques are deployed in an attempt to facilitate new understandings of the past

Percepcija protiv. Etnografsko promišljanje o osjetilnim, hodajućim i atmosferskim obratima

The paper seeks to contribute to critical reflection on recent trends in cultural anthropology, the humanities more generally, and ongoing transformations of urban space. The first part of the paper explores the genealogy of two crucial anthropological approaches to “the life of the senses,” anthropology of the senses, and sensory anthropology, outlines their relationship to so-called walking methodologies, and relates them to the recent upsurge of research in atmospheres. The second part presents selected topics from the described fields in Ljubljana. More specifically, the paper deals with how, during sensobiographic walking through the historical city center, Ljubljančani and Ljubljančanke experienced what “atmospheric transformations” ushered in by Ljubljana’s annual December celebrations/festivities. The authors conclude that concepts and epistemological frameworks produced or implicated in the anthropology of the senses/sensory anthropology, as well as in walking methodologies and atmospheric studies, engender an examination of sensory dimensions of politics and economy in late capitalism but are appropriated in a reified form for purposes of capital accumulation.Rad nastoji pridonijeti kritičkom promišljanju o nedavnim kretanjima u kulturnoj antropologiji i humanističkim znanostima općenito, kao i o transformacijama urbanog prostora koje se trenutačno odvijaju. Prvi dio rada istražuje genealogiju dvaju ključnih antropoloških pristupa “životu osjetila”: antropologije osjetila i osjetilne antropologije; opisuje njihov odnos s takozvanim hodajućim metodologijama i povezuje ih s nedavnim porastom istraživačkog interesa za atmosfere. U drugom su dijelu prikazane odabrane teme iz opisanih područja onako kako se one manifestiraju u Ljubljani. Preciznije, rad se bavi time kako su Ljubljančani i Ljubljančanke tijekom senzobiografske šetnje povijesnom gradskom jezgrom doživjeli iskustvo koje nazivamo “atmosferskim transformacijama” i koje je rezultat godišnjih prosinačkih proslava i svečanosti. U radu se zaključuje da koncepti i epistemološki okviri razvijeni ili implicirani u antropologiji osjetila / osjetilnoj antropologiji, kao i u hodajućim metodologijama i istraživanjima atmosfera, dovode do ispitivanja osjetilnih dimenzija politike i ekonomije u kasnom kapitalizmu, ali su prisvojeni u reificiranom obliku za potrebe akumulacije kapitala

Material management in themed restaurants : Inspiring the experience economy / Farah Adibah Che Ishak, Philip Crang and Muhammad Shahrim Ab Karim

In tune with wider ideas of an experience economy, the hospitality industry has increasingly focused less on giving a service to its customers and more on offering them memorable, sensory experiences. This paper looks at one facet of this provision of experiences: the material engineering and management of the ‘affective atmosphere’ or ‘ambiance’ of a venue. It unfolds the exploration of theme restaurants in practicing the material management as an inspiration to stage an experience. This paper illustrates its arguments through one case study: the Indonesian theming of the Pondok Malindo restaurant, Selangor. Practically, the findings suggest that creating the desired ambiance needs proper planning and careful attention to a wide range of material elements. More broadly, the paper suggests that accounts of the experience economy should consider the powers and agencies of materials and objects

Moving sonic geographies: realising the Eerie countryside in music and sound

This paper investigates how sound produces and transforms space and place as it moves and travels. In charting the movement of sound from field recording to music studio, and from rehearsal to performance space, this paper examines the aesthetic and affective geographies that are developed and the consequences of this travel. This argument is illustrated through the example of an artistic project that sought to explore the anti- or non-idyllic practice and experience of the British countryside in sonic and musical form. The notion that there are stranger and eerie, less bucolic, and more unnerving, versions of rurality formed the artistic impulse for this project. The paper explores the creative, emotional, and technical labour involved in translating this idea into sound and music. Through inspecting the processes of achieving this project, and the geographies it generated, the paper argues that it was in the translation and movement of sound through space and through different places that the project was – sometimes unexpectedly – realised. Thus, sonic atmospheres and affective charges of the eerie rural emerged because of this movement-transformation as much it did from the different creative and technical practices, and active sonic-interventions, that sought to achieve it

Overhearing: An Attuning Approach to Noise in Danish Hospitals

Denmark is building new and improved super hospitals, based on a vision of improving overall quality by switching the focus from hospitals for treatment to hospitals for healing, guided by research in the field of evidence-based design and healing architecture. Users mention noise as one of the main stressors and research has discovered that noise levels in hospitals continue to rise. Noise has therefore become a central point of concern, recommending strategies to reduce measurable and perceived noise levels.However, these strategies do not support the need to feel like an integral part of the shared hospital environment, which is also a key element in creating healing environments linked to a reductionist framework underlying the field. This framework regards broad concepts such as noise and silence as objects with quantifiable properties, and assumes that these properties can be understood independently of the perceiver as a bodily and situated subject. The aim of this dissertation is accordingly to develop an alternative framework capable of accommodating the multi-sensory, affective and atmospheric conditions that influence the experience of noise, with a view to complementing the existing approaches in the field.  Consequently, the dissertation develops an ecological framework capable of accommodating these issues, established by viewing sound and listening through the lens of atmospheres. The attuning approach highlights the reciprocal relationship between the way in which atmospheres condition shared rhythms that shape us, but also the way in which we can tune them in different ways. In the context of sound and listening, this creates the potential of ecological overhearing as an atmospheric mode of listening capable of reconfiguring habitual background and foregrounding relationships. Attuning strategies should thus provide opportunities for diverse acoustic situations and possibilities for active choice-making to meet different and shifting needs through an enactive approach in order to enhance empowerment and ecological overhearing. Embedding diverse enactive sound installations and interactive sound technology in hospitals can facilitate such zones of overhearing. These zones become places for ruptures that strengthen the possibilities for engaging in counter-attunements of existing negative atmospheres. In this way, zones of overhearing not only provide continual sense of presence without demanding full attention, but also create ample opportunities for the restoration of  attention.The dissertation takes an experimental practice-based approach through artistic- and constructive design-research and comprises six peer-reviewed papers (Part IV), framed by a general overview article (Parts I-III) that develops the theoretical and methodological foundation for the papers, and provides a synthesis and discussion of their main findings. The practice-based work is founded on a range of experiments, but focuses on two main experiments: Light, Landscape & Voices and KidKit, and the way in which they elicit sensitivities within the topic of investigation. This contribution also concerns the concrete development of installations through the experiments. These installations are in themselves manifestations of and challenges to hypotheses about the topic I aim to address.

Atmosphere

This chapter traces the genealogy of the term atmosphere in the German language, identifies historical semantic shifts, and points to its grammatical specifics. The state of research on atmospheres is briefly summarized and an overview is offered of the various definitions of the term in different disciplines. Drawing on Timothy Morton’s theory of ambient poetics, and on Hermann Schmitz’s “new phenomenology,” four key characteristics of atmospheres are discussed and elaborated: their mereological constitution, their modal structure, their intensification at affective thresholds, and their affective efficacy through suggestions of movement

Acousmatic Foley: Son-en-Scène

“Acousmatic Foley” is practice-based research on sound dramaturgy stemming from musique concrète and Foley Art. This article sets out a theory based on the concept of “son-en-scène”, which forms the sonic content of the mise-en-scène, as perceived (esthesic sound). The theory departs from the well-known features of a soundscape (R. M. Schafer, 1999) and the listening modes in film as asserted by Chion (1994), in order to arrive at three main concepts: sound-prop, sound-actor and sound-motif. Throughout their conceptualization, the study theorizes a sonic dramaturgy that focuses on the sounds themselves and their practical influence on film's story-telling elements. For that, it conveys an assessment of sound in film-history based on the “montage of attractions” and foley art, together with the principles of acousmatic listening. This research concludes that film-sound should be to sound designers what a “sonorous object” is to musique concrète, albeit conveying all sound’s fictional aspects

Chapter 19 Daring to transform

"The Routledge Companion to Performance Philosophy is a volume of especially commissioned critical essays, conversations, and collaborative, creative and performative writing mapping the key contexts, debates, methods, discourses and practices in this developing field. Firstly, the collection offers new insights on the fundamental question of how thinking happens: where, when, how and by whom philosophy is performed. Secondly, it provides a plurality of new accounts of performance and performativity – as the production of ideas, bodies and knowledges in the arts and beyond. Comprising texts written by international artists, philosophers and scholars from multiple disciplines, the essays engage with questions of how performance thinks and how thought is performed in a wide range of philosophies and performances, from the ancient to the contemporary. Concepts and practices from diverse geographical regions and cultural traditions are analysed to draw conclusions about how performance operates across art, philosophy and everyday life. The collection both contributes to and critiques the philosophy of music, dance, theatre and performance, exploring the idea of a philosophy from the arts. It is crucial reading material for those interested in the hierarchy of the relationship between philosophy and the arts, advancing debates on philosophical method, and the relation between Performance and Philosophy more broadly.

The Struggle To Be Heard: Toronto\u27s Postproduction Sound Industry, 1968 to 2005

This dissertation examines how economic and technological changes shaped the sounds of Canadian cinema, from the modern industry’s founding in the late 1960s to the widespread adoption of digital editing software in the early 2000s. By focusing on the labour and craft practices that coalesced in Toronto’s postproduction companies, I argue that such practices engendered a critical shift in the sonic style of Canadian film sound. Whereas fiction films initially featured a sonic style developed by the National Film Board of Canada for documentary production, filmmakers eventually adopted a style strongly identified with Hollywood cinema. Although it is tempting to explain this shift by appealing to generalized statements about the globalization of Hollywood cinema, I reveal a more complex picture in which a host of historical forces, including government policies, industrial competition, and discursive practices among craftspeople, are seen to shape how new sound technologies were used and how the adoption of these technologies did, or did not, affect the aesthetic of Canadian film sound. In order to narrow the focus of this dissertation, my case studies draw on films from the genres of horror and science fiction. Chapter One posits my methodology, which combines theories of film history with formal soundtrack analyses. I explain that unlike many histories of sound that trace how directors use sound as a storytelling tool, my dissertation traces the history of craft techniques among below-the-line labour and in a non-Hollywood industry centered in a single urban locale (Toronto). The remaining chapters are divided into three chronological periods. Chapter Two (1968 to 1986) outlines the founding of the narrative film industry and how sound workers in Toronto appropriated NFB documentary practices. In Chapter Three (1981 to 1989) I argue that the introduction of Dolby Stereo had minimal impact on Toronto soundtracks. Finally, in Chapter Four (1988 to 2003), I contend that the increase of digital audio workstations (DAWs) altered the value of sound labour within the industry. In order to protect their jobs, Toronto sound professionals changed their craft techniques to mirror those used in Hollywood. In these ways, each chapter reveals the various mechanisms (e.g., socioeconomic, political, industrial) that shaped the dominant sound style of each era. Thus, although the dissertation’s chapter breakdown is determined by major technological changes, it ultimately demonstrates that it is not technology alone that leads to style change; rather, such changes can be accounted for by a complex intersection of historical forces at any given period of Canadian film history. Put conversely, the history of Canadian cinema can be detected in its soundtracks