Resonances: The sound of performance

It is a hot summer night in August 2013, as the audience gathers near the entrance of the large Gray Hall at the south side of the former coal mine Göttelborn (Germany). The sun has set, and there is only the gray light of dusk in the performance space inside, streaming through the large glass façade, falling onto a small array of stones laid out on the floor. Additional light from a video projector streams over the stones, and a tiny figure of a dancer is seen crawling over rocks, moving in the strange, a-syncopated rhythm of jump cuts. Slowly the sound of rocks scratching against a stone surface begins to be heard, it will remain the only sound for a while, then Japanese instrumentalist Emi Watanabe steps into the empty space with her flute

PIWeCS: enhancing human/machine agency in an interactive composition system

This paper focuses on the infrastructure and aesthetic approach used in PIWeCS: a Public Space Interactive Web-based Composition System. The concern was to increase the sense of dialogue between human and machine agency in an interactive work by adapting Paine's (2002) notion of a conversational model of interaction as a ‘complex system’. The machine implementation of PIWeCS is achieved through integrating intelligent agent programming with MAX/MSP. Human input is through a web infrastructure. The conversation is initiated and continued by participants through arrangements and composition based on short performed samples of traditional New Zealand Maori instruments. The system allows the extension of a composition through the electroacoustic manipulation of the source material

Sonic islands: sound and responsiveness extending the dimensions of space

A gravidez corresponde a um período da vida da mulher em que as doenças infeciosas representam uma grave ameaça à sua saúde e do seu filho. A imunização materna através da vacinação permite a prevenção de tais doenças e das suas complicações maternas e fetais, bem como conferir imunidade passiva ao feto nos primeiros meses de vida. Os principais objetivos do trabalho são rever as recomendações mais recentes disponibilizadas pelo ACIP para cada vacina, os riscos/benefícios associados e perceber ainda as alterações imunológicas associadas à gravidez, como é realizada a vigilância da gestação, qual o papel dos Cuidados de Saúde Primários e quais os motivos que estão na base da fraca cobertura vacinal nesta população. A metodologia utilizada baseou-se numa pesquisa bibliográfica publicada online no PubMed, na pesquisa específica das recomendações do ACIP e no acesso a normas/protocolos de saúde Materno-Infantil da ARS do Centro e da DGS. O sistema imunitário materno sofre um processo de imunomodulação e a transferência de anticorpos maternos para o feto, que lhe confere imunidade passiva, é maior nas últimas quatro semanas de gestação. A vigilância da gravidez baseia-se num protocolo que deve ser partilhado entre os Cuidados de Saúde Primários e os Cuidados Hospitalares. Segundo o ACIP, as vacinas de bactérias ou vírus inativados, de toxoides e as imunoglobulinas não apresentam riscos para o feto. Já as vacinas de bactérias ou vírus vivos atenuados (LAIV, VASPR, Varicela, Zoster e BCG) apresentam riscos teóricos de infeção fetal, abortamento espontâneo, morte fetal, morte neonatal e malformações congénitas. Deste modo, as primeiras podem ser administradas durante a gravidez e as segundas estão contraindicadas. As vacinas recomendadas a todas as grávidas são a vacina Tdap/Td e a vacina inativada contra o vírus influenza. No entanto, dado que os estudos não revelam preocupações em termos de segurança, mesmo para as vacinas contraindicadas, se a mulher for inadvertidamente vacinada, não existem razões relacionadas com a vacinação para interromper a gravidez. A cobertura vacinal das mulheres grávidas continua a não ser prática constante dos cuidados de saúde e as principais razões para tal são a falta de incentivo pelos profissionais de saúde que alegam falta de informação e questões de segurança das vacinas. Tendo em conta a estreita relação entre a grávida e os Cuidados de Saúde Primários, estes devem rever o seu estado de imunização, informar adequadamente a grávida acerca dos benefícios e riscos da vacinação e proporcionar todo o apoio que seja necessário, incluindo também o agregado familiar da grávida.Pregnancy is a time in a woman's life that infectious diseases pose a serious threat to your health and your child's health. Maternal immunization through vaccination allows the prevention of such diseases and their maternal and fetal complications, as well as to provide passive immunity to the fetus in the first months of life. The main objectives of this study are to review the latest guidelines provided by ACIP for each vaccine, the risks/benefits associated and understand the immunological changes associated with pregnancy, how is performed the surveillance of pregnancy, the role of Primary Health Care and the reasons that underlie the low vaccination coverage in this population. The methodology used was based on a literature research published online in PubMed, in research of specific ACIP guidelines and in access to standards/protocols of Maternal and Child Health of Center ARS and DGS. The maternal immune system undergoes a process of immunomodulation and the transfer of maternal antibodies to the fetus, that confers passive immunity, is higher in the last four weeks of pregnancy. Surveillance of pregnancy is based on a protocol that must be shared between the Primary Health Care and the Hospital Care. According to the ACIP, the vaccines of inactivated bacteria or viruses, toxoids and immunoglobulins present no risk to the fetus. Bacterial or viruses live attenuated vaccines (LAIV, MMR, Varicella, Zoster and BCG) present theoretical risk of fetal infection, miscarriage, stillbirth, neonatal death and congenital malformations. Thus, the first can be administered during pregnancy and the latter are contraindicated. The Tdap/Td and the TIV vaccines are recommended for all pregnant women. However, as studies reveal no concerns about safety, even for vaccines contraindicated, if the woman is inadvertently vaccinated there are no reasons related to vaccination to interrupt the pregnancy. The vaccination coverage of pregnant women is still not a consistent practice of health care and the main reasons for this are the lack of encouragement by health professionals who claim lack of information and safety issues of vaccines. Given the close relationship between the pregnant and Primary Health Care, they should review immunization status of pregnant women, adequately inform about the benefits and risks of vaccination and provide whatever support is necessary, also including the household of pregnant

Amergent Music: behavior and becoming in technoetic & media arts

Merged with duplicate records 10026.1/1082 and 10026.1/2612 on 15.02.2017 by CS (TIS)Technoetic and media arts are environments of mediated interaction and emergence, where meaning is negotiated by individuals through a personal examination and experience—or becoming—within the mediated space. This thesis examines these environments from a musical perspective and considers how sound functions as an analog to this becoming. Five distinct, original musical works explore the possibilities as to how the emergent dynamics of mediated, interactive exchange can be leveraged towards the construction of musical sound. In the context of this research, becoming can be understood relative to Henri Bergson’s description of the appearance of reality—something that is making or unmaking but is never made. Music conceived of a linear model is essentially fixed in time. It is unable to recognize or respond to the becoming of interactive exchange, which is marked by frequent and unpredictable transformation. This research abandons linear musical approaches and looks to generative music as a way to reconcile the dynamics of mediated interaction with a musical listening experience. The specifics of this relationship are conceptualized in the structaural coupling model, which borrows from Maturana & Varela’s “structural coupling.” The person interacting and the generative musical system are compared to autopoietic unities, with each responding to mutual perturbations while maintaining independence and autonomy. Musical autonomy is sustained through generative techniques and organized within a psychogeographical framework. In the way that cities invite use and communicate boundaries, the individual sounds of a musical work create an aural context that is legible to the listener, rendering the consequences or implications of any choice audible. This arrangement of sound, as it relates to human presence in a technoetic environment, challenges many existing assumptions, including the idea “the sound changes.” Change can be viewed as a movement predicated by behavior. Amergent music is brought forth through kinds of change or sonic movement more robustly explored as a dimension of musical behavior. Listeners hear change, but it is the result of behavior that arises from within an autonomous musical system relative to the perturbations sensed within its environment. Amergence propagates through the effects of emergent dynamics coupled to the affective experience of continuous sonic transformation.Rutland Port Authoritie

Collage music : the development of a language of studio composition

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/573 on 03.01.2017 by CS (TIS). Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/2630 on 28.02.2017 by CS (TIS)This is a digitised version of a thesis that was deposited in the University Library. If you are the author please contact PEARL Admin ([email protected]) to discuss options.This thesis is intended to amplify, support and provide historical and aesthetic contexts for the concerns which I have explored and developed in my creative practice as a composer. It is accompanied by three audio CDs containing six compositions which map the development of my language of studio music, together with a further two CDs containing earlier compositions and a sixth CD containing a musical reference compilation which supports the text. The thesis is divided into the following six sections: Introduction "a brief account of my background as a composer including a summary of the composition portfolios of my previous degrees, going on to discuss my first composition for this project, The Book (1999), which is submitted not as a portfolio piece but for reference only (CD 4) "a description of the subsequent ten compositions, only one of which is submitted, Summer Nights Dream (2001), which again is intended for reference only (CD 5) " the listing of a number of influential collage pieces according to the categorisation superimposition or juxtaposition which prefaces the history of collage music outlined in the next chapter. I Collage Music: History, Context and Influence "a positioning of collage music in both historical and cultural contexts; examples are drawn from both popular and classical musics including examples of contemporary studio-based music, in effect proposing a genre-crossing history of collage music which is currently undocumented " an examination of the ways in which the structure, pace and content in my studio music have been informed by comedy. This chapter is intended to be read in conjunction with the musical reference CD (6). 2 Composition and Computers: The Landscape of Studio Music " an exploration the various ways in which music technology has been an influence on the development of my compositional language "a brief survey of the field of algorithmic composition and a description of a suite of computer programs I designed in order to generate musical material "a discussion of a system of calculating modes which I devised in conjunction with these programs " an account of `large-scale phasing' including an examination of historical precedents in both the classical and popular music traditions for using this kind of generative system " an exploration of the notion of musical landscape as a means of pointing up a significant development in my approach to composition. 3 The Portfolio of Compositions: An Overview "a discussion of the development of my language of composition throughout the pieces in the portfolio "a grouping of my work into four approaches to form: generative landscape, episodic, rondo and fantasia " an examination of structure and gesture in my pieces. 4 Carnival of Light: An Account of my Compositional Process "a detailed account of the composition of one of the pieces in my portfolio in which I show how I have been inspired by texts, paintings, photographs and music in the creation of each section of my piece, hoping also to illuminate the thinking processes involved. Conclusion " an attempt to bring together the themes of each of the preceding sections, and to summarise the contribution I have made to the fields of studio composition and collage music " the introduction of the notion of altitude as a means of establishing a distinction between collage and non-collage music "a discussion of the issue of quotation in collage and a consideration of the relevance of collage music in contemporary culture.Dartington College of Art

Merging Modest with Complexity

This thesis will enable a retrospective critical examination of aspects of my practice as an artist from 2005 - 2020. The research question addresses the implication of multiple forms of inter-reliance enabled in the practice. This will be enabled by opening a discursive space that retrospectively, integrates and critically examines the role and function of inter-reliance as a structural methodology and how this is implicated in the practice over this period. This thesis will use term inter-reliance to define a play of relations where individual art works when viewed in isolation exist only in partial illumination as a form of penumbra. The art works are inchoate as separate entities only becoming activated or fully realised when engaged with collectively and interdiscursively, as a set of enabled relationships. In each of the chapters inter-reliance is manifested as a set of specific enabled reciprocal relationships between artistic mechanisms and physical, perceptual, associative, sonic, contextual and cinematic space. Rather than make art for art’s sake or art that specifically engages with trends or tendencies within the art world, it will elucidate how the practice is relational and empathetic, facilitating an inter-reliance between artist and viewer and artist and society, the practice engages with and reflects upon broader society where articulations of ideological positions are subtly embedded

Dataremix: Aesthetic Experiences of Big Data and Data Abstraction

This PhD by published work expands on the contribution to knowledge in two recent large-scale transdisciplinary artistic research projects: ATLAS in silico and INSTRUMENT | One Antarctic Night and their exhibited and published outputs. The thesis reflects upon this practice-based artistic research that interrogates data abstraction: the digitization, datafication and abstraction of culture and nature, as vast and abstract digital data. The research is situated in digital arts practices that engage a combination of big (scientific) data as artistic material, embodied interaction in virtual environments, and poetic recombination. A transdisciplinary and collaborative artistic practice, x-resonance, provides a framework for the hybrid processes, outcomes, and contributions to knowledge from the research. These are purposefully and productively situated at the objective | subjective interface, have potential to convey multiple meanings simultaneously to a variety of audiences and resist disciplinary definition. In the course of the research, a novel methodology emerges, dataremix, which is employed and iteratively evolved through artistic practice to address the research questions: 1) How can a visceral and poetic experience of data abstraction be created? and 2) How would one go about generating an artistically-informed (scientific) discovery? Several interconnected contributions to knowledge arise through the first research question: creation of representational elements for artistic visualization of big (scientific) data that includes four new forms (genomic calligraphy, algorithmic objects as natural specimens, scalable auditory data signatures, and signal objects); an aesthetic of slowness that contributes an extension to the operative forces in Jevbratt’s inverted sublime of looking down and in to also include looking fast and slow; an extension of Corby’s objective and subjective image consisting of “informational and aesthetic components” to novel virtual environments created from big 3 (scientific) data that extend Davies’ poetic virtual spatiality to poetic objective | subjective generative virtual spaces; and an extension of Seaman’s embodied interactive recombinant poetics through embodied interaction in virtual environments as a recapitulation of scientific (objective) and algorithmic processes through aesthetic (subjective) physical gestures. These contributions holistically combine in the artworks ATLAS in silico and INSTRUMENT | One Antarctic Night to create visceral poetic experiences of big data abstraction. Contributions to knowledge from the first research question develop artworks that are visceral and poetic experiences of data abstraction, and which manifest the objective | subjective through art. Contributions to knowledge from the second research question occur through the process of the artworks functioning as experimental systems in which experiments using analytical tools from the scientific domain are enacted within the process of creation of the artwork. The results are “returned” into the artwork. These contributions are: elucidating differences in DNA helix bending and curvature along regions of gene sequences specified as either introns or exons, revealing nuanced differences in BLAST results in relation to genomics sequence metadata, and cross-correlation of astronomical data to identify putative variable signals from astronomical objects for further scientific evaluation

Sonic Islands: Sound and Responsiveness Extending the Dimensions of Space

Designing space is an activity for all the senses, This chapter unpacks multidimensional designing, new ways to think.of designing architectures and spaces using sound and interaction (or responsiveness) as additional dimensions in negotiating and experiencing spaceand hence in its conception. Islands are unique and exciting.This discussion raises three different possibilities for integrating the sonic and interactive potential of space to elaborate the essence of the Urban Island

Alchemical Sensing: Creating an Embodied Experience of the Unseen Organism

This paper presents the research surrounding the audiovisual installation, Stars Beneath our Feet (2015) by Louise Mackenzie. It introduces the concept of alchemical sensing to describe the layered use of scientific technology in the context of an audio-visual art installation as an alternative frame of reference that attempts an embodied understanding of the unseen organism. The process of translation through layers of technology is considered as alchemical in reference to the ancient Greek and Egyptian origins of the tradition. Not alchemical in the sense of seeking immortality or turning metal into gold, but alchemical in the anima mundi sense of seeking out the ‘essence’ of matter. Referencing the development of the field of sonification, the acoustic artwork of Joe Davis and Katie Egan and of Anne Niemetz and Andrew Pelling, the use of Atomic Force Microscopy, Python, Photosounder and MAX MSP were employed to construct an embodied audio sense of the micro-organism, Dunaliella salina. Movements detected were translated using both sonification and audification techniques into sound files that were used to form the audio component of Stars Beneath Our Feet: an installation as part of Lumiere Durham 2015, a four- day international light festival produced in the UK by Artichoke. The video component of the installation was made using a combination of dark field microscopy and DSLR camera to produce moving images that focus on a perspective of micro-organisms that is other to that commonly used within scientific research. The objective of ‘looking at’ the organisms in this expanded manner and ‘listening to’ the sounds of data obtained via technological interpretation of the movement of micro- organisms in the context of an art installation adds a broader sensory dimension to our understanding of the unseen organism, one which encompasses their being in the world without consideration of their use as resources. https://vimeo.com/14712064

Composing with Matter: Interdisciplinary Explorations Between the Natural and the Artificial

This practice-based research, which includes a written thesis and a portfolio of creative practice, represents the interdisciplinary exploration of co-composition between natural and artificial matter as otherworldly phenomena. Accelerated by the application of recent technologies to control natural materials, matter has become merged between nature and artefacts, offering new potentials, where the boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred. This thesis presents a series of complementing sound art works, including transition [systemic], transition [characteristic], and moment, which were devised through co-composing towards a creative outcome that combines sonic and visual elements by integrating natural and artificial matter as co-authors and co-makers within the creative process to generate multiple perspectives. Raising questions of the boundary between nature and artificiality, it aims to consider a new methodology for sound art in the human-dominated, Anthropocene epoch. This research employs natural elements and processes to engage with sonic and visual anthropomorphism. It is focused on generative processes in the organisation of matter, here analysed and harnessed for sound expression, using acoustic phenomena including the inaudible range that can be perceived through matter. Through a laboratory-based study made in collaboration with scientists, three ‘life-like’ features of the generative processes of materials are discussed: 1) fusion and division, 2) network formation, and 3) pulse and rhythm. The practice explores these features to develop a new methodology of authorship and making, examining the following two questions. How can life-like behaviours of matter be portrayed through sonic and visual modes of expression? And in what ways might the expression of life-like behaviours be grasped by human perception? In conclusion, by integrating the agency of matter into the compositional processes, life-like features – as described by current theories in art, design, science, and philosophy – are made apparent