A Celebration of Faculty Scholarship: 2020-2023

A listing of the scholarly and creative work produced by the faculty of the College of the Holy Cross. It includes articles, book chapters, productions, exhibitions, grants, reviews and other forms of scholarship reported for the 20192020. 2020-2021, 2021-2022, and 2022-2023 academic years.https://crossworks.holycross.edu/fac_bib/1010/thumbnail.jp

Book of Abstracts

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Audio-Based Visualization of Expressive Body Movements in Music Performance: An Evaluation of Methodology in Three Electroacoustic Compositions

An increase in collaboration amongst visual artists, performance artists, musicians, and programmers has given rise to the exploration of multimedia performance arts. A methodology for audio-based visualization has been created that integrates the information of sound with the visualization of physical expressions, with the goal of magnifying the expressiveness of the performance. The emphasis is placed on exalting the music by using the audio to affect and enhance the video processing, while the video does not affect the audio at all. In this sense the music is considered to be autonomous of the video. The audio-based visualization can provide the audience with a deeper appreciation of the music. Unique implementations of the methodology have been created for three compositions. A qualitative analysis of each implementation is employed to evaluate both the technological and aesthetic merits for each composition

Exploring the physics of the Earth's core with numerical simulations

In the first chapter of this report, I discuss some of my work of the past 7 years,since I joined the geodynamo team at ISTerre as a CNRS researcher. This workmost often involves numerical simulations with codes that I have written.An important step forward in the efficiency of simulations based on the spherical harmonic transform has come from the matrix-free SHTns library I have designed and written (Schaeffer, 2013).Numerical simulations linked to the magnetized spherical Couette experimentDTS have been performed to understand its peculiar turbulence (Figueroa et al.,2013) and try to characterize the effect of the small turbulent scales on the induction processes (Cabanes, Schaeffer, and Nataf, 2014a; Cabanes, Schaeffer, andNataf, 2014b).Related to the Earth’s core dynamics, my simulations helped to characterizethe effects of the magnetic field on short timescale flows, leading to strong arguments for quasi-geostrophic (columnar) flows at large spatial scales (& 10 km)and short timescales (. 10 years) in the core (Gillet, Schaeffer, and Jault, 2011).Smaller length scales evade the rotational constraint because inertial waves aregetting too slow. At longer length scales more research is needed, but we havealready explored the implications of a deformation of the columns by magneticfields (Schaeffer, Lora Silva, and Pais, 2016). We have also shown that near theequator, where the columnar flows were expected to wither, the quasi-geostrophyseems strong in the Earth’s core (Schaeffer and Pais, 2011).Prompted by observations, we studied the propagation and reflection of torsional Alfvén waves in the core, and showed the importance of the value of themagnetic Prandtl number (Schaeffer, Jault, et al., 2012). Moreover, an extensionof this work to include a conducting solid layer at the top of the core suggests theexistence of such a layer with a rather strong conductance in the Earth.More recently, and as a logical follow-up, I have produced turbulent geodynamo simulations, with interesting implications that will be reported in a futurepublication, but several facts are already presented in appendix D and will alsobe discussed here. These simulations have also fed the reflection that resulted inour chapter on core turbulence in the second edition of the Treatise on Geophysics(Nataf and Schaeffer, 2015).In the second chapter, I present synthetically my ongoing work and projectsthat develop even further the topics above, but also new projects on the dynamoof the early Moon and further numerical developments

Composing with Sound-Objects: A Methodology

Technology presents us with the ability to record and manipulate the entire universe of sound in a musical composition. As a result, composers are faced with an overwhelming—often paralyzing—amount of available musical options. My methodology focuses on how a sound-object informs the organization, collection, manipulation, and culmination of a work of electronic music. I believe that breaking down the number of choices to manageable bite-sized portions helps minimize ambiguity, and imposing limits on musical parameters helps the composer focus on productive musical options. This is a methodology where the sound-object holds primacy over the work and serves as the motivic touchstone from which to make all compositional decisions.Part one of the dissertation provides a definition of a sound-object and an historical overview. Part two is my methodology, which is divided into three working stages: onset, continuant, and termination. The onset stage discusses a compositional approach to organizing a piece of music based on the sound-object as motivic touchstone; it introduces the organizational process according to functional considerations as well as conceptual approaches. The continuant stage is the composer’s playground where sound is transformed. It includes the technical and practical approaches used to assess the many parameters of a sound-object, as well as how the object itself informs the transformations. Additionally, the continuant stage represents an approach to composition and improvisation—informed by the sound-object—that uses acoustic instruments. Finally, the termination stage brings all these elements together in order to finish the piece. This stage explores how the sound-object can inform the structure of the piece at the subsequent levels of event, phrase, section, and overall form. I will demonstrate this methodology by explaining how I composed five original pieces with sound-objects—Acoustic Memories (2019), Modular Voices (2019), Interconnected (2019), Synthetic Objects (2019), and Gucci Concrète (2019). Through the framework presented in this methodology, composers of electronic music will better understand this flexible medium of composition, by moving beyond the traditional grid of discrete pitches and rhythms, in order to control the entire universe of sound for their palette of inspiration

Housing Justice in Unequal Cities

Housing Justice in Unequal Cities is a global research network funded by the National Science Foundation (BCS 1758774) and housed at the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin. This open-access volume, co-edited by Ananya Roy and Hilary Malson, brings together movement-based and university-based scholars to build a shared field of inquiry focused on housing justice. Based on a convening that took place in Los Angeles in January 2019, at the LA Community Action Network and at the University of California, Los Angeles, the essays and interventions situate housing justice in the long struggle for freedom on stolen land. Embedded in the stark inequalities of Los Angeles, our work is necessarily global, connecting the city’s Skid Row to the indebted and evicted in Spain and Greece, to black women’s resistance in Brazil, to the rights asserted by squatters in India and South Africa. Learning from radical social movements, we argue that housing justice also requires a commitment to research justice. With this in mind, our effort to build a field of inquiry is also necessarily an endeavor to build epistemologies and methodologies that are accountable to communities that are on the frontlines of banishment and displacement

Faculty Publications and Creative Works 1999

One of the ways in which we recognize our faculty at the University of New Mexico is through Faculty Publications & Creative Works. An annual publication, it highlights our faculty\u27s scholarly and creative activities and achievements and serves as a compendium of UNM faculty efforts during the 1999 calendar year. Faculty Publications & Creative Works strives to illustrate the depth and breadth of research activities performed throughout our University\u27s laboratories, studios and classrooms. We believe that the communication of individual research is a significant method of sharing concepts and thoughts and ultimately inspiring the birth of new ideas. In support of this, UNM faculty during 1999 produced over 2,292 works, including 1,837 scholarly papers and articles, 78 books, 82 book chapters, 175 reviews, 113 creative works and 7 patented works. We are proud of the accomplishments of our faculty which are in part reflected in this book, which illustrates the diversity of intellectual pursuits in support of research and education at the University of New Mexico