395 research outputs found

    Sensing Collectives: Aesthetic and Political Practices Intertwined

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    Are aesthetics and politics really two different things? The book takes a new look at how they intertwine, by turning from theory to practice. Case studies trace how sensory experiences are created and how collective interests are shaped. They investigate how aesthetics and politics are entangled, both in building and disrupting collective orders, in governance and innovation. This ranges from populist rallies and artistic activism over alternative lifestyles and consumer culture to corporate PR and governmental policies. Authors are academics and artists. The result is a new mapping of the intermingling and co-constitution of aesthetics and politics in engagements with collective orders

    Action at a Distance: Reformatting the Paradigm of Spectatorship through Virtual Gestures and Audio-Visuals

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    Array Infinitive is a practice-based research project that examines audiovisuals and audience experience in virtual reality art practice. This PhD investigates the ways in which audiovisual performance in virtual reality (VR) affects and impacts an audience, and to what degree the audience is aware of the live aspect of the performance whilst immersed in the virtual space. This studio-led work draws upon ambient audio and colourful VR visuals, generated, processed, and ‘played’ via gesture to a locally networked audience. Acting as researcher, lead artist, composer, and performer, I used improvised hand gestures and bodily movements to create amplified soundscapes and VR particle trails, which were broadcast to audience headsets in real-time. One aim of this project was to create an altered state of consciousness (ASC) experience through ambient soundscapes and mesmeric VR visuals. These could then be studied to determine whether the audience had an awareness that ‘the instrument’ (by which I mean sonified and visualised VR-responsive gestures) was controlled by a human. I also expanded the framework of spectatorship through a ‘hybrid-audience’ when Array Infinitive was shown to a larger mixed group. This included observers both within and outside of VR, forming the same collective. Methodologically, to understand audience experience in the context of this project, I undertook case studies, research studies, and field work to investigate audience response, as well as to gain feedback on the impact of VR audiovisuals, ASC reaction, and gestural performance as a form of instrumentation in VR. This PhD research project builds upon important contributions to the field of performance research and the notion of 'enchantment' presented by Erika Fischer-Lichte, regarding performance as a spatial, embodied event: something that has energy and sensation.1 As well as Fischer-Lichte’s exploration of ‘enlivening’ a room into a performance space, she argues that live action extends possibilities of perception and expands the relationship between performer and audience.2 Throughout this research, I intended to activate dual spatial planes – of both virtual and real-world dimensions; to create a group experience; and to explore affect by way of live audiovisuals. Other referenced research and material includes Maaike Bleeker’s ‘Corporeal Literacy’ and ‘Bodymind'3 concepts, Shi Ke's, Embodiment and Disembodiment in Live Art,4 Mieke Bal's Endless Andness5 and Jonathan Weinel's Inner Sound, Altered States of Consciousness in Electronic Music and Audio-Visual Media.6 In addition, essays and published papers such as Seigworth and Gre!’s 'An inventory of shimmers'7 and Dr David Glowacki’s research into group VR ASC experience8 were also reference material for the thesis. Array Infinitive takes inspiration and points of reference from many artists who work with a variety of media, such as Ann Veronica Janssens, Haroon Mirza, Rashaad Newsome, Pauline Oliveros, Éliane Radigue, Jacolby Satterwhite and Catherine Yass. These artists produce work that is less about what it ‘means’ and more about what it ‘does’. The outcomes of this research contribute to the field of audiovisual art by way of exploring and expanding the definition of performance in VR and of experimental, improvised live sound-making. The development of gesture-controlled VR audiovisual content for live performance has been established and tested in a variety of settings through this actionresearch, including both public-facing interactions and controlled research studies. Discoveries revolve around audience experience and affective response to sensory contact through VR, as well as demonstrating the ability of this work to evoke a genuine ASC. The findings of the Array Infinitive research project have demonstrated that the fully immersed audience were not aware of the live element of the performance. Participants in VR were not cognisant that there was a performer within their physical environment nor that the audiovisuals were being conducted by a human. The cybernetic is present in this performance piece, through a corporeal, tangible, biological conduit. This work does not employ algorithms or artificial intelligence (AI) to generate content. The majority of the test subjects could not recognise that the shared audiovisual experience was being conducted by a person as part of a live proceeding. Furthermore, the alteration in perception of human performative manoeuvres was instigated and studied as part of an extended form of spectatorship, which reconsiders the definition of the ‘audience’ and makes room for paradox within a collective event: a multidimensional encounter that deliberately involves isolation, solidarity, and heterogeneous realities simultaneously

    Everyday Streets

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    Everyday streets are both the most used and most undervalued of cities’ public spaces. They are places of social aggregation, bringing together those belonging to different classes, genders, ages, ethnicities and nationalities. They comprise not just the familiar outdoor spaces that we use to move and interact but also urban blocks, interiors, depths and hinterlands, which are integral to their nature and contribute to their vitality. Everyday streets are physically and socially shaped by the lives of the people and things that inhabit them through a reciprocal dance with multiple overlapping temporalities. The primary focus of this book is an inclusive approach to understanding and designing everyday streets. It offers an analysis of many aspects of everyday streets from cities around the globe. From the regular rectilinear urban blocks of Montreal to the military-regulated narrow alleyways of Naples, and from the resilient market streets of London to the crammed commercial streets of Chennai, the streets in this book were all conceived with a certain level of control. Everyday Streets is a palimpsest of methods, perspectives and recommendations that together provide a solid understanding of everyday streets, their degree of inclusiveness, and to what extent they could be more inclusive

    A Framework for Site-Specific Spatial Audio Applications

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    As audio recording and reproduction technology has advanced over the past five decades, increasing attention has been paid to recreating the highly spatialised listening experience we understand from our physical environment. This is the logical next step in the quest for increasing audio clarity, particularly as virtual reality gaming and augmented reality experiences become more widespread. This study sought to develop and demonstrate a technical framework for the production of site-specific audio-based works that is user-friendly and cost effective. The system was intended to be used by existing content producers and audio programmers to work collaboratively with a range of site-based organisations such as museums and galleries to produce an audio augmentation of the physicality of the space. This research was guided by four key aims: 1. Demonstrate a compositional method for immersive spatial audio that references the novel physical environment and the listener’s movement within it. 2. Describe a framework for the development and deployment of a spatial audio visitor technology system. 3. Prototype a naturalistic method for the delivery and navigation of contextual information via audio. 4. Deploy, demonstrate, and evaluate a spatial audio experience within a representative environment. The resulting system makes use of a range of existing technologies to provide a development experience and output that meets a clearly defined set of criteria. Furthermore, a case study application has been developed that demonstrates the use of the system to augment a selection of six paintings in a gallery space. For each of these paintings, a creative spatial composition was produced that demonstrates the principles of spatial composition discussed in this thesis. A spoken informational layer sits on top of this acting as a museum audio guide, featuring navigation using head gestures for a hands-free experience. This thesis presents a detailed discussion of the artistic intentions and techniques employed in the production of the six soundscapes, as well as an evaluation of the resulting application in use in a public gallery space

    Postcolonial Publics: Art and Citizen Media in Europe

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    Postcolonial Publics: Art and Citizen Media in Europe presents a collection of sixteen chapters that explore the themes of how migrants, refugees and citizens express and share their political and social causes and experiences through art and media. These expressions, which we term ‘citizen media’, arguably become a platform for postcolonial intellectuals as the studies pursued in this volume investigate the different ways in which previously excluded social groups regain public voice. The volume strives to understand the different articulations of migrants’, refugees’, and citizens’ struggle against increasingly harsh European politics that allow them to achieve and empower political subjectivity in a mediated and creative space. In this way, the contributions in this volume present case studies of citizen media in the form of ‘activistic art’ or ‘artivism’ (Trandafoiu, Ruffini, Cazzato & Taronna, Koobak & Tali, Negrón-Muntaner), activism through different kinds of technological media (Chouliaraki and Al-Ghazzi, Jedlowski), such as documentaries and film (Denić), podcasts, music and soundscapes (Romeo and Fabbri, Western, Lazzari, Huggan), and activisms through writings from journalism to fiction (Longhi, Concilio, Festa, De Capitani). The volume argues that citizen media go hand in hand with postcolonial critique because of their shared focus on the deconstruction and decolonisation of Western logics and narratives. Moreover, both question the concept of citizen and of citizenship as they relate to the nation-state and explores the power of media as a tool for participation as well as an instrument of political strength. The book forwards postcolonial artivism and citizen media as a critical framework to understand the refugee and migrant situations in contemporary Europe

    INSAM Journal of Contemporary Music, Art and Technology 10 (I/2023)

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    Having in mind the foundational idea not only of our Journal but also the INSAM Institute itself, the main theme of this issue is titled “Technological Aspects of Contemporary Artistic and Scientific Research”. This theme was recognized as important, timely, and necessary by a number of authors coming from various disciplines. The (Inter)Views section brings us three diverse pieces; the issue is opened by Aida Adžović’s interview with the legendary Slovene act Laibach regarding their performance of the Wir sing das Volk project at the Sarajevo National Theater on May 9, 2023. Following this, Marija Mitrović prepared an interview with media artist Leon Eckard, concerning this artist’s views on contemporary art and the interaction between technology and human sensitivity. An essay by Alexander Liebermann on the early 20th-century composer Erwin Schulhoff, whose search for a unique personal voice could be encouraging in any given period, closes this rubric. The Main theme section contains seven scientific articles. In the first one, Filipa Magalhães, Inês Filipe, Mariana Silva and Henrique Carvalho explore the process and details of technological and artistic challenges of reviving the music theater work FE...DE...RI...CO... (1987) by Constança Capdeville. The second article, written by Milan Milojković, is dedicated to the analysis of historical composer Vojislav Vučković and his ChatGPT-generated doppelganger and opera. The fictional narrative woven around the actual historical figure served as an example of the current possibilities of AI in the domain of musicological work. In the next paper, Luís Arandas, Miguel Carvalhais and Mick Grierson expand on their work on the film Irreplaceable Biography, which was created via language-guided generative models in audiovisual production. Thomas Moore focuses on the Belgium-based Nadar Ensemble and discusses the ways in which the performers of the ensemble understand the concept of the integrated concert and distinguish themselves from it, specifying the broadening of performers’ competencies and responsibilities. In her paper, Dana Papachristou contributes to the discussion on the politics of connectivity based on the examination of three projects: the online project Xenakis Networked Performance Marathon 2022, 2023Eleusis Mystery 91_Magnetic Dance in Elefsina European Capital of Culture, and Spaces of Reflection offline PirateBox network in the 10th Berlin Biennale. The penultimate article in the section is written by Kenrick Ho and presents us with the author’s composition Flou for solo violin through the prism of the relationship between (historically present) algorithmic processes, the composer, and the performer. Finally, Rijad Kaniža adds to the critical discourse on the reshaping of the musical experience via technology and the understanding of said technology using the example of musique concrète. In the final Review section, Bakir Memišević gives an overview of the 13th International Symposium “Music in Society” that was held in Sarajevo in December 2022

    Animate Being: Extending a Practice of the Image to New Mediums via Speculative Game Design

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    This post-disciplinary practice as research thesis examines the potential of Carl Jung's therapeutic method of active imagination as a strategy for engaging with an increasingly complex and interconnected technological reality. Embracing a non-clinical, practice-driven approach, I harness James Hillman’s notion of the image and the imaginal to investigate the interdisciplinary capacity and ethical dimensions of an expansive mode of image-work. My approach to practice theoretically and practically intertwines analytical psychology, feminist worlding and design speculation. Building upon Susan Rowland’s work, I study image-work as an ecological alchemical craft that seeks to matter the immaterial. Through the cyclic iterative design of a video game, I mobilise and respond to image-work as a mode of myth-making that may facilitate dialogue between human and non-human intelligences. Departing from the essentialism of the hero's journey, I adopt Le Guin's Carrier Bag (1986/2019) as a feminist video game form and by utilising the framework of a video game (Bogost, 2007; Flannigan, 2013), the alchemical processes of image-work are transformed into novel interactive game mechanics. The game I design is both a vessel and a portal to an imaginal ecological realm, an open-world, procedurally generated ‘living world’ sandbox exploration game. This game integrates real-time, real-world data streams to invite the non-human to enter into play as player two, facilitating experimentation with possible new forms of cross-species dialogue, collaboration, and healing

    Changing Business models for Sustainability: Role of drivers and dynamic capabilities in Arctic nature tourism

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    This thesis investigates nature tourism companies, which strive to incorporate sustainability into their business models and change them to be more resilient. For this purpose, it adopts a dynamic perspective on business models by which companies address corporate sustainability which is understood here as a balance among environmental, social, and economic pillars as well as a sustainable competitive advantage. Past studies overlooked the significance of a systematic analysis of drivers and enablers of change as a way to explain how business models are stimulated and changed. Thus, this thesis aims to answer this overall research question: What are the key drivers and dynamic capabilities underlying business model change for sustainability, and how do they give rise to business model changes for sustainability? Four sub-research questions are formulated across three studies: one systematic literature review and two empirical qualitative studies. Article 1 was inspired by the existing literature regarding a prominent knowledge gap in terms of the theorization of business models in tourism research compared to management research. This study resides in a systematic literature review of nature tourism literature about the conceptualization and operationalization of business models with respect to sustainability and innovation. Article 2 follows a qualitative multiple-case study design to comparatively examine five nature tourism companies to explore how their business models are driven to incorporate sustainability aspects. This study differentiates these business models in terms of sustainability integration and underlying drivers to shed light on crucial driving factors in terms of how they can drive various business models to embed sustainability. Article 3 relies on a longitudinal qualitative design to study how nature tourism companies handled the COVID-19 crisis and enhanced their resilience by changing their business models through building dynamic capabilities. To address the temporal aspects of dynamic capabilities and business model changes, two rounds of interviews were held with seven tourism entrepreneurs. This article regards the crisis as a driver underlying the building of dynamic capabilities that set the stage for business model changes. Given the conceptual contribution of individual articles, article 1 stresses that business models are relevant tools to set off the desired changes and innovations and contributes to sustainable business model research by offering insight into how past nature tourism studies applied the concept of business model with respect to sustainability and innovation. By identifying knowledge gaps in the literature on the nature tourism business models, this study yields two empirical qualitative articles, articles 2 and 3. Article 2 contributes to sustainable business model literature by refining and extending past typologies of drivers for sustainability embeddedness by clarifying how drivers perform empirically across different business models, particularly in nature tourism. Compared to article 2, article 3 seeks to probe more closely into firms via their respective dynamic capabilities and underlying practices, which enable business model changes to be either radical (innovations) or incremental (adjustments). While article 2 considers sustainability in terms of social and environmental aspects in addition to the economic aspect, article 3 conceptualizes sustainability in light of resilience. Article 3 proposes a taxonomy of dynamic capability-based practices and contributes to the dynamic capabilities and business model innovation literature in times of crisis. Above all, this thesis contributes to filling the noteworthy knowledge gap in terms of the lack of a systematic and thorough explanation of the relevant key drivers and dynamic capabilities to illustrate business model changes for sustainability. Notably, it makes novel theoretical contributions to the research stream of business model innovations for sustainability. Relatedly, this research clarifies how critical driving factors and dynamic capability-based practices stimulate and facilitate business model changes. This is done in this thesis by differentiating drivers and dynamic capabilities, but at the same time seeing them as closely linked. Hence, by applying a dynamic perspective on business models, the overall findings demonstrate how business models are driven, enabled, and changed to embed sustainability and enhance resilience. This thesis argues that business model design is a continuous task and not a one-time practice. Moreover, the overall results of this thesis provide useful insights into business models in nature tourism in two different situations: a competitive environment before the crisis and a turbulent environment during the crisis. More importantly, as the findings of articles 2 and 3 suggest, the focus of change might vary to ensure a proper balance among economic, social, and environmental aspects. This thesis concludes with some research limitations, suggestions for future studies and implications for practice

    Translanguaging for Equal Opportunities : Speaking Romani at School

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    This multi-authored monograph, located in the intersection of translanguaging research and Romani studies, offers a state-of-the-art analysis of the ways in which translanguaging supports bilingual Roma students’ learning in monolingual school systems. Complete with a video repository of translanguaging classroom moments, this comprehensive study is based on long-term participatory ethnographic research and a pedagogical implementation project undertaken in Hungary and Slovakia by a group of primary teachers, bilingual Roma participants, and researchers. Co-written by academic and non-academic participants, the book is an essential reading for researchers, pre- and in-service teachers of Romani-speaking students, and experts working with collaborators (learners, informants, activists) whose home languages are excluded from mainstream education and school curricula
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