The Mill: Analysis of the Original Score and Film

The Mill is an original film and music performance piece chronicling the history of the steel industry in the United States, with specific connections to Pittsburgh. In addition to scoring the project, I designed the sound and produced the film and music and also shot and edited the film. About eighty percent of the film material is historical footage (in black and white, as well as color), while I shot the remaining portions, on location, in various areas of the Mon Valley region of Pittsburgh. Separated into four distinct sections, the film portrays the rise, the zenith and the eventual collapse of the steel industry in the late 1970s and the early 1980s from its epicenter in Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania. The musical score is composed of two elements: a live performance ensemble consisting of a clarinet in B flat, a flute and piano; and an electronic soundtrack that mostly supports the live instrumentation but also, at times, creates ambiguity between what is heard live and what is pre-recorded. I also created the ambient sound design and Foley effects. The purpose of this document is to closely examine the various stages in the creative process of The Mill, to describe the inception of the idea, the implementation of technology and the overall aesthetics of a multimedia production. Although the project was intended to be solely a musical film piece, the final product resulted in an educational quasi-documentary The document is divided into seven chapters, each describing the techniques and tools utilized to achieve the final product

A geometrical approach to the motion planning problem for a submerged rigid body

The main focus of this paper is the motion planning problem for a deeply submerged rigid body. The equations of motion are formulated and presented by use of the framework of differential geometry and these equations incorporate external dissipative and restoring forces. We consider a kinematic reduction of the affine connection control system for the rigid body submerged in an ideal fluid, and present an extension of this reduction to the forced affine connection control system for the rigid body submerged in a viscous fluid. The motion planning strategy is based on kinematic motions; the integral curves of rank one kinematic reductions. This method is of particular interest to autonomous underwater vehicles which can not directly control all six degrees of freedom (such as torpedo shaped AUVs) or in case of actuator failure (i.e., under-actuated scenario). A practical example is included to illustrate our technique