The Cochlea Unwound: A case study for a listening aid using a sonic crystal

In September 2008, liminal (architect Frances Crow and myself) were awarded a grant from the Wellcome Trust for the research phase of our project Tranquillity is a State of Mind: Listening Aids for a Listening Impaired Society. Working in partnership with Sustrans, the sustainable transport charity, we brought together a research team comprising two acousticians, a computational neuroscientist and a clinical audiologist in order to develop a proposal for a ‘listening aid’: a device that might facilitate contemplation on the act of listening itself. Our proposal, The Cochlea Unwound, is for a permanent acoustic intervention that would be sited between the weir at Diglis Island, Worcester and the footpath that runs alongside it. The Cochlea Unwound utilises the acoustic technology of sonic crystals to sculpt the noise of the weir into a sound composition that unfolds according to both the speed that the visitor passes the structure and their proximity to it. An overview of the Tranquillity is a State of Mind project as a whole is beyond the scope of this paper, but what follows is a commentary on the thinking behind The Cochlea Unwound and an introduction to the acoustic principles on which it is based

United States Reconstruction Across the Americas

This short collection of three essays by prominent scholars constitutes the first volume published in the Frontiers of the American South series at the University Press of Florida. It focuses on three sets of connections between the Reconstruction of the United States and the rest of the Americas, and as such advances the now-longstanding quest to internationalize U.S. history. The editor and authors should be applauded for undertaking this work since Reconstruction scholars have, with some caveats, hesitated to engage with the transnational turn in American history, which has otherwise been so transformative

Postcard: Site-Specific Music at Dartington

As the location of a number of pioneering investigations into the expanded field of performance and exhibition, Dartington College of Arts had a long tradition of using the estate as a point of departure for student work across the disciplines taught there. Music was no exception, with the ‘Sites Project’ a regular fixture of the Spring term for 1st year students. Yas Clarke’s Snare Drums in a Field (2008) is one wonderful example among many others from the project. Inspired by a visit from Alvin Lucier the previous year, the piece was conceived for a path that ran through a field on the estate. Conducted by the artist using brightly coloured flags, four drummers played a simple rhythm in unison, with the audience located next to the conductor at one end of the path. The piece was a poetic translation of distance into time, as simultaneously played beats became rhythms based on the time it took for the sound of each drummer to reach the audience

The Impact of Glassblowing on the Early-Roman Glass Industry (circa 50 B.C. – A.D. 79)

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, ancient glass was frequently treated as though it was a prestigious product, owned only by the elites of society. Research was primarily art-historical, and focused on select museum pieces. As archaeology developed, it became clear that glass vessels were used at many, if not most, Roman sites, from the late first century B.C. onward, and in many different social contexts, contradicting the idea that only the rich could afford them. Scholars began to explain the increased prevalence of glass by arguing that the invention of glassblowing (circa 50 B.C.) had increased production speed while lowering production costs, making glass vessels cheap and widely available across the social spectrum This thesis explores the role of blown glass by comparing the percentages and forms produced by older casting techniques in glass vessel assemblages from military sites, civilian sites, frontier settlements, and settings at the heart of the Roman world. It seeks to understand the social and economic status of blown glass and cast glass: why did cast glass persist after the invention of cheaper blown glass? Was cast and blown glass equally accessible to different levels of society? And to what extent can the invention of glassblowing bear responsibility for the rise in glass vessel use in the Roman world? By drawing comparisons between vessels from different production methods, and from different social and geographical contexts, this thesis begins to identify emerging patterns in glass use across Roman society and finds that both cast and blown vessels were used across all levels of society and that there was no strict divide between the use of casting for luxury wares and glassblowing for cheap utilitarian wares

Documentary Sound: Beyond the Diegetic

Over the last ten years or so, there has been a growing body of literature emerging that examines the role of sound in film. While case studies have been diverse, attention to sound in documentary film has been notable by its relative absence. The term ‘sound design’, widely attributed to Walter Murch, has become shorthand for the overall composition of a film’s sound track. In this paper I will suggest that far from being a dispassionate description of the way in which sound is integrated with film images, the notion of ‘sound design’ has privileged certain approaches to sound editing and has skewed discourse around film sound towards genres in which sound plays a primarily mimetic, rather than diagetic function. Acknowledging the implied post-production contrivance in the term ‘sound design’, I will focus on the role of sound in documentary film and explore some of the reasons why there are so few examples of documentary films that can be recognised as having made a significant contribution to the state of the art of film sound

Ringing the Changes: An Investigation into Sounds and Power

Bells have a unique status among human-made sounding objects. Not only are they one of our earliest classes of instrument but their use and influence crosses almost all cultures and in many, the bell remains a significant, enduring sonic icon in both civic and religious life today. The public bell evolved to perform a variety of functions; as timekeeper, tocsin, call to prayer and later, the performance of change ringing and music. With their power to evoke reminiscence and to impart a feeling of the passing of time, bells have had a central role in the formation and solidification of identity of both individuals and communities. This paper will survey an on-going project undertaken by liminal (Frances Crow and David Prior), which they began in 2013, evolving into four distinct pieces of work —with more in progress— spanning film, performance and installation. In each of these pieces bells are used as an acoustic lens through which to listen to, and think about the relationship between sound and territory and the way in which authority is expressed in the interface between the two