The Polyrhythms of the Ear Canal: Investigating the Human Body as an Instrument and Listening Machine Inspired by Hearing, Attention, and Alvin Lucier

Halfway into my college career, I was asked if my attention and hearing impairments had ever benefitted me in any way. Although I refused to see it at the time, it is this exact dichotomy between hearing as passive reception and listening as active concentration that informs my musical work. From otoacoustic emissions to tinnitus frequencies, the ear is an active amplifier of its own sounds, acting as an instrument responding to sound information. To distinguish acoustic elements generated outside of the ear from those taking shape within it, we are required to internally perceive all acoustic information. But is concentration enough to determine the origin of each element? Inspired by my own difficulties with attention and hearing, my work strives to accentuate the ear as a musical instrument and emphasize the necessity of focus rhythm requires. My sound art and electronic music explore the physical phenomena of sound and human auditory perception. In the first semester of my senior project, I built a large-scale ear canal that emitted an aural architecture of ear-borne tones in a sound installation. The parallel division of the Old Gym allowed each architectural space to become a speaker that produced overlapping sounds that swept between the two, intricately joining them to be heard and felt in a rhythmic resonance throughout the body. On one side, tinnitus tones of varied frequency coalesced to form their own, highly pitched and dynamic music. On the other, the acoustic impression of low frequency binaural beats was used to invoke our particularization of rhythm. Sound waves coincided to make beats that occurred at speeds enhanced by the passing waves of sympathetically resonating snare drums. My audience was invited to wander from room to room, the room as a trope of attention and hearing, both lost and retrieved—as if the listener must reassemble a strayed train of thought. In my second semester senior concert, I produced specific intervals of ear-borne tone melodies, accompanied by other musical instruments and sound spectra to create superpositions and distortion products as well as to emphasize the subtly shifting phase of rhythmic patterns. Not only did the effects of high frequency acoustic information on the ear and brain bring attention to the sonic intervals of the sounds and their polyrhythms, but it also invoked an internal bodily response that the listener was forced to confront. The phasing patterns of my concert acted as psychoacoustic byproducts of repetitive melodies: once interlaced, a rhythmic entrainment was generated throughout the body that resonated with their produced polyrhythms. Rather than act as submissive receivers, the ears of the listener emitted sounds in response to the otoacoustic emission and tinnitus tones presented. Not only was my audience able to hear how I internalize sound information in addition to how their own ears responded to acoustic stimuli, but they could also hear themselves hearing how their response tones assisted in the direction of the piece. These high-pitched melodies induced auditory distortion products and binaural beating that caused the ears of my listeners to act as listening devices. What were left were psychoacoustic illusions, tricking us into perceiving fantastic width and space. Thus, the emphasis of the performance was on the listener’s active role, using the ear as an instrument to contribute to the creative process. Hearing has generally been imagined as a percussive affair: the sounds of the outside world beating on eardrums. It is once the sounds of the ear are amplified, however, that listeners may realize that the eardrum is an active instrument, creating polyrhythms by responding to acoustic information from the inside, out. The concentration is dependent on which sound is listened to, and why. Throughout my work, I ask that my audience not simply hear, but listen to and internalize the human body’s innate response to the sonic information I create. Utilizing sound as both a form of art and media, my immersive installations and performances benefit from sonic distraction to investigate the body as an instrument and listening device. Photos and videos can be found at: www.pippakelmenson.co

Student Connection

News about student, faculty, and departmental accomplishments and happenings during the 2014-2015 school year in the Department of City and Regional Planning

SNF project engineering process improvement plan

This Engineering Process Improvement Plan documents the activities and plans to be taken by the SNF Project (the Project) to support its engineering process and to produce a consolidated set of engineering procedures that are fully compliant with the requirements of HNF-PRO-1819 (1819). These requirements are imposed on all engineering activities performed for the Project and apply to all life-cycle stages of the Project's systems, structures and components (SSCs). This Plan describes the steps that will be taken by the Project during the transition period to ensure that new procedures are effectively integrated into the Project's work process as these procedures are issued. The consolidated procedures will be issued and implemented by September 30, 1999

Challenges to and from scale in alternative food systems

In recent decades, “alternative”, “local”, “regional”, and/or “community focused” food production practices gained support as an opportunity to mitigates or even reverse the barrage of negative impacts on human health and the environment, loss of small farms and food businesses, and the increasing reliance on inequitable labor practices that are associated with industrial agriculture (Dahlberg, 1993; Feenstra, 1997; White, 2020; Low, et al., 2015) However, there is growing recognition that farmers’ markets and direct sales alone will not meet the increasing demand for local food, or shift the structure of industrial agriculture (Born & Purcell, 2006; Pirog, 2008). Instead, these interventions may need to be “scaled up” to shift production and consumption practices across the food system. Without attention to how scale may happen, efforts to build something alternative to industrial agriculture may fail. This dissertation examines challenges to and from scaling up in for alternative food systems in three ways. Paper I is a case study of innovative pathways for increasing in scale while maintaining and even enhancing many the values associated with alternative food systems. Paper II is a case study of growing pains resulting from scale, specifically how institutions influence sustainable food system development in the context of complex environmental management concerns arising from a larger scale of production. Finally, Paper III explores labor quality in alternative food systems and risks it may pose for innovation and scaling.Doctor of Philosoph

Mission driven intermediaries as anchors of the middle ground in the American food system: Evidence from Warrenton NC

Moving beyond direct marketing, food systems work is increasingly connecting sustainably grown food with supermarkets, dining services, and other mainstream outlets. It is here that growers come face‐to‐face with the rigid conditions of a globalized food system. In this paper we document the emergence of mission‐driven intermediaries as bridging institutions in the middle spaces of American agriculture that are using value addition and strategic scaling up to connect alternative food systems to local and regional markets at profitable prices. Through in‐depth interviews with Working Landscapes of Warrenton, North Carolina, we describe one path to becoming a Mission‐Driven Intermediary, in which intermediaries with roots in the nonprofit sector evolve into organizations of hybrid form that include revenue‐generating activities. This institutional heterodoxy allows lateral alliances with diverse entities that help recombine existing resources in new ways, enabling the organization to demonstrate long‐term commitment to the local food project while successfully improvising to survive in a highly competitive and corporatized industry