The poet sings: “resonance” in Paul Valéry’s poietics

This paper analyses Paul Valéry’s theories relating to his stated goal of poetic production: the attainment of “resonance” and a “singing-state”. My intention is to defend Valéry’s theory as a valid and consistent model of the creative process in poetry. To that end, I will draw support from T. W. Adorno’s claim that Valéry’s manner of reflective journalising in his Notebooks can furnish us with what he calls “aesthetic insight”. The consistency of Valéry’s theory will be supported by comparisons with the inferentialist understanding of semantics. Valéry proves to be a reliable exemplar of what might be called a “practice-led” aesthetics

Writing as life performed

In this chapter I explore the interrelatedness of practice, rehearsal, and performance and their applicability in the domain of “life.” These relationships are complicated when, in reference to Adorno’s Minima Moralia, the content of critical-essayistic production (which is analogous to aesthetic production in many ways) is ultimately that of the life of the author. I propose that to a large extent, the categories of practicing, rehearsing, and performing that are derivable from artistic-productive experience can be extended to lived experience. Working and living seriously and critically have significant points of convergence. What I attempt to disrupt is the presupposition of any “natural” hierarchy between these categories, whereby, for example, performance – connoting the tangible accomplishment of goals and the visibility of that accomplishment – takes precedence over the open-ended tasks of practice and rehearsal

Towers of recollement and bases for diagram algebras: planar diagrams and a little beyond

The recollement approach to the representation theory of sequences of algebras is extended to pass basis information directly through the globalisation functor. The method is hence adapted to treat sequences that are not necessarily towers by inclusion, such as symplectic blob algebras (diagram algebra quotients of the type-\hati{C} Hecke algebras). By carefully reviewing the diagram algebra construction, we find a new set of functors interrelating module categories of ordinary blob algebras (diagram algebra quotients of the type-${B}$ Hecke algebras) at {\em different} values of the algebra parameters. We show that these functors generalise to determine the structure of symplectic blob algebras, and hence of certain two-boundary Temperley-Lieb algebras arising in Statistical Mechanics. We identify the diagram basis with a cellular basis for each symplectic blob algebra, and prove that these algebras are quasihereditary over a field for almost all parameter choices, and generically semisimple. (That is, we give bases for all cell and standard modules.)Comment: 61 page

Dwelling and the sacralisation of the air: A note on acousmatic music

This paper adapts Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of ‘dwelling’ in order to effect a liaison between acousmatic music and ecological concern. I propose this as an alternative to both the propagandist use of music as a means of protest and to using the science of ecology as a domain that might furnish new compositional means. I advance the interpretation that acousmatic music ‘occupies the air’ in ways that transform the meaning of that dimension. It allows the sky to be sky and the earth, earth. I use the precedent of bell ringing as an example of sonic activity that occupies the air in order to furthe

Simultaneous determination of in situ vertical transitions of color, pore-water metals, and visualization of infaunal activity in marine sediments

The vertical color transition from brown to gray-green in marine sediments is linked to the Fe redox boundary and is commonly used as a proxy for biogeochemical state. We combine time-lapse sediment profile imaging with diffusive gradient thin (DGT) gels to obtain simultaneous in situ measurements of sediment color profiles, pore-water Fe and Mn profiles, and qualitative estimates of faunal activity at the Oyster Ground and North Dogger (North Sea). Analysis of Fe and Mn profiles using generalized additive modeling reveals that high variability between profiles within the sites makes it difficult to determine any intersite differences in trace metal behavior. At the Oyster Ground, the depth of sediment color transition (4.78 +/- 0.76 cm) was not significantly different from the Fe redox boundary (7.67 +/- 4.04 cm). At the North Dogger, there was a significant discrepancy between the depth of the sediment color transition (2.86 +/- 0.78 cm) and the Fe redox boundary (10.17 +/- 1.04 cm), which most likely results from high sulfate reduction rates at the North Dogger, leading to complexation of reduced iron to a form not available to the DGT technique. The differences in the coupling of sediment color and the Fe redox boundary between stations is likely to be related to variations in recent infaunal bioturbation activity, rather than variations in sediment source or fundamental differences in bulk sediment chemistry. Our results highlight the importance of the infaunal community in mediating Fe and Mn cycles, which are key pathways in the degradation of organic matter, and suggest that descriptions of bulk chemistry alone may be insufficient to understand the dynamics of biogeochemical cycling