Eurorack to VCV Rack: Modular Synthesis as Compositional Performance

An auto-ethnographic approach is applied to explore the practice of specific patching techniques in post-digital modular synthesis. This is conceptualised as a performance, an embodied approach to creative musical synthesis that emphases the sound and touch over the visual dominance of the currently ubiquitous computer screen. Music performance includes the re-assemblage and re-configuration of a hardware modular system, in this case Eurorack, hereby differentiating it from its virtual version, VCV Rack

Rethinking Immersive Audio

Musical experiences are often described as or aspire to be immersive. Immersive audio is seen as an innovative frontier of music, sometimes encompassing other cutting edge technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Dolby Atmos. However, conceptions of immersion remain reductive and simplistic. Through exploring how immersion is conceptualised in other domains, I interrogate the limits of immersive audio, and argue for a model of immersion that critically considers interactivity and participation. This draws on Small’s concept of musicking (1998) and Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of flow (2013). Immersive audio generally means multichannel audio, involving multiple speakers (or rendered through headphones to appear as such). Immersion becomes a technical challenge solved by more or better configured speakers and ever more realistic spatialising algorithms. Historically, discourses dating back to the very earliest days of stereophonic and multichannel audio have often privileged a “sweet spot” for an immobile but attentive listener (Grajeda, 2015). However, I argue that immersion emerges not from being in an idealised listener position but through being an active participant. Immersive experiences are not limited to sound, and within fields including heritage studies, gaming and theatre, experiences are often sold as being immersive. Scholarly literature in these domains interrogates the nature of this immersion and brings forth valuable perspectives. In her discussion of immersive heritage experiences, Kidd (2018) detaches immersion from technology and notes that “any and all heritage might potentially be understood as immersive.” For Kidd, key characteristics of immersive experiences include being “story-led, audience and participation centered, multimodal, multisensory and attuned to its environment.” Discussing immersion in video games, Collins (2013, p. 141) argues that rather than viewing the game as a separate space that players enter and are immersed in - as when one enters a concert hall - immersion emerges from interaction with the game. Van Elferen’s (2016) ALI model for analysing immersion in game music reveals how musical affect, literacy and interaction all play roles. As Bucher (2017) writes, immersion is “less about telling the viewer a story and more about letting the viewer discover the story.” Through exploring varying ideas of immersion we problematise this oft-used phrase and propose a model for immersion that considers interaction, affect and participation. References Bucher, J. 2017. Storytelling for Virtual Reality: Methods and Principles. New York and Oxon: Routledge. Collins, K., 2013. Playing with sound: a theory of interacting with sound and music in video games. MIT press. Csikszentmihalyi, M., 2013. Flow: The psychology of happiness. Random House. Grajeda, T. 2015. “The “Sweet Spot”: The Technology of Stereo and the Field of Auditorship” in Théberge, P., Devine, K., and Everrett, T (eds.) Living Stereo : Histories and Cultures of Multichannel Sound. Bloomsbury Academic. Kidd, J., 2018.” 'Immersive' heritage encounters”. The Museum Review, 3(1). Small, C. 1998. Musicking: The meanings of performing and listening. Wesleyan University Press. Van Elferen, I. 2016 "Analyzing game musical immersion: the ALI model." in Kamp, M., Summers, T., and Sweeney, M. (eds.) Ludomusicology: approaches to video game music. Equinox

Rethinking Immersion

This presentation proposes that our understanding of immersive audio and how to create immersive sonic experiences might be enriched by looking at how different disciplines have defined “immersive”. We will primarily be drawing on theatre, heritage and gaming. We consider the key facets of immersion that researchers and practitioners working in these disciplines have proposed, and interrogate how insights from these disciplines may give us new and productive ways to think about immersive audio. We propose that reflecting on sound practices by way of these cross-disciplinary insights can give us novel ways of approaching immersive sonic experiences

Reconceptualising clinical handover: Information sharing for situation awareness

Copyright & reuse City University London has developed City Research Online so that its users may access the research outputs of City University London's staff. Copyright © and Moral Rights for this paper are retained by the individual author(s) and / or other copyright holders. Users may download and / or print one copy of any article(s) in City Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. Users may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. All material in City Research Online is checked for eligibility for copyright before being made available in the live archive. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to from other web pages. Versions of research The version in City Research Online may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check the Permanent City Research Online URL above for the status of the paper. Enquiries If you have any enquiries about any aspect of City Research Online, or if you wish to make contact with the author(s) of this paper, please email the team at [email protected]

Public yet private: the status, durability and visibility of handover sheets

Drawing on data from a multi-site case study of a range of clinical settings, this paper explores the form of nursing handover sheets and the processes through which they are created and updated. We argue that these documents function as both public and private documents, having relevance for the whole ward while also acting as a personal workspace. Such dual functionality needs to be supported by any technology that seeks to provide for the work of handover, if the handover sheet is to continue to act as a space for work, rather than just a repository of information

Hurricanes: A Primer for the Aviation Professional

This article has been written in response to the recent increase in hurricane activity within the Atlantic basin and the expectation that this heightened activity will continue for another 20 to 30 years. Its purpose is to educate aviation professionals on the hurricane phenomenon. The topics presented are focused, keying on information that will help these individuals better protect their aircraft and other resources. The issue of aircraft evacuation in response to a threatening hurricane is addressed throughout this paper

The Certainty of Uncertainty: Understanding and Exploiting Probability-Based Aviation Weather Products

Probability-based weather forecasts (i.e., forecasts that quantify uncertainty) have been available for certain weather elements for over 40 years; for example, the probability of precipitation forecast. More recently, probability forecasts designed specifically for aviation have become widely available on the internet through two National Weather Service (NWS) forecast centers, the Aviation Weather Center (AWC) and the Environmental Modeling Center (EMC). Although these probability-based products are generally not recognized by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for operational use, their potential is beginning to be recognized by the aviation community. For example, the Joint Program Development Office (JPDO) Next Generation Air Transportation System (NEXTGEN) Air Traffic Management (ATM)-Weather Integration Plan cites probabilistic forecasts as playing a key role in future air traffic management decision support tools by the year 2023 (JPDO, 2010). Specifically, the JPDO identified the integration of weather uncertainty information (i.e., probabilities and confidence information) into decision-support tools as the highest of four levels of weather integration into the air traffic management system

Quantifying the Effects of Humidity on Density Altitude Calculations for Professional Aviation Education

The effects of humidity on density altitude are quantified in detail and graphically represented as a function of temperature and dew-point temperature for ease of use in professional aviation education. A ten-year climatology of dew-point temperatures for various representative locations throughout the United States is created to provide a basis for comparison and use with the graphical displays. Density altitude is demonstrated to be a function only of dew-point temperature for a given pressure altitude. The absolute errors between density altitude calculations that incorporate humidity to those that do not are combined with linear regression techniques to create a simple rule of thumb for diagnosing the impact of humidity on density altitude. The rule of thumb for the correction (in feet) is simply twenty times the dew-point temperature in Celsius, or colloquially, “double the dew point and add a zero.” This rule of thumb is shown to limit the percent error in density-altitude calculations to within five percent for the range of dew-point temperatures between 5°C to 30°C and elevations below 6,000 compared to over 20 percent for the same conditions using the dry case alone. The effect of humidity is also shown to create larger absolute errors in density-altitude calculations for the same dew-point temperature at higher pressure altitudes; however, the percent error decreases quickly with pressure altitude