Expression in process music: possibility or paradox?

Algorithmic composition progressed throughout the 20th century, as modernism became the dominant aesthetic, until finally ‘process music’ arrived, where the single remaining compositional decision related to what sonic resources to use. Composition pedagogy in the late 20th century did not explicitly include ‘expression’. This raises a second question, as repeatedly, musical discourse refers to ‘expression’, which seems to be something that audiences desire and to which they respond. Addressing these questions has lead me to reconsider the way music itself, and compositional processes, are characterised in music analysis. The outcome of my research is a new theory of music, using Fuzzy Logic principles. I am using this theory to build an algorithmic compositional decision-making system which can create specific aesthetic experiences

Fuzzy ideas: using fuzzy logic to make sense of Western art music

Presented for Music Research Seminar, Kingsland Room, Level 6 ANU School of Music. Current musicological practice provides us with a range of procedures for investigating aspects of the construction of particular genres of Western art music, or for understanding typical listener perceptual response patterns. Each method attempts to deal with the problems of subjectivity of the analyst and/or the nature of music as a time-based intangible artform. As a result, conventional methods overlook or simplify aspects of making sense of a complete piece of music as a lived experience. In the late 20th century, computer scientists developed Fuzzy Logic as a way to explicitly incorporate the subjectivity of human problem-solving in environments of imprecision and uncertainty. Avant-garde music is difficult to understand. My thesis is that Fuzzy Logic is an informative way to represent the personal and subjective experience of a piece of avant-garde music as part of analysing how that intangible time-based music makes sense. As a result, Fuzzy Logic can be a constructive tool for making sense of any type of Western art music, composed using any materials, techniques and forms

Teacher workshops chip away at economic illiteracy

Workshops put on for teachers by the Atlanta and St. Louis Feds are having the desired results, a recent assessment shows. Teachers are learning about the economy and personal finance, and they are passing this information on to a student body that desperately needs it.Education - Economic aspects ; Economics - Study and teaching

Al\u3csub\u3e2\u3c/sub\u3eO\u3csub\u3e3\u3c/sub\u3e Oxide Morphology for Two Fe-Cr-Al Stainless Steel Foils Used in Gasoline Engine Catalytic Converters

Corrugated 0.05 in thick strips of Fe-Cr-Al ferritic stainless steel samples with 4% and 6% aluminum were heat treated, and the resulting Al2O3 oxide was analyzed using SEM imaging. Three heat treatment cycles were carried out for each sample. The heat treatments were based on future metal-substrate catalytic converter processing prior to applying the washcoat Each heat treatment started with a 90 minute ramp from room temperature to 538°C and a 32.5 minute ramp from 538°C to 899°C. The three different dwell periods at 899°C were 4 hours, 6 hours, and taking a sample out every hour for 4 hours and letting it air cool. The full 4 and 6 hour cycles were finished with an in-furnace cool recorded by an external thermocouple and datalogger. Additional samples were included in the 6 hour cycle that were flattened by pressing a metal cylinder across the top of the corrugated sheet. All samples were sputtered with a 300-Å-thick layer of gold to improve resolution in the SEM. Cold rolling to form the 0.05 in sheet and possibly the corrugation deformed the microstructure and altered the surface, which produced different oxide structures during heat treatment in linear patterns. Also, the different regions of the corrugation (ridge, valley and slope) produced different oxide formations. The ridges showed a flatter oxide, the valleys showed a linear pattern with alternating needle-like and rough granular oxides, and the slopes showed needle-like oxide with patches of smooth rounded oxide. The desired oxide is a needle-like structure which provides a large surface area for the catalyst layer (washcoat) during the production of catalytic converters

Space Shuttle Lightning Protection

The technology for lightning protection of even the most advanced spacecraft is available and can be applied through cost-effective hardware designs and design-verification techniques. In this paper, the evolution of the Space Shuttle Lightning Protection Program is discussed, including the general types of protection, testing, and anlayses being performed to assess the lightning-transient-damage susceptibility of solid-state electronics