Application of Musical Computing to Creating a Dynamic Reconfigurable Multilayered Chamber Orchestra Composition

With increasing virtualization and the recognition that today’s virtual computers are faster than hardware computers of 10 years ago, modes of computation are now limited only by the imagination. Pulsed Melodic Affective Processing (PMAP) is an unconventional computation protocol that makes affective computation more human-friendly by making it audible. Data sounds like the emotion it carries. PMAP has been demonstrated in nonmusical applications, e.g. quantum computer entanglement and stock market trading. This article presents a musical application and demonstration of PMAP: a dynamic reconfigurable score for acoustic orchestral performance, in which the orchestra acts as a PMAP half-adder to add two numbers. </jats:p

Sonification of Dark Matter: Challenges and Opportunities

(Abstract to follow

Real-time hallucination simulation and sonification through user-led development of an iPad augmented reality performance

The simulation of visual hallucinations has multiple applications. The authors present a new approach to hallucination simulation, initially developed for a performance, that proved to have uses for individuals suffering from certain types of hallucinations. The system, originally developed with a focus on the visual symptoms of palinopsia experienced by the lead author, allows real-time visual expression using augmented reality via an iPad. It also allows the hallucinations to be converted into sound through visuals sonification. Although no formal experimentation was conducted, the authors report on a number of unsolicited informal responses to the simulator from palinopsia sufferers and the Palinopsia Foundation

Application of Optimization and Simulation to Musical Composition that Emerges Dynamically during Ensemble Singing Performance

31 pages, 11 FiguresThis paper presents and tests a new approach to composing for ensemble singing performance: reality opera. In the performance of such a composition, emotions of the singers are real and emerge as a consequence of their interactions and reaction and to a dynamic narrative. This paper gives background and motivation for the form, based on three key concepts, incorporating the use of technology. Then proposed techniques for creating reality opera are instantiated in an example, which is performed and a behavioral analysis done of performer reactions, leading to support for the feasibility of the reality opera concept

A Hybrid Computer Case Study for Unconventional Virtual Computing

Improvements in computer efficiency are not always due to increasing computation speed. The mouse and GUI approach to OS’s actually slowed down computation, but sped up computing. This paper highlights the concept of Unconventional Virtual Computation (UVC). With the increasing virtualization of computers, and the recognition that this year’s virtual computers are as fast as the hardware computers of 10 years ago, it becomes clear that we are only limited in our modes of computation by our imagination. A form of UVC is presented called Pulsed Melodic Affective Processing, which utilizes melodies to perform affective computations. PMAP makes computation more human-friendly by making it audible – a PMAP data stream sounds like the emotion it represents. A hybrid computation system is presented combining UVC PMAP with a Photonic Quantum Computer, in which the PMAP musico-logic circuit keeps the QC in a state of entanglement

Cloud Chamber: A Performance with Real Time Two-Way Interaction between Subatomic Particles and Violinist

‘Cloud Chamber’ - a composition by Alexis Kirke, Antonino Chiaramonte, and Anna Troisi - is a live performance in which the invisible quantum world becomes visible as a violinist and subatomic particle tracks interact together. An electronic instrument was developed which can be “played” live by radioactive atomic particles. Electronic circuitry was developed enabling a violin to create a physical force field that directly affects the ions generated by cosmic radiation particles. This enabled the violinist and the ions to influence each other musically in real time. A glass cloud chamber was used onstage to make radioactivity visible in bright white tracks moving within, with the tracks projected onto a large screen

Education in Interwar Rural England: Community, Schooling and Voluntarism

Rural education was heavily contested in the interwar years, rooted in diverging ideas about the countryside and rural community. Adopting a broad definition of education, this thesis examines educational initiatives within voluntary organisations, rural schools and progressive schools established in the countryside. Through an examination of these diverse forms of educational activity, this research redresses the marginalisation of the rural in the history of education and enhances historical understanding of the countryside as an educative space. Drawing on archival and documentary sources which have not been used before, it argues that conceptions of ‘rurality’ and ‘rural community’ shaped the structure and content of education in the countryside during the interwar years. It contends that a critical understanding of ‘rural education’ is needed within the history of education, one that acknowledges the changing representational and physical significance of the countryside. This has importance for a fuller understanding of dominant themes in the field, including progressivism, the expansion of the national education system following the First World War and informal education. This research also contributes to rural history by exposing the different ways in which the rural community was conceptualised among various individuals and groups, in relation to changing ideas about voluntarism, citizenship and gender