Effort in gestural interactions with imaginary objects in Hindustani Dhrupad vocal music

Physical effort has often been regarded as a key factor of expressivity in music performance. Nevertheless, systematic experimental approaches to the subject have been rare. In North Indian classical (Hindustani) vocal music, singers often engage with melodic ideas during improvisation by manipulating intangible, imaginary objects with their hands, such as through stretching, pulling, pushing, throwing etc. The above observation suggests that some patterns of change in acoustic features allude to interactions that real objects through their physical properties can afford. The present study reports on the exploration of the relationships between movement and sound by accounting for the physical effort that such interactions require in the Dhrupad genre of Hindustani vocal improvisation. The work follows a mixed methodological approach, combining qualitative and quantitative methods to analyse interviews, audio-visual material and movement data. Findings indicate that despite the flexibility in the way a Dhrupad vocalist might use his/her hands while singing, there is a certain degree of consistency by which performers associate effort levels with melody and types of gestural interactions with imaginary objects. However, different schemes of cross-modal associations are revealed for the vocalists analysed, that depend on the pitch space organisation of each particular melodic mode (rāga), the mechanical requirements of voice production, the macro-structure of the ālāp improvisation and morphological cross-domain analogies. Results further suggest that a good part of the variance in both physical effort and gesture type can be explained through a small set of sound and movement features. Based on the findings, I argue that gesturing in Dhrupad singing is guided by: the know-how of humans in interacting with and exerting effort on real objects of the environment, the movement–sound relationships transmitted from teacher to student in the oral music training context and the mechanical demands of vocalisation

Αξιολόγηση Ψηφιακών Κλισιμετρων Ακριβείας στη Μελέτη Δομικής Παρακολούθησης Γεφυρών Κατά την Επιβολή Ελεγχόμενης Δοκιμαστικής Φόρτισης

Εθνικό Μετσόβιο Πολυτεχνείο--Μεταπτυχιακή Εργασία. Διεπιστημονικό-Διατμηματικό Πρόγραμμα Μεταπτυχιακών Σπουδών (Δ.Π.Μ.Σ.) “Γεωπληροφορική

Phantasma-agoria of/in crisis. Lens-based media and collective experience of the political in performing ‘image’ and agora.

Phantasma-agoria of/in crisis. Lens-based media and collective experience of the political in performing ‘image’ and agora In this practice-based research, I am investigating ways in which an art event can transform the public space from a consumerist topos into a place that enacts the political, disturbing the order of the ‘seeable’ and ‘sayable’ and opening new perspectives in the relationship between the artist and the audience. I particularly focus on the case of the art scene of Athens, Greece, where I live and produce my artwork, and the specific politics of aesthetics that it has promoted during the period of the socio-economic crisis. Specifically, during this period, documentary aesthetics and participatory practices that lacked visual experimentations and outcomes were promoted as more capable to address the political than other forms of creative practices that are presumed to support the culture of consumption. To explore the above tensions between visuality and participatory practices, I critically employed the concept of phantasmagoria, which has been traditionally conceived as the symbol of the consumerist culture. In particular, I concentrated on phantasmagoria as a complex synthesis of the concepts ‘image’/phantasma and agora to re-examine the practice of participation in relation to politics and visuality. Combining lens-based media and digital technologies with participation and performance, the four creative projects of this research allow associations between ‘image’ and agora that enable political thinking and praxis. Taking into consideration that the word crisis, in Greek language means, among others, critical thinking, these projects together constitute the Phantasma-agoria in crisis, that is a critical approach of phantasmagoria. At the same time, they also constitute a Phantasma-agoria of crisis, as they refer to the economic crisis in Greece and the ways that it framed new in/visibilities in the agora. In fact, each one of the projects explores visually different aspects of the agora: the articulation of the agora through speech and language, the articulation of the agora through collective action, the spatial politics of the agora in relation to the dichotomy between private (or domestic) and public space. By conceptualizing the practice of participation through the idea of agora, artist and participants are engaged in a dialogue of political awareness. Depending on the case, the artist should be willing to take the risk and pass some of her authority to the participants and vice versa. Taking the risk builds trust and enables resistance against the normalizing practices of the commodification of culture, setting in motion the political agora

Multimodal Deep Learning Architecture for Hindustani Raga Classification

In this paper, our key aspect is the design of a deep learning architecture for the classification of Hindustani (classical North Indian music) ragas (music modes). In an attempt to address this task, we propose a modular deep learning architecture designed to process data from two modalities, comprising audio recordings and metadata. Our bipolar classifier utilizes convolutional and feed forward neural networks and incorporates spectral information of audio data and metadata descriptors tailored to the peculiar melodic characteristics of Hindustani music. In specific, audio recordings as well as manually annotated and automatically extracted metadata were utilized for audio samples of both Hindustani improvisations and compositions available in the Saraga open dataset of Indian art music. Experiments are conducted on two Hindustani ragas, namely Yaman and Bhairavi. Results indicate that the integration of multimodal data increases the classification accuracy of the classifier in comparison to simply using audio features. Additionally, for the specific task of raga classification the use of the swaragram feature, which is customized for Hindustani music, outperforms the effectiveness of audio features that are commonly used in Eurocentric music genres

Αλλεργίες στην παιδική και εφηβική ηλικία.

Οι αλλεργίες συγκαταλέγονται σήμερα στις πιο διαδεδομένες ασθένειες ανάμεσα σε παιδιά και εφήβους σε παγκόσμιο επίπεδο, με αυξητικές τάσεις τα τελευταία χρόνια. Η εργασία αυτή αποτελεί μία βιβλιογραφική έρευνα, που μελετά τα ποσοστά επικράτησης, τις αιτίες που τις προκαλούν, τους τρόπους διάγνωσης , αλλά και τους τρόπους αντιμετώπισης. Στις κυριότερες αιτίες αναφέρονται το γενετικό υπόβαθρο, η διατροφή, ο θηλασμός, τα γενετικά τροποποιημένα τρόφιμα, η φυσική δραστηριότητα, η ποιότητα του αέρα, το κάπνισμα και το στρές λόγω εκφοβισμού. Από την άλλη, συνεχώς νέες θεραπείες και τρόποι πρόληψης αναδύονται. Στο τέλος, παρατίθεται μία διδακτική πρόταση για τη διδασκαλία της θεματικής ενότητας των αλλεργιών, που στηρίζεται στην ομαδοσυνεργατική καθοδηγούμενη διερεύνηση.Nowadays allergies pertain to most common diseases among children and teenagers worldwide, with increasing trend over the years. This study is a literature review, which studies the percentage of allergy prevalence, the causes which trigger them, allergy testing, as well as possible treatment. As greater causes the genetic background, diet, breastfeeding, GMO, physical exercise, air quality, smoking and stress caused by bullying have been reported. On the other hand, there are lots of new emerging therapies and ways of prevention. At the end, a tutorial approach for the instruction of the thematic section of allergies to students at school, is cited which is based on the Cooperative Learning and the Inquiry-based Instruction