Musical hybridisation: cultural interaction in models of mixtures

[Abstract] The multicultural situation serves as natural accelerator, programming and stimulating production of cultural hybrids in different realms. My general project is theory of multicultural texts based on an interdisciplinary approach, linking cultural semiotics, musicology and cultural studies and studying cultural relationships in case of musical mixtures (represented as multicultural texts). The multicultural texts simultaneously introduce two or more cultural identities. Thinking about it, we cannot advance in accurate modeling since calculating a formula to express ratio of mixed elements is not possible. The hybrid is a construction, where pre-texts grow through each other, and one of the most insoluble questions therein is where one cultural area ends and another begins inside the multicultural text. Besides, the mixtures bring new information and preserve the space of pre-existed cultural interaction, which, perhaps, cannot be disassembled and fit to any of those cultural pre-texts. This presentation proposes ways to think of musical mixtures from the angle of their cultural content. We can distinguish mixtures for modes and grades of the textual interaction inside them and to classify the mixtures for their structure. I have formalized types of structural relationships of cultural elements, or cultural pretexts, in the multicultural texts in the three basic models of mixtures called mosaic, application and assimilation. Mosaic is a simple confrontation of entire cultural blocks with no real concordance or coordination between them. Application includes models based on the principle of addition or accumulation. And, assimilation is adoption of another source with the following transformation of both sources. These models at the same time reflect different stages of cultural dialogues and receiving foreign texts by a culture considered by Jury Lotman. Every model will be demonstrated in musical examples

Deconstructing Andrei Tarkovsky’s Magic Realism : Sound Design and the Category of Irreal

Peer reviewe

Talking Rocks, Illusory Sounds and Projections of the Otherworld: Acoustics of Sacred Sites As a Magic Media in Shamanic Cultures

The archaeoacoustic team of the University of Helsinki has been studying how sacred sites in Northern Europe, used by shamanic cultures since prehistoric times, are home to remarkable acoustic properties. This chapter focuses on natural-site acoustics as a magic tool in ritual practices. Based on our acoustic measurements as well as experimental sound tests carried out during in situ studies of prehistoric and historic sacred sites in Finland, we discuss possible sound media (voice, instruments, noise), performing techniques and methods of sound production used at the sites. While the acoustic study of the sacred sites is at the core of our research, we also discuss the visual aspects and visual phenomena observed at the sites during our fieldwork. Our attempt to restore the sound culture of shamanism associated with the hosting sites and their sound potential profoundly rests on ethnographic research of the Finno-Ugric peoples, predominantly the Sámi and the Finns. The end result of this ethnographic and practical research study is our interpretation of the shamanic ritual practices as seen through the prism of the miraculous acoustic illusions and visual appearances created by the sacred sites.Peer reviewe

Chapter 9 Talking rocks, illusory sounds, and projections of the otherworld

This volume explores illusionism as a much larger phenomenon than optical illusion, magic shows, or special effects, as a vital part of how we perceive, process, and shape the world we live in. Considering different cultural practices characterised by illusionism, this book suggests a new approach to illusion via media theory. Each of the chapters analyses a specific kind of illusionistic practice and the concept of illusionism it entails in a given context, including philosophy, perception and cognitive theory, performance magic, occultism, optics, physiology, early cinema, cartomancy, spiritualism, architecture, shamanic rituals, and theoretical physics, to show the diversity of shapes that illusionism and illusions can take. The book provides detailed analyses of illusions within performance and ritual magic, philosophy, art history and psychology as well as a first approach to the study of illusions outside of these established fields. It aims to find ways of identifying and analysing a wider range of illusions in the humanities. This multidisciplinary and comprehensive volume will appeal to scholars and students with an interest in media and culture, theatre and performance, philosophy, sociology, politics and religion

Teoria multikulttuurisista teksteistä : Erik Bergmanin musiikki multikulttuurisen Euroopan ilmiönä

This dissertation is a study of musical cultural mixtures, essentially focusing on mixtures in contemporary European art music and compositions of the Finnish-Swedish composer Erik Bergman as a complex case of cultural mixtures and mixing processes. The study suggests a theoretical framework and analytical tools for interpreting and deconstructing mixtures defined as multicultural texts. In the second part of the project, the suggested tools are applied to analyse the music of Erik Bergman, whose work is considered to be a particular example of the multicultural texts, in which the initial cultural components have blended into fusion on the level of sound. The project creates various perspectives to study the subject of musical mixtures described as virtual models of cultural communication, where different cultural identities, discourses, and aesthetics are presented simultaneously. Having as its goal the identifying and highlighting of different aspects of mixtures and strategies of their modelling, the multidisciplinary project, with a primary background in musicology and semiotics, combines diverse theories and concepts, involving different branches of semiotics (from Yuri Lotman s cultural semiotics to the intertextual studies and interpretative semiotics of Umberto Eco), as well as the concept of virtual reality, temporal theories, studies of cultural identity, the theory of topics, and studies of cultural forms of sound and their conceptualisation. The research work results in the creation of a comprehensive theory that proposes background, terminology, and several tools and strategies for studying mixtures, while tracing cultural information and its transformation inside them. The theory takes into account processes of virtual cultural modelling, the role of the author and the reader, and addresses an extensive category of the multicultural texts taken as personal creations. This novel understanding of musical mixtures leads to an analysis of mixtures on the level of sound essence and sound strategies. The research also creates a new perspective on Erik Bergman s music, an author with extraordinary cultural experiences and many cultural identities speaking through his authorial voice. The analytical part of the project demonstrates how diverse strategies of modelling, cultural compositional techniques, and sound strategies work to compose (and decompose) a multicultural text.Väitöskirja on tutkielma musiikillis-kulttuurisista sekoittumista pääkohteenaan sekoittumat ( mixtures ) modernissa eurooppalaisessa taidemusiikissa ja suomenruotsalaisen säveltäjän Erik Bergmanin sävellyksissä kulttuuristen sekoittumien ja sekoittumisprosessien kompleksisena esimerkkitapauksena. Tutkielma esittelee teoreettisen viitekehyksen ja menetelmät näiden sekoittumien musiikilliselle analyysille ja tulkinnalle. Väitöskirjan toisessa osassa edellä mainittuja menetelmiä sovelletaan Erik Bergmanin musiikin analyysiin. Hänen tuotantoaan tarkastellaan musiikillisten sekoittumien erityislaatuisena esimerkkinä, jossa alkujaan kulttuuriset komponentit sulautuvat yhteen äänen tasolla. Tutkielman kontekstissa musiikilliset sekoittumat määritellään multikulttuurisiksi teksteiksi. Näitä voidaan kuvailla kulttuurisen kommunikaation virtuaalisina malleina, joissa erilaiset kulttuuriset identiteetit, diskurssit ja estetiikat esiintyvät samanaikaisesti. Tavoitteenaan identifioida ja tuoda esiin näiden sekoittumien erilaisia aspekteja ja niiden mallintamisen strategioita tämä monitieteellinen projekti, pääasiallisena taustanaan musiikkitiede ja semiotiikka, luo erilaisia perspektiivejä musiikillisten sekoittumien tutkimiseen. Siten se yhdistää useita teorioita ja käsitteitä semiotiikan erilaiset alat mukaan lukien (Juri Lotmanin kulttuurisemiotiikasta Umberto Econ intertekstuaalisiin tutkielmiin ja tulkitsevaan semiotiikkaan). Tutkielma kytkee myös toisiinsa virtuaalisen todellisuuden käsitteen, ajallisuutta koskevat teoriat, tutkimukset kulttuurisesta identiteetistä, toposteorian ja äänen kulttuuriset ilmenemismuodot ja niiden käsitteellistämisen. Väitöskirjan tulos on monipuolinen teoria, joka esittelee taustan ja terminologian sekä erilaiset menetelmät ja strategiat sekoittumien ja niiden sisältämän kulttuurisen informaation ja transformaation tutkimiselle. Teoria käsittää myös virtuaalisen kulttuurisen mallintamisen prosessit, tekijän ja lukijan roolin sekä laaja-alaisen kategorian multikulttuurisista teksteistä yksilöllisinä luomuksina. Tämä uusi näkökulma musiikillisiin sekoittumiin johtaa niiden analyysiin äänen olemuksen ja strategioiden tasolla. Tutkimus avaa myös uusia näköaloja Erik Bergmanin musiikkiin ja niihin erityislaatuisiin kulttuurisiin kokemuksiin ja moniin kulttuurisiin identiteetteihin, jotka puhuvat hänen tekijän äänellään. Tutkimusprojektin analyyttinen osa osoittaa, kuinka mallintamisen erilaiset strategiat, säveltämisen kulttuuriset tekniikat ja äänistrategiat osallistuvat multikulttuuristen tekstien rakentumiseen (ja hajottamiseen)

Sounding, quotation and visualisation: applying poetic Logic : realistic cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky

A lo largo de los años y de sus siete películas, el destacado director de cine ruso Andrei Tarkovsky desarrolló una estrategia de rodaje llamada lógica poética. Este artículo se aproxima a las películas de Tarkovsky desde el punto de vista de la lógica poética en sus diferentes manifestaciones. frecuentemente confundida con la metaforización, la lógica poética, aunque cercana, es un concepto mucho más amplio que tiene otros objetivos y centros de atención. Aparece en métodos y técnicas de trabajo como el naturalismo de imágenes y sonidos, el rechazo de la música fílmica y su reemplazo por otras formas sonoras, la observación o contemplación de un objeto, el establecimiento de lazos asociativos, y una de las más importantes, la cita de objetos visuales y sonoros que pertenecen a realidades artísticas extra-cinematográfcas: música preexistente, pintura histórica y obras verbales. Tarkovsky relaciona la lógica poética con los medios del cine realista. Estas herramientas estratégicas ayudan a dibujar la vida en una toma de la forma más cercana a la realidad. Al mismo tiempo, salva la difcultad de mostrar en la pantalla el mundo interior de un hombre y su vida mental representada en sus sueños, recuerdos, visiones e imaginación. La lógica poética deja abierta la cuestión del signifcado, sugiriendo el polisemantismo de las imágenes flmadas.over years and all his seven motion pictures the outstanding Russian flm-director Andrei Tarkovsky developed a strategy of flming called poetic logic. The article approaches Tarkovsky’s flms from the viewpoint of the poetic logic in its different applications. Often mistaken for metaphorisation, the poetic logic is, though a close, but quite a larger concept, which has other purposes and focuses. It appears in such methods and techniques of work as naturalism of images and sounds, rejection of flm music and its replacement for other sound forms, observing or contemplation of an object, building associative links, and one of the most important, quoting visual and audio objects belonging to non-cinematographic art-realities: pre-existed music, historical painting, and verbal works. Tarkovsky relates the poetic logic to the way of the realistic cinema. These strategic tools help to design life in a shot in the closest to reality form. At the same time, it bridges a diffculty of showing on screen the inner world of a man and his mental life represented in his dreams, memories, visions and imagination. The poetic logic leaves the question of meaning open, suggesting polysemanticism of the flmed images

Art et bruit: Théâtre, magie, cinéma, musique, radio, opéra, performance, ciné-danse

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