Doctor Atomic or: How John Adams Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Sound Design

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-117
Author(s):  
Ryan Ebright

AbstractIn his autobiography, John Adams mused that his 2005 opera, Doctor Atomic, challenges directors and conductors owing to its ‘abstracted treatment’ of time and space. This abstraction also challenges scholars. In this article, I bring the cross-disciplinary field of sound studies into the opera house to demonstrate that Adams's obfuscation of operatic space–time is achieved primarily through the use of a spatialised electroacoustic sound design. Drawing on archival materials and new interviews with director Peter Sellars and sound designer Mark Grey, I outline the dramaturgical, epistemological and hermeneutic ramifications of sound design for opera studies and advocate for disciplinary engagement with the spatial dimensions of electroacoustic music generally, and within opera specifically.

Author(s):  
Fei Jin ◽  
Xiaoliang Liu ◽  
Fangfang Xing ◽  
Guoqiang Wen ◽  
Shuangkun Wang ◽  
...  

Background : The day-ahead load forecasting is an essential guideline for power generating, and it is of considerable significance in power dispatch. Objective: Most of the existing load probability prediction methods use historical data to predict a single area, and rarely use the correlation of load time and space to improve the accuracy of load prediction. Methods: This paper presents a method for day-ahead load probability prediction based on space-time correction. Firstly, the kernel density estimation (KDE) is employed to model the prediction error of the long short-term memory (LSTM) model, and the residual distribution is obtained. Then the correlation value is used to modify the time and space dimensions of the test set's partial period prediction values. Results: The experiment selected three years of load data in 10 areas of a city in northern China. The MAPE of the two modified models on their respective test sets can be reduced by an average of 10.2% and 6.1% compared to previous results. The interval coverage of the probability prediction can be increased by an average of 4.2% and 1.8% than before. Conclusion: The test results show that the proposed correction schemes are feasible.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (10) ◽  
pp. 4398-4414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Baptiste Gauthier ◽  
Karin Pestke ◽  
Virginie van Wassenhove

Abstract When moving, the spatiotemporal unfolding of events is bound to our physical trajectory, and time and space become entangled in episodic memory. When imagining past or future events, or being in different geographical locations, the temporal and spatial dimensions of mental events can be independently accessed and manipulated. Using time-resolved neuroimaging, we characterized brain activity while participants ordered historical events from different mental perspectives in time (e.g., when imagining being 9 years in the future) or in space (e.g., when imagining being in Cayenne). We describe 2 neural signatures of temporal ordinality: an early brain response distinguishing whether participants were mentally in the past, the present or the future (self-projection in time), and a graded activity at event retrieval, indexing the mental distance between the representation of the self in time and the event. Neural signatures of ordinality and symbolic distances in time were distinct from those observed in the homologous spatial task: activity indicating spatial order and distances overlapped in latency in distinct brain regions. We interpret our findings as evidence that the conscious representation of time and space share algorithms (egocentric mapping, distance, and ordinality computations) but different implementations with a distinctive status for the psychological “time arrow.”


Author(s):  
Keith C. Clarke ◽  
Ian J. Irmischer
Keyword(s):  

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. e123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Arroyo Ohori ◽  
Hugo Ledoux ◽  
Jantien Stoter

Objects of more than three dimensions can be used to model geographic phenomena that occur in space, time and scale. For instance, a single 4D object can be used to represent the changes in a 3D object’s shape across time or all its optimal representations at various levels of detail. In this paper, we look at how such higher-dimensional space-time and space-scale objects can be visualised as projections from ℝ4to ℝ3. We present three projections that we believe are particularly intuitive for this purpose: (i) a simple ‘long axis’ projection that puts 3D objects side by side; (ii) the well-known orthographic and perspective projections; and (iii) a projection to a 3-sphere (S3) followed by a stereographic projection to ℝ3, which results in an inwards-outwards fourth axis. Our focus is in using these projections from ℝ4to ℝ3, but they are formulated from ℝnto ℝn−1so as to be easily extensible and to incorporate other non-spatial characteristics. We present a prototype interactive visualiser that applies these projections from 4D to 3D in real-time using the programmable pipeline and compute shaders of the Metal graphics API.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 335-346
Author(s):  
Luca Soudant

Abstract This article reflects on an ongoing artistic research practice that deals with sound, gender, power, spatiality, and human–nonhuman entanglement. Sparked by a sound design for a less crunchy “lady-friendly” crisp, the research inquires the relationship between gender and sound at human–nonhuman encounter through making and thinking. Drawing on queer theory, sound studies, and posthumanism, it aims to transcend essentialist, vision-focused, and anthropocentric conceptualisations of gender and, as an insight gained from working with low-frequency sound waves, it reflects on sound as material-philosophically demonstrating human–nonhuman interconnectedness. The latter, as this article proposes, may encourage us to horizontalise hierarchies between the human and nonhuman. Finally, this text situates sonic thinking as a mode of trans*formative thinking: a process-oriented philosophy that aims to embrace the messy, queer ways of human–nonhuman relationality, which characterises a vibrant space from which this artistic research will further develop.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document