Sound, space, sculpture: some thoughts on the ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ of sound diffusion

1998 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
JONTY HARRISON
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Performance Practice ◽  
Measuring Equipment ◽  
Electroacoustic Music ◽  
Diffusion System ◽  
Manual Control ◽  
The World ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Uk

Sound diffusion – the realtime (usually manual) control of the relative levels and spatial deployment during performance – is one of the most contentious issues in the field of electroacoustic music. There are parts of the world where the practice is virtually unknown; in other places it is the norm and appropriate facilities would be provided as a matter of course for any visiting composer or performer. These ‘local variations’ are not merely ripples on the surface of a standardised performance practice but stem from underlying attitudes to what composition and performance in this medium are about and, ultimately, to a definition of music itself. What follows summarises observations drawn from fifteen years of working with the BEAST concert diffusion system in numerous performance spaces in the UK and Europe, as well as experiencing, both as listener and performer, other systems in Europe and North America. Scientific rigour, in the normally accepted sense of tables of measurements etc., is not my goal – my portable measuring equipment has been my ears, and my conclusions are based on what I have heard.

Chapter II. The World Economy

1983 ◽  
Vol 106 ◽  
pp. 26-38
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Industrial Production ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
West Germany ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
The Uk ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Minor Extent

The recovery in the OECD area gathered pace in the second quarter, when its total GDP probably increased by as much as 1 per cent. The rise was, however, heavily concentrated in North America and particularly the US. There may well have been a slight fall in Western Europe, where the level of industrial production hardly changed and increases in gross product in West Germany and, to a minor extent, in France were outweighed by falls in Italy and (according to the expenditure measure) the UK.

Festivals of Transition, Greenlight Festival Leicester

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
School Teacher ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
The World ◽  
Hard Truth ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Brundtland Commission ◽  
System 1

The Brundtland Commission in its report Our Common Future (United Nations, 1987) is widely credited with setting down the first policy definition of sustainable development. In 2017 this report will be thirty years old yet it seems we are still a long way from living sustainably: If, as of 2017, there is not a start of a major wave of new and clean investments, the door to 2 degrees [global temperature increase] will be closed. (Birol, 2011) Green policies have been ‘adapted and adopted’ by mainstream parties across Europe, despite Green parties being a relatively small political force (Carter, 2013). The European Commission has become a worldwide driver of green policy (Judge, 1992) and market-based innovations such as the Emissions Trading System 1 , despite being celebrated and criticised in seemingly equal measure. Media coverage of ‘outsider’ party growth in the UK has swung towards the libertarian and anti-Europe UKIP recently, despite comparable and longer term growth in support for the Greens (Goodwin & Ford, 2013). Efforts have been made to disassociate Green voices from older clichés of self-deprivation: The Green party has changed: partly the personalities within it, partly in response to the changing world outside it....At the same time, ideas that were mainly theoretical 25 years ago – solar and wind technology – have been demonstrably workable...The Greens have become the party of possibilities, not catastrophes. (Williams, 2014). One attempt to imagine a sustainable future can be found in The World We Made, written by Johnathon Porritt from the perspective of a school teacher in the year 2050. The positives of huge renewable investments, progressive economic policies and a panoply of exciting new technologies are matched with equally plausible negatives of stubborn inequality, famines and riots. In the postscript, Porritt states: ‘If we can’t deliver the necessarily limited vision of a better world mapped out in The World We Made, then the hard truth is that no other vision will be available to us anyway, on any terms.’ (Porritt, 2013: 276)

Separated at Birth?

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Baldwin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Unexpected Death ◽  
The World ◽  
Exit Option ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Fathers And Sons

To Return To The Bulk of our material in this book, what absolute differences separate the United States from Europe? The United States is a nation where proportionately more people are murdered each year, more are jailed, and more own guns than anywhere in Europe. The death penalty is still law. Religious belief is more fervent and widespread. A smaller percentage of citizens vote. Collective bargaining covers relatively fewer workers, and the state’s tax take is lower. Inequality is somewhat more pronounced. That is about it. In almost every other respect, differences are ones of degree, rather than kind. Oft en, they do not exist, or if they do, no more so than the same disparities hold true within Western Europe itself. At the very least, this suggests that farreaching claims to radical differences across the Atlantic have been overstated. Even on violence—a salient difference that leaps unprompted from the evidence, both statistical and anecdotal—the contrast depends on how it is framed. Without question, murder rates are dramatically different across the Atlantic. And, of course, murder is the most shocking form of sudden, unexpected death, unsettling communities, leaving survivors bereaved and mourning. But consider a wider definition of unanticipated, immediate, and profoundly disrupting death. Suicide is oft en thought of as the exit option for old, sick men anticipating the inevitable, and therefore not something that changes the world around them. But, in fact, the distribution of suicide over the lifespan is broadly uniform. In Iceland, Ireland, the UK, and the United States, more young men (below forty-five) than old do themselves in. In Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Norway, the figures are almost equal. Elsewhere, the older have a slight edge. But overall, the ratio between young and old suicides approximates 1:1. Broadly speaking, and sticking with the sex that most oft en kills itself, men do away with themselves as oft en when they are younger and possibly still husbands, fathers, and sons as they do when they are older and when their actions are perhaps fraught with less consequence for others. Suicide is as unsettling, and oft en even more so, for survivors as murder.

scholarly journals Strome van lewende water: Nuwe-Testamentiese perspektiewe op die missionêre karakter van die kerk

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Flip P.J. Buys
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
North America ◽  
Missional Church ◽  
The World ◽  
God's Mission ◽  
Reformed Churches ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Missional Churches ◽  
The Church ◽  
International Phenomenon

Oor ’n wye front word besorgdheid uitgespreek oor die stagnering en kwynende getallegroei van hoofstroom-reformatoriese kerke in Suid-Afrika. Die besorgdheid word egter ook uitgespreek dat predikante en kerke in hulle ywer om kerklike vernuwing teweeg te bring, soveel kompromieë maak dat die kerk sy eie aard as heilge volk van God in die wêreld verloor. Daar is ’n internasionale tendens te bespeur by reformatoriese kerke, in Suid-Afrika, Noord Amerika, Australië, Nederland, Duitsland en die Verenige Koninkryk om die na-binne-gerigtheid van kerke om te draai om werklik missionêre kerke te kan wees. Daar is ook tekens van ’n groeiende ontwakende passie om die onbereikte taalgroepe tot by die uithoeke van die aarde te bereik met die evangelie. Daar is oor ’n wye front lewendige debatte aan die gang wat vra vir ’n herevaluering van oorgeërfde ekklesiologiese tradisies en gebruike en ’n herbesinning oor Bybelse beginsels. In die lig van hierdie ontwikkelings is die doel van hierdie artikel om Nuwe-Testamentiese beginsels op te som en te onderstreep en as boustene aan te bied om die profiel van ’n missionêre kerk te skets. Grave concerns are expressed about the decline of mainline reformed churches in South Africa, especially the Reformed Churches in South Africa. At the same time fears are expressed that efforts to facilitate renewal in churches in order to become healthy and more effective missional churches, are making too many compromises with the gospel, so that the church is in danger of losing its very character as God’s holy people in the world. There is also an international phenomenon of reformed and evangelical type churches in North America, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK and Australia endeavouring to outgrow their ingrown vision and become part of God’s mission to reach unreached people groups in every corner of the world. There are lively debates on reviewing and rethinking inherited ecclesiological theological traditions and practices in churches. This article endeavours to gather basic building bricks by summarising and emphasising the most basic New Testament principles for outlining the profile of a missional church.

Performance practice and philology in Bartók’s Violin Concerto (1938)

2012 ◽  
Vol 53 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 153-160
Author(s):  
Péter Laki
Keyword(s):  
Chamber Music ◽  
Performance Practice ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Violin Concerto ◽  
Final Version ◽  
The World ◽  
And Performance ◽  
World Premiere ◽  
Conservatory Students ◽  
Comparative Examination

The world premiere recording of Bartók’s Violin Concerto, played by Zoltán Székely has been a classic for seventy-two years now. Since that time, dozens of artists have committed the work to disc and hundreds more—from concert artists to conservatory students—have played the Concerto. Székely’s extremely subtle, almost chamber-music-like interpretation has been widely admired but many violinists in past decades have favored, by and large, a more robust approach, one that stresses the work’s connections to the Romantic concerto tradition. The question is: can a careful reading of the musical text—the final version as well as the various manuscript sources—help a player make practical stylistic decisions? A comparative examination of the performance of the first 16 measures from a number of older and more recent recordings will be set against what textual analysis can tell us, as a test case for a productive dialog between scholarship and performance.

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Performance

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
Sound Recording ◽  
The Third ◽  
Performance Criticism ◽  
The World ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Latin American Countries ◽  
Final Group

Shakespearean performance criticism has undergone a sea change in recent years, and strong tides of discovery are continuing to shift the contours of the discipline. The essays in this volume, written by scholars from around the world, reveal how these critical cross-currents are influencing the ways we now view Shakespeare in performance. Essays are divided into four groups. The first group interrogates how Shakespeare continues to achieve contemporaneity for Western audiences by exploring modes of performance, acting styles, and aesthetic choices that are regarded as experimental. The second group tackles the burgeoning field of reception: how and why audiences respond to performances, or actors to the conditions in which they perform; how immersive productions turn spectators into actors; how memory and cognition shape and reshape the performances we think we saw. The third group addresses the ways in which technology has altered our views of Shakespeare, both through the mediums of film and sound recording, and through digitalizing processes which have caused a profound reconsideration of what performance is and how it is accessed. The final group grapples with intercultural Shakespeare, considering not only matters of cultural hegemony and appropriation in a ‘global’ importation of non-Western productions to Europe and North America, but also how Shakespeare has been made ‘local’ in performances staged or filmed in African, Asian, and Latin American countries. Together, these groundbreaking essays attest to the richness and diversity of Shakespearean performance criticism as practised today, and point the way to critical continents not yet explored.

Normalisation and the Psychology of ‘Mental Retardation’

1996 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murray K. Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Retardation ◽  
North America ◽  
Social Integration ◽  
Precise Definition ◽  
Service Model ◽  
Dual Strategy ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Uk

The 1950 and 1960s witnessed a revival of interest among psychologists in mental retardation closely associated with the development of a behaviourist model. These developments effected a decisive break in the discourse of retardation by inserting a ‘behaviour’ component into the definition of retardation. This strengthened claims by psychology of professional primacy vis-à-vis medicine. The objective of professional assertion helped create the conditions in which the service model of Normalisation2 took root in North America and, to a lesser extent, the UK. As a semi-autonomous discourse, Normalisation provided a vehicle in which elements of contradictory discourses, principally psychology and interactionism, could be appropriated. The interventions which emerged from this comprised a dual strategy of enhanced social integration and the more precise definition and identification of mental retardation.

Making the Archive and Archiving the Making: insights and outcomes from a major research project

2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIMON WATERS
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Performance Practice ◽  
Electroacoustic Music ◽  
The Other ◽  
Technical Level ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Major Research ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Aesthetic Judgement ◽  
And Performance

This paper seeks to address some of the problems faced by those archiving an area of musical practice – electroacoustic music and the sonic arts – which is, by definition, involved with technologies which change and develop, and which unsurprisingly is itself in a state of flux and transformation. Drawing on the experience gained from two linked research projects – one looking at the development of the practice, the other seeking to archive it – it is suggested that the two apparently disparate areas of activity can be fruitfully regarded as overlapping in many respects. Both activities involve selection and aesthetic judgement, both strive for an elusive ‘completeness’ while acknowledging its impossibility, and at a technical level the strategies now emerging for searching and collating information from ‘separate’ archives look increasingly like the strategies used in some areas of ‘real-time’ composition and performance practice. It is argued that archivists of material from such a disparate and rapidly developing practice, rather than aiming for spurious ‘coverage’ of the field, should acknowledge and celebrate their difference from each other, while conforming to simple principles which will allow their archived content to be searched and collated dynamically by individual users, each querying and configuring the material optimally for their own purposes.

Pierrot L.

2011 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 601-645 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Performance Practice ◽  
Pierrot Lunaire ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Definition Of

Abstract During Arnold Schoenberg's 1912–13 Pierrot lunaire tours, critics frequently described the work's Sprechstimme delivery as “hysterical” and “neurasthenic.” The essay expounds this important strand of Pierrot lunaire's reception by positioning the character of Pierrot in Paul Margueritte's pantomime Pierrot assassin de sa femme (1888) and Schoenberg's Opus 21 against Parisian and Viennese discourses on hysteria. Engaging aspects of pantomime, travesty, visual arts, medical iconography, and performance practice, I explicate how, as the medical definition of hysteria underwent important changes in etiology, symptomatology, and treatment in Freud's revisions of Jean-Martin Charcot's theories, so too did Pierrot's performance of the illness.

‘Humming the Sets’

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine White
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Musical Theatre ◽  
Stage Design ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Visual Impact ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

This chapter discusses the impact of stage design on musical theatre, and the development of musical theatre as a product packaged for consumption across the world. Its focus is chiefly on British musicals of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, during which ‘scenography’ has become recognized as the term for describing the whole theatre-designed space, encompassing, set, costume, sound, light, and more recently including film, animations, and a host of projection technologies and digital media. The chapter refers to contemporary reviews of productions, their success and failure, and the nature of the musical as a form in harmony with new scenic production aesthetics. What becomes apparent in this chapter is the interconnectedness of scenic practices and production aesthetics, which relates directly to the visual impact of musicals on the British stage and the interchange of production styles and modes of the UK and North America.

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