Scoring with Sound, the Aesthetics of Reticence, and Films of Peter Strickland

Author(s):  
Danijela Kulezic-Wilson

Chapter 3 focuses on methods of replacing diegetic sound with electroacoustic music and/or musique concrète, or their seamless merging, arguing that they represent a significant development in the practice of erasing the line between score and sound design. The main case studies—Katalin Varga and Berberian Sound Studio—come from the work of British director Peter Strickland, whose methods of “scoring with sound design” are informed by his interest in avant-garde and experimental music. Connecting Strickland’s methods with a growing tendency among some filmmakers to reject the conventions of traditional scoring and its values of passive spectatorship, this chapter introduces the aesthetics of reticence as a conceptual framework embraced by artists who encourage the audience’s active intellectual and emotional engagement with the text.

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-186
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Cox

Standard histories of electronic music tend to trace the lineage of musique concrète as lying mainly in the Futurists’ declarations of the 1910s, through Cage’s ‘emancipation’ of noise in the 1930s, to Schaeffer’s work and codifications of the late 1940s and early 1950s. This article challenges this narrative by drawing attention to the work of filmmakers in the 1930s that foreshadowed the sound experiments of Pierre Schaeffer and thus offers an alternative history of their background. The main focus of the article is on the innovations within documentary film and specifically the sonic explorations in early British documentary that prefigured musique concrète, an area ignored by electronic music studies. The theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of the documentary movement’s members, particularly their leader John Grierson, will be compared with those of Pierre Schaeffer, and the important influence of Russian avant-garde filmmaking on the British (and musique concrète) will be addressed. Case studies will focus on the groundbreaking soundtracks of two films made by the General Post Office Film Unit that feature both practical and theoretical correspondences to Schaeffer: 6.30 Collection (1934) and Coal Face (1935). Parallels between the nature and use of technologies and how this affected creative outputs will also be discussed, as will the relationship of the British documentary movement’s practice and ideas to post-Schaefferian ‘anecdotal music’ and the work of Luc Ferrari.


Author(s):  
Danijela Kulezic-Wilson

Sound Design Is the New Score explores film soundtrack practice that blurs the boundary between scoring and sound design, subverting long-established hierarchical relationships between dialogue, music, and sound effects. The new methods associated with this practice rely on the language and techniques of contemporary popular and art music rather than traditional Hollywood scoring and mixing practices, producing soundtracks in which it is difficult to tell the difference between score and ambient sound, where pieces of pre-existing musique concrète or electroacoustic music are merged with diegetic sound, sound effects are absorbed into the score or treated as music, and diegetic sound is treated as musique concrète. The book argues that the underlying principle that binds together all the different manifestations of this practice is a musical approach to soundtrack conceived as an integrated whole. The aesthetic concerns of this practice, demonstrated in a resistance to the familiar tropes of classical narrative and scoring, are illuminated through the concept of the aesthetics of reticence, which encourages an intellectual, affective, and sensuous engagement with film. The sensuous aspect of this practice is theorized using the concept of the erotics of art, arguing that the sensuousness of film form—its sonic and visual textures, composition, rhythm, movement, and flow—is much more complex and sophisticated than simply being an emphasis on excessive sensory stimulation facilitated by the use of digital technology or the aesthetics inspired by it.


Author(s):  
Michael Brendan Baker

This chapter offers a narrative account of music in Canadian cinema that highlights the contributions of its pioneers. Case studies spanning the critically acclaimed, the curious, and the marginalized allow for an effort to flesh out the place of music, particularly popular music, in this national cinema. While the esthetics and dollars-and-cents of music in film may be similar in Canada as elsewhere, the expectations of filmmakers and audiences are perhaps uniquely Canadian as a result of industrial and institutional forces. Animation, the avant-garde, and documentary are particularly vibrant spaces for the innovative use of music and differentiate the history of music in Canadian cinema from other more commercially oriented contexts.


Tempo ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 68 (268) ◽  
pp. 20-33
Author(s):  
Laurence Osborn

AbstractThis article argues that Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern demonstrates a unique approach to music-drama that stems from the perceptual capacities of listeners, and their desire to search for meaning in what they hear. Beginning with the claim that Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern can be viewed as the culmination of an aesthetic project begun at the point of Lachenmann's emergence as a distinctive voice of the European avant-garde during the 1960s, the article first examines two major aspects of Lachenmann's aesthetics – musique concrète instrumentale and aura – outlining a composing philosophy that has been at the heart of Lachenmann's practice throughout his career. The article claims that Lachenmann sought to establish a rejuvenated semiotics, freed from cultural baggage and tied to the perceptual and cognitive capacities of listeners. Drawing upon the studies of Naomi Cumming and Luke Windsor, it outlines a theoretical framework that takes into account this composing philosophy and its implications, applying it in analyses of various excerpts from Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern. My analysis illuminates a music-drama that forms around the interplay of internally represented images and sensations, the emergence of which is facilitated by a musical language that prepares sounds to take on certain types of meaning. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the possible implications this has for audience members.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 3161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pilar Portillo-Tarragona ◽  
Sabina Scarpellini ◽  
Jose Moneva ◽  
Jesus Valero-Gil ◽  
Alfonso Aranda-Usón

Interest from academics, policy–makers and practitioners in eco-innovation has increased as it enables the optimization of the use of natural resources improving competitiveness and it provides a conceptual framework for corporate sustainability. In this context, this paper provides an in-depth analysis and a wide classification of the specific indicators for the integrated measurement of eco-innovation projects in business from a resource-based view (RBV). The specific metrics were tested to measure the economic-financial and environmental resources and capabilities applied by five Spanish firms to eco-innovation projects, selected as case studies.


Author(s):  
Miško Šuvaković

In what follows, I will point to theorization of concept of the experimental film. My main thesis is that experimental art is based on the project, research practice, innovation and open transgressive or subversive artworks. Art focused on subversion of institutional power features as a singular event performed within a particular social relationship, as a critical actionist, engaged, or activist practice. Transgression – literally – refers to: infraction, violation of a law or an order, while in geological terms it implies penetration and expansion of the sea over the mainland. The notion of transgression relates to excess, overrunning or, more precisely, departing the familiar for the unknown, control for freedom. Experimental art was created in different disciplines such as experimental music, experimental film, experimental theater, etc. John Cage’s concept of ‘experimental music’ has been the starting point for new experimental art and artistic practices since 1950. Experimental film (experimental, new, avant-garde or neo-avant-garde cinema) has featured since the Second World War. The concept and term describe a range of filmmaking styles which are generally quite different from, and often opposed to, the practices of mainstream commercial and documentary filmmaking and entertainment-oriented cinematography. In the second and third part of the essay, I will present an analysis of the experimental films of the artists the OHO group and Neša Paripović. Article received: December 2, 2017; Article accepted: December 18, 2017; Published online: April 15, 2018; Original scholarly paper How to cite this article: Šuvaković, Miško. "Fragments Over Experimental Film: Liminal Zones of Cinema, Art and Theory." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies no 15 (2018): . doi: 10.25038/am.v0i15.225


Spatium ◽  
2014 ◽  
pp. 14-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
İmre Eren

Cities are trying to adapt to the rapidly changing global trends by regenerating themselves. Approaches and practices of this regeneration are different in several countries. In big Turkish cities, particularly in the past decade, urban regeneration practices, processes and consequences have sparked several debates. The ?new? gained or converted spaces in the city are also significant in terms of their impacts on urban identity. In this context, this study aims to identify the impacts of urban regeneration, which occurred in historical city centres, on urban identity in the case of Turkey. The study determines general framework of urban regeneration and then defines a conceptual framework of urban identity. It focuses on urban regeneration projects in the case of Turkey. Then, the topic is explored through two case studies which are selected from Turkey, Istanbul and Bursa. The findings of the study indicate that there are several problematic aspects of urban regeneration. The findings also show that urban identity was ignored in urban regeneration projects, which caused significant breaks in the context of physical, cultural, historical and semantic continuity.


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Lisa Amdur ◽  
Irit Mero-Jaffe

The study examined the interrelations between policymakers’ intentions for test-based accountability policy, and school agents’ perceptions and actions with regard to this policy. Mixed-methods were used and encompassed 24 policymakers, 80 school principals, 168 teachers and case studies of four schools. New institutional theory, including the concept of “environmental shift” (Powell & Di Maggio, 1991) and the metaphor of “coupling” (Weick, 1976), served as the conceptual framework. Findings indicate that the interrelations between intentions, perceptions and actions are mainly tightly coupled. These are discussed by invoking three types of institutional isomorphism (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983): coercive, mimetic and normative. 


Author(s):  
Sophie Heywood

The years around May ’68 (c. 1965 – c. late-1970s) are widely understood to represent a watershed moment for children’s books in France. An important factor was the influence of a new fringe of avant-garde publishers that attracted attention across their trade in and beyond France. Using archives and interviews and accounts of some of the books produced and their reception, this article presents case studies of the most influential publishing houses as a series of three snapshots of the areas of movement in the field. At the same time, it evaluates the extent to which the social, cultural and political upheavals in France in the wake of May ’68 helped to alter the shape of book production for children and to bring about a ›radical revolution‹ in the children’s publishing trade.


2021 ◽  
pp. 135581962110556
Author(s):  
Viola Burau ◽  
Ellen Kuhlmann ◽  
Loni Ledderer

Objective Good governance of integrated care is key to better health care, but we know little about how professions can help make this happen. Our aim is to introduce a conceptual framework to analyse how professions contribute to the governance of integrated care, and to apply the framework to a secondary analysis of selected case studies from Denmark. Methods We developed a framework, which identified the what, how and why of the contribution professions make to the governance of integrated care. We included five qualitative Danish studies, using coordination as an indicator of integrated care. We adopted a thematic approach in our analysis, combining deductive and inductive elements. Results Health professions engage in highly diverse activities, which fall into closely connected clusters of more formal or more informal coordination. Professions apply many different adaptive mechanisms at different levels to fit coordination into local contexts. Professions are driven by interlocking rationales, where a common focus on patients connects organizational and professional concerns. Conclusions Our analytical framework emerges as a useful tool for analysis. The contribution of professions to the governance of integrated care needs greater attention in health policy implementation as it can promote more effective governance of integrated care.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document