The Biopolitics of Synthesizers

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike D’Errico
Keyword(s):  
Electronic Music ◽  
First Century ◽  
Cultural Economy ◽  
Commodity Fetishism ◽  
Interconnected System ◽  
Music Production ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Core Practices ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter outlines how the design of synthesizers and digital instruments in twenty-first-century EDM reflects a biopolitics of software that arises when sound and signal are analogized as dynamic bodies, and the core practices of music production center on the attempt to control, manipulate, and repair those bodies. Combining Tara Rodgers’ work on metaphor in audio-technical discourse and Robin James’s ideas about EDM and the sonic signatures of neoliberalism, this chapter argues that the intersonic control network of synthesizers—a modular, interconnected system of oscillating waveforms, filters, modulation envelopes, and effects—embodies fundamental shifts in the creative practice of electronic music production, the cultural economy of the music products industry, and the nature of labor in the software and media industries. The blurred lines between production and consumption, hardware and software, and labor and leisure define what the author calls the biopolitics of synthesizers. The author details three aspects of these biopolitics in this chapter, including the relationship between synthesizers and masculinity post-2008, synthesizer design and manufacturing as an agent of neoliberal capitalism, and the nature of commodity fetishism and gearlust in an era of plugins, sample packs, and other types of downloadable content.

Music as Product

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dr Daragh O’Reilly ◽  
Dr Gretchen Larsen ◽  
Dr Krzysztof Kubacki
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Music Production ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The Us ◽  
Sales Success ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

n order to develop a more holistic and integrated understanding of the relationship between music and the market, and consequently of music production and consumption, it is necessary to examine the notion of music as a product. The very act of exploring the relationship between music, markets and consumption immediately frames music as a ‘product’. In the marketplace, music is ‘produced’ and ‘consumed’ rather than made and heard. But the language and practices of the market and of marketing go far beyond the labelling of music making and listening in this way. They are pervasive and, as such, mediate our everyday engagement with music, regardless of the role we play in the market. The way the quality of music is evaluated is dominated by measures of sales success: songs ‘top the charts’, artists ‘sell out’ stadiums and tours, and recording companies sign ‘the next big thing’ to contracts in the expectation of future sales. Even a particular market can be held up as measure of success: in popular music, many bands, such as the Beatles, have been deemed to be successful only after they have ‘broken America’ by reaching high positions on the US music charts.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND THE ACCOUNTING AND ECONOMIC PRACTICES OF A SOCIETY: EVIDENCE FROM THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
David N. Herda ◽  
Stephen A. Reed ◽  
William F. Bowlin
Keyword(s):  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
First Century ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Economic Practices ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
The Relationship

This study explores the Dead Sea Scrolls to demonstrate how Essene socio-religious values shaped their accounting and economic practices during the late Second Temple period (ca. first century BCE to 70 CE). Our primary focus is on the accounting and commercial responsibilities of a leader within their community – the Examiner. We contend that certain sectarian accounting practices may be understood as ritual/religious ceremony and address the performative roles of the Essenes' accounting and business procedures in light of their purity laws and eschatological beliefs. Far from being antithetical to religious beliefs, we find that accounting actually enabled the better practice and monitoring of religious behavior. We add to the literature on the interaction of religion with the structures and practices of accounting and regulation within a society.

Spaces of Consumption in American Literary Realism

2019 ◽  
pp. 391-410
Author(s):  
Gary Totten
Keyword(s):  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Literary Realism ◽  
Natural Environments ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
New Strategies

This chapter discusses how consumer culture affects the depiction and meaning of the natural world in the work of American realist writers. These writers illuminate the relationship between natural environments and the social expectations of consumer culture and reveal how such expectations transform natural space into what Henri Lefebvre terms “social space” implicated in the processes and power dynamics of production and consumption. The representation of nature as social space in realist works demonstrates the range of consequences such space holds for characters. Such space can both empower and oppress individuals, and rejecting or embracing it can deepen moral resolve, prompt a crisis of self, or result in one’s death. Characters’ attempts to escape social space and consumer culture also provide readers with new strategies for coping with their effects.

scholarly journals Fraud in highly appreciated fish detected from DNA in Europe may undermine the Development Goal of sustainable fishing in Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Blanco-Fernandez ◽  
Alba Ardura ◽  
Paula Masiá ◽  
Noemi Rodriguez ◽  
Laura Voces ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Consumption ◽  
Pcr Amplification ◽  
Molecular Tools ◽  
Food Authenticity ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Fish Samples ◽  
Sustainable Seafood ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Unregulated Fishing ◽  
High Effort

AbstractDespite high effort for food traceability to ensure safe and sustainable consumption, mislabeling persists on seafood markets. Determining what drives deliberate fraud is necessary to improve food authenticity and sustainability. In this study, the relationship between consumer’s appreciation and fraudulent mislabeling was assessed through a combination of a survey on consumer’s preferences (N = 1608) and molecular tools applied to fish samples commercialized by European companies. We analyzed 401 samples of fish highly consumed in Europe and worldwide (i.e. tuna, hake, anchovy, and blue whiting) through PCR-amplification and sequencing of a suite of DNA markers. Results revealed low mislabeling rate (1.9%), with a higher mislabeling risk in non-recognizable products and significant mediation of fish price between consumer´s appreciation and mislabeling risk of a species. Furthermore, the use of endangered species (e.g. Thunnus thynnus), tuna juveniles for anchovy, and still not regulated Merluccius polli hake as substitutes, points towards illegal, unreported and/or unregulated fishing from African waters. These findings reveal a worrying intentional fraud that hampers the goal of sustainable seafood production and consumption, and suggest to prioritize control efforts on highly appreciated species.

scholarly journals Capitalism and democracy in the twenty-first century: does it still take two to tango?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Matteo Marenco
Keyword(s):  
Political Power ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
First Century ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Digital Capitalism ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Rise Of China ◽  
Science Question ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This article reviews three books that offer thought-provoking insights on a central political science question, namely the relationship between capitalism and democracy in the twenty-first century. First, ‘Democracy and Prosperity’ by Iversen and Soskice posits a symbiotic relationship between capitalism and democracy. Advanced capital thrives on nationally rooted institutions, hence it needs democratic politics. A majority of voters ask for pro-advanced-capital reforms, hence democratic politics needs advanced capital. Second, ‘Capitalism, Alone’ by Milanovic depicts a troubled coexistence between capitalism and democracy. The former's tendency to concentrate economic and political power in the hands of the few is the main reason why democratic politics is under pressure. Third, ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’ by Zuboff suggests a negative relationship between digital capitalism and democracy. Surveillance capitalism increasingly acts as a control means of individuals' behaviour, which undermines democracy at its roots. The last section brings the three contributions together. It maintains that a mutually beneficial coexistence between capitalism and democracy currently faces both internal (from within) and external (from without) challenges. In line with Milanovic and Zuboff, it argues that the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of the few is the most apparent from-within challenge. Drawing on Milanovic, it contends that rise of China as a global power combining capitalism with non-democracy challenges the relationship between capitalism and democracy from without. Finally, it contends that the environmental question and the pandemic represent two windows of opportunity for democracy to recover lost ground and re-establish a more balanced relationship with capitalism.

scholarly journals ‘There Must Be a Poetry of Sound That None of Us Knows…’: Early British documentary film and the prefiguring of musique concrète

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-186
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Cox
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Electronic Music ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Post Office ◽  
Coal Face ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Musique Concrete

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.

Temporal Emotions and Historical Vulnerability: Music as a Vehicle of Ideology in Cold War and Peste Noire

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-102
Author(s):  
Louise D’Arcens
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
First Century ◽  
White People ◽  
Black Metal ◽  
Ideological Differences ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This essay focuses on the Polish film Cold War and the oeuvre of the French nationalist black metal band Peste Noire, examining them as twenty-first-century texts that disclose music’s capacity to solicit emotion in the service of ideology. Despite their aesthetic and ideological differences, each text demonstrates the importance of temporal emotions – that is, emotions that register a heightened sense of the relationship between present, past and future. Each text portrays these emotions’ ideological significance when attached to ideas of a national past. Dwelling on Peste Noire’s racist-nationalist use of the medieval past, the essay explores music as a medium for emotional performances in which white people appear to convey vulnerability while actually reconfirming white supremacy. Peste Noire’s idiosyncratic performance of aggressive vulnerability is a temporal emotion that self-consciously lays claim to a long emotional tradition reaching back to the French Middle Ages.

Pots on mats: mat-impressed salt-extraction pottery at Chalcolithic Provadia-Solnitsata, Bulgaria

Antiquity ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Mila Andonova ◽  
Vassil Nikolov
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Salt Production ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Late Chalcolithic ◽  
South Eastern Europe ◽  
Materials Used ◽  
The Relationship

Evidence for both basket weaving and salt production is often elusive in the prehistoric archaeological record. An assemblage of Middle–Late Chalcolithic pottery from Provadia-Solnitsata in Bulgaria provides insight into these two different technologies and the relationship between them. The authors analyse sherds from vessels used in large-scale salt production, the bases of which bear the impression of woven mats. This analysis reveals the possible raw materials used in mat weaving at Provadia-Solnitsata and allows interpretation of the role of these mats in salt production at the site. The results illustrate how it is possible to see the ‘invisible’ material culture of prehistoric south-eastern Europe and its importance for production and consumption.

The problem of measuring the quantity of output in the input–output model by W. Leontief in modeling the trends in economic reproduction of nations and regions

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (8) ◽  
pp. 1568-1592
Author(s):  
Nikolai I. KURYSHEV
Keyword(s):  
Input Output ◽  
Von Neumann ◽  
Output Matrix ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Production Quantity ◽  
Mathematical Analyses ◽  
Neumann Model ◽  
Product Output ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Cost Characteristics

Subject. This article deals with the problem of constructing a Leontief's input–output matrix. Objectives. The article aims to determine the rules for constructing a Leontief's input–output matrix on the basis of data on production time and quantity of product output. Methods. For the study, I used the methods of logical and mathematical analyses. Results. The article formulates the rules for constructing a Leontief's input–output matrix, taking into account differences in the time of production, quantity of output, as well as the conditions for the reproduction of the resources expended. It summarizes these rules for the J. von Neumann model. Conclusions. The proposed approach to the analysis of the material mechanism of economic reproduction defines the relationship between the quantitative and cost characteristics of the production and consumption of products and resources. This relationship opens up new opportunities for the application of input–output models to create simple and accurate algorithms for identifying and predicting the macroeconomic trends.

Messiah with the Microphone? Oral Historians, Technology, and Sound Archives

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert B. Perks
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Digital Audio ◽  
Digital Revolution ◽  
The World ◽  
Technological Skills ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Relationship

For decades, oral historians and their tape recorders have been inseparable, but it has also been an uneasy marriage of convenience. The recorder is both our “tool of trade” and also that part of the interview with which historians are least comfortable. Oral historians' relationship with archivists has been an uneasy one. From the very beginnings of the modern oral history movement in the 1940s, archivists have played an important role. The arrival of “artifact-free” digital audio recorders and mass access via the Internet has transformed the relationship between the historian and the source. Accomplished twenty-first-century oral history practitioners are now expected to acquire advanced technological skills to capture, preserve, analyze, edit, and present their data to ever larger audiences. The development of oral history in many parts of the world was influenced by the involvement of sound archivists and librarians. Digital revolution in the present century continues to influence oral history.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document