Linking Information Saturation to Cultural Shifts in Preferences for Simpler Cultural Products

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael E. W. Varnum ◽  
Jaimie Arona Krems ◽  
Colin Morris ◽  
Igor Grossmann
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Partial Correlation ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Auto Correlation ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Ecological Changes ◽  
Draft Version ◽  
American Popular Music ◽  
Cultural Shifts ◽  
Over Time

***DRAFT VERSION, 3/2019. THIS PAPER HAS NOT BEEN PEER REVIEWED. PLEASE DO NOT DISTRIBUTE OR CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION***How has the complexity of cultural products changed over time and what is responsible for these changes? A cultural compression hypothesis (CCH) suggests that changes in simplicity (vs. complexity) of cultural products is associated with shifts in the volume of cultural products, with greater within-domain volume of products facilitating evolution within the domain toward simpler products. To test this hypothesis, we introduce a novel approach to assessing lyrical complexity in popular music over a period of six decades. Consistent with the CCH, we show that the average lyrical compressibility of American popular music (an index of simplicity) has increased over time and that this rise is driven by increases in the amount of music produced annually (an indicator of the amount of cultural products people have to choose from). This relationship holds controlling for a number of potentially-related ecological changes and alternative explanations, and when accounting or correcting for temporal auto-correlation using a variety of methods (including correcting significance thresholds based on observed auto-correlation, partial correlation analysis controlling for year, and using auto.ARIMA to assess the contribution of amount of music produced to compressibility over and above autocorrelation in the two time series). Results of auto.ARIMA forecasts confirm the contribution of amount of music produced to success of more repetitive songs and suggest that the trend of increasing simplicity will continue over the next several decades. We discuss implications of the cultural compression hypothesis for understanding cultural evolution and social change.

Forecasting Interconnections in International Housing Markets: Evidence from the Dynamic Model Averaging Approach

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-103
Author(s):  
Hardik A. Marfatia
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Model ◽  
Model Averaging ◽  
Housing Markets ◽  
The United States ◽  
Forecasting Model ◽  
Change Over Time ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Dynamic Model Averaging ◽  
Over Time

In this paper, I undertake a novel approach to uncover the forecasting interconnections in the international housing markets. Using a dynamic model averaging framework that allows both the coefficients and the entire forecasting model to dynamically change over time, I uncover the intertwined forecasting relationships in 23 leading international housing markets. The evidence suggests significant forecasting interconnections in these markets. However, no country holds a constant forecasting advantage, including the United States and the United Kingdom, although the U.S. housing market's predictive power has increased over time. Evidence also suggests that allowing the forecasting model to change is more important than allowing the coefficients to change over time.

The origins of syncopation in American popular music

Popular Music ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-41
Author(s):  
David Temperley
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
Piano Music ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
American Popular Music ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Fourth Position

AbstractThe origins of syncopation in 20th-century American popular music have been a source of controversy. I offer a new account of this historical process. I distinguish between second-position syncopation, an accent on the second quarter of a half-note or quarter-note unit, and fourth-position syncopation, an accent on the fourth quarter of such a unit. Unlike second-position syncopation, fourth-position syncopation tends to have an anticipatory character. In an earlier study I presented evidence suggesting British roots for second-position syncopation. in contrast, fourth-position syncopation – the focus of the current study – seems to have had no presence in published 19th-century vocal music, British or American. It first appears in notation in ragtime songs and piano music at the very end of the 19th century; it was also used in recordings by African-American singers before it was widely notated.

Step It Up and Go

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Menconi
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
The State ◽  
College Town ◽  
American Idol ◽  
Recorded Music ◽  
American Popular Music ◽  
The Many ◽  
Nina Simone

This book is a love letter to the artists, scenes, and sounds defining North Carolina’s extraordinary contributions to American popular music. David Menconi spent three decades immersed in the state’s music, where traditions run deep but the energy expands in countless directions. Menconi shows how working-class roots and rebellion tie North Carolina’s Piedmont blues, jazz, and bluegrass to beach music, rock, hip-hop, and more. From mill towns and mountain coves to college-town clubs and the stage of American Idol, Blind Boy Fuller and Doc Watson to Nina Simone and Superchunk, Step It Up and Go celebrates homegrown music just as essential to the state as barbecue and basketball. Spanning a century of history from the dawn of recorded music to the present, and with sidebars and photos that help reveal the many-splendored glory of North Carolina’s sonic landscape, this is a must-read for every music lover.

scholarly journals Persistent Wrinkles and Folds of Clothes

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Byung-Cheol Kim ◽  
Seungwoo Oh ◽  
Kwangyun Wohn
Keyword(s):  
Energy Loss ◽  
Energy Model ◽  
Stiffness Coefficients ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Linear Buckling ◽  
Non Linear ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Rest Posture ◽  
Over Time

We present a novel approach to woven-cloth simu-lation in order to generate persistent wrinkles and folds. For a couple of decades, our community has identified and mimicked non-linear buckling of cloth based on the mechanical measure-ment of cloth. It has, however, scarcely paid attention to another important aspect of the measurement, the hysteresis of cloth be-haviors, which is the lag of the amount of forces between stress and relaxation. Our interpretation of the measurement indicates that persistent wrinkles and folds develop in part from the hyste-resis of cloth and its associated energy loss. Thus, we establish an adaptive energy model which takes stiffness coefficients and rest posture values not as constants but as variables over time and behavior. As stiffness coefficients and rest posture values change in proportion to the amount of the energy loss, they appear as persistent wrinkles and folds. Consequently, the clothes simulated by our method bring more realism with respect to visual identi-fication for past behaviors of cloth.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document