scholarly journals Rapt/Wrapped Listening: The Aesthetics of “Surround Sound”

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
James Wierzbicki

This essay is prompted by “surround sound,” the sonic results of which have been evident in cinemas since the late 1970s and the encoding for which, in the form of Dolby 5.1 on the soundtracks of DVDs, since the turn of the century has been fairly ubiquitous. By way of background, the essay deals in turn with the physical nature of three-dimensional listening and with the history of stereophonic sound as manifest both in the cinema and on LP recordings. More to the point, the essay deals with the aesthetic differences (not just perceptual but also affective) between listening to three-dimensional sounds in real life situations and listening to re-creations of those sounds, via a Dolby system or otherwise, in the privacy and comfort of one’s home. Playing on the homophonic adjectives in its title, the essay reflects on why sometimes we give more rapt attention to artificial versions of “surround sound” than to the genuine stereophonic sound in which we are literally wrapped almost on a daily basis.

Author(s):  
Monika Maria Stumpp ◽  
Claudio Calovi Pereira

The development of design activity uses technical suports that allow the architect to record the evolution of your idea or communication with it. Historically, the support that has been used is the graphical representation, which, as a intelligence technology, joins with the creative and cognitive processes of the individual, allowing communication with their imagination and also to all individuals involved in projecting. The representations graphically materialized, calls drawing,  are important in the practice of architecture because they represent the evolution of the design process. The drawing means the way in which design is conducted, tested, controlled and ultimately appears performed. In this context the drawings of the Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio play a special role in the history of architecture, because it makes clear how he understood and thought the architecture. At that time, the graphical representation of the space acquired an importance that had not previously, incorporating a greater number of alternative representation, highlighting the aesthetic concerns and the current building techniques. A lot of drawings produced by Palladio, shows how he was deeply convinced of eloquence and priority of images to understand the architecture, more than any other form of discursive explanation. In this sense, this work investigates the drawings of Palladio as a tool at the process of design solutions translation. The reading of the project through the design has been used to study designs and architectural objects or certain styles or specific authorship of an architect. Here the method is used for reading the project of Villa Pisani in Bagnolo (1542). Using two and three dimensional drawings, represented by plan, section and volumetry, it is intended to make explicit certain aspects underlying the architectural work, as questions of proportion and symmetry. It is expected that, at the work of Palladio, this method allows to compare and understand drawings, in order to analyze mutations and replications and  search of new meanings, readings and interpretations.


Migration and Modernities recovers a comparative literary history of migration by bringing together scholars from the US and Europe to explore the connections between migrant experiences and the uneven emergence of modernity. The collection initiates transnational, transcultural and interdisciplinary conversations about migration in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, demonstrating how mobility unsettles the geographic boundaries, temporal periodization, and racial categories we often use to organize literary and historical study. Migrants are by definition liminal, and many have existed historically in the spaces between nations, regions or ethnicities. In exploring these spaces, Migration and Modernities also investigates the origins of current debates about belonging, rights, and citizenship. Its chapters traverse the globe, revealing the experiences — real or imagined — of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century migrants, from dispossessed Native Americans to soldiers in South America, Turkish refugees to Scottish settlers. They explore the aesthetic and rhetorical frameworks used to represent migrant experiences during a time when imperial expansion and technological developments made the fortunes of some migrants and made exiles out of others. These frameworks continue to influence the narratives we tell ourselves about migration today and were crucial in producing a distinctively modern subjectivity in which mobility and rootlessness have become normative.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-211
Author(s):  
Patricia E. Chu

The Paris avant-garde milieu from which both Cirque Calder/Calder's Circus and Painlevé’s early films emerged was a cultural intersection of art and the twentieth-century life sciences. In turning to the style of current scientific journals, the Paris surrealists can be understood as engaging the (life) sciences not simply as a provider of normative categories of materiality to be dismissed, but as a companion in apprehending the “reality” of a world beneath the surface just as real as the one visible to the naked eye. I will focus in this essay on two modernist practices in new media in the context of the history of the life sciences: Jean Painlevé’s (1902–1989) science films and Alexander Calder's (1898–1976) work in three-dimensional moving art and performance—the Circus. In analyzing Painlevé’s work, I discuss it as exemplary of a moment when life sciences and avant-garde technical methods and philosophies created each other rather than being classified as separate categories of epistemological work. In moving from Painlevé’s films to Alexander Calder's Circus, Painlevé’s cinematography remains at the forefront; I use his film of one of Calder's performances of the Circus, a collaboration the men had taken two decades to complete. Painlevé’s depiction allows us to see the elements of Calder's work that mark it as akin to Painlevé’s own interest in a modern experimental organicism as central to the so-called machine-age. Calder's work can be understood as similarly developing an avant-garde practice along the line between the bestiary of the natural historian and the bestiary of the modern life scientist.


2014 ◽  
pp. 126-136
Author(s):  
Аndrey G. Velikanov

Considers the aspects of architecture as a language able to express the current state and to prophetically indicate the upcoming changes. The aesthetic value of a construction cannot be perceived just as a separate entity, but it can be cognized in the context and not only a visual one, in space. It is necessary to see the entire complex of the accompanying phenomena, all the flow of the unfolding metaphors and values. In the model in view the figure of the author-creator must be reconsidered as no longer conforming to today's reality. The development of the Stalinist Empire style, as well as its transformations, is considered as one of the specific phenomena in the history of well-known constructions


Transfers ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikkel Thelle

The article approaches mobility through a cultural history of urban conflict. Using a case of “The Copenhagen Trouble,“ a series of riots in the Danish capital around 1900, a space of subversive mobilities is delineated. These turn-of-the-century riots points to a new pattern of mobile gathering, the swarm; to a new aspect of public action, the staging; and to new ways of configuring public space. These different components indicate an urban assemblage of subversion, and a new characterization of the “throwntogetherness“ of the modern public.


Author(s):  
Hongzhang Zhu ◽  
Shi-Ting Feng ◽  
Xingqi Zhang ◽  
Zunfu Ke ◽  
Ruixi Zeng ◽  
...  

Background: Cutis Verticis Gyrata (CVG) is a rare skin disease caused by overgrowth of the scalp, presenting as cerebriform folds and wrinkles. CVG can be classified into two forms: primary (essential and non-essential) and secondary. The primary non-essential form is often associated with neurological and ophthalmological abnormalities, while the primary essential form occurs without associated comorbidities. Discussion: We report on a rare case of primary essential CVG with a 4-year history of normal-colored scalp skin mass in the parietal-occipital region without symptom in a 34-year-old male patient, retrospectively summarizing his pathological and Computer Tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings. The major clinical observations on the CT and MR sectional images include a thickened dermis and excessive growth of the scalp, forming the characteristic scalp folds. With the help of CT and MRI Three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction techniques, the characteristic skin changes could be displayed intuitively, providing more evidence for a diagnosis of CVG. At the 5-year followup, there were no obvious changes in the lesion. Conclusion: Based on our observations, we propose that not all patients with primary essential CVG need surgical intervention, and continuous clinical observation should be an appropriate therapy for those in stable condition.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rawand Essa

BACKGROUND In the span of COVID-19, the mortality rate has been different from one country to another. As a country in the Middle East Iraq has a critical position, lies between Iran and Turkey while both countries coronavirus cases increase on daily basis, while Iranian mortality rate record is high similar to Turkey. After Wuhan city of China, Lombard of Italy, Qum city in Iran has the highest number of COVID-19 as a first country in the Middle East. OBJECTIVE aim of this study is to show the effect of BCG vaccine during pandemic diseases, especially nowadays at the time of COVID-19. One of the crucial observations is the government preparedness and strategic planning prior pandemics, in which the BCG vaccine is an attenuated live vaccine for control of tuberculosis (TB). BCG vaccine has a non-specific immune effect that is used against pathogens like bacteria and viruses, through the promotion of pro-inflammatory cytokines' secretion. METHODS An epidemiological study has been performed, and it shows that some countries are more prone to contagious diseases like COVID-19, regardless of the main cultural, religious, societal similarities among the three mentioned countries. The information data has been collected from WHO reports and worldometer in 18 February 2020 to 10 May 2020. Regarding the efficacy of the BCG vaccine, relevant data has been retrieved from Google scholar, Pub-med and BCG world-atlas. RESULTS COVID-19 mortality rates are at peak in Iran and Turkey while the mortality rate is very low in Iraq, while the patients that died in Iraq all had history of other long-term diseases as heart disease, blood pressure, cancer etc. CONCLUSIONS From the experiences of the three countries in the life span of COVID-19, the historical plan of BCG vaccine in Iraq in cooperation with WHO since the last decades it shows that COVID-19 mortality rate is lower than other countries due to the early vaccination of the Iraqis, otherwise Iraq is more fragile than Iran and Turkey due to the poor conditions of Iraq in terms of economics, politics, war and other aspects.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-202

The article advances a hypothesis about the composition of Michel de Montaigne’s Essays. Specialists in the intellectual history of the Renaissance have long considered the relationship among Montaigne’s thematically heterogeneous thoughts, which unfold unpredictably and often seen to contradict each other. The waywardness of those reflections over the years was a way for Montaigne to construct a self-portrait. Spontaneity of thought is the essence of the person depicted and an experimental literary technique that was unprecedented in its time and has still not been surpassed. Montaigne often writes about freedom of reflection and regards it as an extremely important topic. There have been many attempts to interpret the haphazardness of the Essays as the guiding principle in their composition. According to one such interpretation, the spontaneous digressions and readiness to take up very different philosophical notions is a form of of varietas and distinguo, which Montaigne understood in the context of Renaissance philosophy. Another interpretation argues that the Essays employ the rhetorical techniques of Renaissance legal commentary. A third opinion regards the Essays as an example of sprezzatura, a calculated negligence that calls attention to the aesthetic character of Montaigne’s writing. The author of the article argues for a different interpretation that is based on the concept of idleness to which Montaigne assigned great significance. He had a keen appreciation of the role of otium in the culture of ancient Rome and regarded leisure as an inner spiritual quest for self-knowledge. According to Montaigne, idleness permits self-directedness, and it is an ideal form in which to practice the freedom of thought that brings about consistency in writing, living and reality, in all of which Montaigne finds one general property - complete inconstancy. Socratic self-knowledge, a skepticism derived from Pyrrho of Elis and Sextus Empiricus, and a rejection of the conventions of traditional rhetoric that was similar to Seneca’s critique of it were all brought to bear on the concept of idleness and made Montaigne’s intellectual and literary experimentation in the Essays possible.


Author(s):  
John E. Toews

This article studies selected works of Gustav Mahler and Sigmund Freud as enacting the history of subjectivity as a problematic narrative of the deconstruction and construction of identity. It views Mahler and Freud's cultural productions as historically parallel examples of a certain way of imagining human subjectivity as a reflective activity. It studies their ideas on identity as a form of assimilation, and looks at how their “works” took a turn towards subjectivity. The article shows that Freud, Mahler, and their modernist contemporaries did not opt to live in their songs and selves, but instead found a new way to imagine the relations among individuals.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document