scholarly journals The cinematic soundscape: conceptualising the use of sound in Indian films

Author(s):  
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay

This article examines the trajectories of sound practice in Indian cinema and conceptualises the use of sound since the advent of talkies. By studying and analysing a number of sound- films from different technological phases of direct recording, magnetic recording and present- day digital recording, the article proposes three corresponding models that are developed on the basis of observations on the use of sound in Indian cinema. These models take their point of departure in specific phases of technological transitions and intend to highlight characteristics defining the sound aesthetics that emerges from these different phases of sound practice. The models furthermore seek to frame the aesthetics within theoretical frameworks of sound studies in general. The argument developed following the observations is that, through different phases of cinematic sound practice, Indian films have been primarily shifting the relationship between audio and visual from a merely vococentric contract to a creative realm of sound, in which audience engagement with the moving image is increasingly instigated by the spatial reordering of environmental sound or ambience. I term this arrangement of sound ‘The Cinematic Soundscape’, which is crafted by digital technologies such as ‘sync’ recording and multi-track sound design, emphasising a cognitive theoretical premise in cinematic sound studies.

It has long been suggested that films have changed the way we listen, but cinema’s contribution to broader listening cultures has only recently started to receive serious academic attention. Taking this issue as its central topic, The Oxford Handbook of Cinematic Listening explores—from philosophical, archival, empirical, and analytical perspectives—the genealogies of cinema’s audiovisual practices, the relationship between film aesthetics and listening protocols, and the extension of cinematic modes of listening into other media and everyday situations. Featuring scholars from musicology, film and literary studies, ethnomusicology and sound studies, media and communications, and psychology, this Handbook aims to foster new ways of thinking about the intersection between the history of listening and the history of the moving image. It offers a wealth of original case studies and novel perspectives that show how cinematic listening is constantly being redefined in relation to shifting historical, spatial, textual, and theoretical frameworks.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 335-346
Author(s):  
Luca Soudant

Abstract This article reflects on an ongoing artistic research practice that deals with sound, gender, power, spatiality, and human–nonhuman entanglement. Sparked by a sound design for a less crunchy “lady-friendly” crisp, the research inquires the relationship between gender and sound at human–nonhuman encounter through making and thinking. Drawing on queer theory, sound studies, and posthumanism, it aims to transcend essentialist, vision-focused, and anthropocentric conceptualisations of gender and, as an insight gained from working with low-frequency sound waves, it reflects on sound as material-philosophically demonstrating human–nonhuman interconnectedness. The latter, as this article proposes, may encourage us to horizontalise hierarchies between the human and nonhuman. Finally, this text situates sonic thinking as a mode of trans*formative thinking: a process-oriented philosophy that aims to embrace the messy, queer ways of human–nonhuman relationality, which characterises a vibrant space from which this artistic research will further develop.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Bruce Isaacs

Hitchcock’s clearest articulation of a pure cinema method appears in a lengthy discussion with François Truffaut in 1962. Discussing landmark works such as Rear Window and Vertigo, Hitchcock frames pure cinema as a philosophical approach to film style. It is both medium-specific and part of a larger narrative describing the evolution of moving image art forms in the twentieth century. The introduction situates the relationship between Hitchcock and his “imitators,” filmmakers who reflexively evolved the pure cinema method. Brian De Palma emerges in the 1970s as the Hitchcockian imitator par excellence, the New Hollywood director who strove to take Hitchcock’s pure cinematic method further in terms of mise en scène, montage, and sound design.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlotta Sillano

The paper – rapidly retracing some fundamental stages in the history of sound studies – questions the relationship between soundscape and music language and proposes a reflection on the resulting ontologies of sound. In the traditional conception of soundscape studies, musical language should contribute to a re-orchestration of environmental sound and should promote awareness and active listening of extra-musical sounds. However, every music composition or performance that draws on this kind of acoustic material, inevitably transforms its fruition. Immediacy is in fact impossible and each perception produces a new meaning. The article highlights the value of subjective perception and creative processes in the multidisciplinary discussion about soundscape.


2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathias Herup Nielsen ◽  
Niklas Andreas Andersen

Studier, der analyserer det sociale med inspiration fra Foucaults tanker om governmentality, kritiseres i stigende omfang for at afskære sig fra at analysere de praktiske relationer, som politisk styring konkret indlejres i. I artiklen tager vi afsæt i denne kritik og viser, med et studie af forholdet mellem et kommunalt jobcenter og et lokalt beskæftigelsesråd, hvordan governmental magtanalyse kan indfange styringens uforudsigelige, mangefacetterede og immanente karakter ved at fokusere på styringsintentionernes møde med den praktiske virkelighed, der søges styret. Formelt er rådet nedsat til at overvåge og kontrollere jobcentret, men i den praktiske relation er det snarere jobcentret, som overvåger og kontrollerer rådet. Artiklen viser, hvordan dette er muligt ved at analysere jobcentrets arbejde med rådet ved hjælp af en række centrale begreber fra Foucaults forfatterskab. Empirisk trækker studiet foruden formelle myndighedsdokumenter, der beskriver rådets tiltænkte rolle, på praksisinformerende empiri i form af kvalitative interviews og mødereferater over en fire-årig periode. ENGELSK ABSTRACT: Mathias Herup Nielsen and Niklas Andreas Andersen: When Praxis Challenges the Ambitions of Governing. Analyzing the Space between the Intentions of Governing and Situational Praxis Studies working with the Foucauldian concept of ”governmentality” are frequently criticized for their apparent disregard of empirical reality. This article takes this critique as its point of departure and demonstrates the application of the concept of governmentality in a concrete empirical case study in order to grasp the unpredictable and multifaceted nature of modern day power. The case investigated here is the relationship between a Danish Jobcentre and a so-called local employment council (LBR). The latter was created to ”control” and ”monitor” the former organization. However, in practice, it is rather the other way around – the Jobcentre is controlling and monitoring the members of the LBR. This article draws on a number of well-known Foucauldian concepts to show how this relation of power is practically structured. Empirically the article draws on documents from central authorities as well as on a number of qualitative interviews with the actors involved – hence, the article attempts to meet with the dominant overall critique of the governmentality perspective for disregarding empirical reality. Keywords: governmentality, Michel Foucault, unemployment policy, jobcentre.


Author(s):  
Jens K. Roehrich ◽  
Beverly B. Tyler ◽  
Jas Kalra ◽  
Brian Squire

Contracts are a formal mode of governing interorganizational relationships. They specify the terms and conditions of the agreement between two parties, interpret and adapt the relevant legal and industrial norms, serve as framing devices, and establish the rules and norms underpinning the relationship. The objective of this chapter is to synthesize the extant literature on interorganizational contracting to guide future research and practice. This chapter focuses on the three phases of contracting: (1) designing the contracting portfolio; (2) negotiating initial contracts; and (3) managing the relationship using contracts. The chapter explores the key decisions in each phase and the criteria involved in making these decisions. In doing so, it draws on existing research and theoretical frameworks that have contributed to the development of the contracting literature. The chapter also identifies some important and interesting directions for future contracting research and offers suggestions regarding how selected theoretical lenses might guide these endeavors. The principal conclusion is that while the existing research has primarily focused on the structural issues guiding contracting design, a more processual, social, and behavioral focus is required in future developments of the contracting literature.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 4045
Author(s):  
Simon L. Albrecht ◽  
Camille R. Green ◽  
Andrew Marty

Meaningful work and employee engagement have been the subject of increasing interest in organizational research and practice over recent years. Both constructs have been shown to influence important organizational outcomes, such as job satisfaction, wellbeing, and performance. Only a limited amount of empirical research has focused on understanding the relationship within existing theoretical frameworks. For this study, meaningful work is proposed as a critical psychological state within the job demands-resources (JD-R) model that can therefore, in part, explain the relationship between job resources and employee engagement. Survey data collected from 1415 employees working in a range of organizations, across a number of industries, were analyzed with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modelling (SEM). In support of expectations, job variety, development opportunities, and autonomy, each had a significant and positive direct association with meaningful work. These job resources also had a significant and positive indirect effect on employee engagement via meaningful work. Although job variety, development opportunities, autonomy, and feedback had significant positive direct associations with engagement, contrary to expectations, supervisor support had a negative association with engagement. The final model explained a sizable proportion of variance in both meaningful work (49%) and employee engagement (65%). Relative weights analyses showed that job variety was the strongest job resource predictor of meaningful work, and that meaningful work was more strongly associated with employee engagement than the job resources. Overall, the results show that meaningful work plays an important role in enhancing employee engagement and that providing employees with skill and task variety is important to achieving that goal. Practical implications, study limitations, and future research opportunities are discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 362-374
Author(s):  
David Kennerley

AbstractMusic has been steadily rising up the historical agenda, a product of the emergence of sound studies, the history of the senses, and a mood of interdisciplinary curiosity. This introductory article offers a critical review of how the relationship between music and politics has featured in extant historical writing, from classic works of political history to the most recent scholarship. It begins by evaluating different approaches that historians have taken to music, summarizes the important shifts in method that have recently taken place, and advocates for a performance-centered, contextualized framework that is attentive to the distinctive features of music as a medium. The second half examines avenues for future research into the historical connections between music and politics, focusing on four thematic areas—the body, emotions, space, and memory—and closes with some overarching reflections on music's use as a tool of power, as well as a challenge to it. Although for reasons of cohesion, this short article focuses primarily on scholarship on Britain and Ireland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, its discussion of theory and methods is intended to be applicable to the study of music and political culture across a broad range of periods and geographies.


2021 ◽  
pp. 147490412110097
Author(s):  
Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen ◽  
Justine Grønbæk Pors

Taking a point of departure in the paradoxical fact that the increase in educational knowledge leads to an increase in uncertainty for educational organisations, this article explores how uncertainty and contingency have increasingly become an integral part of school governance. The article draws on Niklas Luhmann’s theory of ‘World Society’ as a functional differentiated society providing a range of different symbolic media for educational organisations. To trace the increase in the complexity of governing, we provide a historical account of the shifting couplings between schools and function systems. We show how the school becomes linked to an increasing number of symbolic media so that education becomes only one out of many other concerns. The article studies the consequences these shifting couplings have for how schools are governed and how they are expected to self-manage their relationship to different function systems. The article adds to existing studies of how education has become more and more differentiated with the argument that this has also led to new forms of couplings between schools and the education system with a number of important implications for the teaching profession.


1993 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
M. A. Kruger

Theological renewal regarding different theological disciplines as well as the complete theological encyclopedia has lately been debated worldwide. Likewise, the Reformed Churches in South Africa are in a process of reconsidering the traditional reformed theological encyclopedia. This task can, however, not be fulfilled unless the basic issues are not also reconsidered. This article focuses on revelation as the principium theologiae. The line of argumentation centres round the fundamental confession in article 2 of the Belgian Confession. The truth implicit in this article, and accepted by the Reformed Churches, stresses that God can be known through his creation, sustenance and government of the universe, but He can be known more convincingly by studying holy Scripture. To prove this point of departure, Romans 1-4 and Romans 10 are discussed. The distinction between special and general revelation, contextual theology and the relationship to world religions and H. Bavinck's concept of the principium theologiae are also considered.


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