Dead voices and lost sounds: an imagined sonic history

A project description of a sound art installation and interactive performance presented as part of the Up Close Festival in New York City in the winter of 2019/2020. The article is authored by the creator and director of the piece, Adrienne Kapstein. Created for an all-age audience, the piece was a unique, relational and socially engaged experience that merged sound art, live performance, illusion, technology, and audience participation. Designed to be completed in partnership with members of the community it sought to serve, the piece invited participation from every audience member through multiple and varied means of engagement.

Character and Non-character in Art Song

<p><b>Whom is a singer portraying when performing? While this is a straightforward question in opera where there is usually a concrete character to play, it is not always obvious in art song. The persona that the singer portrays in art song is not always clearly delineated: they may be a familiar figure, a nameless wanderer, a detached narrator, or even a disembodied consciousness. The outburst of singing may be an act of soliloquy or an internal thought process. It could occur as part of a chronological sequence of events or perhaps fall outside of time entirely. These portrayals require different embodied instincts from those in operatic singing.</b></p> <p>My exegesis explores some of the different kinds of vocal personae one can portray in art song performance. I posit a framework within which I categorise my personal methods of performance, relating to how an audience member might perceive these personae in relation to themselves. With reference to four selected solo vocal works, I detail how my application of this framework informs my performance, resulting in a unique embodiment of these abstract personae.</p>

Character and Non-character in Art Song

<p><b>Whom is a singer portraying when performing? While this is a straightforward question in opera where there is usually a concrete character to play, it is not always obvious in art song. The persona that the singer portrays in art song is not always clearly delineated: they may be a familiar figure, a nameless wanderer, a detached narrator, or even a disembodied consciousness. The outburst of singing may be an act of soliloquy or an internal thought process. It could occur as part of a chronological sequence of events or perhaps fall outside of time entirely. These portrayals require different embodied instincts from those in operatic singing.</b></p> <p>My exegesis explores some of the different kinds of vocal personae one can portray in art song performance. I posit a framework within which I categorise my personal methods of performance, relating to how an audience member might perceive these personae in relation to themselves. With reference to four selected solo vocal works, I detail how my application of this framework informs my performance, resulting in a unique embodiment of these abstract personae.</p>

Conclusion: Reading the Qur’ān as God’s Narrative

This chapter summarizes the book’s approach to Qur’ānic stories in Sūrat Āl ‘Imrān, Sūrat Maryam, Sūrat Yūsuf, SūratṬaha and Sūrat al-Qaṣaṣ. It discusses the development of a sustained analysis of the Qur’ān as an intertextual scripture that rewards the audience member who reads and listens carefully, notices echoing words or phrases and then follows them to other parts of the text, compares them with each other and reflects on them. It discusses the book’s analysis focusing on the overarching questions of how the Qur’ānic stories withhold knowledge, create consonance and make connections. The audience learns about the nature of knowledge, one’s proper place in relation to God and God’s message, and how to read the Qur’ān. The text imprints on the audience beliefs about God: God is omniscient and people are not and cannot ever be. People learn what God wills when they turn to God and to the Qur’ān. The narrator of the Qur’ān makes its reading an active process, and we see this through the alternate giving and withholding of information, causing readers to question, ponder and fill in details.

Differences in Instructor, Presenter, and Audience Ratings of PechaKucha and Traditional Student Presentations

Background: Recent evidence suggests PechaKucha—a presentation style utilizing simplified visuals, narration, and rigid time constraints—may promote various learning outcomes and instructor goals better than traditional PowerPoint presentations. Objective: The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of students’ PechaKucha compared to traditional presentations from multiple perspectives (instructor, presenter, and audience member) using a between-subjects design. Method: Instructors rated students’ PechaKucha ( n = 48) or traditional presentations ( n = 25), and students completed surveys on their experiences as presenters and audience members, as well as their immediate and delayed retention. Results: PechaKucha required significantly less class time, and received higher instructor ratings of appearance, creativity, and overall presentation quality. PechaKucha presenters displayed higher immediate retention of content from their own presentations than did presenters of traditional presentations, but there were no differences in delayed retention or presenter learning outcomes. PechaKucha audience members reported better understanding, as well as higher delayed retention. PechaKucha benefits were shown even when presentations were conducted remotely due to COVID-19. Conclusion: These findings further point to the utility of PechaKucha for promoting student learning outcomes and instructor goals from multiple perspectives. Teaching Implications: Instructors should consider assigning PechaKucha instead of traditional presentations.

Babyface: Performance and Installation Art Exploring the Feminine Ideal in Gendered Machines

Representations of gender in new technologies like the Siri, Pepper, and Sophia robotic assistants, as well as the commodification of features associated with gender on platforms like Instagram, inspire questions about how and whether robotic tools can have gender and what it means to people if they do. One possible response to this is through artistic creation of dance performance. This paper reports on one such project where, along the route to this inquiry, creation of machine augmentation – of both the performer and audience member – was necessary to communicate the artistic ideas grappled with therein. Thus, this article describes the presentation of Babyface, a machine-augmented, participatory contemporary dance performance. This work is a reaction to feminized tropes in popular media and modern technology, and establishes a parallel between the ways that women and machines are talked about, treated, and – in the case of machines – designed to look and behave. This paper extends prior reports on the creation of this piece and its accompanying devices to describe extensions with audience member participation, and reflect on the responses of these audience members. These fabricated elements alongside the actions of the performer and a soundscape that quotes statements made by real “female” robots create an otherwordly, sad cyborg character that causes viewers to question their assumptions about and pressures on the feminine ideal.

Netnography and design thinking: development and illustration in the vegan food industry

Purpose This paper aims to strengthen the process of design thinking by aligning it with netnography, specifically auto-netnography, which this paper asserts is particularly suited to the task of studying and enriching the actions of “designerly types” who seek to fashion monetisable businesses. Design/methodology/approach This paper conducts an auto-netnography with a structure divined from established design thinking theory – that of empathising, defining, ideating, prototyping and testing – to afford an understanding of how a popular health food influencer designs a successful vegan restaurant. Findings This paper illustrates the empathetic relationship between a long-term audience member and an entrepreneur/designer/marketer. The intimate cultural analysis reveals the nature of their symbiotic entwinement. In a way that few other methods could, the method shows how this sense of reciprocity, deepens over time. Research limitations/implications Conducting an auto-netnography is a prolonged and difficult task. Nonetheless, by revealing the rituals, expectations, roles and routines of content creators, designers and followers, this paper illustrates exciting possibilities for the enactment and development of design thinking in the marketing field. Practical implications Designerly types such as marketers and content creators should closely study, listen to and interact with consumers by using a similarly staged process that draws equally from design thinking and auto-netnography. Originality/value Prior to this study, existing research has not previously linked design thinking with either netnographic or auto-netnographic research.

Conferences and Presentations

As well as producing scientific papers, researchers communicate in many different ways, some written (e.g., reports, theses) and others nonwritten (e.g., presentations, posters). This chapter focuses specifically on making a successful scientific presentation to a professional audience, and the differences in approach from writing to verbal presentation. The chapter explores key themes, in particular focusing on the need for a presenter to put themselves in advance into the seat of an audience member, and prepare with a view to what they wish someone in that seat to get from the experience (my primary principle of all forms of communication is “first, and last, consider your audience”). Tips and advice for preparing a presentation, from layout to delivery, and presented, along with advice on the preparation of scientific posters.

Shared communicative acts in theatre texts in performance

This paper adopts a relevance theoretic approach to meaning making in theatrical texts and performances. Text-based theatrical performances are collaborative creative events, many of whose participants may never engage directly with an audience member, but all of whom are engaged in making and conveying meaning. Such texts communicate immediately to multiple audiences: readers, actors, directors, producers, and designers. They communicate less directly to the writer’s ultimate audience – the playgoer or spectator – through the medium of performance. But playgoers are not passive receptacles for interpretations distilled in rehearsal, enacted through performance, or developed in study and reflection. Rather, in the framework of communication postulated by relevance theory, the audience is an active participant in making meaning. I will briefly review a range of approaches to meaning making in theatre, and then outline my view of a relevance theoretic account of theatre texts and performances as related but distinct communicative acts. For Weimann (1992), discussing the German playwright, Heiner Müller, “language is first and foremost material with which the audience is expected to work so as to make and explore their own ‘experiences’” (p. 958). By contrast, T. S. Eliot characterised performances as ‘interruptions’ of the relationship between writer and audience; in ‘a true acting play’, he asserted, the actor added nothing (Eliot, 1924, p. 96). Campbell (1981) argues that “the theatre cannot gear its production to actual audiences”, as only the “finest and most appreciative of abstract audiences for that play” (p. 152) can properly grasp its meaning. For him, the disparate capacities, views, and expectations of a given audience present a profound challenge to theatre as communication. Connor (1999) addresses the same issue, pointing out that if readers can disagree about the meaning of a text, then spectators are even less likely to agree on what a given performance means (p. 417). Unlike Campbell, however, she regards this diversity as enriching, concluding that meanings “develop from co-production with spectators as subjects” (p. 426). Relevance theory provides a framework in which to begin to disentangle the overlapping and interacting, but equally vital, contributions of writer, company, and audience in making meanings.