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.

Audience participation

A response to Philip Moriarty’s book review “Flights of fancy, feet on the ground” which discusses the notion that physics needs more bold “out-of-the-box” thinking, akin to that of experimental artists and musicians.

An Integrative Approach to Promoting Wellness in Older Adults: An Online Undergraduate Course

As gerontology and geriatric programs look to grow their connections with health and allied health areas, examining emerging health care areas is important. Thus, this session will present key concepts and pedagogical strategies from an innovative online undergraduate course, An Integrative Approach to Promoting Wellness in Older Adults, that is taught in the Erickson School at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County. The course brings together a conventional western allopathic approach and a holistic, patient-centered, integrative approach which includes complementary therapies, to promote wellness in older adults. Specifically, the session will present a comparison of the philosophical premises of conventional western and integrative approaches to health promotion. It will present a holistic model of health, an overview of the effectiveness and safety of different complementary therapies, and examples of how an integrative approach with conventional western and complementary therapies can be used in to promote health in older adults with particular chronic conditions. Also, a discussion of the incorporation of diversity content in the course, an integrative approach to health promotion for underserved populations, and specific pedagogical strategies used to facilitate learning in synchronous and asynchronous online learning environments are included. Session presentation techniques include a PowerPoint presentation, demonstration of examples of conventional western and integrative approaches to health promotion in older adults through case studies, and audience participation.

Reimagining Training During a Pandemic: The Experience of Middle Tennessee GWEP

A major component of The Middle Tennessee GWEP involves delivery of an annual regional geriatrics update conference. Formerly in-person, the planning committee transformed the 34th Annual Update Conference to a virtual platform within a six-month period. The University partner provided a Zoom platform with licensing and training of program staff. National marketing was achieved through professional societies and purchased e-mailings. Participants numbered 79, including 8 disciplines. Presenters were instructed on platform techniques including screen sharing, polling function, and breakout rooms to enhance audience participation. REDCap registration captured demographic information and facilitated evaluations and post-attendance intention-to-change surveys. Lessons learned were shared with community partners and advisory board members who demonstrated changes in service delivery models and training of new staff to support care to greater numbers of clients and participants. Virtual platforms can extend outreach for valuable learning and service outcomes and maintain high levels of satisfaction among target audiences.

Preschool Storytime in Auckland’s public libraries: A qualitative study of book selection practices

<p>Research problem: Anecdotal evidence suggested a lack of uniformity across Auckland Libraries, in that Preschool Storytime sessions were being delivered by a range of different people with varying levels of training and experience. The purpose of the research was to gain an understanding of their book selection practices and the nature of the books selected for reading aloud. Methodology: The researcher took a qualitative approach, using a purposive sampling technique to select 10 participants from nine different libraries across the Auckland region. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect the required data. Results: Seven main factors were found to influence the book selection process: length; illustrations; subjects, concepts and themes; use of language; the potential for audience participation; the potential for emotional engagement and personal preference. Participants employed various strategies to assist them in finding suitable books. These included physical browsing, online browsing, searching the library catalogue and seeking recommendations. Toy and movable books and picture storybooks were popular with participants. Implications: The findings from this study may be of interest to librarians working with children in public libraries elsewhere in New Zealand. The results could potentially be used as a tool to guide and inform their storytime practices, and as a basis for training and development. A subsequent study involving content analysis could be undertaken at a later date, with a view to describing in detail the books shared with children during Preschool Storytime sessions.</p>

Preschool Storytime in Auckland’s public libraries: A qualitative study of book selection practices

<p>Research problem: Anecdotal evidence suggested a lack of uniformity across Auckland Libraries, in that Preschool Storytime sessions were being delivered by a range of different people with varying levels of training and experience. The purpose of the research was to gain an understanding of their book selection practices and the nature of the books selected for reading aloud. Methodology: The researcher took a qualitative approach, using a purposive sampling technique to select 10 participants from nine different libraries across the Auckland region. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect the required data. Results: Seven main factors were found to influence the book selection process: length; illustrations; subjects, concepts and themes; use of language; the potential for audience participation; the potential for emotional engagement and personal preference. Participants employed various strategies to assist them in finding suitable books. These included physical browsing, online browsing, searching the library catalogue and seeking recommendations. Toy and movable books and picture storybooks were popular with participants. Implications: The findings from this study may be of interest to librarians working with children in public libraries elsewhere in New Zealand. The results could potentially be used as a tool to guide and inform their storytime practices, and as a basis for training and development. A subsequent study involving content analysis could be undertaken at a later date, with a view to describing in detail the books shared with children during Preschool Storytime sessions.</p>

Media Convergence, AVT and Translation Criticism in the Digital Era

With the increased integration in the 21st century of the internet and digital technologies into our daily interactions and ways of engagement with life, new audience profiles emerged for mass media consumerism. Viewers are becoming more involved in the process of media dissemination with a hands-on attitude that creates a plethora of possibilities for the “afterlife”- as Walter Benjamin might have called it- of media products. Research on contemporary reception trends refers in this vein to such concepts as media convergence, participatory culture and civic engagement. Participation on the part of the audience, which can be traced back to fandom activities that had been emerging in the media consumption trends of the late 1980s and early 1990s, has increased to become a feature of today’s digital culture (Jenkins, 2006; Orrego-Carmona, 2018). The ability to determine, to some degree, the afterlife of a media product has endowed the audience with a certain power (albeit a relative one) that signalled “uneasy convergences of the market and non-market modes of cultural production” (Burgess & Green, 2009, p. 75). The appropriation of mass media products using amateur skills and the incorporation therefore of “folk culture practices” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 246) into the experience of media consumerism indicated a bottom-up, grassroots involvement with what previously had been accessible only to the central authorities and the corporate production machinery. Beyond fandom activity, such participation has the potential to empower media users in the realm of civic engagement and political activism through “exercis[ing] the civic imagination” (Jenkins & Shresthova, 2016, p. 258) towards, hopefully, more democratic futures. In this chapter, I will discuss audio-visual translation (AVT) within the framework of digital culture and civic engagement and how it can be used as bottom-up new media resistance to top-down mass media production strategies. Regarding such engagement as a form of translation criticism, I will offer a case study through which I observe how Arab consumers of translated (dubbed) Turkish TV drama, particularly the Kurtlar Vadisi [valley of wolves] series, react to strategies of dubbing and censorship that are politically motivated and express their criticism via new media outlets using creative methods that involve translation. I will explain my theoretical framework and methodology in the second part, before moving in the third part to the discussion of my case study. I will conclude with some remarks on audience participation and the role of digital culture in facilitating new expressions of translation criticism.