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WHERE IS TERRORISM GOING AND ARE CANADIAN AGENCIES PREPARED TO CONFRONT IT?
Get PDFOn November 22, 2022, Mr. Phil Gurski, President and Chief Executive Officer of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting Ltd., presented on Disruption and National Security. The presentation was followed by a question-and-answer period with questions from the audience and CASIS Vancouver executives. The key points discussed were the difficulties of the current definition of Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremist groups (IMVE), as well as the need for Canada’s security agencies to shift focus from IMVE back to Islamist terrorist organizations. Mr. Gurski also discussed the importance of maintaining public trust through oversight and improved communication with the public, as well as improving technology and understanding context when assessing data sourced from social media platforms.
Received: 2022-12-05Revised: 2022-12-2
EXTREMIST RECRUITMENT AND EXTREMIST SENTIMENT NORMALIZATION
Get PDFOn November 23, 2022, Dr. Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University, presented on Extremist Recruitment and Extremist Sentiment Normalization. The presentation was followed by a question-and-answer period with questions from the audience and CASIS Vancouver executives. The key points discussed were conceptualisation and context of far-right extremism, the development and trends of the movement globally, and suggested directions for prevention.
Received: 2022-12-27Revised: 2023-01-0
INDEPENDENT ADVISORY GROUPS (IAG): MANAGING THE DIVIDE BETWEEN COMMUNITIES AND POLICE IN KNOWLEDGE SHARING AND UNDERSTANDING
Get PDFOn November 24, 2022, Dr. Rachael Aplin, Senior Lecturer of Policing at York St. John University, presented Independent Advisory Groups (IAG): Managing the Divide Between Communities and Police in Knowledge Sharing and Understanding. The presentation was followed by a question-and-answer period with questions from the audience and CASIS-Vancouver executives. The key points discussed were the value and role of IAGs, the principal issues identified and addressed, and the challenges and benefits that the groups present.
Received: 2022-12-29Revised: 2023-01-0
MEDIA/DIGITAL LITERACY IN AN ERA OF DISINFORMATION
Get PDFOn November 25, 2022, Dr. Heidi Tworek, Associate Professor of International History and Public Policy at the University of British Columbia, presented Media/Digital Literacy in an Era of Disinformation. The key points discussed were the differences between misinformation and disinformation, how misinformation and online abuse overlap, and the initiatives to address mis/disinformation in Canada.
Received: 2023-01-03Revised: 2023-01-0
An Introduction to Acoustic Ecology
Get PDFAs a reader of this journal it is possible that you attach a certain significance to sound. Maybe you are a musician, an audio engineer, an architect, a foley artist, a marine biologist, or a composer of sonic art. Maybe you have studied sound in built environments, used sound in performance, in film or video, or researched sound underwater and among animals. You may have noticed how important sound can be in communicating mood, meaning and context. Perhaps when listening to a “soundscape”—sound heard in a real or “virtual” environment—you have been transported to another time, another place. Conversely, maybe you have experienced the-here- and-now even more acutely as a result of listening intently. Your awareness of sound—specifically your level of awareness of the acoustic environment at any given time—is an issue central to the interdiscipline of Acoustic Ecology (also known as ecoacoustics).
The philosophy underpinning Acoustic Ecology is simple yet pro-found: its author—R. Murray Schafer, a musician, composer and former Professor of Communication Studies at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Burnaby, BC, Canada—suggests that we try to hear the acoustic environment as a musical composition and further, that we own responsibility for its composition (Schafer 1977a, 205). Like many issues emerging from the explosion of ideologies in the late 1960s, the profundity of Schafer’s message is now hidden behind a single, soundbite-friendly issue: noise pollution. This is unfortunate since Schafer has far more to offer. However, some 22 years after his ideas were first fully articulated in print, they remain un-known to the general public and mostly unknown to environmental acousticians. Where Schafer is well known—within the contemporary music community—it is mostly for his large-scale, often site-specific, musical/theatrical work rather than his acoustic ecology. Composer John Cage was aware of both; when asked if he knew of any great music teachers, he replied “Murray Schafer of Canada” (Truax 1978, sleeve note)
Earworms
Get PDFThis essay will argue that musical sounds are independent beings in their own right, just like worms. Indeed, it is going to use the example of the earworm to demonstrate this. In turn, the fact that the earworm is an independent entity in some sense has profound implications for how we listen to, compose and analyze music, and in particular on how to think what is called soundscape. And the fundamental detail here is that this new think- ing will be strongly ecological
Digital Arts’ Black Sheep
Get PDFContrary to the plethora of festivals dealing with the digital arts, digital music and digital media, there is essentially little discussion about what the digital means to us. It seems the term‚digital‘ has a kind of magic attraction which nobody can resist. In this way, the digital is not only a technological development, but a quality as such, which does not seem to be questioned. As a musician who has started her artistic career with tape recorder reels and patch cords, who has moved faders and buttons and who has edited tape by hand, this is confusing. Analogue is out, odd in any case, and unfashionable. Who wants to be like that? It seems to me like a tribe which hides its genealogical tree, because otherwise the black sheep of the family has to be called by its name
Hearing Protection For The Critical Listener
No full textHearing is one of our most important senses; the one, it can be argued, without which our lives are most impacted (Gasaway, 1996). For critical listeners and acoustic ecologists, hearing has special significance. Since relatively modest changes may effect our aural perceptions and the enjoyment we derive from the aesthetic and professional aspects of audition we should exercise special care in the protection of our ears. It is truly regrettable that about 10 million Americans, and countless others worldwide, experience hearing loss that is at least partially attributable to noise exposure, since hearing loss due to noise (with the exception of unexpected explosive sounds) is virtually entirely preventable through the use of hearing protection devices (HPDs)
Two Way Traffic: Mediation of identity through sound, and sound through identity
Get PDFIt is by now a truism in popular music studies that one of the primary mediators of individual and collective identity is music (Stokes 1994). And it is equally recognised in acoustic ecology that a major identity marker is the local soundscape (Järviluoma et al 2009). The two converge when a composer or musician seeks to represent that soundscape in musical terms. Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antarctica incorporates literal signifiers of locality through the sound of a polar blizzard, while more oblique representations of a soundscape include the use of reverberation to evoke senses of place, such as the open ‘home-on-the-range’ (see further Doyle 2005). I want to present some thoughts on the relationship between music, sound and Australian identity from two directions. The first is the more obvious one that I have just sketched; that is, the use of music to mediate national or local identity. Then, however, I want to move in the opposite direction to a connection much more rarely, if ever, made. That is, how place mediates sounds which are categorised as music
The Soundscape of Burning Man
Get PDFThe Burning Man Festival, an annual art festival in the Nevada Black Rock Desert of the Western US, has been going strongly for over 20 years, and has grown immensely since its humble beginnings in 1986. In the last few years, the event has reached a population of well over 50,000 people, featuring hundreds of performances, and thousands of works of art in all media and on all scales imaginable. A party in the desert for some, a way of life for others, the festival and the temporary city that supports it is a remarkable human enterprise, thriving on communal effort and participation, a gifting economy, radical self-reliance, and radical self-expression. The unique soundscape of Black Rock City, Burning Man’s ephemeral home, with its multitude of sonic art works, musical performances and immersive environments, offers some of the most unusual and interesting sonic experiences for the week that it exists. This study looks at the evolution of this unique soundscape through the course of the event, from its beginning as an uninhabited desert, to the gradual construction of the city by the inhabitants, to the height of its celebratory completion as the tenth largest city in the state of Nevada, its ultimate destruction with the burning of the central art structures, and the leave-no-trace cleanup process that follows. Throughout the event, we witness a ritualistic ebb and flow of sound as the citizens of the city celebrate radical self-expression in remarkable ways: hot days of construction and exploration, the city-wide celebration of sunset, the festive all-night dancing, the exhausted and restful morning, the exuberant burning of the man, and the contemplative and quiet burning of the temple. Our study analyzes the soundscape across the vast space of the event, looking at its daily and week-long evolution, through field recordings, discussions with participants, and personal observations. The paper is derived from observations over the previous eight years of the event, as well as a sound journal based on Burning Man 2011