1401 research outputs found
Sort by
Data associated with ‘Asymptotically single-mode small-core terahertz Bragg fibre with low loss and low dispersion’
No full textThese data relate to a design study of an asymptotically single-mode small-core terahertz Bragg fibre with low loss and low dispersion. A generalized half-wavelength condition, promoting the manipulation of photonic bandgap for Bragg fibre, is proposed and examined by representative cases. A significant propagation loss discrimination between the desired TE01 mode and other unwanted competing modes has been created resulting in an effectively single-mode operation in the fibre. The proposed tightly confined single-TE01-mode small-air-core Bragg fibre exhibits propagation loss and group velocity dispersion less than 1.2 dB/m and -0.6 ps/THz/cm, respectively, over the frequency range from 0.85 THz to 1.15 THz
Raw data for the analysis of the growth kinetics and morphology of methyl stearate crystals growing in n-dodecane, kerosene and toluene
Get PDFDifferential Interference Contrast microscopy is used to characterise the growth kinetics and morphology of methyl stearate crystals, growing in three different solvents. The collected experimental data for the growth of these crystals specific faces as a function of supersaturation is presented in the dataset. The complete set of planes delivered through the prediction of the BFDH morphology for methyl stearate crystals using three different sets of unit cell parameters is presented. These planes are organised in groups and analysed using common zone axes methods to identify the most rational crystal lattice and morpholog
Data associated with 'The Development of a Semtex-H Simulant for Terahertz Spectroscopy'
No full textThe development and use of terahertz-frequency (THz) spectroscopy systems for security screening has shown an increased growth over the past 15 years. In order to test these systems in real world situations, safe simulants of illicit materials are required, particularly of explosives. Ideally simulants should mimic key features of the material of interest, such that it at least resembles or even appears indistinguishable from the material of interest to the interrogating technique(s), whilst not having hazardous or illicit properties. Ideally, simulants should: have similar physical properties such as malleability, density, surface energy, volatility etc; be non-toxic; be easy to clean and decontaminate from surfaces; be recyclable or disposable; and, be useable in a public environment. A THz explosive simulant would require spectral features at similar frequencies to those in a common explosive, in this instance Semtex-H, but would be safe to handle and be non-explosive. Here, we present a method for developing such a simulant based on a database of THz spectra of common organic molecules, and the use of a genetic algorithm to select a mixture of compounds automatically to form such a simulant. We propose four mixtures that could then be used to test the response of any instrument, working at terahertz frequencies, without the need for an explosive substance
The Hauntological Turn: Genealogy, History Making, and ‘the Contemporary’ in Electronic Music
No full text“Categories strain, crack and sometimes break, under their burden - step out of the space provided”
Nurse With Wound.
The 1979 debut album by Nurse With Wound is perhaps less famous for the music it contained than an accompanying text printed on its inside sleeve. Dubbed the ‘NWW List’, it is a collection of 292 outsider artists and bands (‘electric experimental music’) that inspired NWW; some known, most obscure, and a few potentially fictional. Providing fans and collectors of experimental with an unofficial road-map-cum-shopping-list of rare, visionary and exotic music across ‘art’ and ‘popular’ styles, its fame has accumulated such that, today, items sell on Ebay for upwards of a thousand pounds. Yet the significance of the list is not only as a spirit-seeker’s handbook. More than this, it has come to represent a shift in the praxis and self-understanding of underground music culture relative to history, where passive notions of ‘influence’ and ‘inheritance’ are displaced by the more active and performative concepts of ‘genealogy’ and ‘history making’. In today’s electronic music, these processes are everywhere: in the creative practices of individual artists, the curatorship of record labels, the texts of record stores and music critics - even in the individual sounds and technologies. Without the recovered historical signifiers and uncharted paths that thread throughout and mark the terrain of contemporary electronic music genres - J.D. Emmanuel’s new age-meets-minimalism masterpiece Wizards in Noise; the production sound on Don Henley’s Boys of Summer in Hypnagogic Pop; the Radiophonic Workshop in Hauntology - their very separateness as genres is compromised.
How do we theorise this acceleration, diversification, and individuation of genealogy in electronic music today, accounting for the multiple conflicting historical paths that are threaded by artists, labels, genres, and institutions, and that are performed through texts, sounds, artefacts, and other mediums? Music criticism on the subject has so far been nugatory, resorting to well-worn end-of-history narratives of crisis, decline, and malaise in popular culture. Drawing on the NWW list, and informed by the concept of ‘the contemporary’ as a distinct moment of historical-time consciousness, a first aim of this paper will be to argue against this intellectual trend, figuring the ‘hauntological’ turn, not as a symptom of crisis or inertia, but as part of a reflexive expansion of what constitutes the aesthetic object. Central here is the role and function of the Internet in today’s electronic music genres, and the aesthetics of the archive that has emerged in relation to it.
The second aim of my paper will be to consider the implications of these actions for music studies in general. If there is a ‘musicological’ intent to these acts of curation and history-making, augured by the expanding archive of popular music housed on the Internet, then how can musicology-proper utilise them in productive ways? This section will draw on Branden W. Joseph’s 2008 study of Tony Conrad, and Georgina Born and Nicholas Cook’s recent statements on the notion of ‘relational musicology’, for methodological and theoretical support
Electro-acoustic feedback and the birth of sound installations
No full textReflecting upon Max Neuhaus and Alvin Lucier’s first electronic works on electro-acoustic feedback, I will consider how their researches on live electronic music, meant to be performed on stage, announce a whole other form of creation, which is paradoxically emancipated from the concert hall and essential to the emergence of sound art: sound installations. If both musicians first appropriated the electronic medium for its possibilities in sound transformation (Neuhaus’s interpretations of the avant-garde’s percussion repertoire; Lucier’s collaboration with the Sonic Arts Union), it appears that these experimentations, and more precisely those using feedback, quickly extended into other areas than research on tones and the live dimension of electronic performances. Indeed, electro-acoustic feedback, as a phenomenon of retroaction, goes beyond the mere relationship to the instrument: by manifesting itself in the looping of the electro-acoustic chain (microphone-amplification-speakers), it straightaway inscribes the electronic device in a spatial dimension that is linked to the propagation of sound. Highly unstable and unpredictable, feedback’s variations indeed result from the interaction of numerous parameters: acoustics, volume, the architecture of a space, as well as the technology employed and its positioning in space, or the mass and movements of bodies within it. Any work implying this type of feedback can thus only be in situ: it depends upon how sounds wander in space. By analyzing Neuhaus and Lucier’s first experimentations with feedback, the specificities of their apparatuses and the experiences they aim at and foster, this presentation wishes to question the role they played in the emergence of both musicians’ concern with space, which is at the core of any understanding of their later works. And beyond these singular paths, we will reread the history of live electronic music in the light of its bifurcations and lines of flight, in order to explicate the birth of a certain art of sound installation, in which the liveness of live electronic music, far from being deserted, seems to lead into other forms of creation and specific aesthetic stakes. If live electronic music can be considered as one of the conditions of possibility for the emergence of sound installations, we will also have to consider, on a broader scale, the relations that the history of sound art practices have with electronics and their ambiguous emancipation from experimental music
Organic Instruments: Early Electrophones and the Valorization of Technology in the Weimar Republic
No full textIn standard histories of electronic music, early electric instruments typically appear as mere novelties in contrast to the studio technologies of the post-WWII period. But these earlier devices not only anticipated later developments in the history of what became known as “electronic music,” they also reveal connections to bigger debates about the role of technology in modernity. In this paper, I examine how the instruments of two German inventors of the 1920s and ‘30s change our understanding both of history of that period and the broader contours of sound technology in the twentieth century and into the present.
Jörg Mager (1880-1939) is arguably one of the most important forgotten figures in the history of electronic music. Inspired by the rhapsodic visions of Busoni’s Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music, Mager first experimented with microtonal organ building before delving into electric tone-generation in the early 1920s. In 1926, Mager unveiled his crank-operated instrument called the Sphärophon at the summer music festival in Donaueschingen, a major center of European modernism. By 1930, his instrument had evolved to a multiple-manual “electric organ” that could create both microtonal intervals and stunning new tone-colors. Supported by an organization called the Society for Electroacoustic Music, Mager conducted groundbreaking research into the production of timbre and noise by electric means. He demonstrated his instruments around Germany and was hailed as the prophet of a new age of music.
In 1930, another new instrument appeared: the Trautonium. It was the pet project of three men: Friedrich Trautwein, inventor and namesake, Paul Hindemith, who wrote its first original compositions, and Oskar Sala, the instrument’s sole virtuoso. From the beginning, the Trautonium promised to bring “electric music” to the masses: a year after it was introduced, a companion booklet included a blueprint instructing how radio enthusiasts could build their own model. Within a few years, the instrument was developed from a modest laboratory prototype to an ambitious, mass-produced version called the Volkstrautonium, unveiled in 1933. Funded by the radio firm Telefunken, the instrument could be plugged into domestic radio receivers for amplification, and its marketing copy promised that anyone could learn to play it. In spite of its failure to seize the market, the Trautonium gained considerable notoriety under the Third Reich, as electric instruments became powerful emblems of the political-aesthetic program Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels called “steel romanticism.”
The instruments of Mager and Trautwein, far from being marginal phenomena in the musical culture of the Weimar Republic, figured prominently in ongoing debates about technology and its role in modern life. In contrast to “mechanical” devices such as the player piano and gramophone, which threatened to replace performers with machines and stoked the public’s fears of technology run amok, the Spherophone and Trautonium were seen as “organic” instruments that gave their performers enhanced powers of expression. Thus, these inventions became symbols of a perfectly humanized instrumentarium, and so contributed to the valorization of technology that became one of the most powerful trends in twentieth-century culture
Serendipitous and Subversive: A Critical Organology of Hugh Davies’s Found Instruments
No full textThe invented instruments of the British composer, performer and musicologist Hugh Davies have played a significant role in articulating not only aesthetic, but also social and political concerns, and thus, deserve closer scrutiny than has been granted them so far. Indeed, Davies’s inventions are an ideal example of what Kevin Dawe has described as instruments existing at an intersection of material, cultural and social worlds. Of particular relevance are his “found” instruments, which consisted in reclaimed objects with little modification except for their amplification, often electronic. Davies discussed this unorthodox lutherie praxis as a result of a serendipitous process; this, however, is not to be understood merely as a naïve activity, but rather as part of a subversive project. Indeed, these instruments questioned the historical identity and status of the musical instrument, jettisoning traditional lutherie craft and skills and posing a challenge to the category of the musical instrument itself, thus representing a possibility for its cultural transformation. The study of such instruments, thus, necessitates a focused and yet multidisciplinary approach, able to discern and disentangle the complex discourses imbricated in their polyvalent and polysemic nature. Such an approach implicates a shift from the positivist paradigm of organology to the perspectives of what can be termed a “critical organology,” which calls for an expanded notion of the ontology of the instrument, not only confined to its material entity and the productive labour involved in shaping it, but also intent at understanding the immaterial aspects of the instrument, those forged by the social environment and the artistic labour invested in its realisation. From such a position, the musical instrument can no longer be considered as a medium through which music flows–a tool–but rather the domain in which music is ordered and re-ordered. Indeed, the two instruments by Davies discussed in particular, the Egg Slicer and My Spring Collection, are interpreted as laboratories for the development of a progressive musical aesthetics, as congeries of different kinds of labour, and as articulations of a queer politics. It will be argued that one of the achievements of Davies’s found instruments is to have understood the term “musical instrument” as the terrain on which a radical emancipatory struggle is enacted, and a persistent site of contest, therefore rendering this category permanently problematic and, thus, crucially significant. A critical organology of Davies’s found musical instruments is thus useful in gaining a better understanding of Davies’s music, but also to more fully comprehend the significance of the musical instrument vis-à-vis its socio-cultural context, as well as being strategically important in uncovering marginalised histories of practices that have not conformed to the canonical narratives of conventional instrumentality
‘Still Point’ - An Unknown Precursor of Today's Electronic Music
No full textThis paper will discuss an unknown work by a pioneer of electronic music, Daphne Oram. Oram is best known as the co-founder and first director of the BBC Radiophonic workshop, where she created numerous musical scores for radio and TV productions. What is less well-known is that she created a theory of electronic sound synthesis known as ‘Oramics’, and wrote a large quantity of concert music, most of which has never been performed.
Our paper will focus on the most substantial score in this neglected body of work. Entitled ‘Still Point’, it is scored for double orchestra, electronically treated recordings on 78-rpm discs, microphones, and Echo and Tone controls. It was composed in 1949, which means it has a good claim to be the first work in history which combines a fully written-out orchestral score with live, real-time manipulation of electronic sound.
Oram entered Still Point for the Prix Italia in 1950, which it failed to win, and unfortunately the score was never returned to Oram and is now presumed lost. What survives are approximately one hundred pages of pencil sketches in the Oram Archive, now housed at Goldsmith’s College, London. The composer and co-author of this paper, Shiva Feshareki, is now working on a reconstruction of the piece, in collaboration with James Bulley, for performance by the London Contemporary Orchestra at St. John’s Smith Square London in the summer of 2016.
The authors aim to address the following topics:
1) We will set this work in the context of Oram’s work as a whole, looking into the relationship between her technical speculations and her aesthetic outlook.
2) We will ask what the influences were on this genesis of this work, with particular emphasis on the poem of T.S Eliot (Burnt Norton from The Four Quartets) which provided the work’s title.
3) We will give a detailed description of the surviving performance materials, with an explanation of the work (both creative and re-creative) required to bring those materials into a performable state.
4) We will attempt to situate the work, and Oram’s work as a whole, in the wider history of electronic music. This is not a straightforward task. On the one hand, she was a visionary, who in this work created a “Concerto for Turntables” a good sixty years before the genre was invented. On the other, her work has many links to earlier traditions in music. The fact that Oram took as her title a line from the most outspoken cultural conservative among 20th -century poets looks significant, but significant of what exactly? And if it turns out on closer inspection that Oram had a vein of cultural conservatism in her make-up, is that peculiar to her? Or might it point to a wider theme in electronic music which is hidden from view, by the rhetoric of radical, technological modernism through which we habitually discuss the genre
The language connection in early electronic music: French and German approaches
No full textThe relationship between music and language is frequently cited as mutually beneficial. Before the eighteenth century language properly speaking was considered of prime importance. Music appeared to be an art form with ‘no semantic content’. By contrast, in the nineteenth century this lack of ‘semantic content’ was considered to be a positive advantage. Nevertheless, writers on music still draw upon linguistic terminology and concepts to clarify and explain how music functions. For example, in his Harvard Lectures ‘The Unanswered Question’ Leonard Bernstein refers to phonology, syntax, semantics and Chomskian grammar in an attempt to elucidate how music communicates. In addition, terminology from linguistics and semiotics can be found in many books on music theory and analysis. When viewed from an historical perspective it can be argued that the emergence of electronic music followed a parallel path comparable to that of music’s emancipation from the subservience of language. As music achieved autonomy from vocal compositions, electronic music also achieved independence from traditional pitch and rhythmic structures. Nevertheless, electronic music, like traditional music, continues to make extensive use of language studies in developing its own theories and practices. My paper will explore the importance of language to electronic music by investigating two different approaches, one French the other German, to the music/language problematic. The first is the use of linguistic terminology by Pierre Schaeffer in his ‘Traité des objets musicaux’, the second is the appropriation of phonetics by Werner Meyer-Eppler who was a central figure in synthetic sound production in Bonn.
In his attempt to understand how music in general functions, Schaeffer made extensive use of concepts derived from linguistics. Indeed chapter 17 in book four of the ‘Traité’ is entitled ‘Structures comparées: musique et langage’ (Comparative structures: music and language). Schaeffer investigates the application of the rules of language to music. He paraphrases Jakobson and suggests that the concept of ‘levels of articulation’ and the combination of units into increasing degrees of complexity can be used by composers. While Schaeffer did not restrict his ideas solely to musique concrète it is clear that he believed the expanded vocabulary this genre benefitted from a knowledge of linguistics. By contrast Werner Meyer-Eppler and ‘elektronische Musik’ had a different agenda. Meyer-Eppler was instrumental in the establishment of the studio at the NWDR (this became the WDR in 1955). His main concern was the development of synthetic speech and the effective transmission of signals in order to maintain effective communication. Consequently, synthesis and concepts such as information theory figured prominently in the thinking of young German composers and indeed in the evolution of serial thought. My intention is to compare these two radically different approaches to language and music in order to tease out the similarities and differences. My principal methodology will be an analysis of writings by Schaeffer and Meyer-Eppler amongst others. It is well-known that despite the fundamental aesthetic and ideological differences of these two ‘schools’ both made a significant contribution to the history of electronic music. I intend to emphasize the still largely unacknowledged but fundamental role played by their different approaches to the study of language
Failed Histories of Electronic Music
No full textThe author, in his self-published 2015 study 'The Magnetic Music of the Spiritual World: Electricity and Sound on the Victorian Stage' provides a detailed and hitherto unexplored pre-history of electronic music, from the electrical 'rappings' of spiritualist devices, culminating with the wireless radio oscillation outrages of the 1920s. A precis of the final two chapters of this work is given. His research brings to light figures that are bizarrely absent from contemporary discourse, such as 'electric musician' Johann Baptist Schalkenbach, John Parsons and the inventor of the first electronic instrument to be performed live (in 1895), Alfred Graham. Why, despite these characters enjoying popularity in their day, have they fallen under the radars of subsequent researchers? The answer lies in the academicisation of electronic music itself, and the perpetuation of deficient narratives.
It is argued here that the absence of such figures from 'official' histories owes much to established power structures within literary elites and academia. Cronyism, nepotism and corruption thrived in these power structures, but they also persist to this day within the media and the PhD racket, exampled by numerous first- and second-hand case studies presented here, including the irony that the very research conducted here by the author was necessarily self-published in the face of wider indifference, funded entirely by Jobseeker's Allowance (alarmingly, it is now in the process of being absorbed and rehashed by paid/funded academics). The author's research methods are outlined; the work emerging from his previous activities on the peripheries of the antiquarian book trade and from frequenting auction-houses, constituting a 'hands-on' mode of research quite distinct from that of academia, yielding hitherto unrecorded source materials and archives. In connection with this, an overview of the rise of the 'composer-researcher' is given (that is, the composer who is compelled to academicise his/her practices in the hope of securing academic jobs), signalling a shift in research practices as the composer-researcher - unavoidably - brings variously modulated self-identifying sympathies into his/her investigations into the artists, engineers and inventors that occupied the hinterlands of yesterday's acoustical art