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Keynote 4: Rethinking the History of Sound-based Music
No full textThe first entry in Hugh Davies’ “A History of Recorded Sound” (1979) was dated ‘unknown (mostly B.C.)’. Creating an alternative history for electronic music that is more radical or inclusive is going to be difficult.
The notion of alternative history will be investigated in a number of ways in this talk and will focus upon the following two. A) Music has always involved some forms of technology throughout its history. One of the most radical developments of the use of technology in music history is what is being called electronic music at this event. However, there are major issues with this term today as it is used in various musical communities in different ways. Examples include the broad usage throughout most of the USA where electronic music is synonymous with electroacoustic music as used in other countries; electronic music means music in which sounds are created or generated electronically to many in the field; electronic music represents a variety of forms of popular music; and that is not all. Beyond the obvious terminology issues the lack of a clear definition for this body or music means that histories of that music will be based on the definition of the day. As awkward as this is, this point is less important than the following one. B) Accepting what most participants at this event will understand to be electronic music, it will be proposed that most of this body of work resides in a truly radical area, namely where the traditional musical note is not its basic unit; it is instead the sound that is not originally intended to be seen as something related to our do-re-mi system. Most histories of electronic music do not focus on the aesthetic results that separate note-based from sound-based works. In my 2007 book, instead of adopting one of the current terms in use, I opted for sound-based music (as opposed to the terms mentioned above as well as sonic art) as this term unambiguously is speaking of works in which the sound as opposed to the note is the basic unit. It also means that some works that do not need electricity (or other form of power) qualify as pertaining to this super-genre as it is the material, not power generation that holds the music together. This term was chosen above sonic art(s) as it clearly places its corpus within music, thus broadening the field from all notes to all sounds in a similar fashion as dance evolved from movement related to particular genres to any movement during the same period.
The history of sound-based music proposed in this talk comfortably crosses genres and categories (including the art music/pop music divide and, in fact, can ignore it); it crosses art forms comfortably (e.g., sound artworks can often be experienced as fine art and music); it benefits from its own paradigm that coexists with the note-based paradigm known from early forms of music production developed in ‘unknown (mostly B.C.)’. Given the ubiquity of technology in today’s music, it will be proposed that rethinking the global history of sound-based music is indeed a valuable alternative to that of electronic music
Mobile robot observing kitchen activities - University of Leeds
Get PDFA collection of human detections captured using a mobile robot during one week patrolling a university staff and student common room and kitchen area. Data includes RGB images of detections, estimated skeleton pose from depth sensor, robot odometry and ground truth segmentation and labelling of activities
Fretting of CoCrMo and Ti6Al4V Alloys in Modular Prostheses
No full textCobalt and Titanium based alloys are two most commonly used alloys in Total Hip Arthroplasty. The Cobalt alloy (Co28Cr6M) is commonly used as the head component of the Hip device whilst the Titanium alloy (Ti6Al4V) is used as the stem component. This paper assessed the failure mechanisms of both alloys under fretting conditions. The fretting contact was modelled using a ball-on-plate configuration at a contact pressure of 1 GPa serum containing solution. It was observed that the CoCr-CoCr fretting contact encouraged a gross slip fretting regime from as low as 25µm of displacement amplitude whereas, for the CoCr-Ti fretting contact at 25µm, a stick regime was observed. This indicated that CoCr-CoCr fretting contact degrades through a wear dominated mechanism whilst CoCr-Ti degrades through a fatigue dominated mechanism. The slip at the contact was shown to effect the removing of the protect oxide layer of both passive alloys
Dataset for 'Tuning hardness in calcite by incorporation of amino acids'
Get PDFThis work investigates the origin of the superior hardness of biogenic calcite by creating “model biominerals” from calcite single crystals containing glycine (0-7 mol%) or aspartic acid (0-4 mol%). Lattice distortions in these crystals were analyzed using x-ray diffraction and molecular dynamics simulations, while SS-NMR showed that the amino acids are incorporated as individual molecules. Nanoindentation hardness increased with amino acid content, reaching values equivalent to their biogenic counterparts. Finally, a dislocation pinning model reveals that the enhanced hardness is determined by the force required to cut covalent bonds in the molecules
Dataset associated with "Influence of intercalating perfluorohexane into the lipid shell on nano and microbubbles stability"
Get PDFThe data presented here supports the images presented in the manuscript to clarify the effect of incorporating perfluorohexane into the microbubble. Briefly: Microbubbles have potential diagnostic and therapeutic agents. In vivo stability is important with the bubbles required to survive multiple passages through heart and lungs to permit targeting, and delivery. Here we have systematically varied key parameters affecting microbubble lifetime to significantly increase in vivo stability. Whilst shell and core composition are found to have important role in improving microbubble stability, we show that inclusion of small quantities of C6F14 in the microbubble bolus significantly improves lifetime. Our results indicate that the C6F14 inserts into lipid shell, decreasing surface tension, to 19 mN/m, and increasing shell resistance, as well as saturating the surrounding medium. Surface area isotherms suggest that C6F14 incorporates into the acyl chain region of the lipid, at high molar ratio indicating ~2 perfluorocarbon molecule per 5 lipid molecules. The resulting microbubble boluses exhibit higher in vivo image intensity, compared to the commercial compositions as well as longer lifetimes
Data associated with 'Origin of terminal voltage variations due to self-mixing in terahertz frequency quantum cascade lasers'
No full textWe explain the origin of voltage variations due to self-mixing in a terahertz (THz) frequency quantum cascade laser (QCL) using an extended density matrix (DM) approach. Our DM model includes a full calculation of scattering between quantum states as well as coherent transport from miniband states into the upper lasing level and allows calculation of both the current–voltage (I-V) and optical power characteristics of the QCL under optical feedback. The model is applied to an exemplar 2.6 THz bound-to continuum QCL that is typical of those used in optical feedback interferometry. Feedback from an external cavity is included in the model through a change in cavity loss, to which the gain of the active region is clamped. The variation of intra-cavity field strength necessary to achieve gain clamping, and the subsequent change in bias required to maintain a constant current density through the heterostructure is then calculated. Strong enhancement of the self-mixing voltage signal due to non-linearity of the I–V characteristics in the analyzed THz QCL device is predicted and confirmed experimentally
The Ondes Martenot: Constructing Narratives of Obsolescence
No full textThis paper will examine the ways in which we construct narratives of obsolescence around the Ondes Martenot regardless of the instrument's actual status, and how this influences its current position.
The Ondes Martenot is, in its physical form, an instrument, but it can also be seen as a concept in its broader sense. If we consider the Ondes Martenot through the lens of Actor-Network Theory, we can imagine a network of human and non-human actors which exert a certain influence on the concept of the instrument, constructing or ‘performing’ it at any given moment in time. Sometimes this influence helps the Ondes Martenot to keep existing, and sometimes it pushes it towards obsolescence. The instrument’s position on this axis has shifted in both directions over the past century, but it is clear that the Ondes Martenot has been steadily gaining momentum in the past fifteen years. It is, for now, not in immediate danger of disappearing and becoming a thing of the past.
However, many academic and other sources portray the Ondes Martenot as just that – a thing of the past.
By placing the Ondes Martenot in a linear history of electronic instruments, using anachronistic and reductive language, portraying the instrument as an unfinished idea, but also by equating value with commercial success and using a dated instrument classification system, it becomes easier to ignore the later decades of activity surrounding the instrument.
The main reason for this reductive narrative is the lack of documentation on the instrument. The only published book, Jean Laurendeau’s Maurice Martenot, Luthier de l’électronique (1990), has yet to be translated to English. However, narratives of obsolescence are also found in other areas of electronic music history. This case study brings some of the mechanisms behind this construction to light
Unravelling live coding
No full textTechnology is often seen as a linear development, towards an ideal of seamless expression, where technology efficiently brings ideas into the world. However, much work in electronic music picks at those seams, stripping back interface design to reveal the systems within. At this moment, we enjoy huge resurgence of interest in modular synthesis, and more generally in maker culture, with great emphasis on revealing how things understanding work, and how they can be repurposed or rebuilt. In electronic music, the state of the art is now not necessarily in the 'fastest' machines, but in the most 'hackable' (Zappi and McPherson, 2014).
Live coding, as a musical practice, has emerged into electronic music culture over the past 16 years. Its history is complicated by emerging from at least three places at once; from the SuperCollider community following the release of version 3.0, where language was decoupled from synthesis, providing grounds for the 'Just-in-Time' environment (JITLib) by Julian Rohrhuber. It also emerged from the work of Ge Wang on ChucK, supporting 'on-the-fly' programming (Wang and Cook, 2003). A third location was the band Slub (of which I am a member), who from the start worked towards writing code while people danced to it, realised through the production of various handmade livecoding environments including MAP/MSG, Pure Events, feedback.pl, Fluxus and Tidal. There were many further precedents, but the exact chronology of these developments is perhaps less interesting than the fact that this burst of activity took place over a few years, from the year 2000. It seems that at this time, there was something 'in the air', a faultline running through assumptions of how software should be made and used in the arts.
That live coding arose from several unconnected places at once hints at technological determinism. But what could this mean, where the artists themselves are creating the technology, and where that technology appears to be almost Luddite in unravelling modern interface paradigms? Furthermore, is it possible to break out of a linear perspective of technology entirely, looking at ancient patterning systems such as the warp weighted loom, to reappraise the role of the human in digital technology?
Through reflection on participating in the AHRC Weaving Codes, Coding Weaves project, and on sixteen years of live coding practice, as well as surveying members from the early live coding community, the author both explores what a history of Live Coding might look like, and how live coding practice challenges the history of computation in general
Tony Oxley: Music from Knives and Egg Slicers
No full textTony Oxley occupies a unique position in the history of improvised music, but much of his more experimental work has been overshadowed by his skill as a jazz drummer and his position in the history of that music. He had a most coveted position in this country as the house drummer at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club from 1966 to 1972, during which time he played with musicians of the stature of Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Johnny Griffin and Joe Henderson.
This paper seeks to draw attention to Oxley’s work with electronics from 1970 onwards. As an artist who was not satisfied to rest on his laurels, he was moved to find ways to expand the sound-world at his disposal. In 1965 he was inspired by hearing a gong glissando on Cage’s First Construction in Metal (1939) that was achieved by submerging the gong in water immediately after being struck. He was unaware of the use of water and conducted experiments putting cymbals under tension to try to achieve a similar sound, before realising that it could not be achieved by mechanical means. This led him to investigate the possibilities of electronics as a way to achieve what he was hearing in his imagination.
By 1970 his desire to incorporate electronic sounds into his instrumental set-up led him to construct a Dexion frame to which he attached sound-sources, including clamped knives, taught strings and springs, domestic and industrial egg slicers, toy motors and inverted cymbals. At first two contact microphones, and later three were attached to the frame and their outputs were combined into one channel that was fed into a series of devices that were hand built for Tony by Alan Willey, an electric guitarist in Liverpool. Tony described the sounds he would like to achieve to Willey, who then built the boxes and transported them to London by train for Oxley to collect. The first device was a Dynamic Compressor followed by a Ring Modulator and an Octave Divider. These were connected in that order to a volume pedal and finally a stereo amplifier and two loudspeakers. The frame was positioned to Tony’s left as an integrated part of his instrumental set-up, alongside his unique drum set, which challenged orthodoxy by dispensing with the snare drum and incorporating a wide timbral range, borrowing heavily from orchestral percussion. This combination of acoustic and electronic percussion foreshadowed contemporary hybrid kits by at least forty years and he was one of the very few players of live electronics active in improvised music in the early seventies.
In 1977 he was invited by composer Martin Wesley-Smith, founder of the Electronic Music Studio, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Australia to be artist in residence for three months; specifically in his capacity as a player of electronics. For this project Tony played his Dexion frame with the compressor, ring modulator and octave divider and eschewed his usual percussion set completely, thus confirming his commitment to the use of live electronics within improvised music
Data associated with 'Toward fully quantum modelling of ultrafast photodissociation imaging experiments. Treating tunnelling in the ab initio multiple cloning approach'
No full textData for 3 figures (including original matlab files) and raw calculations data