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Annotation of digital music notation documents: surveying needs for a generalised implementation
Get PDFThe ability to annotate music notation documents offers a powerful affordance to musicologists using digital libraries, and in the organisation and discovery of annotated sources within a music digital library. In this paper we first assess the current state of the art for annotating digital scores, then report on a survey conducted into existing uses and future needs elicited from the music library community. Analysing the survey results, we distinguish between extensions which might provide generalised annotation services for music notation software, versus application-specific interfaces and visualisations using such annotation services. Drawing upon the Web Annotation Data Model, we frame this distinction in terms of annotation targets and bodies, whereby specialist or customised bodies might utilise common shared mechanisms to address targets. We demonstrate the value of the latter by, for the first time, implementing support for annotation targets in the popular and widely used Verovio open source music engraving software, adding visual indications for enumerations and ranges encoded using the MEI element, and which can be manipulated in the resultant SVG image. We conclude that common mechanisms for specifying and implementing annotation targets are not only possible, but a practical and useful foundation for music digital library tools and infrastructure
'Are you sick, yet? / Are you disgusted, yet?': Watching torture in Dennis Kelly's works
No full textDetention without charge, severe physical and mental pain and suffering, intimidation, coercion, and other forms of torture set out in the United Nations Convention against Torture, have become justified and normalized since the start of the twenty-first century in order supposedly to guarantee national security and maintain law, order, freedom and democracy. This chapter derives its theoretical premise from Hannah Arendt’s On Violence (1970), to illustrate how a number of Dennis Kelly’s plays testify to the torture and other human rights abuses taking place not only in totalitarian regimes, but also in states that supposedly uphold civil liberties. The chapter illustrates both how Kelly exposes the torture that habitually takes place in covert locations behind a façade of ‘democracy’ and ‘liberty’, and also the ethics implicit in how audiences spectate the abusive degradation of others from the safety of our television screens, or of our theatre seats
Bias audit laws: how effective are they at preventing bias in automated employment decision tools?
Get PDFAutomated employment decision tools use machine learning, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, and other data-driven approaches to enhance candidate experiences and streamline employment related decision-making, allowing human resources to be concentrated where they are needed most. However, the use of these tools without appropriate safeguards has resulted in a number of high-profile scandals in recent years, particularly in regard to bias. Accordingly, lawmakers have started to propose laws that require bias audits of automated employment decision tools to examine their outputs for subgroup differences. The first of its kind was New York City Local Law 144, but other US states have since followed suit. In this paper, we examine the concerns about the effectiveness of this and other similar laws, including the suitability of metrics, the scope of the law, and low levels of compliance. We conclude that despite the law being a good initial first step towards greater transparency around automated employment decision tools and reducing bias, examining outcomes alone is not sufficient to prevent bias elsewhere in the tool. Moreover, effective bias prevention will require a multidisciplinary approach that combines expertise in IO psychology, law, and computer science to develop appropriate metrics and maximize the enforceability of such laws
A View Worth Talking About: The Influence of Social Interaction on Aesthetic Experience and Well-Being Outcomes in the Gallery
Get PDFArt museums are inherently social spaces, and social interaction is a key element of arts-based health interventions. Despite this, the effects of viewing art in social contexts remain largely unexplored in empirical aesthetics. This research presents the first experimental, large-scale study to systematically investigate how social interactions, especially through meaningful conversation, influence aesthetic experience and well-being. Conducted within a special exhibition space at Manchester Art Gallery, this experiment employed a between-participant design in which visitors (N = 240) were randomly assigned to either an Individual viewing condition, a Synchronized silent group viewing condition, or a Discussion-based group viewing condition. Participants viewed two paintings for 10 minutes each while listening to a series of slow-looking prompts. While we observed overall increases in well-being markers such as valence, positive affect, and social connectedness, there were notable group differences as well. Namely, the Discussion group reported higher scores in various aesthetic experience outcomes as compared to the Synchronized group, although the Individual group also reported higher emotional engagement and gallery experience ratings as compared to Synchronized participants. However, only participants in the Discussion group exhibited significant well-being impacts, reporting increased positive affect, social connectedness, and group closeness relative to the Synchronized group. This study highlights the potential for integrating discussion-based art viewing into gallery programming to deepen art engagement and promote visitor well-being, offering valuable insights for museum curators and educators
‘Dokkhina Sundari’ – a local story of climate emergency in Bangladesh.
No full textThis chapter critically explores the climate emergency in Bangladesh and examines the important dual role that the creative arts can play in firstly, raising awareness of wider geo-political issues of social justice and equity, and secondly, voice dissent against power structures, corporatized globalization and government. Bangladesh is one of the world’s poorest and most densely populated countries, and the topography, geography, rapid urbanization, and the experience of consistent widespread flooding, human displacement and extreme weather means that Bangladesh remains at the centre of all discourse related to climate change, climate justice and climate emergency. With a focus on the 2014 theatre production of ‘Dokkhina Sundari’ which raises a critical voice against the decision to build the coal-based thermal Rampal Power Station very close to the ‘green wall’ of the Sundarbans in southern Bangladesh, this chapter takes the form of an in-depth conversation with the director of the play – Sudip Chakroborthy. The ultimate message of ‘Dokkhina Sundari’ is a significant one – that all life is precious (humans, animals, plants, habitat) and that we all have a moral and ethical duty to preserve and protect this
Toward a Politics of Vocal Expression: Beckett and Video Art
Get PDFThis article examines the televisual version of Beckett’s play Not I (1973) as a work of video art, placing it in dialogue with video work by Bruce Nauman (Lip Sync, 1969), Vito Acconci (Open Book, 1974), Gary Hill (Mouth Piece, 1978), Stan Douglas (Deux Devises: Mime, 1983), and Mona Hatoum (So Much I Want to Say, 1983), with reference also to Agnieszka Polska (I Am The Mouth, 2014), and Kurdwin Ayub (Pretty-Pretty, 2015). By exploring modalities of asynchronicity, slippage, awkwardness, and obstruction through the philosophies of Adriana Cavarero and Hannah Arendt – who argue that speaking up is a deeply political act – the article positions Not I within an ethics of voice, and situates Beckett’s work as a significant contribution to twentieth-century video art
An Alien Phenomenology in Dance: Virtual Telematic Performances as Embodied Philosophy
Get PDFThis article suggests that dance practice-led exploration of avatar embodiment and telematic performance in 3D virtual environments (such as those generated in real-time graphics engines) can be a meaningful mode of philosophical discovery—a mode of affective doing, creating, becoming, and embodied thinking. By exerting kinaesthetic agency and shared expression within corporeal forms that are both of our body and yet virtual as well as in avatar representations that do not necessarily correlate to our actual anatomical articulation, can we explore a new remote relationality of extended, non-human, or alien embodiment within virtual space? I explore the possibility that, if this experience is indeed philosophical, it can be expansive and joyous, critically and socially engaged, and even ethical in nature, despite the techno-political forces of capture and control which are understood to be at work in so-called volumetric regimes. To consider this I draw upon a proposed alignment of ideas from Ian Bogost (from “procedural rhetoric” to alien phenomenology) and from Laura Marks (unfolding-enfolding aesthetics and the “talisman image”) to think about virtual media forms that enhance dance’s inherent virtuality and its propensity for kinaesthetic metaphorism, ethical intersubjectivity, and play
Room to Breathe: Testing the efficacy of mindful breathing and mindful design in enhancing museum experiences
Get PDFMindfulness-based activities are increasingly offered in arts institutions, yet little is known about the effectiveness of different interventions. Across two experiments, we examined the impacts of mindful breathing and mindful design on mood and aesthetic experience at Manchester Art Gallery. In Experiment 1, 202 participants viewed two portraits in Room to Breathe, a gallery space designed for mindful art viewing, after watching either a mindful breathing video, an informational video, or no video. Mindful breathing had no significant effect on mood or aesthetic experience. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 in a traditional, non-mindful gallery space, allowing for a direct comparison of mindful breathing and mindful design (N = 261). While mindful breathing again had no impact, mindful design led to increased valence, decreased arousal, higher perceptual engagement, and more time spent viewing. These findings suggest that mindful design, as in Room to Breathe, may enhance aesthetic engagement and well-being
On phantasms of gender: A feminist cultural studies perspective
Get PDFThis article provides a response to Judith Butler’s recent book Who’s Afraid of Gender? making the case for the volume as a key contribution to feminist cultural studies, an exemplary pedagogic text, close to Stuart Hall’s style of writing. The book works as a counter to the anti-gender currents which have demonised genderqueer and trans people through the unleashing of populist sentiments securing these to a right-wing agenda. The article draws attention to the UK tabloid press and its reliance on social media invective. With the university as a contested space, what scope is there for new forms of public pedagogy to emerge