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Kite Tales - Audio Piece
No full textAcross a series of kite-building workshops in which kites were created in memory of a loved one, and the subsequent kite-flying celebration day, participants were interviewed about the process of making their kites. This audio piece is a compilation of extracts from these conversations
Check it Out
Full text linkCD review of Bright Lights, 1974-1983, After the Fire (6CD box set, Cherry Red
Staring into the eyes of those who commit science fiction
Full text linkBook reviews of Colourfields: Writing About Writing About Science Fiction, Paul Kincaid (Briardene Books) and Ultrazone, Mark Terrill & Francis Poole (Verse Chorus Press
From Production Format to Research Methodology: Spatial Audio Composition as a ‘New Beginning’ in Listening, Sensing, and Understanding
Full text linkIn the rapidly evolving field of immersive technologies, spatial audio is often treated merely as an output format—a final flourish for music production or media distribution. This presentation argues instead for spatial audio as a radical starting point: a research methodology that provokes new ways of listening, sensing, and understanding our world. Drawing on post-acousmatic compositional approaches, ethnographic field methods, and radiophonic traditions, this presentation proposes spatial audio composition as an inherently critical and creative practice that reconfigures how we document and interpret cultural narratives.
By integrating spatial thinking at every stage—from initial field recordings and interviews, through to fixed-media production and final presentation—we move beyond the normative ‘record-and-mix’ workflow. This approach foregrounds embodied, situational listening: capturing not just sounds, but the relationships between them, the places they inhabit, and the communities who sustain them. Thus, spatial audio composition becomes a tool for knowledge production and meaning-making and reframes the composer’s role as both researcher and mediator.
The paper draws on a developing series of “sonic portrays” of Cornish men—individuals whose voices and lived contexts form the raw material for immersive sonic ‘portraits’ – which is part of my E3 funded project ‘Disappearing Voices, Disappearing Spaces: Safeguarding Heritage Through Immersive Technologies and Community Voices’ for Falmouth University’s Centre for Blended Realities. Building on previous fixed-media works, these new pieces adopt a post-immersive perspective in which every step of the compositional process is informed by spatial awareness. By emphasising the dynamic interactions between location, voice, and listener, the project aims to evoke a deeper sense of presence, empathy, and engagement with participants’ stories.
This research resonates with the conference theme by positing spatial audio as a ground-up reimagining of how composition can serve as a rigorous mode of inquiry.
Rather than simply refining existing paradigms, a post-immersive methodology ‘rips up’ conventional boundaries between documentation and artistry, allowing new modes of critical reflection and communal experience to emerge. As such, spatial audio ceases to be the end-point in production and becomes a transformative lens for understanding cultural phenomena, reshaping artistic practice, and envisioning new ethical and inclusive frameworks for immersive media. Through discussion of compositional strategies, fieldwork techniques, and theoretical underpinnings, the presentation offers a blueprint for how spatial audio can catalyse a broader shift in how we compose, research, and ultimately re-experience our shared sonic environments
Heritage discourse and voices of change
Full text linkBeginning from the premise that the notions of ‘minority’ and ‘heritage’ are socially constructed in part by discursive processes, in this chapter Koreinik and Hodsdon draw on language and heritage studies in considering the discursive construction of minority cultures’ intangible cultural heritage in the context of social justice. They consider how discourse has shaped the relevant concepts at play (including the construction of difference in minority contexts, and the authorised heritage discourse, and review different approaches to discourse analysis. Finally, they offer an illustration of the potential value of using what has been called positive discourse analysis – or a combination of critical and positive, or what the authors term ‘appreciative’ approaches – as a way of understanding how revoicing by minority cultures is already happening, and how it can be better supported in future
Troubling the Self
Full text linkBook reviews of Helen Chadwick: Life Pleasures, Laura Smith (Thames & Hudson) and Dreaming of Dead People, Rosalind Belben (And Other Stories
Raising Consciousness Through Feminist Pedagogy in Animation
Full text linkExploring collective practice and collaboration with external experts to develop a method of integrating feminist pedagogy into creative HE environments using animation as a feminist tool. This case study focuses on a student-made film, Why Mums Don't Jump (2 min, 2023), which premiered in Los Angeles at La Femme International Film Festival 2023. The project resulted from a collaboration between a group of mixed-gender, second-year animation students at Falmouth University who were invested in the subject of female reproductive health and their live-brief client, Helen Ledwick, podcaster, author and creator of Why Mums Don’t Jump.
Embracing the opportunity to reflect on the methodology and success of learning outcomes based on interviews with participants and audiences. The initial feedback and testimonials indicate that the film was received as a pioneering animated story, granting visibility to a hidden condition known as 'pelvic organ prolapse', often experienced by women postpartum. Audiences' recognition of the film's attitude-changing potential testifies to Wells' view of animation as 'a radical tool in the re-invention... of social, cultural ... materials' (Wells 2012). This case study demonstrates that when animation addresses the need for social change, student work can contribute to the visibility of hidden discrimination and social debates around female reproductive rights. The students' engagement with the process exemplifies their temporary entanglement with what Sara Ahmed once called a 'sweaty concept' (2017) to bring out hidden gender inequalities and generate new social understandings.
Although this is not a definite recipe for educating socially aware animators, analysing this project stage-by-stage, there is an attempt to outline one potential teaching strategy for promoting gender awareness among HE students in creative disciplines
An Empirical Review of Uncertainty Estimation for Quality Control in CAD Model Segmentation
No full textDeep neural networks are able to achieve high accuracy in semantic segmentation of geometries used in computational engineering. Being able to recognise abstract and sometimes hard to describe geometric features has applications for automated simulation, model simplification, structural failure analysis, meshing, and additive manufacturing. However, for these systems to be integrated into engineering workflows, they must provide some measures of predictive uncertainty such that engineers can reason about and trust their outputs. This work presents an empirical study of practical uncertainty estimation techniques that can be used with pre-trained neural networks for the task of boundary representation model segmentation. A point-based graph neural network is used as a base. Monte-Carlo Dropout (MCD), Deep Ensembles, test time input augmentation, and post-processing calibration are evaluated for segmentation quality control. The Deep Ensemble technique is found to be top performing and the error of a human-in-the-loop system across a dataset can be reduced from 3.8% to 0.7% for MFCAD++ and from 16% to 11% for Fusion360 Gallery when 10% of the most uncertain predictions are flagged for manual correction. Models trained on only 5% of the MFCAD++ dataset were also tested, with the uncertainty estimation technique reducing the error from 9.4% to 4.3% with 10% of predictions flagged. Additionally, a point-based input augmentation is presented; which, when combined with MCD, is competitive with the Deep Ensemble while having lower computational requirements
The Repeated Lie
Full text linkA poem about deceitful politics and what happens when lies are endlessly repeated
Things to Make and Do
Full text linkA book review of Raucous Invention: the Joy of Making, Mark Hearld (Thames & Hudson