Call for Papers :: Special Issue: Rethinking Theories of Television Sound

http://www.sonicstudies.org

Deadline: May 31, 2012

Essays are invited for a special issue of the Journal of Sonic Studies that
will reexamine the most persistent accounts of television sound, from the
1980s to the present, and reflect on these accounts in terms of
contemporary changes in the production and consumption of television.
Studies on television sound typically begin by emphasizing that the
fundamental differences between film and television­differences in terms of
structure, content, and modes of address­are a direct result of the fact
that film privileges the eye over the ear, while television privileges the
ear over the eye. This notion of television as a form of ‘illustrated
radio’ became the basis of television sound studies, but the rise of
high-definition television, widescreen receivers, and home entertainment
systems challenged this notion by bringing the cinematic experience into
the home. Following these technological developments, critics began to
apply theories of film sound to the study of television by focu
sing on the design of ‘underscores’ to convey emotional states and enhance
narrative tension.

In recent years, television has undergone yet another major shift as the
concept of ‘home cinema’ has been accompanied by radical changes in the way
television is broadcast and received. With the rise of ambient television,
portable devices, social media and web interfaces, television is now viewed
in a much wider range of locations and contexts, which complicates these
earlier approaches to the study of television sound. Viewers are
increasingly watching television in public spaces, they are increasingly
using portable devices that transmit sound over low-quality speakers or
headphones, and they are increasingly using new media platforms that alter
the context in which television is viewed by time-shifting, eliminating
advertising, and isolating programs from broadcast flow, which
de-emphasizes televisual ‘liveness.’ Portability, transferability, and
access have thus become more important than the reproduction of a cinematic
experience, which problematizes both the ‘illustrated r
adio’ and ‘home cinema’ models of television sound.

These contemporary changes demand that scholars once again reexamine and
reevaluate the function of sound in the production, transmission, and
reception of television programming, and we therefore invite proposals that
examine the range of approaches used in sound recording and design in the
contemporary ‘post-television’ era. Possible topics include, but are not
limited to, the following:

- Are established theories of sound-image relations and television
‘orality’ still relevant?
- Are there ways of conceiving of television sound as more than simply the
operation of soundtracks and music?
- What role does sound play in the spatial and temporal organization of
televisual texts?
- Does television sound still play an interpellative role following the
disappearance of traditional sound cues, such as applause and laugh tracks?
- What are the sound practices employed in the production of television
‘webisodes,’ which are intended to be viewed on alternate media platforms?
- What is the impact of new economic models (i.e. subscription and
pay-per-view) on the production and reception of television sound?

Potential contributors are invited to submit completed essays by May 31,
2012. Submissions should be 5500-6000 words in length and they should be
submitted as an attachment in .doc format. For more information, or to
submit an essay, please contact our guest editors:

Carolyn Birdsall, University of Amsterdam: C.J.Birdsall at uva.nl
Anthony Enns, Dalhousie University: Anthony.Enns at dal.ca

audio visual jamming from the Portland Oregon area….

Bat Fancy :: Ashes March 2012.

Three Dimensional Music Scores……

Three Dimensional Musical Scores

A look into representing the organization of sounds and actions on a three dimensional plane. Very inspiring.
When the website is updated, audio related to this article can be heard under “Scored Works” at www.marcberghaus.com.

Interesting Visual/Brain Resarch at UC Berkeley

SCIENCE
BY JESUS DIAZ SEP 22, 2011 9:40 PM 502,999
Reposted from Gizmodo: http://gizmodo.com/5843117/scientists-reconstruct-video-clips-from-brain-activity

Scientists Reconstruct Brains’ Visions Into Digital Video In Historic Experiment
UC Berkeley scientists have developed a system to capture visual activity in human brains and reconstruct it as digital video clips. Eventually, this process will allow you to record and reconstruct your own dreams on a computer screen.

I just can’t believe this is happening for real, but according to Professor Jack Gallant—UC Berkeley neuroscientist and coauthor of the research published today in the journal Current Biology—”this is a major leap toward reconstructing internal imagery. We are opening a window into the movies in our minds.”

Indeed, it’s mindblowing. I’m simultaneously excited and terrified. This is how it works:
They used three different subjects for the experiments—incidentally, they were part of the research team because it requires being inside a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging system for hours at a time. The subjects were exposed to two different groups of Hollywood movie trailers as the fMRI system recorded the brain’s blood flow through their brains’ visual cortex.

The readings were fed into a computer program in which they were divided into three-dimensional pixels units called voxels (volumetric pixels). This process effectively decodes the brain signals generated by moving pictures, connecting the shape and motion information from the movies to specific brain actions. As the sessions progressed, the computer learned more and more about how the visual activity presented on the screen corresponded to the brain activity.

An 18-million-second picture palette

After recording this information, another group of clips was used to reconstruct the videos shown to the subjects. The computer analyzed 18 million seconds of random YouTube video, building a database of potential brain activity for each clip. From all these videos, the software picked the one hundred clips that caused a brain activity more similar to the ones the subject watched, combining them into one final movie. Although the resulting video is low resolution and blurry, it clearly matched the actual clips watched by the subjects.

Think about those 18 million seconds of random videos as a painter’s color palette. A painter sees a red rose in real life and tries to reproduce the color using the different kinds of reds available in his palette, combining them to match what he’s seeing. The software is the painter and the 18 million seconds of random video is its color palette. It analyzes how the brain reacts to certain stimuli, compares it to the brain reactions to the 18-million-second palette, and picks what more closely matches those brain reactions. Then it combines the clips into a new one that duplicates what the subject was seeing. Notice that the 18 million seconds of motion video are not what the subject is seeing. They are random bits used just to compose the brain image.

Given a big enough database of video material and enough computing power, the system would be able to re-create any images in your brain.

In this other video you can see how this process worked in the three experimental targets. On the top left square you can see the movie the subjects were watching while they were in the fMRI machine. Right below you can see the movie “extracted” from their brain activity. It shows that this technique gives consistent results independent of what’s being watched—or who’s watching. The three lines of clips next to the left column show the random movies that the computer program used to reconstruct the visual information.

Right now, the resulting quality is not good, but the potential is enormous. Lead research author—and one of the lab test bunnies—Shinji Nishimoto thinks this is the first step to tap directly into what our brain sees and imagines:

Our natural visual experience is like watching a movie. In order for this technology to have wide applicability, we must understand how the brain processes these dynamic visual experiences.

The brain recorders of the future

Imagine that. Capturing your visual memories, your dreams, the wild ramblings of your imagination into a video that you and others can watch with your own eyes.

This is the first time in history that we have been able to decode brain activity and reconstruct motion pictures in a computer screen. The path that this research opens boggles the mind. It reminds me of Brainstorm, the cult movie in which a group of scientists lead by Christopher Walken develops a machine capable of recording the five senses of a human being and then play them back into the brain itself.

This new development brings us closer to that goal which, I have no doubt, will happen at one point. Given the exponential increase in computing power and our understanding of human biology, I think this will arrive sooner than most mortals expect. Perhaps one day you would be able to go to sleep wearing a flexible band labeled Sony Dreamcam around your skull. [UC Berkeley]

Sound, Image and Space: Evolving our Perceptions of Reality

space-dis-place- How Sound and Interactivity Can Reconfigure Our Apprehension of Space

:: ABSTRACT

The author examines the plasticity of the perceptual spaces generated by sound and interactivity and how their dynamic relationships to other perceptual spaces, both medi- ated and physical, affect our overall perception of the space we are in. He does this by analyzing some of his own work, in the wider context of architec- ture and time-based art and design, referencing work by other makers.
©2006 ISAST
LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 16, pp. 20–27, 2006 ::

Jones has been an avant-garde artist since the late 60s working with Cage, Stockhausen, and most recently Simon BIggs.
This is a concise, yet in-depth discussion of the ideas of space, sound, image and how they are related in Jones’ work.

I would love to take a class with him someday!

AudioVisual Composition in the 40s

As I was researching instances of experimental multimedia for my new audiovisual composition class this quarter, I came across the work of Norman McLaren, who experimented in the 1940s(!) with drawing directly onto cinematic film to create sound.

Norman McLaren :: Dots (1940)

Not only was McLaren a pioneer in a hybrid form of sound creation, but it sounds to me that he was also creating a type of music that could very well be classified as early tekno music!

His technique is quite straightforward and a short film can be seen here:

A Beautiful Meshing of Audio, Video and a Hum of Uncertain Hz

I think this is an awesome “chance” rendering of this clip. There is a low warm hum that infuses the sound recorded here.
A lovely addition!

There are soooo many things to see in Felini’s scenes, and the temporality is very different than the pacing of the “usual” film. I quite enjoy the audio visual mix of this one, especially with its enhanced lower register sound dimension. <

The Concept of Time

A sunny sunday afternoon around 4 pm, we scrolled down walk towards to town, a gentel and easy time, while passing Historisches Museum Basel: Haus zum Kirschgarten, a sudden, prompt idea was to push its giant door, it was quiet and dry inside, and the HAPPY HOUR! we have never visiting here, now admission free ;’) The regular exhibiton covered a well documented spectrum of the histroy of early physical experiment of time and optical objects. I came closer to see how the concept of time was applied and decorated.

Visualizing Polyphony

What a day full of inspiration for my video project!
My first class today was tabla drumming.
The teacher just got back from India, so this was our first offical meeting.
He is such a good teacher. We spent the entire hour just going over this one pattern.
My first video project inspiration for the day came when he was demonstrating for us the sonic envelope of the pattern played at different speeds.
At first, when we played the pattern at a very slowed down speed, as this is a beginner level class, it sounded very regular and evenly spaced, almost flat.
Next, the teacher played it at a much faster speed and told us to notice how the differing sounds of the notes he played started to take more of a shape with respect to each other. I really heard the difference!
The beat/notes started to take on a particular arch, contrasting to the relative flat sound they had when played at a very slow, beginning player’s speed.
Next, the teacher played it at breakneck speed, like only tabla masters can. Again, the voice contour of the pattern took on a completely different shape.
After class, I approached the teacher and asked him if I could video him demonstrating and explaining that concept again for my video, and he agreed.
:]
Later in the day, I watched a video on Middle Ages choral music for my seminar in Polyphony with Chagas.
The main argument of the film was that polyphonic music, or the first music with definite meter, was developed in an age when the mechanical clock was first being developed, and that mechanical time that we now take for granted was a new concept.
Polyphonic music took on the newly forming ideas of how everything in time is interlocked, like the cogs inside of a watch, however it was the “composer” (also a new concept at the time, as most music previously was written by anonymous monks and nuns to be sung in praise of God in church masses) who had the ability to manipulate time, and reconstruct it through metered music.
The movie had an awesome music video in it, featuring the song “Viredunt Omnes” by Perotin, the first composer to use 4 part polyphony in music in the Middle Ages.
Here is a snippet:  The Kiss of a Divine Nature.

I really love the way the visuals in the video are projected onto the cathedral setting—so breathtaking! This is exactly what I mean by creating a visual space with video projections…this totally transforms the cathedral, as well as the projected media into another dimension altogether.

In this section of the video, they only voice the two word title of the piece!

Spectral Semiotics

Hello! This is my first post on uoos. HOORAY!

I really like how two of my main classes—on polyphony with Professor Paulo Chagas, and my intermediate video art class with Professor Erica Suderberg—this quarter are about expressing art both visually and sonically with respect to time.

In the next stage of my artistic practice, I want to use the combination of music and moving image to express these types of concepts—as well as investigating the idea of the dimensionality of the projected moving image.

Here is a short essay summarizing Professor Paulo Chagas’ paper, Spectral Semiotics: Sound as Enacted Experience, which discusses Edmund Husserl’s 1905  lecture, “Analysis of the Consciousness of Time”.

Chagas, my faculty advisor in UCR’s Music department, takes Husserl’s ideas a few steps further in the conceptualization of the human musical experience in time from a pheonomenological viewpoint.  In the reading, we are invited to think about ” ‘Now’ [as] a continuous flow which invokes the perception of tones and melody to explain it.”

_________________________________________

CONSCIOUSNESS, TIME and SOUND :::: by no.e Parker

The concepts of time, sound, and melody consciousness are connected in the fact that they are all temporally based phenomena.  Another connection lies in the fact that these three forms of consciousness all exhibit definite envelopes, which can be best described as “flows”.  According to Husserl, the starting point of being conscious of time, sound, and melody is our consciousness and experience of the present moment as an continual yet ever changing event called the “now”.

We navigate through our individual existences constantly mediating between an ever present “now”,  and the events that are the “not now”. This idea can be extended to our consciousness of hearing sound, and perceiving melody.

The Human Consciousness of Time can be separated into the “now”; and the “not now”, or what Husserl refers to as the “just past”. This is merely the representation of the past that has been created in our individual minds.

These two aspects of time are continuously mediated together, and relates to Husserl’s idea of the “primary memory” of representation/retention.

The Human Consciousness of Sound: In terms of the now, this is what is actually sensed by the listener as the tone that is currently being played.

Sound is perceived as a flow:  “a tone in its duration is a temporal object”(Husserl, 24).

Husserl’s retentional consciousness retains consciousness of the past individual tone and presents it in its absence in the listener’s memory.  According to Chagas, the protentional consciousness intends to further tones of the melody.  Each new tone makes us conscious of the tones that have actually elapsed (Chagas, 125), however in decreasing amounts of clarity, as we move increasingly down the temporal scale.

The Human Consciousness of Melody: The now-ness of the melody exists within the tone that is currently playing, with a perception of unity with the tone that has just past. The further away the playing of the melody gets from its beginning, the more remote it becomes to the “now”. When this is the case, the primary memory of that musical beginning is based on something Husserl calls retentional consciousness, or intuition, and no longer directly on the experience of the “now”.  The whole of the melody is not perceived until it has passed through our experience of the now in its entirety, and has been distilled into various shades of itself according to what our intuitive memory creates out of it.

The change of the temporal object, in our case, an individual sound or an entire melody is continual thru time.

_____________________________

Suggested Reading List:

Chagas, Paulo C. 2010. “Spectral Semiotics: Sound as Enacted Experience. A Phenomenological Approach to Temporality in Sound and Music.” In L. Navickaite-Martinelli (ed.). Before and After Music. Proceedings of the 10th International Congress on Musical Signification. Acta Semiotica Fennica XXXVII. Vilnius-Helsinki: Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. 117-126.

Husserl, Edmund. 1990. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893-1917), J. Brough. Dordrecht (trans.). Boston; London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.