Search Results

In the history of theatre buildings, the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza by Andrea Palladio is often regarded as the archetype of the evolution of spaces for drama and music in modern European culture. Even within the specific subject of architectural acoustics, the Olympic Theatre represents a sort of symbolic beginning of a new era, since the main idea which led to its realisation, that is, the transformation of the Greco-Roman theatre into a closed volume, started to pose problems that had previously been unknown or neglected due to the completely different sound-propagation processes experienced in the open-air theatres of antiquity. This chapter focuses on the recent campaign of acoustic measurements carried out by the author in the Teatro Olimpico. Among the results discussed are the long reverberation time and low clarity, which make the hall more suitable for music than speech.

Things engender doubles of themselves. They cast reflections and shadows of themselves on other things. Aural images of things move off them. The sonorous images of things, their cracklings, thumpings, and thuds link up to form rustlings, rolls, or din. Things react to these doubles; the moss flourishes in the shadow of the building, the grass lifts itself out of the imprint of the deer’s body. Things react to their doubles: bushes raise their flowers above their shadows. In practical handling and managing things we deal with their carpentry, which as it becomes familiar we attend to less and less. But so much of our pleasure in the world, pleasure in being in the world, is a pleasure in the glows, gleams, and halos about things, in the reflections and shadows things cast about themselves. Our gaze skips and sways with them, attracted and delighted by them. The shadows, reflections, halos, and reverberations of things also appeal to us, summon us, and order us.

The introduction to the collection discusses the concept of reverberations of revolution and differentiates it from other metaphors such as waves, networks and series. It also situates the research within comparative studies of revolution.

It is commonly thought that Derrida's reason in creating his most architectural and most explicit sexual work Glas points the way to some exit or escape from the prison of Western values so entrenched as to have become transparent. Glas is a book that goes beyond the farthest reaches of book culture, yet it established a textual modality of reverberation, supplementarity, chiasmatic reversal, and constriction. This is all by way of saying that there is an implicit architecture of history in Glas that its ideology's appeal sounds its silent echo. On the other hand, the Hegel column in Glas has been questioned to be extrapolated in comprehensive fashion during an epoch of Western culture but then soon terminated. Moreover, the split of Modernity resounds at a major juncture in Derrida's recounting of Hegelian Christianity.

This chapter provides an account of Bhojpuri popular culture, highlighting its standout features and tendencies. Historicizing the libidinal solidarity of assertive masculinities, the chapter recounts the history of Bhojpuri cinema from the origins to the contemporary period, in which it has emerged as a public scandal. Engaging at length with three particularly iconic Bhojpuri films – Sasura Bada Paisawala (2004), Nirahua Rickshawala (2007) and Jaan Tere Naam (2013) – the chapter navigates a formal grammar shifting from rural melodramas towards action cinema, celebrating the eruption of masculine energy and the increasingly scandalous portrayal of the female body. The chapter also highlights recurrent exchanges between Hindi and Bhojpuri film industries, and their interdependence on infrastructure, personnel and locales, with particular stress on gender politics and male stardom. In summary, the chapter argues that the libidinal economy of Bhojpuri cinema is anchored within a twin-logic which toggles between moralizing and scandalizing imperatives.

This chapter investigates transient phenomena in sound and vibration. Sabine’s theory of reverberation is first presented, with applications in room acoustics. The extension to statistical energy analysis and coupled subsystems is next studied. The conditions of an exponential law for time decay and the notion of reverberation time are finally discussed.

This chapter addresses the “what for” question regarding voice leading. Experiments show that listeners perceive adding streams to a texture as pleasurable. At the same time, increasing the textural density makes it more difficult for listeners to parse an acoustic scene. This chapter suggests that the brain rewards itself for successfully parsing scenes and that the evoked pleasure is proportional to the scene’s complexity. Inspired by the concept of the brain teaser, this phenomenon is dubbed ear teasing. In addition to explaining why passages constructed according to voice-leading principles would be heard as sounding better, ear teasing also provides a plausible explanation of the preference for reverberant musical sounds (in contrast to speech) and stereo reproduction (in contrast to mono).

Chapter 5 explores—from the direction of non-mainstream poetics—the politics of embodiment and reception in Denise Riley’s poetry. Its focus is her late-twentieth-century avant-garde pamphlets and small press publications. What is at stake in Riley’s poetic emphasis on the punctured, uncertain, and wounded textual-corporeal body? Why do her poems invite readers to witness the traces of their physical making/printing? The chapter examines what Riley’s use of unmarked space can teach readers about their role in the politics of production and reception. It explores how sparse type energizes gaps between words (giving them a fugitive figuration) and draws attention to the conflict involved in acts of listening and receiving, inking and uttering. The chapter considers whether such effects are compromised when larger, more commercial houses republish the works.

This chapter focuses on the families of those involved in county lines, looking at how violence and intimidation often reverberates back into families. Familial reverberations occur when issues arising from criminal activity, or proximity to it, return to impact upon the domestic situation or wider family. Commonly this occurs due to: unpaid debts; teaching people ‘a lesson’; revenge; intimidation; demonstration of power; and as proxy method of reaching a gang-affiliate not personally locatable. In this way, the physical violence is transferred by proxy to other family members as a substitute. The type of familial reverberation depends upon: the principal target; trigger motivation; role of target; and relationship to urban street gang. The chapter then explores the range of potential responses available to local youth once a county line emerges in their town, noting emergence can offer either opportunity or threat. It also offers a spectrum of local adaptations employed by local youth before establishing a new theory of asymmetric clash and the gang Sprouting model — both detailing how county line emergence can dramatically impact host locations generating violence and fear.

This chapter focuses on miking methods, mixing strategies, and performance styles developed by studio workers and on-air talent for making radio music. These strategies were governed by five principles: (1) acoustic plasticity (manipulating reverberation to simulate different acoustic environments); (2) sonic restraint (eschewing forceful concert-hall projections in favor of more subdued, microphone-appropriate performance styles); (3) flattening of curves (compression of dynamic range, yielding a uniformly close-up sound); (4) sonic parsimony (reduction of sonic inputs to maintain clarity of reproduction); and (5) intelligibility (rejecting fidelity to real-world spatial relationships in favor of a clear and evenly balanced sound). Embraced for broadcasting during the early and middle years of the 1920s, these principles helped to professionalize and legitimize radio’s emerging forms of soundwork and would also inform parallel strategies pursued in recording studios and Hollywood soundstages, facilitating broader shifts in period sound culture.

Performance is merely the first step in the way we hear music. Acoustics of concert halls, churches, electronics and recording, or broadcasting all modify the original sounds, often quite dramatically. Even in the best auditoria no two seats will receive identical sounds. Buildings designed for different types of music will rarely perform well across a range of musical performances. Understanding this can help in the choice of seating. For music that is broadcast or played from recordings there are considerable changes from the electronics, recording, transmission, reception, home electronics, and acoustics. This chapter examines many possible situations and the attempts at optimization. Hearing differs considerably between people, and it changes with age and our level of concentration.

Chapter 8 traces the history of sound spatialization, starting with instrumental/vocal music and continuing into the digital age. The rest of the chapter outlines the scope and dimensions of spatialization as a compositional issue. The chapter especially discusses spatialization on multiple timescales and the virtual/physical space distinction. The next sections focus on important topics of relevance to composition, including the use of spatial depth, audio cinematics, pluriphonic sound projection, the vertical dimension, sound rotation, superdirectional sound beams, and the growing field of immersive sound technology. The final section, “Articulating space,” centers on a table of spatial oppositions: a basic set of possible spatial gestures.