Early Pop Research Articles

Zeitschriften als Common Grounds früher Popkulturen

ZusammenfassungDer Artikel untersucht Strukturen in illustrierten Unterhaltungsmagazinen der Weimarer Republik, die dazu dienen, Leser:innen dauerhaft zu binden und die das Gefühl erzeugen, als Rezeptionsgemeinschaft einen Common Ground auszubilden. Ostentative Serialität, Mitmachangebote, die Suggestion einer gemeinsamen Bewertungskultur etc. sorgen für eine ästhetische Kopplung der Zeitschriften mit den Leser:innen und gefühlt auch unter den Leser:innen. Das close reading ausgewählter Zeitschriftenausgaben basiert auf linguistischen und interaktionsanalytischen Grounding-Theorien.

The Evolution of Pop Art and Its Application to the Urban Landscape —— The example of the landscape design work of Martha Schwartz

Taking the development of Pop Art to Post Pop Art as a clue, the urban landscape has gradually given city dwellers different sensory experiences and begun to lead people’s lifestyles. Few people have collated the correlation between the evolution of Pop Art and the landscape design works of Martha Schwartz, and there is no systematic study of Pop Art landscape on urban development. Through the analysis of different design techniques in early Pop Art, New Pop Art and Post Pop Art, and the in-depth analysis of Martha Schwartz who is the representative figure of Pop Art landscape, the influence of Pop Art landscape on urban development is excavated. The study summarizes systematic theories and design methods, and provides ideas for future innovation in urban landscape design.

Impact of cosmic rays on the global 21-cm signal during cosmic dawn

ABSTRACT It is extremely important to understand the processes through which the thermal state of the inter-galactic medium (IGM) evolved in the early universe in order to study the evolution of HI 21-cm signal during cosmic dawn. Here, we consider the heating of the IGM due to cosmic ray (CR) protons generated by the supernovae from both early Pop III and Pop II stars. The low energy CR (cr protons from Pop III supernovae can escape from minihalos and heat the IGM via collision and ionization of hydrogen. Furthermore, high-energy protons generated in Pop II supernovae can escape the hosting halos and heat the IGM via magnetosonic Alfvén waves. We show that the heating due to these CR particles can significantly impact the IGM temperature and hence the global 21-cm signal at z ∼ 14−18. The depth, location, and duration of the 21-cm absorption profile are highly dependent on the efficiencies of CR heating. In particular, the Experiment to Detect the Epoch of Reionization Signature signal can be well fitted by the CR heating along with the Lyman-α coupling and the dark matter--baryon interaction that we consider to achieve a ‘colder IGM background’. Further, we argue that the properties of CRs and the nature of first generation of stars could be constrained by accurately measuring the global 21-cm absorption signal during the cosmic dawn.

Reading Production and Culture

In this article I explore the production of teen girl comics such as Marilyn, Mirabelle, Roxy and Valentine in the promotion of pop music and pop stars from 1955 to 1960. These comics developed alongside early pop music and consisted of serial and self-contained picture stories, beauty and pop music articles, advice columns, and horoscopes. Materiality is a key component of the importance of comics in the promotional culture in a media landscape in which pop music was difficult to access for teenage girls. I analyze the comics within their historical and cultural framework and show how early British pop stars were constructed through paradoxical discourses such as religion, consumerism, and national identity to make them safe for teen girl consumption. The promotion of these star images formed the foundation for later pop music promotion and girl fan practices.

The Filmic Fugue of Ken Russell's Pop Goes the Easel

First broadcast as an episode of BBC Television's Monitor in 1962, Ken Russell's documentary film Pop Goes the Easel profiles four young artists: Pauline Boty, Peter Phillips, Derek Boshier and Peter Blake. With an exuberant and varied approach to filming, Pop Goes the Easel is a rich and revealing document of early Pop Art in London. This article situates the film within the context of television's engagement with the visual arts in the medium's first 25 years. It is argued that part of its significance within the tradition of the visual arts on television is its resistance to the determinations of an explanatory voice and that its achievement combines and develops approaches of photojournalism, documentary and art cinema from the mid and late 1950s. It is further proposed that Pop Goes the Easel is especially noteworthy for its finely tuned balancing of tensions between discourses traditionally understood as oppositional: the stasis of artworks versus the linear narrative of film; the indexical qualities of documentary versus the inventions of fiction; the mass-produced elements and images of popular culture versus the individual authorship and authority of high art; the abstracted rationality of critical discourse versus explosions of embodied sensuality; and the determinations and closure of a singular meaning versus polysemic openness.

New Ways of Analysing the History of Varieties of English – An Acoustic Analysis of Early Pop Music Recordings from Ghana

Focusing on English in Ghana, this paper explores some ways in which early popular music recordings might be used to reconstruct the phonology of colonial and post-colonial Englishes in a situation where other recordings are (mostly) absent.
 While the history of standard and, to a certain degree, non-standard varieties of “Inner Circle Englishes” (Kachru 1986) has received linguistic attention, diachronic investigations of Outer Circle varieties are still the exception. For the most part, descriptions of the history of post-colonial Englishes are restricted to sociohistorical outlines from a macro-sociolinguistic perspective with little if any reference to the linguistic structure of earlier stages of the varieties. One main reason for this lack of diachronic studies is the limited availability of authentic historical data. In contrast to spoken material, written sources are more readily available, since early travel accounts, diaries or memoirs of missionaries, traders and administrators often contain quotes and at times there are even documents produced by speakers of colonial Englishes themselves (cf. the diary of Antera Duke, a late 18th century Nigerian slave trader; Behrendt et al. 2010). Such material provides insights into the morphology, syntax and the lexicon of earlier stages of varieties of English (cf. Hickey 2010), but it is inadequate for the reconstruction of phonological systems. Obtaining spoken material, which permits phonological investigation, is far more difficult, since there are comparatively few early recordings of Outer Circle Englishes. In such cases, popular music recordings can fill the gap.
 I will present first results of an acoustic analysis of Ghanaian “Highlife” songs from the 1950s to 1960s. My results show that vowel subsystems in the 1950s and 1960s show a different kind of variation than in present-day Ghanaian English. Particularly the STRUT lexical set is realized as /a, ɔ/ in the Highlife-corpus. Today, it is realized with three different vowels in Ghanaian English, /a, ε, ɔ/ (Huber 2004: 849). A particular emphasis will also be on the way Praat (Boersma and Weenink 2011) can be used to analyze music recordings.

The House As SKIN

This paper investigates J. G. Ballard's vision of the house, tracing its origin to the ideas expressed by the British architectural avant-gardes of the fifties and sixties; these regarded inhabited spaces as psycho-physical membranes, bio-architectural constructs functioning as extensions of the body. The philosophical sources of Ballard's early fiction are also investigated to show the impact of Existentialism on his concept of dwelling, both via early Pop Art and directly through Sartre's and Heidegger's works. One of the aims is to disclose the importance for Ballard of Archigram's fantasies of bio-technological responsive houses but also to interrogate the imbrications in his fiction of such fantasies with contemporary theoretical ideas of dwelling (McLuhan, Banham), authenticity, and the estranging chaos and unhomeliness of the world (Heidegger). The article discusses specific examples of Ballard's unhomely, post-human habitations, from psychotropic houses to the neo-gothic technological tower-block, showing how they are imbued with contemporary architectural and philosophical theories. A special emphasis is placed on the uncanny and – so I argue here – gendered spaces of High-Rise .

Seductive subversion: women Pop artists, 1958-1968

Foreword Running on Empty: Women, Pop and the Society of Consumption Beyond the Surface: Women and Pop Art 1958-1968 Pop Proto-Feminisms: Beyond the Paradox of the Woman Pop Artist Soft Sculpture Sunshine Reclamations: Rosalyn Drexler's Early Pop Paintings, 1961-67 The Figure of the Artist, The Figure of the Woman Painting Manhattan in the Era of Pop--Barbro Ostlihn A Transgression Too Far: Women Artists and the British Pop Art Movement Notes Acknowledgments Index of Artworks Illustrated Image Credits

The radio to infrared emission of very high redshift gamma-ray bursts: probing early star formation through molecular and atomic absorption lines

We evaluate the broadband afterglow emission of very high redshift gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) using standard relativistic blastwave models with both forward and reverse shock components. For a broad range of parameters, a generic property for GRBs at redshifts $z \sim$ 5--30 is that the emission peaks in the millimeter to far-infrared bands with milli-Jansky flux levels, first at a few hours after the burst due to the reverse shock, and then again for several days afterwards with somewhat lower flux due to the forward shock. The radio, submillimeter and infrared continuum emission should be readily detectable out to $z \ga 30$ by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), Extended Very Large Array (EVLA), Square Kilometer Array (SKA) and other facilities. For relatively bright bursts, spectroscopic measurements of molecular and atomic absorption lines due to ambient protostellar gas may be possible. Utilizing models of primordial protostellar clouds, we show that under certain conditions, appreciable absorption may be caused by HD rotational transitions even in metal-free environments. After sufficient metal enrichment, absorption from CO rotational transitions and [OI] fine-structure transitions can also become strong. With appropriate observing strategies in combination with optical telescopes, ALMA and/or SKA may be able to detect such lines, offering a unique probe of physical conditions in individual Pop III and early Pop II star forming regions. We also remark on potential near-infrared absorption features due to electronic transitions of H$_2$.

PARIS CIRCUS NEW YORK JUNK: JEAN DUBUFFET AND CLAES OLDENBURG, 1959–1962

This article explores the artistic relation between Jean Dubuffet and Claes Oldenburg, attentive to the shifts in the critical reception of Dubuffet in the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The essay focuses on Oldenburg's two major early environments, The Street and The Store, arguing that Oldenburg anticipated his critical reception by claiming the influence of Dubuffet over his work and turning this into a creative tool. In the process, Oldenburg transposed and ultimately rewrote Dubuffet's postwar vision of the ‘common man’ in the context of early pop art. Dubuffet's Paris Circus paintings from 1961–62 are briefly discussed in order to underscore a concept of influence as productive anachronism.

Early pop song writers and their backgrounds

What was the first Japanese pop hit? The answer will vary according to definition, but undoubtedly come from one of the following five songs:(1) ‘Kachûsha no Uta’ (Kachusha's Song): first sung on stage by Matsui Sumako in March 1914; words by Shimamura Hôgetsu and Sôma Gyofû, music by Nakayama Shimpei; recorded by Matsui for Orient Records under the title of ‘Fukkatsu Shôka.(2) ‘Sendô Kouta’ (A Boatman's Ditty): released in sheet music form in March 1921; words by Noguchi Ujō, music by Nakayama Shimpei.(3) ‘Habu no Minato’ (The Harbour of Habu): written in 1923; words by Noguchi Ujô, music by Nakayama Shimpei; originally recorded by Satô Chiyako for Victor Records in April 1928.(4) ‘Kimi Koishi’ (You, Sweetheart): written in 1928; words by Shiguré Otowa, music by Sasa Kôka; originally recorded by Futamura Tei'ichi for Victor Records in December 1928.(5) ‘Tokyo Kôshin-kyoku’ (Tokyo March): written in 1929; words by Saijô Yaso, music by Nakayama Shimpei; originally sung by Satô Chiyako for Victor Records in June 1929.By looking at how these five songs were put together and became hits, we may be able to understand the origins of the professional song writer in Japan and the early growth of the domestic recording industry.