Sound Objects Research Articles

An interactive environment for digital registration of human behaviour for biofeedback purposes

Unceasing development of computing power of modern computers and advanced graphics card functions enable very faithful projections of the virtual world. However, issues related to real-time object generation and object interaction are complex research problems. A designer and programmer face a dilemma of modifying the model. Simplifying the model significantly affects minimisation of a detail. The article presents a position of digital registration of human behaviour in the virtual world. A study of human behaviour has been proposed, where the main stimulant is not an image but a sound. Participants heard different sounds and responded to them. Parameters such as: pulse, hand movement, general posture and movements of the entire body were registered. An analysis of change in the scope of given psychological modality is important for biofeedback, which allows activating a self-regulatory ability by a body’s feedback. In the authors’ research, depending on variability of a respondent’s reaction, a further interaction with the virtual sound object is created. In this environment, fear of dogs was safely examined. The paper presents the results of pilot studies, which indicated that it is possible to control human reactions by analysing registered parameters, learning to control their own reactions and with more frequent biofeedback training – working out concentration and coping in the most extreme conditions.

Sounding Modernism: Rhythm and Sonic Mediation in Modern Literature and Film ed. by Julian Murphet, Helen Groth, and Penelope Hone

Reviewed by: Sounding Modernism: Rhythm and Sonic Mediation in Modern Literature and Film ed. by Julian Murphet, Helen Groth, and Penelope Hone Eleni Loukopoulou (bio) Sounding Modernism: Rhythm and Sonic Mediation in Modern Literature and Film, edited by Julian Murphet, Helen Groth, and Penelope Hone. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017. viii + 254 pp. £75.00 cloth, £24.99 paper, £75.00 ebook. This groundbreaking collection of essays explores how rhythm and sound were mediated in modern literature and film during the period 1890–1950. The contributors deploy theoretical approaches from sound and media studies to foreground their sonic aesthetics through multiple perspectives. A key point of reference for the editors and the contributors to this volume is Roland Barthes's essay "Listening" and his distinction that "[h]earing is a physiological phenomenon; listening is a psychological act."1 As the editors explain, "[l]istening in this sense is a selfconsciously critical process, requiring far more of the reader than the automatic internalisation of an aesthetic ideal" (8). Barthes's analysis influenced Garrett Stewart's methods in his Reading Voices: Literature and the Phonotext; by privileging "listening over hearing" (8), he persuasively stresses the complex processes of literary reading and the "receptivity of the body to phonic and graphic mediations—from the brain's cognitive rhythms to the reverberating surfaces of the diaphragm, throat, tongue, and palate" (8).2 Taking this research into consideration, the editors highlight the significance of Sounding Modernism and explain that "[t]he rich nexus of new sound-recording technologies, new vocabularies of and for sonic phenomena, new standardisations of rhythm and speed, and the weird displacements of 'voice' peculiar to modernity offer unparalleled resonators for the period in literary history known as modernism" (4). Specifically, they draw attention to the impact of the gramophone record and how it interrelates to the way writers used the technique of onomatopoeia in innovative ways. They highlight the fact that [w]hen Joyce came to inscribe the sounds made by the Blooms' domes-tic cat in Ulysses (1922), what mattered (for the first time in literary history) was not the settled national conventions of a "meow," "miaow" or "miau," but the infinitesimal intra-textual distinctions between a "Mkgnao!" a "Mrkgnao!" and a "Mrkrgnao!," not to mention an irregular "Gurrhr!" (7) The editors elucidate such distinctive word formations by convincingly asserting that "it is far from an exegetical stretch to insist that all of this fanatical attention to the letter-by-letter specificity of onomatopoeia's exquisite new pedantries in Joyce's hands can be traced to the impact of a machine that was automatically recording sounds [End Page 192] as sounds and not as alphabetical glyphs" (7). Apart from onomatopoeia, one of the editors, Julian Murphet, is interested in the theoretical analysis of sounds that are soundless, "transposed synaesthetically into image" in modernist texts (20). This becomes the focal point in Murphet's essay. Among others, Murphet explores silence in Samuel Beckett's Texts for Nothing.3 Examining the final Text 13, Murphet highlights Beckett's preoccupation with silence and repetition and the way he breaks "down the units of sense into a perforated surface of sheer language as such" attaining silence "by way of a murmur," producing thus a "prose murmur" (32). Similarly, the examination of silence or ellipsis, but this time in relation to the representation of race, is central in Julie Beth Napolin's contribution. As she observes, in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises,4 a black jazz musician's speech moves further and further away from representation, being first a dialect rendering of a racialised timbre. … [T]he matter of his voice is left unnarrated, calling upon the reader's inner sense of sound and that reader's archive of racial associations of voice. It is then a singing, a chanting, until finally it is an ellipsis, a spacing out within written discourse itself. (122) She concludes that, "[w]hile the racialised sound object has been marginalised, it remains 'in' the narrative in elided and distorted (but also compressed) form. The racialised drummer is 'there,' at the audiovisual margins of narratability: the ellipsis is a visualised fracture in articulation" (123). The perception of speech...

Materiality in Sound Art

This article investigates the recent resurgence of kinetic sound art in light of the relationship between art and material. It does this by studying the history of mechanical musical instruments and kinetic art, the role of immateriality in the history of Western art, and the renewed focus on materiality in the arts. Materiality is key to understanding the resurgence of kinetics in sound art. The first part of this article studies the historical narratives of materiality in sound art, while the second part investigates materiality in my own works as more contemporary examples. Here the text turns to exploration of the material and acoustic properties of metal rods and plates, and suggests that direct contact with sound-producing objects provides opportunities for new art forms where the morphology of sound can be developed in dialogue with the physical objects and the surrounding space. By examining the underlying acoustic principles of rods and plates, we get a deeper understanding of the relationship between mathematical models and the actual sounding objects. Using the acoustic model with basic input parameters enables us to explore the timbral possibilities of the sound objects. This allows us to shape the spectrum of acoustic sound objects with great attention to detail, and makes models from spectromorphology relevant during the construction of the objects. The physical production of sound objects becomes both spectral composition and shaping of spatial objects. This highlights the importance of knowledge of both materials and acoustic principles, and questions the traditional perception of sound art and music as immaterial art forms.

The Relationship Between Tobacco and Cannabis Use: A Review

Background: Based on the prevalence and health implications of tobacco and cannabis use, aiming to reduce their use, especially among youth, is a sound objective at both the individual and public health level. A proper understanding of the relationships between tobacco and cannabis use may help to achieve this goal. Objectives: To review the relationships between tobacco and cannabis use. Methods: A selective review of the literature. Results: We present an overview of the motivations for tobacco and cannabis use, and their perceived harmfulness. The article then reviews the gateway theory, reverse gateway theory, route of administration theory, and common liability theory. We describe the link between co-use and dependence symptoms, and the substitution phenomenon between tobacco and cannabis use. Three forms of simultaneous use–mulling, blunt smoking, and chasing–and their impacts are explained. We summarize the impact of tobacco use on cannabis (and vice versa) treatment outcomes, and, finally, review new treatments that simultaneously target tobacco and cannabis dependence. Most of the literature reviewed here relates to substance use among adolescents and young adults. Conclusions: The use of tobacco and cannabis–two of the most widely used substances around the world–are strongly intertwined in several respects. Both health professionals and researchers should have well-informed views on this issue to better evaluate, understand, inform, and provide care to their patients.

Objective Regolith-Landform Mapping in a Regolith Dominated Terrain to Inform Mineral Exploration

An objective method for generating statistically sound objective regolith-landform maps using widely accessible digital topographic and geophysical data without requiring specific regional knowledge is demonstrated and has application as a first pass tool for mineral exploration in regolith dominated terrains. This method differs from traditional regolith-landform mapping methods in that it is not subject to interpretation and bias of the mapper. This study was undertaken in a location where mineral exploration has occurred for over 20 years and traditional regolith mapping had recently been completed using a standardized subjective methodology. An unsupervised classification was performed using a Digital Elevation Model, Topographic Position Index, and airborne gamma-ray radiometrics as data inputs resulting in 30 classes that were clustered to eight groups representing regolith types. The association between objective and traditional mapping classes was tested using the ‘Mapcurves’ algorithm to determine the ‘Goodness-of-Fit’, resulting in a mean score of 26.4% between methods. This Goodness-of-Fit indicates that this objective map may be used for initial mineral exploration in regolith dominated terrains.

Identification of breeding objectives for Begait goat in western Tigray, North Ethiopia

A sound breeding objective is the basis for genetic improvement in overall economic merit of farm animals. Begait goat is one of the identified breeds in Ethiopia, which is a multipurpose breed as it serves as source of cash income and source of food (meat and milk). Despite its importance, no formal breeding objectives exist for Begait goat. The objective of the present study was to identify breeding objectives for the breed through two approaches: using own-flock ranking experiment and developing deterministic bio-economic models as a preliminary step towards designing sustainable breeding programs for the breed. In the own-flock ranking experiment, a total of 45 households were visited at their homesteads and were asked to select, with reasons, the first best, second best, third best, and the most inferior does from their own flock. Age, previous reproduction, and production information of the identified animals were inquired; live body weight and some linear body measurements were taken. The bio-economic model included performance traits (weights, daily weight gain, kidding interval, litter size, milk yield, kid mortality, pregnancy, and replacement rates) and economic (revenue and costs) parameters. It was observed that there was close agreement between the farmers’ ranking and bio-economic model results. In general, the results of the present study indicated that Begait goat owners could improve performance of their goats and profitability of their farms by selecting for 6-month weight, litter size, pre-weaning kid survival rate, and milk yield.

Digital interactions

This article discusses a prototype that explores the simultaneous manipulation of three-dimensional digital forms and sound. Our multi-media study examines the aesthetic affordances of tight parameter couplings between digital three-dimensional objects and sound objects based on notions of process and user-machine interaction. It investigates how effective cohesion between visual, spatial and sonic might be established through changes perceived in parallel; what Michel Chion refers to as 'synchresis'. Drawing from Mike Blow's work On the Simultaneous Perception of Sound and Three-Dimensional Objects and processual art, this prototype uses computer technology for forming and mediating a creative practice involving 3D animation, sound synthesis, digital signal processing and programming. Our practice-based approach entails the rendering of a three-dimensional digital object in Processing whose form changes over time according to specific actions. Spatial data is sent via Open Sound Control (OSC) to Max MSP in real time, where sound is synthesized and then manipulated. Sonic parameters such as amplitude, spectral density/width and timbre are controlled by select spatial parameters from the three-dimensional object. Sound processing is realized based on the changing of the three-dimensional object in time through basic actions such as splitting, distorting, cutting, shattering and rotating. We use digital technology to look beyond basic synchronisation of sound and vision to a more complex cohesion of percepts, based on changes to myriad sonic and visual parameters experienced concurrently.

Embodied sound design

Abstract Embodied sound design is a process of sound creation that involves the designer’s vocal apparatus and gestures. The possibilities of vocal sketching were investigated by means of an art installation. An artist–designer interpreted several vocal self-portraits and rendered the corresponding synthetic sketches by using physics-based and concatenative sound synthesis. Both synthesis techniques afforded a broad range of artificial sound objects, from concrete to abstract, all derived from natural vocalisations. The vocal-to-synthetic transformation process was then automated in SEeD, a tool allowing to set and play interactively with physics- or corpus-based sound models. The voice-driven process and tool, developed and evaluated through design exercises, show how an embodied sound sketching system can work in supporting the externalisation of sonic concepts.

Plasticidade das imagens audiovisuais no espaço acústico-ressonante do cinema

O presente ensaio examina a relação entre espaço e comunicação nos meios audiovisuais marcado pelo domínio do regime escópico em detrimento dos objetos sonoros. Reivindica-se o realinhamento do papel do som na definição audiovisual da cultura, de modo a reposicionar a importância da dimensão sonoro-acústica. Para isso, a hipótese de fundo reconhece que o cinema tem um papel decisivo na renovação da relação do som com o ruído, sobretudo no que diz respeito à consolidação do espaço acústico-ressonante criado pelos meios elétricos. Por conseguinte, entende que matérias sonoras são tão determinantes das imagens audiovisuais quanto a visualidade, como se pode averiguar nas análises fílmicas comparativas. Espera-se, assim, resgatar o legado das culturas acústicas agora reprocessadas em termos de experiência audiovisual de caráter eletrônico-digital.

Early goal-directed therapy using a physiological holistic view: the ANDROMEDA-SHOCK\u2014a randomized controlled trial

BackgroundSeptic shock is a highly lethal condition. Early recognition of tissue hypoperfusion and its reversion are key factors for limiting progression to multiple organ dysfunction and death. Lactate-targeted resuscitation is the gold-standard under current guidelines, although it has several pitfalls including that non-hypoxic sources of lactate might predominate in an unknown proportion of patients. Peripheral perfusion-targeted resuscitation might provide a real-time response to increases in flow that could lead to a more timely decision to stop resuscitation, thus avoiding fluid overload and the risks of over-resuscitation. This article reports the rationale, study design and analysis plan of the ANDROMEDA-SHOCK Study.MethodsANDROMEDA-SHOCK is a randomized controlled trial which aims to determine if a peripheral perfusion-targeted resuscitation is associated with lower 28-day mortality compared to a lactate-targeted resuscitation in patients with septic shock with less than 4 h of diagnosis. Both groups will be treated with the same sequential approach during the 8-hour study period pursuing normalization of capillary refill time versus normalization or a decrease of more than 20% of lactate every 2 h. The common protocol starts with fluid responsiveness assessment and fluid loading in responders, followed by a vasopressor and an inodilator test if necessary. The primary outcome is 28-day mortality, and the secondary outcomes are: free days of mechanical ventilation, renal replacement therapy and vasopressor support during the first 28 days after randomization; multiple organ dysfunction during the first 72 h after randomization; intensive care unit and hospital lengths of stay; and all-cause mortality at 90-day. A sample size of 422 patients was calculated to detect a 15% absolute reduction in mortality in the peripheral perfusion group with 90% power and two-tailed type I error of 5%. All analysis will follow the intention-to-treat principle.ConclusionsIf peripheral perfusion-targeted resuscitation improves 28-day mortality, this could lead to simplified algorithms, assessing almost in real-time the reperfusion process, and pursuing more physiologically sound objectives. At the end, it might prevent the risk of over-resuscitation and lead to a better utilization of intensive care unit resources.Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03078712 (registered retrospectively March 13th, 2017)

Musical and Musicianly Listening in Intercultural Practice

This paper discusses the function of listening in intercultural musical collaboration, with reference to a number of examples taken from the author’s practice, within the Vietnamese/Swedish group The Six Tones. Through the lens of Pierre Schaeffer’s concepts of musical and musicianly listening, the paper suggests that intercultural exchange takes place in a liminal field between traditions. This demands a particular openness which can be developed by operating musicianly listening, a form of listening which actively seeks to “innovate in the facture of sound objects.”

Keeping track of sound objects in space: The contribution of early-stage auditory areas

The influential dual-stream model of auditory processing stipulates that information pertaining to the meaning and to the position of a given sound object is processed in parallel along two distinct pathways, the ventral and dorsal auditory streams. Functional independence of the two processing pathways is well documented by conscious experience of patients with focal hemispheric lesions. On the other hand there is growing evidence that the meaning and the position of a sound are combined early in the processing pathway, possibly already at the level of early-stage auditory areas. Here, we investigated how early auditory areas integrate sound object meaning and space (simulated by interaural time differences) using a repetition suppression fMRI paradigm at 7 T. Subjects listen passively to environmental sounds presented in blocks of repetitions of the same sound object (same category) or different sounds objects (different categories), perceived either in the left or right space (no change within block) or shifted left-to-right or right-to-left halfway in the block (change within block). Environmental sounds activated bilaterally the superior temporal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, and right precentral cortex. Repetitions suppression effects were measured within bilateral early-stage auditory areas in the lateral portion of the Heschl's gyrus and posterior superior temporal plane. Left lateral early-stages areas showed significant effects for position and change, interactions Category x Initial Position and Category x Change in Position, while right lateral areas showed main effect of category and interaction Category x Change in Position. The combined evidence from our study and from previous studies speaks in favour of a position-linked representation of sound objects, which is independent from semantic encoding within the ventral stream and from spatial encoding within the dorsal stream. We argue for a third auditory stream, which has its origin in lateral belt areas and tracks sound objects across space.

The influence of dialect in sound symbolic size perception

Prior research on sound symbolism and referent object size establishes that words with front vowels are perceived to refer to smaller objects than do back vowels (Ohala 1997; Klink 2000). Some dialects of American English exhibit vowel movement along the front-back axis which may influence perceived object size. This study focuses on California English /u/-fronting (Hinton et al. 1987) and predicts that shifting from a standardly back vowel [u] to a more front vowel [ʉ] is paired with a shift from a large perceived object size to a smaller perceived object size. This paper describes two experiments in which participants either silently read (reading task) or listened (listening task) to stimulus words and rated perceived object size. California English speakers in the reading task experiment perceived words with /u/ to be smaller than did non-California English speakers. This result suggests that sound symbolic perception is sensitive to fine phonetic variability due to a person’s dialect.

Examining the effect of emerging audio formats and technology on acoustical space in film composition and mixing

Because film audio must balance the three basic soundtrack elements of dialogue, music, and effects, acoustical masking and professional disagreements during the post-production mixing process affect the importance given to the film score. Dialogue is customarily and logically given priority, causing film composers and music mixers to work around the acoustical space taken up by speech, typically through panning, equalization, avoidance of speech frequencies, and “density” in orchestration. Improvements in audio systems and formats, such as surround sound and now Dolby Atmos, are affording composers and mixers more acoustical space to avoid masking effects without a loss of dramatic support for the film, including the introduction of height cues and greater surround panning control, as well as sound objects, which control the localization of discrete sounds in 3D space. The new technologies also present acoustical design challenges as they interact in surprising ways with specific “acoustic signatures” of widely-varying media presentation spaces. Acoustical environment examples from earlier and recent film mixes as well as critical literature are given. Composers and mixers are encouraged to explore the range of expressive acoustical options made available by emerging technologies and the more widely-compatible mixing spaces designed for them.

From Sound to Sound Space, Sound Environment, Soundscape, Sound Milieu or Ambiance …

This article proposes approaching the phenomenon of sound as a fabric of relationships. Critiquing the notion of a sound object as it has become defined thanks to the fixity enabled by sound recording, it focuses on the characteristics of sound that converge towards a relational approach and suggests that there is an inextricable link between the vibrating object, the milieu in which the vibration spreads and the subject who listens. It is probably for this reason that current research — whether in music, sound art or other disciplines that centre on sound, from sound studies to environmental ecology — implicitly seeks to move beyond the concept of sound alone in favour of compounds that combine sound with other elements. While the notions of sound ‘spaces’ and sound ‘environments’ appear as the default options here, three other compounds in particular highlight, in their own way, the relational approach: ‘soundscapes’, ‘sound milieus’, and sound ‘ambiances’ and ‘atmospheres’.

Age-related differences in orienting attention to sound object representations

We examined the effect of age on listeners' ability to orient attention to an item in auditory short-term memory (ASTM) using high-density electroencephalography, while participants completed a delayed match-to-sample task. During the retention interval, an uninformative or an informative visual retro-cue guided attention to an item in ASTM. Informative cues speeded response times, but only for young adults. In young adults, informative retro-cues generated greater event-related potential amplitude between 450 and 650 ms at parietal sites, and an increased sustained potential over the left central scalp region, thought to index the deployment of attention and maintenance of the cued item in ASTM, respectively. Both modulations were reduced in older adults. Alpha and low beta oscillatory power suppression was greater when the retro-cue was informative than uninformative, especially in young adults. Our results point toward an age-related decline in orienting attention to the cued item in ASTM. Older adults may be dividing their attention between all items in working memory rather than selectively focusing attention on a single cued item.

Acoustic Science in Intelligent Environments

In this article is presented a revision of previous works related to acoustic science and intelligent environments, to establish a connection between these areas. The described works combine physics, psychoacoustics and neuroscience, including also sound objects and automatic acoustic management. The research’s goal is to show how these immersive environments are created with the sound as the main element to take into account, and other elements that are part of these systems. This description allows establishing the reference framework to create a reflective middleware for the acoustic self-management in intelligent environments, to make possible the inclusion of more audio elements in these spaces, in order to improve and extend the capabilities and benefits offered by the intelligent environments.

Sound as Multiplicity: Listening with Thoreau, Cage and Serres

Despite the gradual proliferation of scholarly work around sound, and in particular its role in experimental music, there is little explicitly sonic philosophy that attempts to provide a ground for such research. Decades after the work of Pierre Schaeffer to theorise theobjet sonore– sound object – and John Cage’s (1973: 10) call to ‘let sounds be themselves’, there remain few ontological and epistemological frameworks to support investigations into aesthetic, ethical and political questions related to experimental music practice and the place of sound in it. This makes writing about sound difficult and contributes to a lack of clarity or specificity in the use of terms such as ‘sound’, ‘noise’ and ‘silence’. In this article I seek to address this, connecting the work of transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, experimental music composer and thinker Cage and philosopher Michel Serres with my own experience to develop an account of sound in experimental music that approaches it as multiplicity. This allows sound to be heard as physical, perceptual and conceptual and brings into question the reproducibility of sound, emphasising the place of sound as part of its environment.

A Typo-morphological Approach to Human–Machine Interaction Analysis in Music

This article proposes an analytical perspective on the aural analysis of human–machine interaction. Starting from Pierre Schaeffer’s musical thinking, it focuses on the perception of sound morphologies that generate from human–machine interaction. This interaction, usually interpreted under the perspective of the devices and technological innovation, will be interpreted through the perspective of musical perception and semantics. In the article, the author applies the criterion of ‘allure’, that permits the analysis of the sound object’s sustain and indicates the sound agent as mechanical, living or natural. ‘Allure’ is used as a theoretical framework for the analysis of human–computer interaction (HCI) in music. Inspired by a hypothetical perceptive Turing’s test, the author employs the ‘allure’ criterion as a conceptual tool for an aural analysis of human–machine interaction: aural analysis can indeed reveal the interaction of sound agents through the cognitive mechanism of motor imagery. This approach can be extended and developed in music information retrieval. The author will develop this reflection showing the actuality of Schaeffer’s perspective in HCI analysis. Finally, to highlight the interaction between human and electronic sound sources, the author will consider a case study: the first movement of Traiettoria for piano and electronics by Marco Stroppa.

Rhythmic ostensive gestures: How adults facilitate infants’ entrance into early triadic interactions

For decades, the literature on the emergence of triadic interactions considers the end of the first year of life as the time when children become able to communicate with others intentionally about a referent. Prior to that, children only relate in dyads, either with someone else or with an object. However, several researchers claim that referents are not naturally given in human communication and that they need to be established in interaction with others.In this study, we focus on earlier triadic interactions initiated by adults, when young babies still require an adult to bring the material world within their reach. In these early triadic interactions, ostensive gestures (with the object in the hand) are one of the first means of enabling the establishment of shared reference. Such gestures are easier to understand since sign (gesture) and referent (object) coincide. We conducted a longitudinal study with 6 babies filmed at 2, 3 and 4 months old in interaction with their mothers and a sounding object (a maraca). We analyzed different communicative initiatives by the adult and the child’s responses.The results show that children come to understand the adult’s communicative intention gradually through interaction. Adults include children in organized communicative “niches” based on ostensive actions, both through ostensive gestures and demonstrations of the use of the object. Consequently, the first shared understandings between adult and child take place around the object and its uses. Rhythm is a powerful tool used to structure the interaction. Eventually, adults provide space to children to actively interact with the sounding object themselves. These results highlight the importance of considering ostensive actions as a communicative tool that favors joint attention and action. They also bring some light to the interdependence between a child who actively perceives and acts, and the structured situation that the adult organizes for them.