Traditional Adaptation Research Articles

Ears of the past, an inquiry into the sonic memory of the acoustics of Notre-Dame before the fire of 2019

This interdisciplinary study brings together acousticians and anthropologists to examine the memory of the acoustics of Notre-Dame de Paris before the fire of April 2019, using a qualitative approach to collect the testimonies of 18 people involved in the sound usages of the cathedral. Testimonies were analyzed in light of research conducted in the anthropology of the senses, sensory perception, memory, and cultural heritage. Analysis highlights an apparent contradiction between the remarkable acoustics of the monument before the fire and the impression of musicians. These musicians reported a struggle to tame the cathedral’s sound space, to hear each other well enough to craft their performances and to reach an acceptable level of clarity in their musical practice. These phenomena are examined with acoustic measurements and numerical simulations using a calibrated geometrical acoustics model of the cathedral before the fire, which allows for an objective exploration of the acoustic characteristics of Notre-Dame. This analysis concludes that the well-known reverberation of Notre-Dame, as well as the acoustic barrier of the transept and the poor acoustic return on the podium (the usual place for concert performers) negatively impact singers’ comfort. This highlights the tension between the original architectural design of the cathedral and its modern religious and cultural usages. However, the regular occupants have developed a deep familiarity with these constraints during their ritual and musical practices, adjusting to the acoustics in a unique way. Such a tradition of adaptation must be considered as a part of cultural practice, not to be overlooked during the reconstruction.

Erratum to ‘Ears of the past, an inquiry into the sonic memory of the acoustics of Notre-Dame before the fire of 2019’ [Journal of Cultural Heritage Volume 56C (July-August 2022) 130-137

• Collaborative work between sciences of acoustics and anthropology allows to decipher the reported perceptions of the acoustics of Notre-Dame de Paris. • Although the acoustics of Notre-Dame de Paris before the fire were remarkable in several aspects, musicians report than they were dificult to “tame” in the context of modern musical and liturgical uses. • Musical clarity suffered from large distances between the singers and the assembly as well as from architectural particularities of Notre-Dame de Paris. • Due to poor clarity in the nave, various sound system configurations were used to assist musical, vocal, and speech productions. This interdisciplinary study brings together acousticians and anthropologists to examine the memory of the acoustics of Notre-Dame de Paris before the fire of April 2019, using a qualitative approach to collect the testimonies of 18 people involved in the sound usages of the cathedral. Testimonies were analyzed in light of research conducted in the anthropology of the senses, sensory perception, memory, and cultural heritage. Analysis highlights an apparent contradiction between the remarkable acoustics of the monument before the fire and the impression of musicians. These musicians reported a struggle to tame the cathedral’s sound space, to hear each other well enough to craft their performances and to reach an acceptable level of clarity in their musical practice. These phenomena are examined with acoustic measurements and numerical simulations using a calibrated geometrical acoustics model of the cathedral before the fire, which allows for an objective exploration of the acoustic characteristics of Notre-Dame. This analysis concludes that the well-known reverberation of Notre-Dame, as well as the acoustic barrier of the transept and the poor acoustic return on the podium (the usual place for concert performers) negatively impact singers’ comfort. This highlights the tension between the original architectural design of the cathedral and its modern religious and cultural usages. However, the regular occupants have developed a deep familiarity with these constraints during their ritual and musical practices, adjusting to the acoustics in a unique way. Such a tradition of adaptation must be considered as a part of cultural practice, not to be overlooked during the reconstruction.

Lost adaptations: piracy, ‘Rip Offs’, and the Australian Copyright Act 1905

By investigating the early Australian feature films, through the Australian Copyright Act 1905, begins a discussion on the emerging industrialisation of patent and copyright law, which did not recognise celluloid pictures as matter that could be copyrighted. With the Act formed to provide authors greater powers to stop the proliferation of degraded versions of their work, film-makers came to adaptation as a strategy to legally protect their moving pictures from copyright infringements. By concentrating on the Australian cinema’s early tradition of adaptation, during the nascent period of film production (1906–1911), in this article, I will discuss how film-makers at, and outside of, the cinema were encouraged to engage with feature films as adaptation – and what this culturally meant. In a time of uncontrolled piracy and plagiarism ‘rip offs’, adaptations of popular works became a means for producers to copyright their films. And it was through this Act that the tradition of Australian adaptation began. By investigating the industrial factors behind where, why and how this tradition was culturally and socially shaped will identify by what means adaptation was spawned from the industry of copyright in a time where film-makers were trying to distinguish their works in a crowded field of film production and exhibition.

Remake: Appropriating Film in Tanguy Viel's Cinéma

An exemplary illustration of the postmodern logic of “postproduction,” in which cultural artifacts are not simply recycled but reinvented and re-consumed (Bourriaud), Tanguy Viel's 1999 novel Cinéma delves into the infinite archive of popular images and appropriates a film that it remakes in words. Turning the tradition of adaptation from text to film inside out, Viel's contemporary take on the avant-garde practice of the “readymade” projects a series of images and sounds from the screen onto the page. This innovative recasting of the picture not only engages our understanding of cinematic spectatorship and how we make sense of film (or more importantly, do not), it also makes a potent postmodern critique of the cult of originality and the quest for the “new” in (modern) art.1 Perhaps most importantly, however, Cinéma's rewriting of the film maps the complex relationship between literature and cinema today, and, as I argue in what follows, ultimately suggests why the status of that relationship might matter in an age characterized by an unheralded propagation of commodified visual forms.

Continuity and Change in the Constitutional Experience of the German Jews

Despite the progress of Emancipation in the nineteenth centu ry, German Jews were required to belong to legally recognized Jewish communities. Even after this requirement was lifted, Jew ish communal life remained strong. The community structure that the Prussian state expected the Jews to implement was modeled after German civil administration. This framework, however, re sembled both medieval German and medieval Jewish models. Thus, German Jews, while modernizing their own communal insti tutions, continued to maintain both their own and their German neighbors' political traditions. The German Jewish communal constitutions attest to a Jewish political tradition of adaptation to prevailing non-Jewish norms, as well as retention of ancient Jew ish elements.

Changing manifestations of wisdom and knowledge in Thailand

Thailand is an important regional power in south-east Asia. At present it is experiencing a time of rapid economic development that brings tension into the traditional storehouses of knowledge. Local Thai knowledge and wisdom are being eclipsed by newer knowledge coming into Thailand from the outside. Thailand, however, has a long and proud tradition of adaptation and some Thais believe that this trait of adaptation describes the essence of Thailand. The task is well summed up by the Office of the National Education Commission (1991, p. 17) which says, ‘[The new graduate] must think out how to produce a well-balanced combination of modern knowledge and local wisdom for future economic and social development’. Traditional knowledge is being blended with newer knowledge to form wisdom that is distinctly Thai and enables Thailand to join the global community as a well-informed regional power.

Shakespeare's Dramaturgy and Binary Form

For Shakespeare and his contemporaries, playwriting was a business of turning stories into theatrical performances. Occasionally, a writer might seize on a notorious murder of the day as the kernel of a plot, but usually the dramatists relied on collections of romances, assemblages of chronicles, and a smattering of old plays for their raw material. That their widespread practice is not inherent in the art of the drama can be seen in the habits of our own writers. O'Neill and Miller to name only two of the most prominent American dramatists may uncharacteristically work over The Oresteia or explore the archives of Old Salem, but normally the major works that we associate with their names owe nothing to prior literary or dramatic sources. Instead, their works grow from a personal, often idiosyncratic root, a genesis far removed from the Elizabethan tradition of adaptation.