The purpose of this research project has been to gain a deeper awareness of the practice of Cultural Awareness Training and to develop resources that will support other practitioners in the field. My hope in undertaking this project is to make the wider community more aware of what it means to be Aboriginal, at a time when jail is replacing initiation for many young Indigenous people. I want to engender a greater understanding about social, cultural and political issues in the Aboriginal community, by building bridges of awareness between Indigenous and Western cultures. My research question is: How does my approach to Cultural Awareness Training deal with uninformed and racist attitudes towards Aboriginal people in ways that effect positive, constructive change? In the documentation of my professional practice, I have examined critical incidents that have shaped my responses to uninformed and racially stereotyped attitudes within an educational context. This includes stories of overt racism in the classroom experience. In undertaking critical reflection about my professional practice as a Cultural Awareness Trainer, I have aimed to provide insights, as well as practical resources, to support the professional practice of others in this field.

Matrices of Vision is a sonic deconstruction of a higher education dataset compiled by the influential Swedish higher education authority Universitetskanslersämbetet (UKÄ). The title Matrices of Vision and project theme is inspired by Indigenous cyberfeminist, scholar and artist Tiara Roxanne’s work into data colonialism. The method explores how practical applications of sound and theory can be used to meditate on political struggles and envision emancipatory modes of creation that hold space through a music-making practice. The artistic approach uses just intonation as a system, or grid of fixed points, which it refuses. The pitch strategy diverges from this approach by way of its political motivations: it disobeys just intonation’s rigid structure through practice and breaks with its order as a way to explore its experiential qualities. The approach seeks to engage beyond the structures designed to regulate behaviors and ways of perceiving and rather hold space for a multiplicity of viewpoints which are explored through cacophony, emotion and deep listening techniques.

My composition, Maitreya, combines vocal synthesis techniques with the theoretical concept of Deep Listening. This essay discusses developments in vocal synthesis and digital signal processing (DSP) software that can be performed in real-time and contributed to my composition. Deep Listening involves meditative practices to make one more aware of sounds that are both audible and inaudible. The composition utilizes recordings of male and female voices that recite poetry, chant, and are phase-vocoded. The composition also features various DSP techniques, and a custom-built modular synthesizer. The composition has three sections that were compiled and edited in Ableton Live 8.2.2.

No description available.

The goal of this master project was to create reverberant sound worlds on the border between acoustic and electronic sounds. I approached this goal through the exploration of musical repetition, difference and timbre. These fields were approximated both through practical and theoretical work. This thesis gives insight into my practical work of solo piano playing, with specific focus on the combination of acoustic piano with electronic effect pedals and extended techniques. Reading about and translating concepts and ideas from the fields of minimalism and ambient music has led me to approaching repetition, difference and timbre through thinking-feeling texture. This thesis focuses on the music and concepts that arise in the in-between of these four fields: repetition, difference, timbre and texture. In addition, the text includes theoretical reflections on texture, repetition and listening modes from a conceptual and philosophical angle. This master project has given me new entryways to create music and changed my way of listening. I developed a new style and technique for playing solo piano, which includes a set up for electronically processed and prepared piano. Moreover, I developed several concepts that explain my musical driving forces as well as connect my musical work with visual art and serve as useful tools to share my artistic practice. Especially important are the concepts of uneven repetition, antipiano and texture-gesture continuum. / <p>Anna Wohlfarth – prepared piano</p><p>Marika Markström – electronic processing</p><p>"spatial magnets"</p><p>Solo:</p><p>Anna Wohlfarth – piano, effects</p><p>"3 improvisations"</p><p>Duo:</p><p>Anna Wohlfarth – piano, effects</p><p>Petter Norbäck – sampler, elektronik</p><p>"tonefloat; dark atmo // iceland memories; disintegration"</p>

Depuis l'avènement des technologies portables et du réseau Internet, de nombreux artistes conçoivent leurs œuvres au delà d'un espace et d'un temps donnés et inventent des formes permanentes et immatérielles disséminées sur les réseaux. Dans le cadre de cette recherche, il s'agit de produire à la fois une série de travaux sonores utilisant le réseau, des modes de participation collaboratifs et également de proposer une pensée sur les concepts révélés par ces nouvelles pratiques et ces formes d'écritures artistiques comme celle du noise, de la poésie sonore et des musiques expérimentales. La recherche est concentrée sur les éléments nécessaires pour constituer un laboratoire connecté de production sonore partagée, dans lequel toutes les questions (et d'autres à venir et à définir ensemble) sont posées à travers notre pratique artistique, des formes d'installations “dé-géolocalisées” ou “non géolocalisées” et enfin des performances musicales en simultané sur Internet. Il est intéressant de pouvoir à la fois envisager une production avec une communauté d'artistes et de penseurs ayant une pratique et des connaissances dans le domaine mais aussi de savoir comment ces artistes, théoriciens formulent leurs pensées et créent de nouveaux concepts. Ainsi, le travail de recherche peut croiser un projet de création, une pratique, un savoir- faire et en dégager une méthodologie théorique qui donne accès à des clefs, à la compréhension de ces nouvelles formes d'écritures / Since the advent of portable technologies and the Internet, many artists conceive their works beyond a given space and time and invent permanent and immaterial forms scattered over the networks. Within the framework of this research, the aim is to produce a series of sound works using the network and collaborative modes of participation, as well as to stimulate discussion of the concepts revealed by these new practices and forms of artistic language: noise, sound poetry and experimental music. This research will focus on the key elements of a connected laboratory of shared sound production: questions will be raised through the lens of the author’s own artistic practice using geodelocalised forms of installation and simultaneous musical performances on the Internet. I will also consider the work and thinking of a community of artists within this field and seek to understand how these artists and theorists formulate their thoughts and create new concepts. Finally, this thesis addresses these creative projects, practices and expertise and articulates a theoretical methodology which draws together current forms of artistic language relating to cutting edge music and poetry and networked practices

This thesis discusses music's role in utopian community-building by using a case study of a specific composer, Pauline Oliveros, who believed her work could provide a positive "pathway to the future" resembling other utopian visions. The questions of utopian intent, potential, and method are explored through an analysis of Oliveros's untraditional scores, as well as an exploration of Oliveros's writings and secondary accounts from members of the Deep Listening community. This document explores Oliveros's utopian beliefs and practices and outlines important aspects of her utopian vision as they relate to three major utopian models: the traditional "end-state" model, the anarchical model, and the postmodern "method" utopian model. Oliveros exhibits all three models within her work, although this thesis argues that she is, for the most part, a method utopian. While her ceremonial group improvisations like Link/Bonn Feier resemble anarchical works by John Cage, they exhibit a greater interest in the past and in process than most anarchical models allow. Likewise, while her visions of a future aided by AI and bio-technologies appear end-state, her improvisational works with her Electronic Instrument System (EIS) suggest a more process-based, method utopian approach. Her Deep Listening practice is deeply method-utopian, and her Center for Deep Listening can be viewed as an attempt at bringing these method utopian principles to the real world.

Networks are an integral part of everyday life. Today, public concern with the extent to which they influence people’s routines, and how much they affect cultures and societies, has grown substantially. People are thus now engaging in conversations and movements to evaluate and address the biases and discriminatory behaviours to which networks contribute. The media play an important part in this conversation, often directing the discourse towards fears of technology. Although such concerns are very real, the stories that media circulate typically rely on the “magical” nature of networks and therefore accentuate their figurative power. But, for people to participate meaningfully in the conversation, and for them to approach technologies responsibly, they need access to the complexities and technical intricacies of networks, not just their surfaces or metaphors. This dissertation argues that, by listening to networks, people can begin to apprehend, and even comprehend, the complex, ostensibly “magical” nature of their communications. One problem is that listening semantically to networks is incredibly difficult, if not impossible. Networks are very noisy, and they do not, for instance, use alphabetic language for internal or external communication. Yet there are other ways to hear and interpret them. I argue that Michel Chion’s techniques of reduced and causal listening are two such ways, and that they afford a “sensible” and timely method for approaching networks. Of course, network communications must first be rendered audible to hear them. For this purpose, I propose “tactical network sonification” (TNS) as a methodology for Science and Technology Studies (STS). As this dissertation’s primary contribution to the field of STS, TNS focuses on making the materiality of networks sensibly accessible to the general public, especially people who are not technology experts. In so doing, TNS builds on the scholarship of not only Chion but also Beth Coleman, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Henri Lefebvre, Shannon Mattern, Shintaro Miyazaki, Pauline Oliveros, Rita Raley, and Jonathan Sterne in particular. This project finds that TNS results in crowded sound clips that represent the complexity of network infrastructure, through the many overlapping rhythms and layers of sound that each clip contains. It explains that sonifications may assist in creating multimodal network stories, making networks sensible and apprehendable. Finally, this dissertation proposes that using TNS can help understand potential discriminatory distribution of network infrastructure across communities. / Graduate / 2021-12-18

This Bachelor Thesis in composition explores an alternative compositional process for creating improvised music through the approach of sound design. The questions addressed in the thesis are concerned with how the soundscape can be controlled by the composer while still maintaining the expressivity of an improvised performance. Thus, the composer’s role as both sound designer, producer and performer is investigated using live electronics and score design. The theoretical framework for the thesis is to be found in the intersection between Anglo-American experimental music, electronic music, sound design and electroacoustic improvisation. Key influences include indeterminacy as expressed in the music of John Cage, Deep Listening practices pioneered by Pauline Oliveros as well as the aesthetical paradigms of electronic and electroacoustic music. The artistic methods revolved around the following steps: studio workshops with musicians (Fredrik Ekenvi and José Louis Relova Gallego) exploring timbres, playing techniques and music technology in real-time followed by associative discussions about the soundscapes created; composing audio and graphical drafts influenced by the workshops; designing diagrams for the electronics and compiling these to a design document; workshopping and performing the final piece (Towards the Event Horizon). Towards the Event Horizon (for bass clarinet, electric guitar and live electronics) is the final result of the work, comprising a score with accompanying design document as well as a recording of the original performance at Studio Acusticum in Piteå 20th of March 2021. The artefacts and associated documentation are presented in their entirety on the dedicated Research Catalogue exposition. Conclusions include how composition and sound design are tied together and cannot be considered as isolated processes, especially in the context of live electronics; the interrelationship between the improviser, the acoustic soundscape and the artistic associations that inform the improvisation; the importance of form as the defining element of a composition and lastly; how a score for improvised music can be devised in the shape of a blueprint of form and texture, setting certain technical, sonic and gestural conditions while leaving the performer to play freely within this frame. / <p>Konstnärliga artefakter presenteras via Research Catalogue: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1250652/1250651</p>

This thesis is an investigation of the complex processes and relationships between the physical human performer and the technologically manufactured cyber-human counterpart. I acted as both researcher and the physical human performer, deeply engaged in the moment-to-moment creation of events unfolding within a shared virtual reality environment. As the primary instigator and activator of the cyber-human partner, I maintained a balance between the live and technological performance elements, prioritizing the production of content and meaning. By way of using practice as research, this thesis argues that in considering interactions between cyber-human and human performers, it is crucial to move beyond discussions of technology when considering interactions between cyber-humans and human performers to an analysis of emotional content, the powers of poetic imagery, the trust that is developed through sensory perception and the evocation of complex relationships. A theoretical model is constructed to describe the relationship between a cyber-human and a human performer in the five works created specifically for this thesis, which is not substantially different from that between human performers. Technological exploration allows for the observation and analysis of various relationships, furthering an expanded understanding of ‘movement as content’ beyond the electronic connection. Each of the works created for this research used new and innovative technologies, including virtual reality, multiple interactive systems, six generations of wearable computers, motion capture technology, high-end digital lighting projectors, various projection screens, smart electronically charged fabrics, multiple sensory sensitive devices and intelligent sensory charged alternative performance spaces. They were most often collaboratively created in order to augment all aspects of the performance and create the sense of community found in digital live dance performances/events. These works are identified as one continuous line of energy and discovery, each representing a slight variation on the premise that a working, caring, visceral and poetic content occurs beyond the technological tools. Consequently, a shift in the physical human’s psyche overwhelms the act of performance. Scholarship and reflection on the works have been integral to my creative process throughout. The goals of this thesis, the works created and the resulting methodologies are to investigate performance to heighten the multiple ways we experience and interact with the world. This maximizes connection and results in a highly interactive, improvisational, dynamic, non-linear, immediate, accessible, agential, reciprocal, emotional, visceral and transformative experience without boundaries between the virtual and physical for physical humans, cyborgs and cyber-humans alike.