last goodnight amidst Superior fog (for sinfonietta and fixed media) explores one recorded sound, analyzed at three increasingly quiet amplitude thresholds. From these analyses, I created three harmonic collections, each comprised of the thirty loudest tones under the chosen amplitude thresholds. Although a re-synthesis of the first collection sounds very similar to the actual acoustic model, the quieter collections point less clearly to an identifiable source. While a computer can show us that these tones exist in the source, what is their role in our perception of the sound? Do they create a background to the loudest tones, adding subtleties that make the sound unique? Or are they beyond our perception, filtered out by our psychological and physiological limitations, and only evident through technological means, like the observation of ultraviolet light? With these questions in mind, I wrote this piece to explore the ambiguous space between these two realities: one close to our perception, and one far from it. We spend much of our lives saying goodbye. Each of these moments is a threshold between two states of being. Through this piece, I seek to place the listener in this point of transition – a situation in which they are perpetually moving on, but in a sense, not moving at all. Uncertain of boundaries, a process may be perceived as unified - as if observing a single moment from many perspectives.

A movement through a calm -- Five responses -- Storms and staples sing halleluja! -- A day in Monroe County. / text

Partial denitrification anammox (PdNA) is an emerging wastewater treatment technology with the potential to increase process capacity and save on energy and carbon. PdNA circumvents potential issues with stability of the more familiar mainstream partial nitritation anammox (PNA) process. The PdNA process can be used to effectively remove ammonia, nitrate, and nitrite from mainstream municipal waste streams. To retain slow growing anammox, some sort of retention system is needed with media being a common solution to this problem. PdNA has been successfully implemented in mainstream full-scale systems in sand filters and with moving media. The goal of this study was to assess the denitrifying capabilities, anammox treatment capacity, and effective surface area to volume of two types of fixed media. A nitrifying pilot was set up to assess the effective surface area to volume. To assess the nitrifying and anammox ammonia removal capabilities of the fixed media, a fixed media PdNA system was installed in the second anoxic zone of a full-scale municipal wastewater treatment plant. The fixed media system consisted of three modules of sheets modified to mimic a plug flow system. After accounting for the estimated nitrate removal from mixed liquor, denitrification rates normalized to media surface area were 0.52 +/- 1.9 g/m2-day in the first module, 0.62 +/- 0.91 g/m2-day for the second module, and 0.56 +/- 0.90 g/m2-day for the third module. In ex situ batch testing it was found that maximum ex-situ anammox ammonia removal rates for the / Master of Science / Urban population growth has created a two-pronged problem for wastewater treatment plants. Plants in populated areas are seeing increases in flow along with growing space restrictions that limit new infrastructure construction. Additionally, rising environmental awareness from the public has spurred regulatory agencies to impose tighter limits on the quality of water leaving plants and entering sensitive watersheds. These factors have driven a need for treatment techniques that allow plants to operate better with their existing equipment. Overall, this concept is known as process intensification. One such method that treatment plants are using to intensify wastewater treatment is the addition of plastic media into their existing tanks. This media provides additional surfaces for the microorganisms that biodegrade the pollutants in the wastewater to grow and allows waste to be treated faster in the same area. It also allows slow growing organisms to be retained in the system that would otherwise not have time to grow. Such slow-growing microbes are especially critical for the removal of ammonia, a toxic form of nitrogen that occurs in high concentrations in wastewater. The partial denitrification-anammox process is an intensification process that leverages microbial metabolisms to convert nitrate to nitrite instead of denitrifying the nitrate all the way to nitrogen gas. Plants then let more ammonia pass through the aeration zone, where ammonia is converted to nitrate. The bleed through ammonia and the nitrite generated from partial denitrification is used by microbes called anammox, which denitrify without the addition of carbon. The full denitrification process requires externally added carbon, which is energy intensive to produce and expensive, and aeration requires energy to run the aeration blowers. Bypassing the full denitrification process using PdNA results in two-fold cost and energy savings. The plastic media help slow-growing anammox bacteria attach and grow to achieve this aim. Most of the plants that use plastic media use media that is free floating in the tank. However, certain plants cannot use this floating plastic media because it can either plug up the system, or flow to the end of the treatment tank and have no way to get back to the front. In instances such as these it could be beneficial to use a type of media that is fixed in place. One potential use of fixed media that has never been tried before is with partial denitrification with anammox. This research sets out to evaluate the effectiveness of fixed media with use in a partial denitrification anammox process and compare it to a treatment tank of moving media that is present at the same plant to find out whether it may be a viable option for retrofitting plants that cannot use moving media.

No description available.

No description available.

abstract: The number of compositions that use electronics alongside the wind ensemble has gradually increased in the 21st century, yet these compositions are infrequently programmed past their premieres. Explanations include lack of access to necessary resources, unfamiliarity with the repertoire, and inexperience with the technology they require. While there are other barriers to performance, this document focuses on familiarizing the repertoire and providing foundational knowledge necessary to overcome inexperience. As the number of technology-native composers, audience members, and performers continues to increase, electronics in the ensemble are likely to become more standard. Without knowledge of the technology electronics require, these works will remain inaccessible. Composers attempt to bridge the technological knowledge gap by providing technical instructions for individual pieces, but this does not help people recognize the broader concepts that make all of these works more accessible. This document guides ensemble directors and performers to an understanding of these base concepts by developing a grading system for technology difficulty, assessing pedagogical and performance issues, and providing an annotated list of works currently available for electronics and winds. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Music 2020

No description available.

This practice-based research is concerned with a collection of fixed media compositions written between 2005 and 2012 with accompanying contextual writing. The primary focus of this research was to produce sound works, but the concept of place has played a significant role throughout both the compositional process and in the reflection of each composition. This research explores how place is ‘heard and felt’ (Feld, 2005) in a composition and how recollected memory impacts on the compositional process. Artistic decisions made with regard to creating the compositions reflect my personal place and associations with these sound materials at a given time whether they are field recordings or synthesised materials. The way in which sound material is subsequently processed and structured reflects this. Place and the compositional practice inform each other in a two-way process. This results in what Katharine Norman (2010) has referred to in her writing on sound art as an ‘autoethnographic’ journey; a representation of the creator’s personal experience. I have begun to reflect on these compositions as art works that represent a particular time or place. The artwork represents the trace of the place from which it was composed (Corringham, 2010). I believe that I cannot totally transport a person to my place; rather, I intend this creative representation to enable the listener to create and inspire their own narrative.

This portfolio of compositions investigates the adaptation of state-space models, frequently used in engineering control theory, to the electroacoustic composition context. These models are mathematical descriptions of physical systems that provide several variables representing the system’s behaviours. The composer adapts a set of state-space models of either abstract, mechanical or electrical systems to a music creation environment. She uses them in eight compositions: five mixed media multi-channel pieces and three mixed media pieces. In the portfolio, the composer investigates multiple ways of meaningfully mapping these system’s behaviours into music parameters. This is done either by exploring and creating timbre in synthetic sound, or by transforming existing sounds. The research also involves the process of incorporating state-space models as a real-time software tool using Max and SuperCollider. As real-time models offer several variables of continuous evolutions, the composer mapped them to different dimensions of sound simultaneously. The composer represented the model’s evolutions with either short/interrupted, long or indefinitely evolving sounds. The evolution implies changes in timbre, length and dynamic range. The composer creates gestures, textures and spaces based on the model’s behaviours. The composer explores how the model’s nature influences the musical language and the integration of these with other music sources such as recordings or musical instruments. As the models represent physical processes, the composer observes that the resulting sounds evolve in organic ways. Moreover, the composer not only sonifies the real-time models, but actually excites them to cause changes. The composer develops a compositional methodology which involves interacting with the models while observing/designing changes in sound. In that sense, the composer regards real-time state-space models as her own instruments to create music. The models are regarded as additional forces and as sound transforming agents in mixed media pieces. In fixed media pieces, the composer additionally exploits their linearity to create space through sound de-correlation.

No description available.