The purpose of this project is to investigate the differences between psychoacoustic principles and genetic algorithms (GA0). These will be discussed separately. The review will also compare the compression ratio and the quality of the decompressed files decoded by these two methods.

La version intégrale de cette thèse est disponible uniquement pour consultation individuelle à la Bibliothèque de musique de l’Université de Montréal (www.bib.umontreal.ca/MU). / Cette thèse porte sur la démarche derrière la composition d’oeuvres électroacoustiques et instrumentales durant mon doctorat en composition à la Faculté de musique de l’Université de Montréal. Il est d’abord question de l’importance de la prise de son comme technique d’écriture primordiale dans mon travail ; je développe à ce titre cinq points fondamentaux inhérents à la prise de son et autour desquels s’articule mon travail de compositeur. S’ensuit un survol technique de Gestugel, un outil de traitement sonore développé au cours de mon doctorat et qui m’a servi à générer une grande partie du matériau sonore prenant place dans les œuvres présentées. Les cinq paradigmes propres à la prise de son précédemment exposés sont ensuite rappelés et appliqués à l’étape du traitement audio permettant ainsi de développer le concept d’extension de la prise de son, philosophie du traitement audio analogue à l’approche de la prise de son traditionnelle et dont Gestugel est une application directe. Des exemples concrets sont fournis afin de bien différencier l’extension de la prise de son du traitement audionumérique conventionnel. Une dernière partie, plus esthétique, tente se circonscrire l’approche surnaturaliste du compositeur : l’utilisation des motifs récurrents, de gestes, de l’anecdotisme et de la sublimation (orchestration) du son acoustique vise une véritable peinture sonore, une musique figurative où l’oreille voit autant qu’elle entend. / This thesis concerns step behind the composition of electroacoustic and instrumental compositions during my doctorate in the Faculté de musique de l’Université de Montréal. It is first a matter of the importance of the sound recording as primordial composition know-how; I develop in this title five fundamental points inherent in creative sound recording and central to my musical practice. Then comes a technical skimming over of Gestugel, a tool of sound processing developed during my doctorate and which generated most of the sounds used in my com- positions . The five sound recording paradigms previously developed are then reminded and applied to the stage of audio processing, allowing the concept of extension of the sound recording, a concept of audio processing similar to the ap-close to the traditional sound recording and a direct application of which Gestugel is. Concrete examples are supplied to differentiate the extention of the sound recording of the conventional audio processing. A last part, more philosophical, tries to circumscribe the surnaturalist approach of the composer: the use of recurrent motives, of gestures, of sound causality and of sublimation (orchestration) of the acoustical sound tries to accomplish true sound paintings, a figurative music where one can see as much as he can hear.

The subject of my thesis is The Rights of Producers of Phonograms (Sound Recordings) and Films. I have chosen this topic because of my fondness for music and for media that carry such recordings. The Rights of Producers are denominated as rights related (to Copyright) because of the absence of creativity and individuality. The term neighbouring rights is exactly equivalent. In the first chapter I provide reader with basic terms and a concept of continental copyright law as well as a comparison with common law copyright system. These two law systems are essentially important to comprehend the rights of producers in general and to have basic overview on their role in global society and economy. Both authors' rights and related rights are copyrights in the sense of common law. The second chapter analyses international law on this subject. I describe the relationship between czech national law and international law. Although the majority of international agreements is phrased generally, mentioned agreements have impact on legislations of contracting parties. They form a part of czech law since their ratification and publication in Collection of Laws. The important agreements on the subject are Rome Convention, Geneva Convention, TRIPS Agreement and WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty. In addition, I...

Personal space is a human’s imaginary system of precaution and an important concept for exploring territoriality, but between humans and technology because machinic agencies transfer, relocate, enact and reenact territorially. Literatures of territoriality, violence and affect are uniquely brought together, with chatbots as the research object to argue that their ongoing development as artificial agents, and the ambiguity of violence they can engender, have broader ramifications for a socio-technical research programme. These literatures help to understand the interrelation of virtual and actual spatiality relevant to research involving chatrooms and internet forums, automated systems and processes, as well as human and machine agencies; because all of these spaces, methods and agencies involve the personal sphere. The thesis is an ethical tale of cruel techno-science that is performed through conceptualisations from the creative arts, constituting a PhD by practice. This thesis chronicles four chatbots, taking into account interventions made in fine art, design, fiction and film that are omitted from a history of agent technology. The thesis re-interprets Edward Hall’s work on proxemics, personal space and territoriality, using techniques of the bricoleur and rudiments (an undeveloped and speculative method of practice), to understand chatbot techniques such as the pick-up, their entrapment logics, their repetitions of hateful speech, their nonsense talk (including how they disorientate spatial metaphors), as well as how developers switch on and off their learning functionality. Semi-structured interviews and online forum postings with chatbot developers were used to expand and reflect on the rudimentary method. To urge that this project is timely is itself a statement of anxiety. Chatbots can manipulate, exceed, and exhaust a human understanding of both space and time. Violence between humans and machines in online and offline spaces is explored as an interweaving of agency and spatiality. A series of rudiments were used to probe empirical experiments such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma (Tucker, 1950). The spatial metaphors of confinement as a parable of entrapment, are revealed within that logic and that of chatbots. The ‘Obedience to Authority’ experiments (Milgram, 1961) were used to reflect on the roles played by machines which are then reflected into a discussion of chatbots and the experiments done in and around them. The agency of the experimenter was revealed in the machine as evidenced with chatbots which has ethical ramifications. The argument of personal space is widened to include the ways machinic territoriality and its violence impacts on our ways of living together both in the private spheres of our computers and homes, as well as in state-regulated conditions (Directive-3, 2003). The misanthropic aspects of chatbot design are reflected through the methodology of designing out of fear. I argue that personal spaces create misanthropic design imperatives, methods and ways of living. Furthermore, the technological agencies of personal spaces have a confining impact on the transient spaces of the non-places in a wider discussion of the lift, chatroom and car. The violent origins of the chatbot are linked to various imaginings of impending disaster through visualisations, supported by case studies in fiction to look at the resonance of how anxiety transformed into terror when considering the affects of violence.

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Music radio is the most listened to form of radio, and one of the least researched by academic ethnographers. This research project addresses industry structure and agency in an investigation into the relationship between music radio and the record industry in the UK, how that relationship works to produce music radio and to shape the production of popular music. The underlying context for this research is Peterson's production of culture perspective. The research is in three parts: a model of music radio production and consumption, an ethnographic investigation focusing on music radio programmers and record industry pluggers, and an ethnographic investigation into the use of specialist music radio programming by alternative pop and rock artists in Glasgow, Scotland. The research has four main conclusions: music radio continues to be central to the record industry's promotional strategy for new commercial recordings; music radio is increasing able to mediate the production practices of the popular music industry; that mediation is focused through the social relationship between music radio programmers and record industry pluggers; cultural practices of musicians are developed and mediated by consumption of specialist music radio, as they become part of specialist music radio.

This thesis is an historiographical and sociological study of Indian South African broadcasting and the music industry between 1924 and 1983. A multilevel approach which integrates empirical and cultural materialist critical theoretical methodologies reveals the relationships between the media, industry, economy, politics, and culture. Until the sixties, Indian South Africans were denied the civic rights that were taken for granted by white South Africans. Broadcasting, for them, was to be a concession. On being declared South Africans, broadcast programmes were expanded and designed to pacify and Indianise Indian South Africans, preparing them for their role as a middle-class racially defined group, a homelands group without a homeland. South Africanised popular music, and Indian South African Western semi-classical, popular music, or jazz performance was rejected by the SABC. Ambiguous nationalisms shaped Indian South African aesthetics. Global monopoly controlled the music industry. Similarly, disruptions in the global market enabled local musicians and small business groups to challenge the majors. In the late forties and fifties, this resulted in a number of locally manufactured records featuring local and visiting musicians, and special distribution rights under royalty to an independent South Asian company. The local South African records were largely characterised by their syncretic nature, and generated a South African modernism which had the capacity both to draw and repel audiences and officials alike. A glossary of non-English terms and a discography of Indian South African music have been included. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1999.

An interpretative methodology for understanding meaning in cinema since the 1950s, auteur analysis is an approach to film studies in which an individual, usually the director, is studied as the author of her or his films. The principal argument of this thesis is that proponents of auteurism have privileged examination of the visual components in a film-maker’s body of work, neglecting the potentially significant role played by sound. The thesis seeks to address this problematic imbalance by interrogating the creative use of sound in the films written and directed by Rolf de Heer, asking the question, “Does his use of sound make Rolf de Heer an aural auteur?” In so far as the term ‘aural’ encompasses everything in the film that is heard by the audience, the analysis seeks to discover if de Heer has, as Peter Wollen suggests of the auteur and her or his directing of the visual components (1968, 1972 and 1998), unconsciously left a detectable aural signature on his films. The thesis delivers an innovative outcome by demonstrating that auteur analysis that goes beyond the mise-en-scène (i.e. visuals) is productive and worthwhile as an interpretive response to film. De Heer’s use of the aural point of view and binaural sound recording, his interest in providing a ‘voice’ for marginalised people, his self-penned song lyrics, his close and early collaboration with composer Graham Tardif and sound designer Jim Currie, his ‘hands-on’ approach to sound recording and sound editing and his predilection for making films about sound are all shown to be examples of de Heer’s aural auteurism. As well as the three published (or accepted for publication) interviews with de Heer, Tardif and Currie, the dissertation consists of seven papers refereed and published (or accepted for publication) in journals and international conference proceedings, a literature review and a unifying essay. The papers presented are close textual analyses of de Heer’s films which, when considered as a whole, support the thesis’ overall argument and serve as a comprehensive auteur analysis, the first such sustained study of his work, and the first with an emphasis on the aural.

Traditionally, connection management applications (referred to as patchbays) for high-speed audio networking, are predominantly developed using third-generation languages such as C, C# and C++. Due to the rapid increase in distributed audio/video network usage in the world today, connection management applications that control signal routing over these networks have also evolved in complexity to accommodate more functionality. As the result, high-speed audio networking application developers require a tool that will enable them to develop complex connection management applications easily and within the shortest possible time. In addition, this tool should provide them with the reliability and flexibility required to develop applications controlling signal routing in networks carrying real-time data. High-speed audio networks are used for various purposes that include audio/video production and broadcasting. This investigation evaluates the possibility of using Adobe Flash Professional 8, using ActionScript 2.0, for developing connection management applications. Three patchbays, namely the Broadcast patchbay, the Project studio patchbay, and the Hospitality/Convention Centre patchbay were developed and tested for connection management in three sound installation networks, namely the Broadcast network, the Project studio network, and the Hospitality/Convention Centre network. Findings indicate that complex connection management applications can effectively be implemented using the Adobe Flash IDE and ActionScript 2.0.

Ce mémoire est une étude de cas sur Le voyage d’hiver (2013) de Keith Kouna. Réalisée par René Lussier, cette œuvre de musique enregistrée est une transposition musicolittéraire d’après Winterreise (1828) de Franz Schubert. Malgré la réécriture d’un texte en français et les transformations musicales notables qui caractérisent Le voyage d’hiver, les fondements mélodiques et harmoniques qu’il reproduit génèrent un effet de reconnaissance qui ne cesse de renvoyer Kouna vers Schubert. Plutôt que de les tenir pour inséparables l’un de l’autre, cette étude propose une réflexion sur la distance qui les sépare. On se demandera si Le voyage d’hiver peut constituer une œuvre avec le caractère propre de ce qui la rendrait autonome et originale. Considérant que la réécriture textuelle dont il procède s’enracine dans l’écoute musicale, la recherche pose d’abord que le Voyage d’hiver s’établit comme la trace d’une écoute de Winterreise. À partir du rapport entre texte et musique qui s’y déploie, il s’agit ensuite de suivre cette écoute à travers les médiations de la musique enregistrée en studio qui en ont constitué l’inscription. L’établissement de ce tracé permettra d’évaluer l’ampleur des transformations qui donnent lieu au Voyage d’hiver afin de mettre en perspective la distance qui le sépare et le distingue de l’œuvre de Schubert. / This master’s thesis is a case study of Keith Kouna’s music recording Le voyage d’hiver (2013). Produced by René Lussier, this album is a literary and musical transposition based on Franz Schubert’s Winterreise (1828). Although the text was rewritten in French and the music underwent significant transformations, the melodic and harmonic foundations of Le voyage d’hiver create a recognition effect that constantly hearken Kouna’s work back to Schubert. Instead of viewing both works as inseparable, this study will examine the distance that separates them. One may ask if Le voyage d’hiver possesses the distinctive traits to be considered an original, free-standing musical work. Given that the rewriting of the text is rooted in music listening, this research posits that Le voyage d’hiver takes form as the result of listening to Schubert’s Winterreise. Based on the relationship that unfolds between the text and music, the research is then a matter of following this listening through the mediations of the resulting music that was created and recorded in the studio. Establishing this path will make it possible to assess the extent of the transformations that led to Le voyage d’hiver in order to put into perspective the distance that separates and distinguishes it from Schubert’s work.