Manchester, in the first half of the nineteenth century, held great fascination to many as an example of a town being remade and transformed by the technological developments of the Industrial Revolution. The transformations experienced included the rapid physical expansion of the town and its population and the reordering of its society from a traditional, rigid class structure, involving a powerful aristocracy and working-class citizens, to a new social hierarchy with a numerous and influential middle class—an emerging ‘urban aristocracy’ of people involved in manufacturing, commerce and other professions. As these changes took place, the rest of England (and the Western world) looked on—horrified, shocked, awed, fascinated. It was a different world, and the rapid changes taking place in society created in observers a sense of urgency in describing the effects of those changes—particularly the social problems, which had been shaped by industrial life. / A trend in describing Manchester’s residents as ‘philistines’ and the town, generally, as a ‘cultural wasteland’ took hold at this time and has been perpetuated until fairly recently. This thesis explores this trend—Manchester’s nineteenth-century image—and the impact of contemporary opinion on constructions of social hierarchies and cultural reputations. It also aims to show that there was more to Manchester’s cultural life in the nineteenth century than is widely acknowledged, either by contemporaries from the period or by some scholars today, and that the pursuit and experience of music and certain noises was genuinely wanted by the manufacturing class for a number of key reasons. / Delving further, into studies of soundscapes and ‘noise,’ it becomes ever clearer that sound, and how individuals and societies interact with it and interpret it, acts as an important—though frequently overlooked—signifier of class relations and civic identity. Finally, this thesis aims to reconstruct how Manchester sounded in three principal regions of the town to show how a study of soundscapes helps to articulate how the town was psychologically constructed in the minds of inhabitants and visitors, and how it was sensed and experienced.

Manchester, in the first half of the nineteenth century, held great fascination to many as an example of a town being remade and transformed by the technological developments of the Industrial Revolution. The transformations experienced included the rapid physical expansion of the town and its population and the reordering of its society from a traditional, rigid class structure, involving a powerful aristocracy and working-class citizens, to a new social hierarchy with a numerous and influential middle class—an emerging ‘urban aristocracy’ of people involved in manufacturing, commerce and other professions. As these changes took place, the rest of England (and the Western world) looked on—horrified, shocked, awed, fascinated. It was a different world, and the rapid changes taking place in society created in observers a sense of urgency in describing the effects of those changes—particularly the social problems, which had been shaped by industrial life. / A trend in describing Manchester’s residents as ‘philistines’ and the town, generally, as a ‘cultural wasteland’ took hold at this time and has been perpetuated until fairly recently. This thesis explores this trend—Manchester’s nineteenth-century image—and the impact of contemporary opinion on constructions of social hierarchies and cultural reputations. It also aims to show that there was more to Manchester’s cultural life in the nineteenth century than is widely acknowledged, either by contemporaries from the period or by some scholars today, and that the pursuit and experience of music and certain noises was genuinely wanted by the manufacturing class for a number of key reasons. / Delving further, into studies of soundscapes and ‘noise,’ it becomes ever clearer that sound, and how individuals and societies interact with it and interpret it, acts as an important—though frequently overlooked—signifier of class relations and civic identity. Finally, this thesis aims to reconstruct how Manchester sounded in three principal regions of the town to show how a study of soundscapes helps to articulate how the town was psychologically constructed in the minds of inhabitants and visitors, and how it was sensed and experienced.

Boat noise has been shown to distract and cause harm to many marine organisms. Most of the study effort has been focused on fish & marine mammals, even though invertebrates represent 99% of all living organisms, both terrestrial and aquatic. The small amount of studies conducted on invertebrates have demonstrated a clear negative correlation between anthropogenic noise pollution and invertebrate well-being. The small giant clam Tridacna maxima and the spider conch Lambis lambis are two invertebrate species which play key roles in coral reef ecosystems, and are little studied for the effects of noise disturbance. If their behaviour is significantly affected by boat noise, this could cause a knock on effect on the rest of the reef ecosystem. T. maxima functions as prey to many fish species, contributing up to 9% of the reef’s calcium carbonate budget, as well as playing a role in nutrient cycling. L. lambis is essential prey for molluscivore snails and certain elasmobranchs, and through its herbivorous feeding, helps to keep filamentous algae levels low. Moreover, coral reefs are reliant on the biological sound primarily created by invertebrates, such as snapping shrimp, to attract larvae from the pelagic environment for settlement. During experiments conducted in February 2020 in the Red Sea, Daily Diary Monitoring (DDMT) smart tags were used to measure the reactions of T. maxima and L. lambis respectively during underwater playback of boat noise compared with ambient reef sound. It was found that both T. maxima and L. lambis exhibited behavioral changes during the boat noise treatment. The implications of this study is that individuals of L. lambis and T. maxima may spend energy averting the invisible "threat" of boat noise, rather than feeding and/or photosynthesizing, in the case of T. maxima. If this hinders the acquisition of food/production, the whole reef ecosystem may be compromised in a knock-on effect from these producers and primary consumers. As boat noise is prevalent on inshore Red Sea reefs, shown by a 24-hour acoustic analysis of a patch reef sound pressure levels (SPL), invertebrates might be affected on a large scale in the Red Sea.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Canadian music educator R. Murray Schafer developed the field of soundscape studies, later introducing the “soundwalk”: an empirical method for identifying a soundscape and its components through the activities of walking and close listening. Human activity in a soundscape, or a soundwalk, is known as anthropophony: a category of sounds produced by humans, including language, vocalizations, and musics. In this individual oral presentation, the primary researcher will share her experiences in creating a framework for her Master’s in Appalachian Studies Applied Project at East Tennessee State University. The soundwalk method will be adapted into a series of recorded “soundhikes.” During these hikes, the primary researcher and her participants will engage in a series of interviews in areas designated as state parks and national forests in the Upstate of South Carolina. These oral histories (with English-language translations, when applicable) will be submitted to the Archives of Appalachia, and will be used in the primary researcher’s ongoing research on Appalachian representation in the region’s protected spaces. As these protected spaces have reached nearly one hundred years of existence as “state parks” or “national forests”, the demographics of the people visiting them have changed drastically. The lenses of Critical Race Theory and Feminist Disability Theory will be used to explore these new demographic realties, and to advocate for resources benefitting those who have self-reported any of the following while attempting to enjoy Appalachian nature spaces: barriers to access, feelings of fear, or experiences of rejection. The ultimate goal of the oral history soundhike project, influenced by the principles of Public Sphere Theory, is to feature present-day voices which have not been historically included in Appalachian “nature narratives,” leading to increased representation in the field of Appalachian Studies. Though data collection has not yet begun, it is the hope of the primary researcher that this information will have a pragmatic application. Applicable portions of this project will be submitted to agencies, located in South Carolina’s Upstate region, which have indicated an interest in attracting more diverse stakeholders. The finished project will advocate for more diverse language and cultural resources and programming in protected nature spaces.

This dissertation aims to study the variety of sounds described in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and to identify an aesthetic of noise in the poem, a soundscape which contributes to the work’s thematic undertones. The two entities which shape an understanding of the poem’s conception of noise are Chaos, the conglomerate of mobile, conflicting elements with which the poem begins, and the personified Fama, whose domus is seen to contain a chaotic cosmos of words rather than elements. Within the loose frame provided by Chaos and Fama, the varied categories of noise in the Metamorphoses’ world, from nature sounds to speech, are seen to share qualities of changeability, mobility, and conflict, qualities which align them with the overall themes of flux and metamorphosis in the poem. I discuss three categories of Ovidian sound: in the first chapter, cosmological and elemental sound; in the second chapter, nature noises with an emphasis on the vocality of reeds and the role of echoes; and in the third chapter I treat human and divine speech and narrative, and the role of rumor. By the end of the poem, Ovid leaves us with a chaos of words as well as of forms, which bears important implications for his treatment of contemporary Augustanism as well as his belief in his own poetic fame.

<p><italic>Tentative Embrace</italic> is a composition in five movements for flute, clarinet, saxophone quartet, vibraphone, piano, string quartet and tape track. The tape track features spoken text and soundscape recordings gathered in and around the Sonoran desert of the Southwestern United States. The text and the soundscape recordings, along with the composed music, are all my own work. </p> <p>This piece embodies my efforts to interpret and translate the complicated sensation of being a human alone in nature - of wanting to belong, realizing I do belong, but also not quite belonging. The Sonoran desert, the site of inspiration for this work, is an especially revelatory space that heightens these simultaneous sensations of connection and disconnection; it draws attention to the biological points of contact between human beings and their natural surroundings, but it also emphasizes those cultural and material differences that we carry with us into such a space. Through the combination of the music, the text and the soundscapes, I work to convey the ever-shifting boundaries between the self and everything else. </p> <p>For the music, I find formal inspiration in the slow and cyclical pace of the desert itself; musical ideas unfold gradually through ever-varying repetitions. Each movement is devoted to a particular phenomenon experienced in the desert, and while the text and the soundscapes work to articulate the specifics of these phenomena, the music gives form to their structural and sensual suggestion. I move back and forth between specifics and abstractions; as such, some of my translations of this space will be more audible than others, but each of them demonstrate this attempt at forging an artistic point of connection with this environment.</p> / Dissertation

This play, Weaving Worlds, and the accompanying case study of its use of multimedia examine how multimedia can complexify space in theatre. The case study explores the process of writing a play that has multimedia elements scripted into it. Space in theatre can be defined in terms of its function as well as its location, its representational ideas and as an area used to present an argument, otherwise known as the fictional space. This is achieved through the narrative (that is presented traditionally in theatre through movement, gesture, and text). Multimedia has complexified this fictional space by expanding its location and being able to deliver multiple narratives within it. Multimedia has complexified the time and the space continuum of the narrative through its ability to present mediated images from the stage to the audience at the same time as traditional live performance. This challenges the definition of live performance. The multimedia elements in the play are soundscapes, virtual characters composed of multimedia animations captured on pre-recorded digital video, and live video displays of performance. The world of the play exists in an augmented reality of the memories of the two main characters, Bev and Ben. The addition of multimedia assisted me as a playwright to present my idea of augmented reality in the world of the play, as well as a means of presenting the underpinning themes of the play being disassociation and recorded memory, violence as a means of control, and issues on change. Twentieth century theatre theorists, including Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht, pioneered the use of multimedia in the theatre. In some way they contributed to a contemporary theatre that has evolved in tandem with multimedia. Correspondingly, multimedia requires its own skill sets and equipment and brings with it new aesthetic possibilities as well as becoming an agent of narrative. Multimedia creates opportunities for improvisation. This means that despite the pre-recorded nature of multimedia elements each presentation of multimedia that involves live actors can still create a unique performance experience. The exchange of touch is removed between virtual characters created by multimedia technology and live actors. At the same time the idea of live performance is challenged by the inclusion of multimedia elements. New audiences understand the narrative presented by multimedia because their world is filled with technologies that contain multimedia applications. Playwrights, who are aware of the spatial implications of multimedia, can utilise these new elements to create narratives to alter the structure of their work, and to create new ways of presenting characters, soundscapes and thematic digital displays to enhance and support the performance of their plays.

Thesis (M.Sc.) - Simon Fraser University, 2005. / Theses (School of Interactive Arts and Technology) / Simon Fraser University.

No description available.

Research suggests that interacting with nature has positive psychological, physiological, and cognitive benefits. Views to nature, interacting with nature, and other visual nature stimuli have been widely studied. However, nature soundscapes have received less attention; and the limited research that has been published has mixed findings. The present study assessed whether nature soundscapes influenced performance on cognitive and affective assessments. Participants completed the Flanker task, the Stroop task, a Visual Search task, and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, while exposed to either nature sounds alone, nature sounds with outdoor views, or neither. No statistically significant differences in performance were found for any of the three conditions, on either the cognitive and affective assessments. These findings indicate that the relation between nature sounds and cognition is more complex than originally presumed, and potential future directions are discussed. / Graduate / 2020-04-11