No description available.

This inquiry is a two-tongued performance as research project asking &quotWhy was the voice of the Sirens deadly?" and &quotHow can the Sirens inform contemporary feminist theatre praxis?". The two questions in constant dialectic have been explored in a written dissertation as well as in a one-hour original and ensemble performance called The Quivering: a Matter of Life and Death. Analysing references in mythology, art and history, the written component suggests how the Siren's sonic qualities are manifest in distinct cultural icons and embodied by actual female performers. Four Siren vocalities are identified and theorised: The Monster vocality is evidenced in the figure of the femme fatale; the Lamenter exists in traditional funerary singers and contemporary torch songs; the sound of the Diva is heard in the opera queen; and the Lullaby Maker acoustics oscillate between the banter of Mother Goose and the 'red hot mamas' of the blues. Pursuing what is deadly about each of these embodied voices, the thesis articulates why female sound, like the Siren song of knowledge, is so ambivalently received - its evocation of otherness (Monster), liminality (Lamenter), jouissance (Diva) and contra-diction (Lullaby Maker) is both feared and revered. These four vocalities have grown in and out of The Quivering, a performance odyssey that has interrogated aesthetic, content, characterisation, narrative and devising practice, all with an ear to the Siren's 'deadly' sonority. Subverting portrayals of death as a woman and a taboo, its comic-tragic heroines exist in a liminal landscape as lamenters who confront and facilitate the audience's death passage. In counterpoint to Homeric legacy, it has been designed as an open text, which, combined with its heightened physicality and musicality, make for an 'other' aesthetic or contemporary Siren 'song'. The Quivering is pitched at the same tone as the distilled Siren vocalities or 'blue notes', and, as a performance as research project, also re-sounds provocatively within traditional academic discourse. The 'deadliness' of the female voice, in myth, in theory and in performance thus resides in its dissolution of logos and certainty. It quivers with the pleasure and trauma of a corporeal jouissance that exceeds narrative and linguistic frames with its full-bodied, acoustic and imagistic resonance.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Oregon, 2008. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 128-133). Also available online.

Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2009. / Title from screen (viewed on August 26, 2009). Department of English, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Jonathan Eller, John Rudy, Thomas Marvin. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 67-68).

The devastating southeast Asian tsunami of December 26, 2004 has brought home the destructive consequences of coastal hazards in an absence of effective warning systems. Since the 1946 tsunami that destroyed much of Hilo, Hawai'i, a network of pole mounted sirens has been used to provide an early public alert of future tsunamis. However, studies in the 1960s showed that understanding of the meaning of siren soundings was very low and that ambiguity in understanding had contributed to fatalities in the 1960 tsunami that again destroyed much of Hilo. The Hawaiian public has since been exposed to monthly tests of the sirens for more than 25 years and descriptions of the system have been widely published in telephone books for at least 45 years. However, currently there remains some uncertainty in the level of public understanding of the sirens and their implications for behavioral response. Here, we show from recent surveys of Hawai'i residents that awareness of the siren tests and test frequency is high, but these factors do not equate with increased understanding of the meaning of the siren, which remains disturbingly low (13%). Furthermore, the length of time people have lived in Hawai'i is not correlated systematically with understanding of the meaning of the sirens. An additional issue is that warning times for tsunamis gene rated locally in Hawai'i will be of the order of minutes to tens of minutes and limit the immediate utility of the sirens. Natural warning signs of such tsunamis may provide the earliest warning to residents. Analysis of a survey subgroup from Hilo suggests that awareness of natural signs is only moderate, and a majority may expect notification via alerts provided by official sources. We conclude that a major change is needed in tsunami education, even in Hawai'i, to increase public understanding of, and effective response to, both future official alerts and natural warning signs of future tsunamis.

A functional and effective alarm signal is a critical component of alarm systems designed to alert workers of impending danger. In a previous study (Hansson, 2017) background alarm sirens composed of changing-state sounds with an embedded temporal deviant, produced greater disruption of serial short-term memory than a signal without a deviant. However, to give rise to disruption the siren needed to change from fast to slow, since a change from slow to fast was impotent in its effect on task performance. In the current study, whether acoustic change was a necessary prerequisite for obtaining the fast-to-slow deviant effect was explored. Thus, repeated tones—steady-state sequences—presented at slow or fast rates were used with or without a temporal deviant (change from slow-to-fast vs. change from fast-to-slow). In the context of the steady-state sequences, both slow-to-fast and fast-to-slow temporal deviants produced disruption relative to the fast and slow control sequences. This suggests that a changing-state sequence is required for the fast-to-slow temporal deviant effect to arise. However, an alternative explanation based upon inter-stimulus intervals is also entertained. Understanding the acoustic parameters of sound is necessary to develop alarms sirens that are better at capturing attention. The current study suggests that embedding temporal deviants within sirens can promote greater attentional capture, but that this may depend on the nature of the alarm signal (whether it is changing vs. steady-state) and the direction of the change of speed (slow-to-fast vs. fast-to-slow).

Alarm signals such as sirens are crucial in alerting users of impending dangers. Therefore, it is important that the siren is designed so it can capture user's attention. In a previous study (Hansson, 2017) background alarm sirens composed of changing-state sounds with an embedded temporal deviant, produced greater disruption of serial short-term memory than a signal without a temporal deviant. However, to give rise to disruption the siren needed to change from fast to slow, since a change from slow to fast was impotent in its effect on task performance. This was further addressed in Hansson (2018) where it was shown that acoustic change appeared to be a necessary prerequisite for obtaining the fast-to-slow temporal deviant effect: When steady-state sounds were used fast-to-slow and or slow-to-fast temporal deviants were equally disruptive of serial recall. However, in order to create a steady-state siren, inter-stimulus intervals were incorporated into the siren to prevent the continuous uninterrupted presentation of a single tone. Since inter-stimulus intervals were not used in Hansson (2017) it could be the presence of these that eliminated the potency of the fast-to-slow over the slow-to-fast temporal deviation effect in Hansson (2018). Therefore, the current study was undertaken to investigate whether the embedding inter-stimulus intervals within a changing-state siren would restore the potency of the fast-to-slow temporal deviation over the slow-to-fast temporal deviation in capturing attention. The additional disruption for fast-to-slow temporal deviants over slow-to-fast temporal deviants (that did not produce disruption relative to control) returned in the current study when inter-stimulus intervals were included within the siren. The results support the notion that the additional disruption produced by fast-to-slow, over slow-to-fast temporal deviants depend on the changing-state properties of the siren. Implications of this result for the design and operation of sirens within ecologically valid settings are discussed.

No description available.

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro / A presente tese problematiza a ideia defendida por Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) da perda da aura dos objetos artísticos na modernidade técnica, em sua reprodutibilidade, e defende que os cancionistas são neo-sereias modernas que carregam na performance vocal a gaia ciência nutrida pelo instinto caraíba de nossa cultura brasileira. Para tanto, numa metodologia majoritariamente interpretativa de canções populares, aliada ao método comparatista confrontando W. Benjamin, T. Adorno e Oswald de Andrade, entre outros pensadores , investiga: (1) a aplicação prática do conceito de mitopoética na re-criação e permanência do mito sirênico do mito como fonte de saber, a partir do arquétipo da sereia-mãe Iemanjá e suas derivações; (2) o conceito de metacanção, da canção como produto da neo-sereia e como subjetivação da linguagem; e (3) a distinção entre sujeito cancional e sujeito da canção, como artifícios artísticos neo-sirênicos assentados no Brasil / This thesis discusses the idea defended by Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) about the loss of aura of art objects in technical modernity in its reproducibility, and argues that cancionistas are modern neo-sirens bearing in vocal performance at gay science nourished by the caraíba instinct of our Brazilian culture. To this end, a mostly interpretive methodology of popular songs, coupled with the comparative method confronting W. Benjamin, T. Adorno and Oswald de Andrade, among other thinkers investigates: ( 1 ) the practical application of the concept of mythopoetic on the re-creation and permanence of sirênico myth the myth as a source of knowledge, from the archetype of the siren-mother Iemanjá and its derivatives, ( 2 ) the concept of metacanção, the song as a product of neo-sirens and how subjectivity of language, and ( 3 ) the distinction between cancional subject and subject of the song as neo-sirênicos artistic artifices settlers in Brazil

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro / A presente tese problematiza a ideia defendida por Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) da perda da aura dos objetos artísticos na modernidade técnica, em sua reprodutibilidade, e defende que os cancionistas são neo-sereias modernas que carregam na performance vocal a gaia ciência nutrida pelo instinto caraíba de nossa cultura brasileira. Para tanto, numa metodologia majoritariamente interpretativa de canções populares, aliada ao método comparatista confrontando W. Benjamin, T. Adorno e Oswald de Andrade, entre outros pensadores , investiga: (1) a aplicação prática do conceito de mitopoética na re-criação e permanência do mito sirênico do mito como fonte de saber, a partir do arquétipo da sereia-mãe Iemanjá e suas derivações; (2) o conceito de metacanção, da canção como produto da neo-sereia e como subjetivação da linguagem; e (3) a distinção entre sujeito cancional e sujeito da canção, como artifícios artísticos neo-sirênicos assentados no Brasil / This thesis discusses the idea defended by Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) about the loss of aura of art objects in technical modernity in its reproducibility, and argues that cancionistas are modern neo-sirens bearing in vocal performance at gay science nourished by the caraíba instinct of our Brazilian culture. To this end, a mostly interpretive methodology of popular songs, coupled with the comparative method confronting W. Benjamin, T. Adorno and Oswald de Andrade, among other thinkers investigates: ( 1 ) the practical application of the concept of mythopoetic on the re-creation and permanence of sirênico myth the myth as a source of knowledge, from the archetype of the siren-mother Iemanjá and its derivatives, ( 2 ) the concept of metacanção, the song as a product of neo-sirens and how subjectivity of language, and ( 3 ) the distinction between cancional subject and subject of the song as neo-sirênicos artistic artifices settlers in Brazil