This practice-based thesis aims to expand sound art discourse by considering process in sound art practice through an exploration of artists’ experiences. There is still relatively little debate about or critical reflection on the location or nature of process in contemporary sound art’s discourse. This thesis addresses this lack of debate and reflection by developing a framework through which artists can explore and then communicate their perspectives in order to extend sound art discourse. Three key areas emerge from this approach: process, practice and discourse. This thesis investigates how they relate to and interact with each other. In order to explore process, I have borrowed from and extended concepts from the model of conceptual blending, a theory of cognition developed by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner in The way we think: conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities (2002).1 Through the notion of inputs, which are blended through process into outputs, the model of procedural blending, adapted from conceptual blending, illustrates how new meaning is created, providing a basis for the investigation of process in sound art practice for inclusion in its discourse. This exploration is carried out through a modular approach to methodology, which I have termed Modular Field Methodology. I first examine my own past and current work, which offers me the opportunity directly to observe process within my practice and to observe how new themes and views emerge from an engagement with new inputs. The examination of my past and current work also provides a space to gain a deeper understanding of procedural blending in sound art practice. This ‘introspective approach’ is then calibrated by an investigation of the practice of other artists, through collaborative workshops, interviews and an online magazine, each providing different spaces for a wide range of practitioners’ voices reflecting on the diversity and complexity of multimodal sound art practice.

How is agency distributed “in the field” and how can the practice of field recording critically manifest the relationship between humans and non-humans? This thesis posits an original art practice of field recording based on a perspective I am calling “Inter-agential”. Employing the self-reflexive anthropological turn of the 1970’s as parallel critique throughout, I argue environmental sound art has ignored the politics of observer-subject relations and instead engaged place and sound through divisive legacies of conservation and composition. I propose a hybrid conceptual framework from contemporary sound and anthropological studies that foregrounds issues relating to ethics, agency and representation. These subjects are examined in practice by converting “the field” into a collaborative and contested arena for intervention and performance. The result is a unique and formally diverse body of work that seeks to actively disrupt, critique and re-imagine the ontological foundations of field recording through an original and politicised aesthetics. All practice-based experimentation has been conducted in one fixed location along the North-East Coast of England called South Gare. It is an industrial and ecologically embroiled site, both in terms of its history and present day impact. I situate this site-specific setting through artistic legacies found in Land Art. This context helps to re-imagine modes of documentation, production and subjectivity within field recording and builds a nuanced understanding of the field in relation to the representation of place and sonic experience.

Acoustics is a vast subject that has been utilised in many forms for millennia. Recent work has, amongst other things, explored the control of sound using geometric structure to complement inherent material properties. In this thesis, structured plates and surfaces are exploited to engineer specific acoustic responses. The acoustic transmittance and reflectance of these systems is explored in air and underwater to further understanding and develop structures that possess tailored acoustic properties. Original investigations are presented across six chapters. The first three investigations explore the transmittance of periodically perforated plates in air. The fourth investigation considers a non-resonant mechanism of obtaining complete transmission by varying the fluid environment and the fluid in the apertures of a periodically perforated plate is explored. The fifth investigation considers the transmittance through a slit in an acoustically soft plate underwater. Finally, the surface waves supported on periodically structured surfaces are explored by observing the reflectance of the surface. An acoustic field incident upon a perforated plate is partly transmitted. However, at frequencies dictated by the thickness of the plate, the acoustic field is completely transmitted. Stacking two plates with a small separation creates a resonant cavity between the plates that is the origin of a narrow acoustic stop-band at the frequency of the resonance. By varying the offset of the stacked plates and by varying the gap between the plates the frequency of this acoustic stop band is controlled. Altering the geometry of the plate surface within the gaps allows the gap to behave like an array of Helmholtz resonators, in doing so the frequency of the acoustic stop-band is significantly lowered. Varying the acoustic properties of the fluid contained within the apertures of a periodically perforated plates changes how sound is transmitted through the structure. By careful choice of the fluid environment and aperture media, it is demonstrated numerically that broadband total transmittance can be obtained. Acoustic tunnelling is demonstrated through an acoustically soft-walled slit underwater. The slit exhibits a cut-off frequency below which no propagating waves can exist, in contrast to a rigid-walled slit where propagating waves exist down to zero frequency. Resonant acoustic tunnelling is observed through two closely spaced slits in a series connection, at a frequency below the cut-off frequency of the lowest supported propagating mode. A preliminary study of pseudo surface acoustic waves on periodically structured surfaces observes the excitation of surface waves in reflection. A long pitch grating, added to the surface allows diffractive coupling of incident acoustic radiation to the surface wave. However, the height of the grating above the sample is shown to strongly affect the frequency at which the surface wave is detected. All the structures investigated may be designed to provide a desired response by careful choice of the geometry and materials.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / Internal solitary waves, or solitons, are often generated in coastal or continental shelf regions when tidal currents advect stratified water over bathymetric relief, creating an internal tide which non-linearly evolves into one or more solitons. A major consequence of solitons in a stratified environment is the vertical displacement of water parcels which can lead to sound speed variability of order 10m/s with spatial scales of order 100 meters and timescales of order minutes. Thus significant variations in sonar performance on both surface based ships and submarines can be expected. An understanding into the nature of acoustic propagation through these waves is vital for future development of sonar prediction systems. This research investigates acoustic normal mode propagation through solitons using a 2D parabolic equation simulation and weak acoustic scattering theory whose primary physics is a single scatter Bragg mechanism. To simplify the theory, a Gaussian soliton model is developed that compares favorably to the results from a traditional sech2 soliton model. The theory of sound through a Gaussian soliton was then tested against the numerical simulation under conditions of various acoustic frequency, source depths, soliton position relative to the source and soliton number. The theoretical results compare favorably with numerical simulations at 75, 150 and 300-Hz. Higher frequencies need to be tested to determine the limits of the first order theory. Higher order theory will then be needed to address even higher frequencies and to deal with weakly excited modes. This research is the first step in moving from a state of observing acoustic propagation through solitons, to one of predicting it. / Outstanding Thesis / Royal Australian Navy author

Children whose mental age is below ten years lack the ability to utilize incoming information perfectly enough to make fine phonetic distinctions among sounds. This is an experimental study of the growth and interrelationship between sound discrimination ability and mental age.

This study brings forward the field of non-musical sound branding, concerning the use of sound in practical marketing and brand development. This interpretive, qualitative study has been conducted with the purpose of examining and explaining what aspects within non-musical sound branding that advocates and inhibits its use, ase well as exhibit how it can be created and developed. Interview data from advertising agencies and sound producers with extensive experience and knowledge in the field, is interpreted and analysed through theories within the fields of sensory marketing, brand theory, sound theory and non-musical sound branding. The results confirm that the intimate, subliminal qualities of sound, as well as the context in which it is mediated, are fundamental parameters for its reception and interpretation. The results also show that non-musical sound branding possess a number of aspects that both advocates and inhibits its use. The study also exhibit how it can be created and developed in regard to a number of fundamental and contributing perspectives.

O trabalho toma como ponto de partida a realização de um conjunto de ações com o nome pausa,. A idéia é pensar a ocupação temporária de espaços, feita pela interação imagem x som. Tem interesse no tipo de ocupação destes espaços, desenvolvendo a noção de vazamento entre um e outro. A eleição destes espaços parte de elementos que oscilam entre dados reconhecíveis e comuns e por isso coletivos , e identificações particulares, num movimento pendular entre ambos. / This work takes as its starting point a set of actions named pausa, [pause,]. The idea is to reflect upon the temporary occupation of spaces, carried out by means of the interaction between images and sound. It has an interest in the type of occupation of these spaces, developing the notion of leakage between one and another. The choice of these spaces is grounded in elements that oscillate between recognizable, common and hence, collective data, and private identifications, in a pendular movement between the two.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / Responses of coincidence-detecting neurons are a direct function of the temporal structure of their input patterns. Quantitative studies of coincidence-detection provide insight into how neural processing of temporal information contributes to psychophysical performance. This study explored in detail the response properties of model coincidence-detection cells that receive inputs from auditory-nerve (AN) fibers. It also focused on the role of these model cells in coding of complex sounds related to psychophysical tasks for which temporal cues are believed to be important. Performance of model cells was evaluated quantitatively for different model parameters, including the width of the coincidence window, the number of input AN fibers, the characteristic frequencies (CFs) of the input AN fibers, and mixed strengths of the inputs. Results suggest that model cells with low CFs are very sensitive to the phase relationship of the input AN responses. The response properties of the model cells were also compared with results of physiological studies, and the coincidence-detection model predicts several response properties that were previously believed to be difficult to explain. Models for psychophysical detection and discrimination were designed based on population responses of model coincidence cells. Quantitative predictions of masked detection suggest that the most sensitive model cells for detection are the cells whose input AN responses are out of phase when a tone is added to the noise. The temporal structure in AN responses changes with signal-to-noise ratio and does not change as the overall level changes; thus, this model predicts psychophysical performance better than energy-based models under conditions in which the overall level of the stimulus varies randomly from trial to trial. The comparison of the coincidence-detection model and models based on other cues (e.g. envelope detector and channel theory) and implications for the theory of complex sound processing are also discussed. / 2031-01-01

O trabalho toma como ponto de partida a realização de um conjunto de ações com o nome pausa,. A idéia é pensar a ocupação temporária de espaços, feita pela interação imagem x som. Tem interesse no tipo de ocupação destes espaços, desenvolvendo a noção de vazamento entre um e outro. A eleição destes espaços parte de elementos que oscilam entre dados reconhecíveis e comuns e por isso coletivos , e identificações particulares, num movimento pendular entre ambos. / This work takes as its starting point a set of actions named pausa, [pause,]. The idea is to reflect upon the temporary occupation of spaces, carried out by means of the interaction between images and sound. It has an interest in the type of occupation of these spaces, developing the notion of leakage between one and another. The choice of these spaces is grounded in elements that oscillate between recognizable, common and hence, collective data, and private identifications, in a pendular movement between the two.

acase@tulane.edu / In the present study a few approaches are developed for theoretical investigation of vibrational energy propagation in highly ordered polymers and linear atomic chains. Density matrix formalism applied to explain the transition between ballistic and diffusive regimes in polymers, the diffusive and ballistic regimes of energy transport are described in terms of asymptotic limits of exact solution of Liouville-Bloch equation. Energy bands theory is developed for oligomeric structures such as perfluoroalkane and alkane compounds, as an example, practical application for understanding experimental data for alkane is discussed. Also, purely electronic torsional mode in linear atomic chains, such as cumulene, is considered. The speed of up to 1000~km/s for electronic sound is predicted, the spectrum of quanta (torsitons) of torsional electronic mode in cumulene is obtained. / 1 / Arkady Kurnosov