Academic literature on the topic 'Normalising Flows'

In an environmental systems analysis of four wastewater systems, the environmental aspects were prioritised by normalisation of predicted impacts from the studied systems to the total impacts from society. Priority Group 1 (highest priority) consisted of discharges (flows) of nitrogen, cadmium, lead and mercury to water, recycling of nitrogen and phosphorus to arable land and flows of heavy metals to arable land. A conventional wastewater system (A) was compared to irrigation of energy forest with biologically treated wastewater (B), liquid composting of toilet wastewater (C) and a conventional system supplemented with urine separation (D). Analysing the aspects in priority group one, systems B–D improved the management of plant nutrients and decreased the flow of heavy metals to water, while the flow to arable land increased, especially for system B. The suggested method is useful in municipal environmental planning and when choosing a wastewater system.

Sound field reconstruction from finite measurement arrays provides a means to interpolate and extrapolate acoustic quantities that describe the field. By assuming a linear projection on a basis that follows a principled source propagation, one can recover accurate estimates of the aforementioned sound fields. However, the recovery of the basis coefficients relies on explicit models of which measurement noise and data incompleteness can profoundly affect the uncertainty of the solution. This work aims to estimate the distribution of the underlying pressure conditioned on the observations of the measured pressure in a room. A framework for approximate inference is adapted for sound field reconstruction by applying generative flow-based models and invertible neural network architectures. In particular, we use conditional normalising flows for fast conditional posterior estimation and uncertainty quantification. The model's evaluation is carried out using experimental data measured with a spherical array and compared to hierarchical Bayes with Markov Chain Monte-Carlo sampling.

Coherent waving interactions between vegetation and fluid flows are known to emerge under conditions associated with the mixing layer instability. A similar waving motion has also been observed in flow control applications, where passive slender structures are used to augment bluff body wakes. While their existence is well reported, the mechanisms which govern this behaviour, and their dependence on structural properties, are not yet fully understood. This work investigates the coupled interactions of a large array of slender structures in an open-channel flow, via numerical simulation. A direct modelling approach, whereby the individual structures are fully resolved, is realised via a lattice Boltzmann-immersed boundary-finite element model. For steady flow conditions at low–moderate Reynolds number, the response of the array is measured over a range of mass ratio and bending rigidity, spanning two orders of magnitude, and the ensuing response is characterised. The results show a range of behaviours which are classified into distinct states: static, regular waving, irregular waving and flapping. The regular waving regime is found to occur when the natural frequency of the array approaches the estimated frequency of the mixing layer instability. Furthermore, after normalising with respect to the natural frequency of the array, the frequency response across the examined parameter space collapses onto a single curve. These findings indicate that the coherent waving mode is in fact a coupled instability, as opposed to a purely fluid-driven response, and that this specific regime is triggered by a lock-in between the fluid and structural natural frequencies.

The initial production defects having been transferred into a structure and developed during its operation, it is crucial for labour safety to prevent such defects from reaching critical limits. First, the defects should be measured and then calculations of the parameters affecting the extent of their propagation are to be made. Provisions should be made to control damage during production and maintenance process. Evaluation of the structural element strength, once the defect or crack is detected, is rather a complicated procedure requiring sometimes additional theoretical solution or even an experimental research. The limit state conditions favouring stopping the crack find their way to practical application. If such conditions are maintained, it is estimated that the structural element containing a crack in a state of stoppage is able to perform fully its functions. In the paper, the resistance of threaded joints to cyclic loading is defined and based on the criteria of fracture mechanics describing non-permissible operational limit states: formation of macrocrack; transition from stable crack propagation to a dynamic one, ie fracture of the structural element; stable crack propagation exceeding the permissible crack size; transition from the defect (stable crack) to steadily propagating crack, ie continuous accumulation of damage. The regularities of the fracturing process, taking into account constructive peculiarities, production technology and loading conditions were studied in threaded joints within the range of M8 to M48. Threaded joints were tested according to the system ‘nut-stud-nut’ and ‘nut-stud-body’ made of steel 25XIMΦ and 20XIMIΦITP which are widely used to manufacture elements for fixing power equipment. The indicators of mechanical properties are as follows: σ0.2=780÷1020 MPa; σ u =830÷1120 MPa; Ψ=58÷62%. Nuts were manufactured from the same kind of steel as studs, or from another kind of steel with different mechanical properties. The characteristic stages of crack propagation and its rate along the cavity and deeper into the cross-section are presented in the works of the authors. In the experiments, the criterion of fracture mechanics K 1 was applied to describe the crack propagation rate and to investigate the conditions of brittle fracture. A special investigation was carried out to substantiate such a decision. On the basis of the refraction obtained, the S. Jarioma equation was applied to calculate the stress intensity ratio. The parameters of kinetic the fatigue diagrams (a threaded joint and cylindrical specimen 20 with a ring notch imitating the cavity of thread M20) described by means of the P. Paris equation are presented in the works of the authors. The presented experimental data of the cyclic fracture strength of models M20 are characteristic of threaded joints of other size too, not only of those with the size ranging from M8 to M48. Similar regularities were observed in natural specimens of threaded joints M 140x6. The low-cycle fatigue strength of threaded joints manufactured from steel with different mechanical properties (studs made of steel 25XIMΦ, nuts of steel 20.40X and TC) change insignificantly. A more uniform distribution of notches were observed, however, it has a minimal effect on threshold and crack propagation. To determine specific peculiarities which are characteristic of threaded joints, additional experiments were carried out. It is known that a properly constructed threaded joint ‘nut-stud- nut’ undergoes fracture in the stud bar during the construction loading (as in case of tension). Provided there is a big crack in the stud, the fracture can occur on the plane of the cavity during the construction loading. Specimens of three types were studied as follows: cylindrical specimens with a crack; studs with a crack and threaded joints ‘stud-nut’ with a crack in their studs. The results of the experiment depending on the depth of the crack are presented. Different regularities of the threshold, crack propagation and its brittle fracture can be explained as follows: a different stressed state within the cavity of the stud thread (the total result of the stud tension and turn bending) and in the ring notch of the cylindrical specimen; a different front of crack propagation; a different angle of crack propagation (perpendicular to loading in the cylindrical specimen and along the angle of the rise of a turn in the stud); the effect of the first joint turns of the stud and the nut which limits crack opening and influences the processes taking place on the top of a crack. All these factors determine a certain difference between the intensity ratios of critical stresses: materials K c ; studs K cb and studs joint to the nut K ct . Making use of earlier and additional experimental investigation of threaded joints made of steel 25XIMΦ (normalising), the part of the diagram of kinetic fatigue was drawn in which the number of loading cycles exceeds 107. This part characterises the propagation of short cracks. The marginal value ΔK th of the intensity of stresses is a threshold below which cracks do not propagate. One more peculiarity of the experiment results should be indicated—at least two specimens (stud-nut) were tested under equal conditions, but the cracks propagated differently. In the opinion of the authors, cracks propagating in the stud change the flows of the internal resultant in the system ‘stud-nut’ as a consequence of which the crack propagation rate either decreases or terminates. Making use of the experimental data and analysis of the stressed state, the study of the region close to the threshold (ΔK th ) was conducted by means of finite element method. The amplitude of the endurance limit of an even specimen is regarded as the limit state of the threshold. A satisfactory correlation of the results was observed with the stress ratio r = 0; 0.3; 0.6. The difference in the results with the stress ratio r = 0 shows the complexity of the fatigue process as well as the peculiarities of the effect of the nut upon the bolt. According to the experimental data, the length of a non-propagating crack ≈ 5 mm, and the depth exceeds 0.2 mm. Experiments carried out on studs with such cracks showed that non-propagating cracks have no effect on the static strength and fracture takes place in an even part. The determined size of non-propagating cracks is easily measured by means of non-distrusting control methods both under laboratory and operational conditions.

Les directives européennes requièrent que les États membres surveillent la contamination des sédiments continentaux et vérifient que les concentrations en contaminants hydrophobes et métaux dans les sédiments n’augmentent pas de manière significative au cours du temps. En France métropolitaine, les agences de l’eau coordonnent la surveillance des milieux aquatiques continentaux, mais ne disposent pas d’une méthodologie harmonisée permettant d’exploiter les données de contamination des sédiments de surface. À cela s’ajoutent des freins opérationnels, en raison de la difficulté à prélever des sédiments fins et comparables dans le temps résultant de l’hétérogénéité naturelle des sédiments. Aussi, le prélèvement de matières en suspension (MES), qui cible préférentiellement les particules fines, constitue une alternative intéressante au suivi des sédiments de surface. Une réflexion prenant en compte ces difficultés a été menée par Aquaref (Laboratoire national de référence pour la surveillance des milieux aquatiques) afin de proposer une méthodologie pour l’évaluation des tendances de contamination des sédiments. Cette méthodologie a été testée partir des données de surveillance, notamment en normalisant les données pour s’affranchir de la variabilité naturelle des sédiments. Des recommandations sur la qualité nécessaire des chroniques pour une exploitation fiable ont été formulées. Ainsi, sous réserve de disposer de chroniques comportant suffisamment de données et de paramètres normalisateurs, cette méthodologie permet d’identifier des tendances significatives et d’étudier l’évolution temporelle des contaminations à l’échelle d’une station. L’application de cette méthodologie sur des données de MES a permis de démontrer l’intérêt d’effectuer un suivi des MES pour évaluer les tendances de contamination, en raison de l’homogénéité de la fraction échantillonnée au cours du temps. Les comparaisons entre résultats obtenus sur des données de sédiments et de MES montrent que ces dernières peuvent permettre une étude plus fine des tendances. Les approches proposées constituent une première étape pour répondre aux exigences réglementaires, et pour une meilleure exploitation des données de contamination des sédiments.

Despite knowing that perfection is an unsteady concept, mass society is unlikely to escape normalising pressures and be susceptible to negative differentiations of bodies, such as those with functional diversity. However, in co-creative design processes, these bodies can be understood as extreme-users and are welcomed for their diversity and empowerment. Artefacts similarly undergo inclusion and exclusion in creative and productive processes. Therefore, the stigmatisation and standardisation of human and artificial bodies are made explicit in extreme-users, whose importance in design processes lies in addressing them with no negative differentiation with respect to ordinary users, implying that objects’ flaws would be embedded as identity and semantics. This paper questions the dualism of perfection/imperfection attributed to bodies and artefacts by normalising domains, and expects to corroborate design as a social activism tool for catalysing the paradigm of inclusion.

Introduction One of the ways in which ‘country’ is made to work discursively is in ‘country music’ – defining a genre and sensibility in music production, marketing and consumption. This article seeks to excavate one small niche in the historical geography of country music to explore exactly how discursive antecedents emerged, and crucially, how images associated with ‘country’ surfaced and travelled internationally via one of the new ‘global’ media of the first half of the twentieth century – sheet music. My central arguments are twofold: first, that alongside aural qualities and lyrical content, the visual elements of sheet music were important and thus far have been under-acknowledged. Sheet music diffused the imagery connecting ‘country’ to music, to particular landscapes, and masculinities. In the literature on country music much emphasis has been placed on film, radio and television (Tichi; Peterson). Yet, sheet music was for several decades the most common way people bought personal copies of songs they liked and intended to play at home on piano, guitar or ukulele. This was particularly the case in Australia – geographically distant, and rarely included in international tours by American country music stars. Sheet music is thus a rich text to reveal the historical contours of ‘country’. My second and related argument is that that the possibilities for the globalising of ‘country’ were first explored in music. The idea of transnational discourses associated with ‘country’ and ‘rurality’ is relatively new (Cloke et al; Gorman-Murray et al; McCarthy), but in music we see early evidence of a globalising discourse of ‘country’ well ahead of the time period usually analysed. Accordingly, my focus is on the sheet music of country songs in Australia in the first half of the twentieth century and on how visual representations hybridised travelling themes to create a new vernacular ‘country’ in Australia. Creating ‘Country’ Music Country music, as its name suggests, is perceived as the music of rural areas, “defined in contrast to metropolitan norms” (Smith 301). However, the ‘naturalness’ of associations between country music and rurality belies a history of urban capitalism and the refinement of deliberate methods of marketing music through associated visual imagery. Early groups wore suits and dressed for urban audiences – but then altered appearances later, on the insistence of urban record companies, to emphasise rurality and cowboy heritage. Post-1950, ‘country’ came to replace ‘folk’ music as a marketing label, as the latter was considered to have too many communistic references (Hemphill 5), and the ethnic mixing of earlier folk styles was conveniently forgotten in the marketing of ‘country’ music as distinct from African American ‘race’ and ‘r and b’ music. Now an industry of its own with multinational headquarters in Nashville, country music is a ‘cash cow’ for entertainment corporations, with lower average production costs, considerable profit margins, and marketing advantages that stem from tropes of working class identity and ‘rural’ honesty (see Lewis; Arango). Another of country music’s associations is with American geography – and an imagined heartland in the colonial frontier of the American West. Slippages between ‘country’ and ‘western’ in music, film and dress enhance this. But historical fictions are masked: ‘purists’ argue that western dress and music have nothing to do with ‘country’ (see truewesternmusic.com), while recognition of the Spanish-Mexican, Native American and Hawaiian origins of ‘cowboy’ mythology is meagre (George-Warren and Freedman). Similarly, the highly international diffusion and adaptation of country music as it rose to prominence in the 1940s is frequently downplayed (Connell and Gibson), as are the destructive elements of colonialism and dispossession of indigenous peoples in frontier America (though Johnny Cash’s 1964 album The Ballads Of The American Indian: Bitter Tears was an exception). Adding to the above is the way ‘country’ operates discursively in music as a means to construct particular masculinities. Again, linked to rural imagery and the American frontier, the dominant masculinity is of rugged men wrestling nature, negotiating hardships and the pressures of family life. Country music valorises ‘heroic masculinities’ (Holt and Thompson), with echoes of earlier cowboy identities reverberating into contemporary performance through dress style, lyrical content and marketing imagery. The men of country music mythology live an isolated existence, working hard to earn an income for dependent families. Their music speaks to the triumph of hard work, honest values (meaning in this context a musical style, and lyrical concerns that are ‘down to earth’, ‘straightforward’ and ‘without pretence’) and physical strength, in spite of neglect from national governments and uncaring urban leaders. Country music has often come to be associated with conservative politics, heteronormativity, and whiteness (Gibson and Davidson), echoing the wider politics of ‘country’ – it is no coincidence, for example, that the slogan for the 2008 Republican National Convention in America was ‘country first’. And yet, throughout its history, country music has also enabled more diverse gender performances to emerge – from those emphasising (or bemoaning) domesticity; assertive femininity; creative negotiation of ‘country’ norms by gay men; and ‘alternative’ culture (captured in the marketing tag, ‘alt.country’); to those acknowledging white male victimhood, criminality (‘the outlaw’), vulnerability and cruelty (see Johnson; McCusker and Pecknold; Saucier). Despite dominant tropes of ‘honesty’, country music is far from transparent, standing for certain values and identities, and yet enabling the construction of diverse and contradictory others. Historical analysis is therefore required to trace the emergence of ‘country’ in music, as it travelled beyond America. A Note on Sheet Music as Media Source Sheet music was one of the main modes of distribution of music from the 1930s through to the 1950s – a formative period in which an eclectic group of otherwise distinct ‘hillbilly’ and ‘folk’ styles moved into a single genre identity, and after which vinyl singles and LP records with picture covers dominated. Sheet music was prevalent in everyday life: beyond radio, a hit song was one that was widely purchased as sheet music, while pianos and sheet music collections (stored in a piece of furniture called a ‘music canterbury’) in family homes were commonplace. Sheet music is in many respects preferable to recorded music as a form of evidence for historical analysis of country music. Picture LP covers did not arrive until the late 1950s (by which time rock and roll had surpassed country music). Until then, 78 rpm shellac discs, the main form of pre-recorded music, featured generic brown paper sleeves from the individual record companies, or city retail stores. Also, while radio was clearly central to the consumption of music in this period, it obviously also lacked the pictorial element that sheet music could provide. Sheet music bridged the music and printing industries – the latter already well-equipped with colour printing, graphic design and marketing tools. Sheet music was often literally crammed with information, providing the researcher with musical notation, lyrics, cover art and embedded advertisements – aural and visual texts combined. These multiple dimensions of sheet music proved useful here, for clues to the context of the music/media industries and geography of distribution (for instance, in addresses for publishers and sheet music retail shops). Moreover, most sheet music of the time used rich, sometimes exaggerated, images to convince passing shoppers to buy songs that they had possibly never heard. As sheet music required caricature rather than detail or historical accuracy, it enabled fantasy without distraction. In terms of representations of ‘country’, then, sheet music is perhaps even more evocative than film or television. Hundreds of sheet music items were collected for this research over several years, through deliberate searching (for instance, in library archives and specialist sheet music stores) and with some serendipity (for instance, when buying second hand sheet music in charity shops or garage sales). The collected material is probably not representative of all music available at the time – it is as much a specialised personal collection as a comprehensive survey. However, at least some material from all the major Australian country music performers of the time were found, and the resulting collection appears to be several times larger than that held currently by the National Library of Australia (from which some entries were sourced). All examples here are of songs written by, or cover art designed for Australian country music performers. For brevity’s sake, the following analysis of the sheet music follows a crudely chronological framework. Country Music in Australia Before ‘Country’ Country music did not ‘arrive’ in Australia from America as a fully-finished genre category; nor was Australia at the time without rural mythology or its own folk music traditions. Associations between Australian national identity, rurality and popular culture were entrenched in a period of intense creativity and renewed national pride in the decades prior to and after Federation in 1901. This period saw an outpouring of art, poetry, music and writing in new nationalist idiom, rooted in ‘the bush’ (though drawing heavily on Celtic expressions), and celebrating themes of mateship, rural adversity and ‘battlers’. By the turn of the twentieth century, such myths, invoked through memory and nostalgia, had already been popularised. Australia had a fully-established system of colonies, capital cities and state governments, and was highly urbanised. Yet the poetry, folk music and art, invariably set in rural locales, looked back to the early 1800s, romanticising bush characters and frontier events. The ‘bush ballad’ was a central and recurring motif, one that commentators have argued was distinctly, and essentially ‘Australian’ (Watson; Smith). Sheet music from this early period reflects the nationalistic, bush-orientated popular culture of the time: iconic Australian fauna and flora are prominent, and Australian folk culture is emphasised as ‘native’ (being the first era of cultural expressions from Australian-born residents). Pioneer life and achievements are celebrated. ‘Along the road to Gundagai’, for instance, was about an iconic Australian country town and depicted sheep droving along rustic trails with overhanging eucalypts. Male figures are either absent, or are depicted in situ as lone drovers in the archetypal ‘shepherd’ image, behind their flocks of sheep (Figure 1). Figure 1: No. 1 Magpie Ballads – The Pioneer (c1900) and Along the road to Gundagai (1923). Further colonial ruralities developed in Australia from the 1910s to 1940s, when agrarian values grew in the promotion of Australian agricultural exports. Australia ‘rode on the sheep’s back’ to industrialisation, and governments promoted rural development and inland migration. It was a period in which rural lifestyles were seen as superior to those in the crowded inner city, and government strategies sought to create a landed proletariat through post-war land settlement and farm allotment schemes. National security was said to rely on populating the inland with those of European descent, developing rural industries, and breeding a healthier and yet compliant population (Dufty), from which armies of war-ready men could be recruited in times of conflict. Popular culture served these national interests, and thus during these decades, when ‘hillbilly’ and other North American music forms were imported, they were transformed, adapted and reworked (as in other places such as Canada – see Lehr). There were definite parallels in the frontier narratives of the United States (Whiteoak), and several local adaptations followed: Tex Morton became Australia’s ‘Yodelling boundary rider’ and Gordon Parsons became ‘Australia’s yodelling bushman’. American songs were re-recorded and performed, and new original songs written with Australian lyrics, titles and themes. Visual imagery in sheet music built upon earlier folk/bush frontier themes to re-cast Australian pastoralism in a more settled, modernist and nationalist aesthetic; farms were places for the production of a robust nation. Where male figures were present on sheet music covers in the early twentieth century, they became more prominent in this period, and wore Akubras (Figure 2). The lyrics to John Ashe’s Growin’ the Golden Fleece (1952) exemplify this mix of Australian frontier imagery, new pastoralist/nationalist rhetoric, and the importation of American cowboy masculinity: Go west and take up sheep, man, North Queensland is the shot But if you don’t get rich, man, you’re sure to get dry rot Oh! Growin’ the golden fleece, battlin’ a-way out west Is bound to break your flamin’ heart, or else expand your chest… We westerners are handy, we can’t afford to crack Not while the whole darn’d country is riding on our back Figure 2: Eric Tutin’s Shearers’ Jamboree (1946). As in America, country music struck a chord because it emerged “at a point in history when the project of the creation and settlement of a new society was underway but had been neither completed nor abandoned” (Dyer 33). Governments pressed on with the colonial project of inland expansion in Australia, despite the theft of indigenous country this entailed, and popular culture such as music became a means to normalise and naturalise the process. Again, mutations of American western imagery, and particular iconic male figures were important, as in Roy Darling’s (1945) Overlander Trail (Figure 3): Wagon wheels are rolling on, and the days seem mighty long Clouds of heat-dust in the air, bawling cattle everywhere They’re on the overlander trail Where only sheer determination will prevail Men of Aussie with a job to do, they’ll stick and drive the cattle through And though they sweat they know they surely must Keep on the trail that winds a-head thro’ heat and dust All sons of Aussie and they will not fail. Sheet music depicted silhouetted men in cowboy hats on horses (either riding solo or in small groups), riding into sunsets or before looming mountain ranges. Music – an important part of popular culture in the 1940s – furthered the colonial project of invading, securing and transforming the Australian interior by normalising its agendas and providing it with heroic male characters, stirring tales and catchy tunes. Figure 3: ‘Roy Darling’s (1945) Overlander Trail and Smoky Dawson’s The Overlander’s Song (1946). ‘Country Music’ Becomes a (Globalised) Genre Further growth in Australian country music followed waves of popularity in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, and was heavily influenced by new cross-media publicity opportunities. Radio shows expanded, and western TV shows such as Bonanza and On the Range fuelled a ‘golden age’. Australian performers such as Slim Dusty and Smokey Dawson rose to fame (see Fitzgerald and Hayward) in an era when rural-urban migration peaked. Sheet music reflected the further diffusion and adoption of American visual imagery: where male figures were present on sheet music covers, they became more prominent than before and wore Stetsons. Some were depicted as chiselled-faced but simple men, with plain clothing and square jaws. Others began to more enthusiastically embrace cowboy looks, with bandana neckerchiefs, rawhide waistcoats, embellished and harnessed tall shaft boots, pipe-edged western shirts with wide collars, smile pockets, snap fasteners and shotgun cuffs, and fringed leather jackets (Figure 4). Landscapes altered further too: cacti replaced eucalypts, and iconic ‘western’ imagery of dusty towns, deserts, mesas and buttes appeared (Figure 5). Any semblance of folk music’s appeal to rustic authenticity was jettisoned in favour of showmanship, as cowboy personas were constructed to maximise cinematic appeal. Figure 4: Al Dexter’s Pistol Packin’ Mama (1943) and Reg Lindsay’s (1954) Country and Western Song Album. Figure 5: Tim McNamara’s Hitching Post (1948) and Smoky Dawson’s Golden West Album (1951). Far from slavish mimicry of American culture, however, hybridisations were common. According to Australian music historian Graeme Smith (300): “Australian place names appear, seeking the same mythological resonance that American localisation evoked: hobos became bagmen […] cowboys become boundary riders.” Thus alongside reproductions of the musical notations of American songs by Lefty Frizzel, Roy Carter and Jimmie Rodgers were songs with localised themes by new Australian stars such as Reg Lindsay and Smoky Dawson: My curlyheaded buckaroo, My home way out back, and On the Murray Valley. On the cover of The square dance by the billabong (Figure 6) – the title of which itself was a conjunction of archetypal ‘country’ images from both America and Australia – a background of eucalypts and windmills frames dancers in classic 1940s western (American) garb. In the case of Tex Morton’s Beautiful Queensland (Figure 7), itself mutated from W. Lee O’Daniel’s Beautiful Texas (c1945), the sheet music instructed those playing the music that the ‘names of other states may be substituted for Queensland’. ‘Country’ music had become an established genre, with normative values, standardised images and themes and yet constituted a stylistic formula with enough polysemy to enable local adaptations and variations. Figure 6: The Square dance by the billabong, Vernon Lisle, 1951. Figure 7: Beautiful Queensland, Tex Morton, c1945 source: http://nla.gov.au/nla.mus-vn1793930. Conclusions In country music images of place and masculinity combine. In music, frontier landscapes are populated by rugged men living ‘on the range’ in neo-colonial attempts to tame the land and convert it to productive uses. This article has considered only one media – sheet music – in only one country (Australia) and in only one time period (1900-1950s). There is much more to say than was possible here about country music, place and gender – particularly recently, since ‘country’ has fragmented into several niches, and marketing of country music via cable television and the internet has ensued (see McCusker and Pecknold). My purpose here has been instead to explore the early origins of ‘country’ mythology in popular culture, through a media source rarely analysed. Images associated with ‘country’ travelled internationally via sheet music, immensely popular in the 1930s and 1940s before the advent of television. The visual elements of sheet music contributed to the popularisation and standardisation of genre expectations and appearances, and yet these too travelled and were adapted and varied in places like Australia which had their own colonial histories and folk music heritages. Evidenced here is how combinations of geographical and gender imagery embraced imported American cowboy imagery and adapted it to local markets and concerns. Australia saw itself as a modern rural utopia with export aspirations and a desire to secure permanence through taming and populating its inland. Sheet music reflected all this. So too, sheet music reveals the historical contours of ‘country’ as a transnational discourse – and the extent to which ‘country’ brought with it a clearly defined set of normative values, a somewhat exaggerated cowboy masculinity, and a remarkable capacity to be moulded to local circumstances. Well before later and more supposedly ‘global’ media such as the internet and television, the humble printed sheet of notated music was steadily shaping ‘country’ imagery, and an emergent international geography of cultural flows. References Arango, Tim. “Cashville USA.” Fortune, Jan 29, 2007. Sept 3, 2008, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/01/22/8397980/index.htm. Cloke, Paul, Marsden, Terry and Mooney, Patrick, eds. Handbook of Rural Studies, London: Sage, 2006. 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