Journal articles on the topic 'Video game acoustics'

Many teenagers’ free time is almost entirely devoted to video games. Unlike reality, in the virtual environment, adolescents feel themselves as protagonists by interacting with people and objects that are very far from the current living environments. Several authors in the literature have highlighted the risks associated with an intensive use of these technologies and the negative consequences for health. To make the gaming experience as exciting as possible, these applications are equipped with sound environments that stimulate attention and aggression. This study describes the noise exposure measurement activities for video game users. The damage caused by noise depends on both the acoustic power and the exposure time. For this reason, different noise exposure scenarios produced by video games have been simulated. The results show that the daily levels of exposure to noise are close to the limits imposed by the legislation. A game exceeds the lower exposure limit for two different time exposures. In the case of 4 h of exposure, the lower exposure limit is exceeded, although the other 4 h of rest have been passed in an environment with low background noise (46.0 dBA). The results suggest limiting the set sound level appropriately and to reduce users’ exposure times.

One of the objectives of architectural design is to create multi-sensory environments. The users are under the influence of a wide variety and intense perceptual data flow when users experience a designed space. Architects and environmental designers should not ignore the sense of hearing, one of the most important of the five primitive senses that allow us to experience the physical environment within the framework of creative thinking from the first stage of the design process. Today, auditory analysis of spaces has been studied under architectural acoustics, soundscapes, multi-sensory interactions, and sense of place. However, the current sound design methods implemented in the film and video game industries and industrial design have not been used in architectural design practices. Sound design is the art and application of making soundtracks in various disciplines and it involves recognizing, acquiring, or developing of auditory components. This research aims to establish a holistic architectural sound design framework based on the previous sound classification and taxonomic models found in the literature. The proposed sound design framework will help the architects and environmental designers classify the sound elements in the built environment and provide holistic environmental sound design guidelines depending on the spaces' functions and context.

Quick reactions are considered important in both, traditional and electronic sports and research findings suggest that reaction time can be optimized by both sports activity and playing action video games. In this study, reaction and motor times of 18 professional and 21 non-professional eSports players from different genres and 36 non-professional traditional sportsmen were compared using the Vienna Test System. No differences between the groups were found in simple visual, acoustic, and choice reaction times. Differentiated by game genre, players from sports simulations had significantly shorter reaction times than MOBA players in the acoustic and choice reaction test. The results of this study suggest that traditional sports and eSports may improve reaction times to a similar amount. Furthermore, various game genres require different reaction times or may affect related abilities in different ways.

Echolocation is a rare ability of some bats, dolphins, and humans with reduced sightedness or visual impairment. Often visualized as a type of auditory sight, echolocation has no true analog for sighted humans without the ability, resulting in a wide range of interpretations when game designers attempt to capture this subjective experience. Video games have depicted echolocation with varying degrees of fidelity and realism, from musical scales and maps to fully realized three-dimensional worlds. This variety may be attributed in part to the inaccessible experience of the echolocating subjects. Designers must rely on their own subjective experiences to create a mental image of this ability. Synthesizing aspects of acoustic and biological sciences, philosophy, and disability studies, this article examines depictions of echolocation in video games, demonstrating that games require players to incorporate their own experiences in order to bridge the “explanatory gap” between the subjective experiences of visually impaired characters and knowledge of the objective processes of echolocation that are accessible to sighted players. With examples from Ecco the Dolphin (1992) and Perception (2017), this article will show that designers support their echolocation mechanics with narrative and supplementary information rather than actualizing the experience with gameplay.

Comics and manga have long been seen as childish literature, even if sometimes referred to as an art. Webpages discussing matters like Mathematics or Science are usually considered popularized content and not as tools with which research can be built. Arcade video games are often not considered serious games that can be used for learning or team building purposes. In this work, we present examples of comics, interactive web pages, and arcade video games that can be used to learn the basics of vibro-acoustics or to focus on more specific topics such as the acoustics of porous media. The reader can experience most of these visual narrative examples following the provided links. An objective of this collection is to make them better known and to stimulate further initiatives on these topics in acoustics education. To this effect, recommendations from various use cases of these visual narratives for different levels of education are also given.

Reaction time is of great importance in life. In both sports and video games, movements of participants are conditioned by different visual, acoustic and somatosensory signals. The aim of this research was to determine whether reaction time is influenced by regular physical activity and playing video games in adolescents. The study included 41 female and 26 male students, aged 10–14 years. Questionnaires about habits related to regular physical activity and playing video games were given to the examinees. Afterwards, the reaction time was determined for visual stimuli, via a computer program. The obtained results show that there is a statistically significant difference in the value of the reaction time of children who are regularly engaged in physical activity relative to those who play video games ((0.327 ± 0.081) s vs. (0.403 ± 0.137) s, p = 0.013), while there is no statistically significant difference in reaction time between children who equally participate in physical activity and video games ((0.386 ± 0.134) s) compared to those who regularly practice physical activity (p = 0.156), and those who only play video games (p = 0.610). Physical activity can decrease reaction time in children, but further studies are needed to elucidate the impact of regular physical activity and gaming on the developing adolescent brain.

Increasingly, our acoustic environment is filled with amplified sound sources (e.g., MP3 players, video game stations, and sports/entertainment venues). There is serious concern and also some controversy about the risks of acoustic trauma in children. This overview provides some basic information on the physiological mechanisms that lead to noise induced hearing loss, a survey of various studies that, on balance, indicates that there is cause for concern, and finally a discussion on measures that can help to prevent noise induced hearing loss in children. This paper is designed for public health and other healthcare professions (ENT, audiologists, family doctors, and pediatricians) who should understand the risks of noise induced hearing loss and its prevention.

The use of virtual reality trainers for teaching minimally invasive surgical techniques has been established for a long time in conventional laparoscopy as well as robotic surgery. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the impact of reproducible disruptive factors on the surgeon’s work. In a cross-sectional investigation, surgeons were tested with regard to the impact of different disruptive factors when doing exercises on a robotic-surgery simulator (Mimic Flex VRTM). Additionally, we collected data about the participants’ professional experience, gender, age, expertise in playing an instrument, and expertise in playing video games. The data were collected during DRUS 2019 (Symposium of the German Society for Robot-assisted Urology). Forty-two surgeons attending DRUS 2019 were asked to participate in a virtual robotic stress training unit. The surgeons worked in various specialties (visceral surgery, gynecology, and urology) and had different levels of expertise. The time taken to complete the exercise (TTCE), the final score (FSC), and blood loss (BL) were measured. In the basic exercise with an interactive disruption, TTCE was significantly longer (p < 0.01) and FSC significantly lower (p < 0.05). No significant difference in TTCE, FSC, or BL was noted in the advanced exercise with acoustic disruption. Performance during disruption was not dependent on the level of surgical experience, gender, age, expertise in playing an instrument, or playing video games. A positive correlation was registered between self-estimation and surgical experience. Interactive disruptions have a greater impact on the performance of a surgeon than acoustic ones. Disruption affects the performance of experienced as well as inexperienced surgeons. Disruption in daily surgery should be evaluated and minimized in the interest of the patient’s safety.

Movements of the head during speech serve multiple communicative purposes, including perceptual enhancement of prosodic F0 contours. However, it remains uncertain how much of any correlation between head movement and F0 may be due to physiological coupling mechanisms exerting effects on glottal tension. In this work, six native speakers of American English (3F) were videorecorded during production of spontaneous monologues lasting 90 seconds. Each speaker extemporized twice on two topics chosen from a list (e.g., "video games waste time"). One of these they agreed with ("sincere"), and the other they pretended to agree with ("insincere"). Speaker head movements were quantified as displacement/rotation of a six DOF rigid body from the videos using OpenFace (Baltrušaitis, 2018). F0 for each speaker was converted to semitones relative to the median value for that speaker. Results show larger semitone excursion range but smaller head movement range for the sincere condition, with no significant differences in syllable rate across conditions. LME models predicting absolute semitone changes from head displacement show significant positive slopes for main effects of movement and sincerity, and an additive interaction for sincere productions. These differences suggest that, while head movement correlates with F0 overall, speaker sincerity can interact with the relation.

AbstractWagner’s vaunted model of artistic synthesis persists in scholarly assessments of his work. But at its centre, the composer argued that the media of voice and orchestra do not mix: they retain their identities as separate channels of sound that can neither duplicate nor substitute for one another. Taking as a starting point Wagner’s claims for the non-adaptability of media, this article addresses the adaptation of Wagner’s music to the modern digital technologies of HD cinema and video game. Drawing on a wide circle of writers, from Schiller and Žižek to Bakhtin, Augé, Baudrillard and second-generation media theorists, it interrogates the concept of ‘reality’ within live acoustic performance, both historically, as a discursive concept, and technologically, via the sensory realism of digital simulcasting and telepresence. The philosophical opposition of appearance and reality fails when reality is defined by the intimate simulation of a sensory event as it is registered on the body. And by contrasting the traditions of high fidelity in (classical) sound recording with that of rendering sound in cinema, I suggest ways in which unmixable media appear to have an afterlife in modern technologies. This raises questions – in a post-Benjamin, post-McLuhan context – about our definition of ‘liveness’, the concept of authenticity within mediatised and acoustic sounds, and our vulnerability to the technological effects of media.

Abstract Sound spatialization is a technique used in various musical genres as well as in soundtrack production for films and video games. In this context, specialized software has been developed for the design of sound trajectories we have classified as (1) basic movements, or image schemas of spatial movement; and (2) archetypal geometric figures. Our contribution is to reach an understanding of how we perceive the movement of sound in space as a result of the interaction between an agent's or listener's sensory-motor characteristics and the morphological characteristics of the stimuli and the acoustic space where such interaction occurs. An experiment was designed involving listening to auditory stimuli and associating them with the aforementioned spatial movement categories. The results suggest that in most cases, the ability to recognize moving sound is hindered when there are no visual stimuli present. Moreover, they indicate that archetypal geometric figures are rarely perceived as such and that the perception of sound movements in space can be organized into three spatial dimensions—height, depth, and width—which the literature on sound localization also confirms.

Background. Today, jazz transcriptions of works by George Gershwin can be heard around the world. Works such as “The Man I Love”, “I Got Rhythm”, “Summertime”, “Liza”, “Fascinating Rhythm”, “Somebody Loves Me”, “Swanee”, included in the collection “Gershwin songs”, and also “Seven virtuoso etudes on the themes of G. Gershwin” by E. Wilde are performed by modern academic musicians. Thus, widely known performance versions of piano transcriptions “Gershwin songs” by M.-A. Hamelin, the song “The Man I Love” performed by A. Tharaud, P. Barton, and others famous performers. The evidence of growing interest of classical performers in the music of the American composer is the successful holding of the IV G. Gershvin International Music Competition in New York (on November 7–10, 2019). Director and main organizer of the competition, Michael Bulychev-Okser, is the American pianist, the main winner of many international competitions in the United States, Italy, Andorra, Spain and Mexico. How does a musician of academic direction, whose inner professional intentions and way of thinking are brought up on the classical repertoire, perceive Gershwin’s jazz compositions? What is the specificity of modern reading of his music? In which cultural traditions should we look for the key to understanding Gershwin’s musical language, its rhythmic and intonational specifics? Finally, can a jazz pianist consider himself completely free from the culture of the academic tradition by playing Gershwin? The search for answers to all these questions has identified the problematic perspective of this article. The purpose of the article is to reveal the characteristic features of the performance of G. Gershwin’s transcriptions by modern academic pianists using specific examples and to determine the interpretational tasks of the performer. The research methodology is based on a comprehensive genre andstyle approach to the study of musical material, and also includes a comparative method used for concidering different performance versions of the same work. The main results of the study. Jazz and the culture of academic music work closely together in the style of G. Gershwin. Indicative in this sense was the idea of a concert eloquently called “Reunion of Classics and Jazz” (1924), for which the “Rhapsody in Blue” was created and where it was first performed by the author with the orchestra of Paul Whiteman. G. Gershwin, more than any other composer of his time, communicated with African-American musicians: he knew Will Voderi, Lucky Roberts, Duke Ellington; heard New York pianists play downtown and often visited the “Cotton Club” and other places in Harlem to hear the bands of Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and other jazz musicians. But not only jazz was the area of interest and creative acquaintances of Gershwin. Along with jazz culture, there were many other musical styles. In the works of G. Gershwin, Ch. Ives, A. Copland in the early 1920s – mid 1940s there is an original combination of deep folk intonation with the composer’s technique of the XX century, up to the use of dodecaphonic-serial technique (Copland). The fusion of jazz and academic branches in Gershwin’s music, above all, takes place at the level of form. “I took the blues and put it in a larger and more serious form”, said the composer (as quoted by Schneider, 1999: 67). As a pianist, Gershwin did not receive a systematic professional education as a child, although he later had enough teachers. But that didn’t stop him from becoming a real pianist-virtuoso and a brilliant improviser. One should listen to archival recordings of Gershwin’s performance to get an idea of his performance style. Samples of his piano performances have been partially preserved: some acoustic and electric recordings, radio recordings, two sound films and a large number of piano videos (Gibbons, 2002). The studio recording of “Rhapsody in Blue” demonstrates Gershwin’s completely “academic” pianism – with clear, well-founded articulation, bright sonic fullness, thoughtful agogics of expressive declamation, which is only emphasized by the well-organized metric pulsation and dynamics by active rhythmic movement – and his true virtuoso skill. Should a modern pianist, performing Gershwin’s works, follow the example of a balanced and rather “academic” performance, as in his studio recording “Rhapsody in Blue”, or follow Gershvin’s interpretation, which can be observed in the transcription “I Got Rhythm”, where he clearly prefers the jazz element? It makes sense to compare different examples of Gershwin’s popular piano transcription of “The Man I Love”. The performance version of the English pianist Paul Barton is an attempt to imitate the specifics of the freedom of sound of instrumental jazz styles, however, as one can hear, the musical intonation is not always convincing, the breath is a bit torn, the agogics of chord melodic constructions performance the agogics of chord melodic constructions (upper layers of texture) is greatly exaggerated and the performing is practically “released” from calculation and feeling of time. As an undoubted plus of this version it is necessary to note huge attention to harmony as such, to vertical and balance within a chord – Barton’s harmony “breathes” and moves. This approach can be justified, because the harmony of Gershwin’s songs is always diverse, bright and inventive. The record of Gershwin’s 1959 “Songbook” by Ella Fitzgerald is available today. The composition “The Man I Love” in her performance can be one of the possible orienting points in the intonation of the main melodic voice, the calculation of its unfolding in time, the display of interval “tensions” and melodic intentions in Gershwin’s music. E. Fitzgerald’s vocal-jazz style presupposes a different temporal organization of the melody, different from the one suggested by P. Barton – the movement of its vocal recitation-intonation and improvisational vocals is accelerated, then somewhat slowed down, thus creating “compensated time” of a musical work, and it is with soft, relaxed, naturally light breathing. The modern media space presents the album of French pianist Alexandre Tharaud “Swing in Paris”, which includes two compositions by Gershwin: “The Man I Love” and “Do it Again!”. Three different interpretations of “The Man I Love” are popular on the You Tube website, where each video is original in its own way. These performings are variants, but the concept of details – melodic constructions, organization of rhythmic accents, as well as a sense of Gershwin’s style, is preserved. The sophistication of the Parisian salon is what distinguishes the game of Tharaud. The musician has a sense of proportion and uses the full range of expressive means of academic pianism. At the same time, the development of the melodic line takes place organically and effortlessly, alluding to vocal genre examples, to free breathing and “blues” articulation of jazz vocalists; rhythmic accentuation is unobtrusive but clearly felt. Summing up, we note that the “Tharaud approach” is certainly the closest to the reference. Conclusions. Proceeding from the synthetic nature of G. Gershwin’s music, comprehension of its stylistic and cultural origins, analysis of listened musical samples, let us single out the interpretation constants that must be taken into account by the performer of his compositions. Among them – the inheritance of agogics, articulation, “light” breathing, inherent in the vocal jazz manner, in the intonation of the melody; “Breathing” harmony with a colorful timbre filling of chords and subvoices united into a movable vertical-horizontal complex; understanding of rhythm as an independent expressive sphere that has ethnic roots in the music of the African American tradition.

Quick reactions are considered important in both, traditional and electronic sports and research findings suggest that reaction time can be optimized by both sports activity and playing action video games. In this study, reaction and motor times of 18 professional and 21 non-professional eSports players from different genres and 36 non-professional traditional sportsmen were compared using the Vienna Test System. No differences between the groups were found in simple visual, acoustic, and choice reaction times. Differentiated by game genre, players from sports simulations had significantly shorter reaction times than MOBA players in the acoustic and choice reaction test. The results of this study suggest that traditional sports and eSports may improve reaction times to a similar amount. Furthermore, various game genres require different reaction times or may affect related abilities in different ways.

Quick reactions are considered important in both, traditional and electronic sports and research findings suggest that reaction time can be optimized by both sports activity and playing action video games. In this study, reaction and motor times of 18 professional and 21 non-professional eSports players from different genres and 36 non-professional traditional sportsmen were compared using the Vienna Test System. No differences between the groups were found in simple visual, acoustic, and choice reaction times. Differentiated by game genre, players from sports simulations had significantly shorter reaction times than MOBA players in the acoustic and choice reaction test. The results of this study suggest that traditional sports and eSports may improve reaction times to a similar amount. Furthermore, various game genres require different reaction times or may affect related abilities in different ways.

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) is widely used in many applications and tools. Smartphones, video games, and cars are a few examples where people use ASR routinely and often daily. A less commonly used, but potentially very important arena for using ASR, is the health domain. For some people, the impact on life could be enormous. The goal of this work is to develop an easy-to-use, non-invasive, inexpensive speech-based diagnostic test for dementia that can easily be applied in a clinician’s office or even at home. While considerable work has been published along these lines, increasing dramatically recently, it is primarily of theoretical value and not yet practical to apply. A large gap exists between current scientific understanding, and the creation of a diagnostic test for dementia. The aim of this paper is to bridge this gap between theory and practice by engineering a practical test. Experimental evidence suggests that strong discrimination between subjects with a diagnosis of probable Alzheimer’s vs. matched normal controls can be achieved with a combination of acoustic features from speech, linguistic features extracted from a transcription of the speech, and results of a mini mental state exam. A fully automatic speech recognition system tuned for the speech-to-text aspect of this application, including automatic punctuation, is also described.

Abstract Background Impaired naming is a ubiquitous symptom in all types of aphasia, which often adversely impacts independence, quality of life, and recovery of affected individuals. Previous research has demonstrated that naming can be facilitated by phonological and semantic cueing strategies that are largely incorporated into the treatment of anomic disturbances. Beneficial effects of cueing, whereby naming becomes faster and more accurate, are often attributed to the priming mechanisms occurring within the distributed language network. Objective We proposed and explored two novel cueing techniques: (1) Silent Visuomotor Cues (SVC), which provided articulatory information of target words presented in the form of silent videos, and (2) Semantic Auditory Cues (SAC), which consisted of acoustic information semantically relevant to target words (ringing for “telephone”). Grounded in neurophysiological evidence, we hypothesized that both SVC and SAC might aid communicative effectiveness possibly by triggering activity in perceptual and semantic language regions, respectively. Methods Ten participants with chronic non-fluent aphasia were recruited for a longitudinal clinical intervention. Participants were split into dyads (i.e., five pairs of two participants) and required to engage in a turn-based peer-to-peer language game using the Rehabilitation Gaming System for aphasia (RGSa). The objective of the RGSa sessions was to practice communicative acts, such as making a request. We administered SVCs and SACs in a pseudorandomized manner at the moment when the active player selected the object to be requested from the interlocutor. For the analysis, we compared the times from selection to the reception of the desired object between cued and non-cued trials. Results Naming accuracy, as measured by a standard clinical scale, significantly improved for all stimuli at each evaluation point, including the follow-up. Moreover, the results yielded beneficial effects of both SVC and SAC cues on word naming, especially at the early intervention sessions when the exposure to the target lexicon was infrequent. Conclusions This study supports the efficacy of the proposed cueing strategies which could be integrated into the clinic or mobile technology to aid naming even at the chronic stages of aphasia. These findings are consistent with sensorimotor accounts of language processing, suggesting a coupling between language, motor, and semantic brain regions. Trial registration NCT02928822. Registered 30 May 2016.

Cochlear implants (CIs) have been remarkably successful at restoring hearing in severely-to-profoundly hearing-impaired individuals. However, users often struggle to deconstruct complex auditory scenes with multiple simultaneous sounds, which can result in reduced music enjoyment and impaired speech understanding in background noise. Hearing aid users often have similar issues, though these are typically less acute. Several recent studies have shown that haptic stimulation can enhance CI listening by giving access to sound features that are poorly transmitted through the electrical CI signal. This “electro-haptic stimulation” improves melody recognition and pitch discrimination, as well as speech-in-noise performance and sound localization. The success of this approach suggests it could also enhance auditory perception in hearing-aid users and other hearing-impaired listeners. This review focuses on the use of haptic stimulation to enhance music perception in hearing-impaired listeners. Music is prevalent throughout everyday life, being critical to media such as film and video games, and often being central to events such as weddings and funerals. It represents the biggest challenge for signal processing, as it is typically an extremely complex acoustic signal, containing multiple simultaneous harmonic and inharmonic sounds. Signal-processing approaches developed for enhancing music perception could therefore have significant utility for other key issues faced by hearing-impaired listeners, such as understanding speech in noisy environments. This review first discusses the limits of music perception in hearing-impaired listeners and the limits of the tactile system. It then discusses the evidence around integration of audio and haptic stimulation in the brain. Next, the features, suitability, and success of current haptic devices for enhancing music perception are reviewed, as well as the signal-processing approaches that could be deployed in future haptic devices. Finally, the cutting-edge technologies that could be exploited for enhancing music perception with haptics are discussed. These include the latest micro motor and driver technology, low-power wireless technology, machine learning, big data, and cloud computing. New approaches for enhancing music perception in hearing-impaired listeners could substantially improve quality of life. Furthermore, effective haptic techniques for providing complex sound information could offer a non-invasive, affordable means for enhancing listening more broadly in hearing-impaired individuals.

EditorialIt is the great honor for us to edit proceedings of “2nd Global Conference on Contemporary Issues in Education
(GLOBE-EDU 2015)” August 27-28, The University of Chicago Chicago, USA. This privileged scientific event has contributed to the field of educational research for two years. As the guest editors of this issue, we are glad to see variety of articles focusing on arts education, Adult Education, Competitive Skills, Continuing Education, Higher Education, Vocational Education, Transferring Disciplines, Business Education, Educational Administration, Human Resource Development, Academic Advising and Counselling, Education Policy and Leadership, Industrial Cooperation, Life-long Learning Experiences, Workplace Learning and Collaborative Learning, Work Employability, Educational Institution Government Partnership, Patent Registration and Technology Transfer, University Spin-Off Companies, Course Management, Accreditation and Quality Assurance, Academic Experiences and Best Practice Contributions, Copy-right, Digital Libraries and Repositories, Digital Rights Management, Evaluation and Assessment, E-content Management and Development, Open Content, e-Portfolios, Grading Methods, Knowledge Management, Quality processes at National and International level, Security and Data Protection, Student Selection Criteria in Interdisciplinary Studies, User-Generated Content, Curriculum, Research and Development, Acoustics in Education Environment, APD/Listening, Counsellor Education, Courses, Tutorials and Labs, Curriculum Design, ESL/TESL, Special Area Education, Early Childhood Education, Elementary Education, Geographical Education, Health Education, Home Education, Mathematics Education, Rural Education, Science Education, Secondary Education, Second life Educators, Social Studies Education, Special Education, Learning / Teaching Methodologies and Assessment, Simulated Communities and Online Mentoring, e-Testing and new Test Theories, Supervising and Managing Student Projects, Pedagogy Enhancement with e-Learning, Educating the Educators, Immersive Learning, Blended Learning, Computer-Aided Assessment, Metrics and Performance Measurement, Assessment Software Tools, Assessment Methods in Blended Learning Environments, Global Issues In Education and Research, Education, Research and Globalization, Barriers to Learning (ethnicity, age, psychosocial factors, …), Women and Minorities in Science and Technology, Indigenous and Diversity Issues, Government Policy issues, Organizational, Legal and Financial Aspects, Digital Divide, Increasing Affordability and Access to the Internet, Ethical issues in Education, Intellectual Property Rights and Plagiarism, Pedagogy, Teacher Education, Cross-disciplinary areas of Education, Educational Psychology, Education practice trends and issues, Indigenous Education, Kinesiology and Leisure Science, K12, Life-long Learning Education, Mathematics Education, Physical Education (PE), Reading Education, Religion and Education Studies Research Management, Research Methodologies,Academic Research Projects, Joint-research programmes, Research on Technology in Education, Research Centres, Links between Education and Research, New Challenges in Education, ECTS experiences, The Bologna Process and its implementation, Joint-Degree Programmes, Erasmus and Exchange experiences in universities, Students and Teaching staff Exchange programmes, Ubiquitous Learning, Accessibility to Disabled Users, Animation, 3D, and Web 3D Applications, Context Dependent Learning, Distance Education, E-Learning, E-Manufacturing, Educational Technology, Educational Games and Software, Human Computer Interaction, ICT Education, Internet technologies, Learning Management Systems (LMS), Mobile Applications and Learning (M-learning), Multi-Virtual Environment, Standards and Interoperability, Technology Enhanced Learning, Technology Support for Pervasive Learning, Ubiquitous Computing, Videos for Learning and Educational Multimedia, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Virtual Learning Environments (VLE), Web 2.0, Social Networking, Blogs and Wikis, Wireless Applications, Research In Progress, On going research from undergraduates, graduates/postgraduates and professionals Projects, Collaborative Research, Integration of cross-cultural studies in curriculum, Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), New Trends And Experiences, Other Areas of Education                                                                                                                                                             Furthermore, the conference is getting more international each year, which is an indicator that it is getting worldwide known and recognized. Scholars from all over the world contributed to the conference. Special thanks are to all the reviewers, the members of the international editorial board, the publisher, and those involved in technical processes. We would like to thank all who contributed to in every process to make this issue actualized. A total of 21 full papers or abstracts were submitted for this conference and each paper has been peer reviewed by the reviewers specialized in the related field. At the end of the review process, a total of 7 high quality research papers were selected and accepted for publication. I hope that you will enjoy reading the papers.Best Regards  Guest EditorsProf. Dr. Gul Celkan, Middle Georgia State College, USA Editorial AssistantMsc. Zeynep Genç, Near East University, North Cyprus

“As the old technologies become automatic and invisible, we find ourselves more concerned with fighting or embracing what’s new”—Dennis Baron, From Pencils to Pixels: The Stage of Literacy Technologies Popular music is firmly rooted within realist practice, or what has been called the "culture of authenticity" associated with modernism. As Lawrence Grossberg notes, the accelleration of the rate of change in modern life caused, in post-war youth culture, an identity crisis or "lived contradiction" that gave rock (particularly) and popular music (generally) a peculiar position in regard to notions of authenticity. Grossberg places rock's authenticity within the "difference" it maintains from other cultural forms, and notes that its difference "can be justified aesthetically or ideologically, or in terms of the social position of the audiences, or by the economics of its production, or through the measure of its popularity or the statement of its politics" (205-6). Popular music scholars have not adequately addressed issues of authenticity and individuality. Two of the most important questions to be asked are: How is authenticity communicated in popular music? What is the site of the interpretation of authenticity? It is important to ask about sound, technology, about the attempt to understand the ideal and the image, the natural and artificial. It is these that make clear the strongest connections between popular music and contemporary culture. Popular music is a particularly appropriate site for the study of authenticity as a cultural category, for several reasons. For one thing, other media do not follow us, as aural media do, into malls, elevators, cars, planes. Nor do they wait for us, as a tape player paused and ready to play. What is important is not that music is "everywhere" but, to borrow from Vivian Sobchack, that it creates a "here" that can be transported anywhere. In fact, we are able to walk around enveloped by a personal aural environment, thanks to a Sony Walkman.1 Also, it is more difficult to shut out the aural than the visual. Closing one's ears does not entirely shut out sound. There is, additionally, the sense that sound and music are interpreted from within, that is, that they resonate through and within the body, and as such engage with one's self in a fashion that coincides with Charles Taylor's claim that the "ideal of authenticity" is an inner-directed one. It must be noted that authenticity is not, however, communicated only via music, but via text and image. Grossberg noted the "primacy of sound" in rock music, and the important link between music, visual image, and authenticity: Visual style as conceived in rock culture is usually the stage for an outrageous and self-conscious inauthenticity... . It was here -- in its visual presentation -- that rock often most explicitly manifested both an ironic resistance to the dominant culture and its sympathies with the business of entertainment ... . The demand for live performance has always expressed the desire for the visual mark (and proof) of authenticity. (208) But that relationship can also be reversed: Music and sound serve in some instances to provide the aural mark and proof of authenticity. Consider, for instance, the "tear" in the voice that Jensen identifies in Hank Williams's singing, and in that of Patsy Cline. For the latter, voicing, in this sense, was particularly important, as it meant more than a singing style, it also involved matters of self-identity, as Jensen appropriately associates with the move of country music from "hometown" to "uptown" (101). Cline's move toward a more "uptown" style involved her visual image, too. At a significant turning point in her career, Faron Young noted, Cline "left that country girl look in those western outfits behind and opted for a slicker appearance in dresses and high fashion gowns" (Jensen 101). Popular music has forged a link with visual media, and in some sense music itself has become more visual (though not necessarily less aural) the more it has engaged with industrial processes in the entertainment industry. For example, engagement with music videos and film soundtracks has made music a part of the larger convergence of mass media forms. Alongside that convergence, the use of music in visual media has come to serve as adjunct to visual symbolisation. One only need observe the increasingly commercial uses to which music is put (as in advertising, film soundtracks and music videos) to note ways in which music serves image. In the literature from a variety of disciplines, including communication, art and music, it has been argued that music videos are the visualisation of music. But in many respects the opposite is true. Music videos are the auralisation of the visual. Music serves many of the same purposes as sound does generally in visual media. One can find a strong argument for the use of sound as supplement to visual media in Silverman's and Altman's work. For Silverman, sound in cinema has largely been overlooked (pun intended) in favor of the visual image, but sound is a more effective (and perhaps necessary) element for willful suspension of disbelief. One may see this as well in the development of Dolby Surround Sound, and in increased emphasis on sound engineering among video and computer game makers, as well as the development of sub-woofers and high-fidelity speakers as computer peripherals. Another way that sound has become more closely associated with the visual is through the ongoing evolution of marketing demands within the popular music industry that increasingly rely on visual media and force image to the front. Internet technologies, particularly the WorldWideWeb (WWW), are also evidence of a merging of the visual and aural (see Hayward). The development of low-cost desktop video equipment and WWW publishing, CD-i, CD-ROM, DVD, and other technologies, has meant that visual images continue to form part of the industrial routine of the music business. The decrease in cost of many of these technologies has also led to the adoption of such routines among individual musicians, small/independent labels, and producers seeking to mimic the resources of major labels (a practice that has become considerably easier via the Internet, as it is difficult to determine capital resources solely from a WWW site). Yet there is another facet to the evolution of the link between the aural and visual. Sound has become more visual by way of its representation during its production (a representation, and process, that has largely been ignored in popular music studies). That representation has to do with the digitisation of sound, and the subsequent transformation sound and music can undergo after being digitised and portrayed on a computer screen. Once digitised, sound can be made visual in any number of ways, through traditional methods like music notation, through representation as audio waveform, by way of MIDI notation, bit streams, or through representation as shapes and colors (as in recent software applications particularly for children, like Making Music by Morton Subotnick). The impetus for these representations comes from the desire for increased control over sound (see Jones, Rock Formation) and such control seems most easily accomplished by way of computers and their concomitant visual technologies (monitors, printers). To make computers useful tools for sound recording it is necessary to employ some form of visual representation for the aural, and the flexibility of modern computers allows for new modes of predominately visual representation. Each of these connections between the aural and visual is in turn related to technology, for as audio technology develops within the entertainment industry it makes sense for synergistic development to occur with visual media technologies. Yet popular music scholars routinely analyse aural and visual media in isolation from one another. The challenge for popular music studies and music philosophy posed by visual media technologies, that they must attend to spatiality and context (both visual and aural), has not been taken up. Until such time as it is, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to engage issues of authenticity, because they will remain rootless instead of situated within the experience of music as fully sensual (in some cases even synaesthetic). Most of the traditional judgments of authenticity among music critics and many popular music scholars involve space and time, the former in terms of the movement of music across cultures and the latter in terms of history. None rely on notions of the "situatedness" of the listener or musicmaker in a particular aural, visual and historical space. Part of the reason for the lack of such an understanding arises from the very means by which popular music is created. We have become accustomed to understanding music as manipulation of sound, and so far as most modern music production is concerned such manipulation occurs as much visually as aurally, by cutting, pasting and otherwise altering audio waveforms on a computer screen. Musicians no more record music than they record fingering; they engage in sound recording. And recording engineers and producers rely less and less on sound and more on sight to determine whether a recording conforms to the demands of digital reproduction.2 Sound, particularly when joined with the visual, becomes a means to build and manipulate the environment, virtual and non-virtual (see Jones, "Sound"). Sound & Music As we construct space through sound, both in terms of audio production (e.g., the use of reverberation devices in recording studios) and in terms of everyday life (e.g., perception of aural stimuli, whether by ear or vibration in the body, from points surrounding us), we centre it within experience. Sound combines the psychological and physiological. Audio engineer George Massenburg noted that in film theaters: You couldn't utilise the full 360-degree sound space for music because there was an "exit sign" phenomena [sic]. If you had a lot of audio going on in the back, people would have a natural inclination to turn around and stare at the back of the room. (Massenburg 79-80) However, he went on to say, beyond observations of such reactions to multichannel sound technology, "we don't know very much". Research in psychoacoustics being used to develop virtual audio systems relies on such reactions and on a notion of human hardwiring for stimulus response (see Jones, "Sense"). But a major stumbling block toward the development of those systems is that none are able to account for individual listeners' perceptions. It is therefore important to consider the individual along with the social dimension in discussions of sound and music. For instance, the term "sound" is deployed in popular music to signify several things, all of which have to do with music or musical performance, but none of which is music. So, for instance, musical groups or performers can have a "sound", but it is distinguishable from what notes they play. Entire music scenes can have "sounds", but the music within such scenes is clearly distinct and differentiated. For the study of popular music this is a significant but often overlooked dimension. As Grossberg argues, "the authenticity of rock was measured by its sound" (207). Visually, he says, popular music is suspect and often inauthentic (sometimes purposefully so), and it is grounded in the aural. Similarly in country music Jensen notes that the "Nashville Sound" continually evoked conflicting definitions among fans and musicians, but that: The music itself was the arena in and through which claims about the Nashville Sound's authenticity were played out. A certain sound (steel guitar, with fiddle) was deemed "hard" or "pure" country, in spite of its own commercial history. (84) One should, therefore, attend to the interpretive acts associated with sound and its meaning. But why has not popular music studies engaged in systematic analysis of sound at the level of the individual as well as the social? As John Shepherd put it, "little cultural theoretical work in music is concerned with music's sounds" ("Value" 174). Why should this be a cause for concern? First, because Shepherd claims that sound is not "meaningful" in the traditional sense. Second, because it leads us to re-examine the question long set to the side in popular music studies: What is music? The structural homology, the connection between meaning and social formation, is a foundation upon which the concept of authenticity in popular music stands. Yet the ability to label a particular piece of music "good" shifts from moment to moment, and place to place. Frith understates the problem when he writes that "it is difficult ... to say how musical texts mean or represent something, and it is difficult to isolate structures of musical creation or control" (56). Shepherd attempts to overcome this difficulty by emphasising that: Music is a social medium in sound. What [this] means ... is that the sounds of music provide constantly moving and complex matrices of sounds in which individuals may invest their own meanings ... [however] while the matrices of sounds which seemingly constitute an individual "piece" of music can accommodate a range of meanings, and thereby allow for negotiability of meaning, they cannot accommodate all possible meanings. (Shepherd, "Art") It must be acknowledged that authenticity is constructed, and that in itself is an argument against the most common way to think of authenticity. If authenticity implies something about the "pure" state of an object or symbol then surely such a state is connected to some "objective" rendering, one not possible according to Shepherd's claims. In some sense, then, authenticity is autonomous, its materialisation springs not from any necessary connection to sound, image, text, but from individual acts of interpretation, typically within what in literary criticism has come to be known as "interpretive communities". It is not hard to illustrate the point by generalising and observing that rock's notion of authenticity is captured in terms of songwriting, but that songwriters are typically identified with places (e.g. Tin Pan Alley, the Brill Building, Liverpool, etc.). In this way there is an obvious connection between authenticity and authorship (see Jones, "Popular Music Studies") and geography (as well in terms of musical "scenes", e.g. the "Philly Sound", the "Sun Sound", etc.). The important thing to note is the resultant connection between the symbolic and the physical worlds rooted (pun intended) in geography. As Redhead & Street put it: The idea of "roots" refers to a number of aspects of the musical process. There is the audience in which the musician's career is rooted ... . Another notion of roots refers to music. Here the idea is that the sounds and the style of the music should continue to resemble the source from which it sprang ... . The issue ... can be detected in the argument of those who raise doubts about the use of musical high-technology by African artists. A final version of roots applies to the artist's sociological origins. (180) It is important, consequently, to note that new technologies, particularly ones associated with the distribution of music, are of increasing importance in regulating the tension between alienation and progress mentioned earlier, as they are technologies not simply of musical production and consumption, but of geography. That the tension they mediate is most readily apparent in legal skirmishes during an unsettled era for copyright law (see Brown) should not distract scholars from understanding their cultural significance. These technologies are, on the one hand, "liberating" (see Hayward, Young, and Marsh) insofar as they permit greater geographical "reach" and thus greater marketing opportunities (see Fromartz), but on the other hand they permit less commercial control, insofar as they permit digitised music to freely circulate without restriction or compensation, to the chagrin of copyright enthusiasts. They also create opportunities for musical collaboration (see Hayward) between performers in different zones of time and space, on a scale unmatched since the development of multitracking enabled the layering of sound. Most importantly, these technologies open spaces for the construction of authenticity that have hitherto been unavailable, particularly across distances that have largely separated cultures and fan communities (see Paul). The technologies of Internetworking provide yet another way to make connections between authenticity, music and sound. Community and locality (as Redhead & Street, as well as others like Sara Cohen and Ruth Finnegan, note) are the elements used by audience and artist alike to understand the authenticity of a performer or performance. The lived experience of an artist, in a particular nexus of time and space, is to be somehow communicated via music and interpreted "properly" by an audience. But technologies of Internetworking permit the construction of alternative spaces, times and identities. In no small way that has also been the situation with the mediation of music via most recordings. They are constructed with a sense of space, consumed within particular spaces, at particular times, in individual, most often private, settings. What the network technologies have wrought is a networked audience for music that is linked globally but rooted in the local. To put it another way, the range of possibilities when it comes to interpretive communities has widened, but the experience of music has not significantly shifted, that is, the listener experiences music individually, and locally. Musical activity, whether it is defined as cultural or commercial practice, is neither flat nor autonomous. It is marked by ever-changing tastes (hence not flat) but within an interpretive structure (via "interpretive communities"). Musical activity must be understood within the nexus of the complex relations between technical, commercial and cultural processes. As Jensen put it in her analysis of Patsy Cline's career: Those who write about culture production can treat it as a mechanical process, a strategic construction of material within technical or institutional systems, logical, rational, and calculated. But Patsy Cline's recording career shows, among other things, how this commodity production view must be linked to an understanding of culture as meaning something -- as defining, connecting, expressing, mattering to those who participate with it. (101) To achieve that type of understanding will require that popular music scholars understand authenticity and music in a symbolic realm. Rather than conceiving of authenticity as a limited resource (that is, there is only so much that is "pure" that can go around), it is important to foreground its symbolic and ever-changing character. Put another way, authenticity is not used by musician or audience simply to label something as such, but rather to mean something about music that matters at that moment. Authenticity therefore does not somehow "slip away", nor does a "pure" authentic exist. Authenticity in this regard is, as Baudrillard explains concerning mechanical reproduction, "conceived according to (its) very reproducibility ... there are models from which all forms proceed according to modulated differences" (56). Popular music scholars must carefully assess the affective dimensions of fans, musicians, and also record company executives, recording producers, and so on, to be sensitive to the deeply rooted construction of authenticity and authentic experience throughout musical processes. Only then will there emerge an understanding of the structures of feeling that are central to the experience of music. Footnotes For analyses of the Walkman's role in social settings and popular music consumption see du Gay; Hosokawa; and Chen. It has been thus since the advent of disc recording, when engineers would watch a record's grooves through a microscope lens as it was being cut to ensure grooves would not cross over one into another. References Altman, Rick. "Television/Sound." Studies in Entertainment. Ed. Tania Modleski. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986. 39-54. Baudrillard, Jean. Symbolic Death and Exchange. London: Sage, 1993. Brown, Ronald. Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure: The Report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1995. Chen, Shing-Ling. "Electronic Narcissism: College Students' Experiences of Walkman Listening." Annual meeting of the International Communication Association. Washington, D.C. 1993. Du Gay, Paul, et al. Doing Cultural Studies. London: Sage, 1997. Frith, Simon. Sound Effects. New York: Pantheon, 1981. Fromartz, Steven. "Starts-ups Sell Garage Bands, Bowie on Web." Reuters newswire, 4 Dec. 1996. Grossberg, Lawrence. We Gotta Get Out of This Place. London: Routledge, 1992. Hayward, Philip. "Enterprise on the New Frontier." Convergence 1.2 (Winter 1995): 29-44. Hosokawa, Shuhei. "The Walkman Effect." Popular Music 4 (1984). Jensen, Joli. The Nashville Sound: Authenticity, Commercialisation and Country Music. Nashville, Vanderbilt UP, 1998. Jones, Steve. Rock Formation: Music, Technology and Mass Communication. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992. ---. "Popular Music Studies and Critical Legal Studies" Stanford Humanities Review 3.2 (Fall 1993): 77-90. ---. "A Sense of Space: Virtual Reality, Authenticity and the Aural." Critical Studies in Mass Communication 10.3 (Sep. 1993), 238-52. ---. "Sound, Space & Digitisation." Media Information Australia 67 (Feb. 1993): 83-91. Marrsh, Brian. "Musicians Adopt Technology to Market Their Skills." Wall Street Journal 14 Oct. 1994: C2. Massenburg, George. "Recording the Future." EQ (Apr. 1997): 79-80. Paul, Frank. "R&B: Soul Music Fans Make Cyberspace Their Meeting Place." Reuters newswire, 11 July 1996. Redhead, Steve, and John Street. "Have I the Right? Legitimacy, Authenticity and Community in Folk's Politics." Popular Music 8.2 (1989). Shepherd, John. "Art, Culture and Interdisciplinarity." Davidson Dunston Research Lecture. Carleton University, Canada. 3 May 1992. ---. "Value and Power in Music." The Sound of Music: Meaning and Power in Culture. Eds. John Shepherd and Peter Wicke. Cambridge: Polity, 1993. Silverman, Kaja. The Acoustic Mirror. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988. Sobchack, Vivian. Screening Space. New York: Ungar, 1982. Young, Charles. "Aussie Artists Use Internet and Bootleg CDs to Protect Rights." Pro Sound News July 1995. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Steve Jones. "Seeing Sound, Hearing Image: 'Remixing' Authenticity in Popular Music Studies." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.4 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/remix.php>. Chicago style: Steve Jones, "Seeing Sound, Hearing Image: 'Remixing' Authenticity in Popular Music Studies," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 4 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/remix.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Steve Jones. (1999) Seeing Sound, Hearing Image: "Remixing" Authenticity in Popular Music Studies. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(4). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/remix.php> ([your date of access]).

The theme for this issue of M/C is 'renew'. This is a term that could be approached in numerous ways: as a cultural practice, in terms of broader dynamics of change, in terms of the future of the journal. In this piece, however, I'd like to narrow the focus and think about renewal in the context of the concept of 'media' and media theory. This is not to diminish the importance of looking at media in relation to changing technologies, and changing cultural contexts. Indeed, most readers of M/C will no doubt be aware of the dangers of positing media outside of culture in some kind of deterministic relationship. Indeed, the slash in the title of M/C -- which since its first editorial both links and separates the terms 'media' and 'culture' -- is interesting to think about here precisely because the substitution of the 'and' opens up a questioning of the relation between the two terms. While I too want to keep the space between media / culture filled with possibility, in this piece I want to look mainly at one side of the slash and speculate on renewal in the way we relate to ideas of media. Since its first editorial the slash has also been a marker of M/C's project to bridge academic and popular approaches, and work as a cross-over journal. In the hope of not stretching the cross-over too far, I'd like to bring contemporary philosophy into the picture and keep it in the background while thinking about renewal and the concept of 'media'. A key theme in contemporary philosophy has been the attempt to think difference beyond any opposition of the One and the Many (Patton 29-48; Deleuze 38-47). In an effort to think difference in its own terms, philosophers like Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida have resisted seeing difference as something dependant on, derivative or secondary to a primary point of sameness and identity. In this brief piece, and out of respect of M/C's project, my intention is not to summarise this work in detail. Rather, I want to highlight the existence of this work in order to draw a contrast with the way in which contemporary thinking about media often seems caught up in a dynamic of the One and Many, and to pose the question of a different path for media theory. Having mentioned philosophy, I do want to make the point that 'One or Many Media' is not just an abstract formulation. On the contrary, the present day is a particularly appropriate time to look at this problem. Popular discussion of media issues itself oscillates between an idea of Media dominance (the One) and an idea of multiple media (multimedia). Discussions of convergence frequently invoke a thematics of the One arising out of the Many, or of the Many arising from the One. Medium, Media, the Media. Which one to use? We need only to list these three terms to begin see how the tension between the One and the Multiple has influenced contemporary thinking about media. An obvious tension exists on the level of grammar. 'Media' is the plural of 'Medium'. That is, until we use the term 'the Media' which can be used to refer to the singularity of (a specific area of) the Press. Walter Ong dubs 'medium' "the fugitive singular" to describe this phenomenon (175). To compensate for the increasing use of 'the media' as a singular it is becoming more common to see the term 'mediums' instead of 'media'. A second tension exists on the level of the senses. 'The media', and in some senses a 'medium', conveys the notion of a media form distinct from the senses. As Michael Heim notes, Medium meant conceptual awareness in conjunction with the five senses through which we come to understand things present before us in the environment. This natural sense of media was gradually dissipated during the modern period by man-made extensions and enhancements of the human senses ... . Electronic media gave new meaning to the term. We not only perceive directly with five senses aided by concepts and enhanced by instrumentation, but also are surrounded by a panorama of man-made images and symbols far more complex than can be assimilated directly through the senses and thought processes. Media in the electronic sense of acoustic-optic technology ... appear to do more than augment innate human sensory capacities: the electronic media become themselves complex problems; they become facts of life we must take into account as we live; they become, in short, the media. (47) In this passage, Heim shows how through extension and instrumentation 'the media' comes to occupy a different register of existence. 'The media' in this account are distinct from any general artefact that can serve as a means of communication to us. On this register, 'the media' also develops into the idea of the mass media (see Williams 169). In popular usage this incorporates print and broadcasting areas (usually with a strong journalistic emphasis), and is often personified around a notion of 'the media' as an agent in the contemporary political arena (the fourth estate, the instrument of a media baron). This brings us to a third tension, to do with diversity. The difference between the terms 'Medium', 'Media', 'the Media', is clearly bound up with the issue of diversity and concentration of media. Sean Cubitt argues that a different activation of interactive media, intermedia, or video media, is crucial to restoring an electronic ecology that has been destroyed by the marketplace (207). What the work of theorists like Cubitt reveals is that the problem of diversity and concentration has a conceptual dimension. Framed within an opposition between the One and the Multiple, the diversity in question -- of different senses and orders of media -- is constrained by the dominant idea of the Media. Many theorists and commentators on 'the Mass media' barely acknowledge the existence of video media unless it is seen as a marketplace for the distribution of movies. This process of marginalisation has been so thorough that the contemporary discussion of the Internet or interactive digital media often ignores previous critical discussion of the electronic arts -- as if McLuhan had no connection with Fluxus, or convergence had no links to intermedia experimentation. In a different example, it is becoming common to discuss 'personal media' like laptops and intelligent jewellery (see Beniger; Kay and Goldberg). But if media theory has previously failed to look at T-shirts and other personal effects as media then this is in part due to the dominance of the idea of the mass media in conceptual terms. This dominance leads Umberto Eco to propose an idea of the "multiplication of the media" against the idea of mass media, and prompts him to declare that "all the professors of theory of communications, trained by the texts of twenty years ago (this includes me) should be pensioned off" (149). It could be argued that rather than represent a problem the sliding between these terms is enabling not disabling. From this perspective, the fact that different senses of media collapse or coalesce with one another is appropriate, since (as I hope I've shown) different senses of media are often grounded in other senses. Indeed, we can agree with this argument, and go further to suggest that renewing our relationship to concepts of media involves affirming the interplay of different senses of media. What needs careful consideration here, however, is how we think of different senses of media. For it is very often the case that this question of difference is blocked from discussion when an order of media is used to secure a territory or a foundation for a particular idea of how things should work. From this foundation particular ideas of One-ness/Same-ness or Many-ness can emerge, each of which involves making assumptions about differences between media, and the nature of difference. Examples might include notions of mainstream and alternative, professional and non-professional, 'industry' and 'artistic' ways of working.1 In each case a dominant idea of the media establishes itself as an order against which other practices are defined as secondary, and other senses of media subordinate. Surveying these tensions (grammatical, sensory and diversity) between the terms 'Medium', 'Media', 'the Media', what becomes apparent is that neither of them is able to stand as 'the' primary conceptual term. Attempting to read contemporary developments in light of the One of the mass media means that theory is often left to discuss the fate of an idea, broadcasting, that represents only one way of organising and articulating a medium. Certainly, this approach can yield important results on the level of audience studies and identity politics, and in respect to government policy. Jock Given's work on broadcasting as a "set of technologies, social and cultural practices, cultural forms, industries, institutional forms, words and an idea" usefully contests the idea that broadcasting is dying or has no place in the digital future (46). However, research of this kind is often constrained by its lack of engagement with different orders of media, and its dependence on an idea of the One medium that is now under erasure.2 Attempting to read contemporary developments in light of the One of the mass media means that theory is often left to discuss the fate of an idea, broadcasting, that represents only one way of organising and articulating a medium. Certainly, this approach can yield important results on the level of audience studies and identity politics, and in respect to government policy. Jock Given's work on broadcasting as a "set of technologies, social and cultural practices, cultural forms, industries, institutional forms, words and an idea" usefully contests the idea that broadcasting is dying or has no place in the digital future (46). However, research of this kind is often constrained by its lack of engagement with different orders of media, and its dependence on an idea of the One medium that is now under erasure.2 Exploring the potential of 'Medium' as a primary term leads again into the problem of the One and the Many. The content of every medium may be, as McLuhan said, another medium (8). But we should search for the hidden One that binds together the Many. Indeed, multimedia can precisely be seen in this way: as a term that facilitates the singularising of multiple media. In a historically significant 1977 paper "Personal Dynamic Media" by Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg, we read that the essence of a medium is very much dependent on the way messages are embedded, changed, and viewed. Although digital computers were originally designed to do arithmetic computation, the ability to simulate the details of any descriptive model means that the computer, viewed as a medium itself, can be all other media if the embedding and viewing methods are sufficiently well provided. (255) It is following this passage that Kay and Goldberg use the term "metamedium" to describe this system, which effectively seals the Many into the One, and compromises any sense that 'multimedia' can fully live up to the idea of multiple media. Situating the term 'media' as a primary term is interesting primarily because Heim deems it the "natural sense of media". There is some value in re-asserting the most general understanding of this idea, which is that any artefact can serve to communicate something to the senses. That said, any exploration of this kind needs to keep a critical eye not just on the McLuhanesque extension of the senses that Heim mentions, but also the imperative that these artefacts must mediate, and function as a means of communication. In other words, any celebration of this conception of media needs to be careful not to naturalise the idea that communication is the transmission of ideal contents. As Derrida's work shows, a complex system is required for a media to work in this way. It is only via a particular system of representation that a medium comes to serve as a vehicle for communication (311-2). As such, we should be wary of designating this idea of media as 'natural'. There are of course other reasons to be cautious with the use of the term 'natural' in this context. Contemporary usage of 'media' show that the human sensorium has already entered a complex cyborg future in which human actions, digital files, data, scripts, can be considered 'media' in a performance work or some other assemblage. Contemporary media theory resolves some of the problems of the terms 'Medium', 'Media', 'the Media' serving as a primary conceptual figure by reading them against one another. Thus, the mass media can be criticised from the point of view of the broader potential of the medium, or transformations in a medium can be tracked through developments in interactive media. Various critical or comparative approaches can be adopted within the nexus defined by these three terms. One important path of investigation for media theory is the investigation of hybrid mixed forms of media as they re-emerge out of more or less well defined definitions of a medium. A concern that can be raised with this approach, however, is that it risks avoiding the problem of the One or Many altogether in the way it posits some media as 'pure' or less hybrid in the first instance. In the difficult process of approaching the problem of One or Many media, media theory may find it worthwhile listen in on discussion of the One or Many opposition in contemporary philosophy. Two terms that find a prominent place in Deleuze's discussion of the multiplicity are "differentiation" and "actualisation". I'd want to suggest that both terms should hold interest for media theorists. For example, in terms of the problem of One or Many Media, we can note that differentiation and actualisation have not always been looked at. Too often, the starting point for theories of media is to begin with a particular order of media, a conception of the One, and then situate multiple practices in relationship to this One. Thus, 'the media' or 'mass media' is able to take the position of centre, with the rest left subordinate. This gesture allows the plural form of 'media' to be dealt with in a reductive way, at the expense of an analysis of supposed plurality. (It also works to detach the discussion of the order of media in question from other academic and non-academic disciplines that may have a great deal to say about the way media work.) A different approach could be to look at the way this dominant order is actualised in the first place. Recognition that a multiplicity of different senses of media pre-exists any single order of media would seem to be a key step towards renewal in media theory. This piece has sought to disturb the way a notion of the One or Many media often works in the space of media theory. Rather than locate this issue in relation to only one definition of media or medium, this approach attempts to differentiate between different senses of media, ranging from those understandings linked to the human sensorium, those related to craft understandings, and those related to the computerised manipulation of media resources. The virtue of this approach is that it tackles head on the issue that there is no one understanding of media that can function as an over-arching term in the present. The human senses, craft, broadcasting, and digital manipulation are all limited in this respect. Any response to this situation needs to engage with this complexity by recognising that some understandings of media exceed the space of a medium. These other understandings can form useful provisional points of counter-actualisation.4 Footnotes Recent Australian government decisions about the differences between digital television and datacasting would be interesting to examine here. In relation to Given's work I'd suggest that a fuller examination of media's digital future needs to elaborate on the relationship between 'the media' and alternative understandings of the term in computing, for example, such as Kay and Goldberg's. In this way, the issue of future conceptions of media can be opened up alongside the issue of a future for the media. Monaco's, "Mediography: In the Middle of Things" is a rare example. In the section 'Levels of the Game' Monaco usefully distinguishes between different orders of media. My thanks to the anonymous M/C reviewers for their useful comments, and also Anna Munster for her suggestions. References Beniger, James R. "Personalisation of Mass Media and the Growth of Pseudo-Community." Communication Research 14.3 (June 1987): 352-71. Cubitt, Sean. Videography: Video Media as Art and Culture. London: Macmillan, 1993. Deleuze, Gilles. Bergsonism. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. New York: Zone, 1991. Derrida, Jacques. Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Brighton, Sussex: Harvester, 1986. Eco, Umberto. "The Multiplication of the Media." Travels in Hyper-Reality. Trans. William Weaver. London: Pan, 1986. 145-50. Given, Jock. The Death of Broadcasting: Media's Digital Future. Kensington: U of New South Wales P, 1998. Heim, Michael. Electric Language: A Philosophical Study of Word Processing. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1987. Kay, Alan, and Adele Goldberg. "Personal Dynamic Media." A History of Personal Workstations. Ed. Adele Goldberg. New York: ACM/Addison-Wesley, 1988. 254-63. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964. Monaco, James. "Mediography: In the Middle of Things." Media Culture. Ed. James Monaco. New York: Delta, 1978. 3-21. Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy: The Technologising of the Word. London: Methuen, 1982. Patton, Paul. Deleuze and the Political. London: Routledge, 2000. Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Fontana, 1976. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Steven Maras. "One or Many Media?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.6 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0012/many.php>. Chicago style: Steven Maras, "One or Many Media?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 6 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0012/many.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Steven Maras. (2000) One or many media? M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(6). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0012/many.php> ([your date of access]).

In rejoinder to a New York Times’s article claiming, “the value of used pianos, especially uprights, has plummeted … Instead of selling them … , donating them … or just passing them along … , owners are far more likely to discard them” (Walkin), artists Kathleen Irwin (scenography) and Jeff Morton (sound/composition) responded to this ignoble passing with an installation playing with the borders delineating music, theatre, digital technology, and economies of value using two upright red pianos, sound and video projection—and the sensibility of relational aesthetics. The installation was a collaboration between two artists who share a common interest in the performative qualities of public space and how technological augmentation is used in identificatory and embodied art processes as a means of extending the human body and enhancing the material space of person-to-person interaction. The title of the installation, PLAY, referenced the etymology of the word itself and how it has been variously understood over time, across artistic disciplines, and in digital and physical environments. Fundamentally, it explored the relative value of a material object (the piano) and how its social and cultural signification persists, shifts, is diminished or augmented by technology. The installation was mounted at the Dunlop Art Gallery, in the Regina Public Library (Saskatchewan, Canada, 14 June - 25 August 2013) and, as such, it illustrated the Library’s mandate to support all forms of literacy through community accessibility and forms of public outreach, social arrangements, and encounters. Indirectly, (as this was not the initial focus), it also exemplified the artists’s gentle probing of the ways, means, claims, and values when layering information and enhancing our visual experience as we interact with (literally, walk through) our physical landscapes and environments—“to see the world for what it is,” as Matt Turbow says “and to see the elements within” (Chapeau). The installation reflected on, among other things, the piano as a still potent cultural signifier, the persistent ability of our imagination to make meaning and codify experience even without digital overlay, and the library as an archive and disseminator of public knowledge. The artists questioned whether old technologies such as the piano will lose their hold on us entirely as technological augmentation develops the means to enhance or colonize the natural world, through graphics, sounds, haptic feedback, smell and, eventually, commodified experiences. This paper intends to reflect on our work and initiate a friendly (playful) interdisciplinary discussion about material objects in the age of physical and digital interactivity, and the terms of augmentation as we chose to understand it through our installation. In response to the call proposed by this journal on the subject of augmentation, we considered: 1. How audio/visual apparatuses in the gallery space augmented the piano’s expressivity; 2. How the piano augmented the social function of its physical situation; 3. How the technology augmented random and fragmentary musical phrases, creating a prolonged musical composition; 4. How each spectator augmented the art through his/her subjective engagement: how there is always meaning generated in excess of the artists’s intention. Image 1: Piano installed outside Dunlop Gallery/ Regina Public Library (photo credit: Jeff Morton) To begin, a brief description of the site of the installation is in order. The first of the red pianos was installed outside the main doors of the Central Library, located in the city’s downtown. The library’s entrance is framed within a two-story glass atrium and the red piano repeated the architecture’s function to open the space by breaking down perceived barriers, and beckoning the passersby inside. Reflecting Irwin’s community-oriented, site-specific practice, this was the relational catalyst of the work—the piano made available for anyone to play and enjoy, day or night, an invitation to respond to an object inserted into the shared space of the sidewalk: to explore, as Nicolas Bourriaud suggests, “the art as a state of encounter” (16). It was the centerpiece of the exhibition's outreach, which included the exhibition’s vernissage featuring new music and performance artists in concert, a costume and prop workshop for a late night public choir procession, and a series of artist talks. This was, arguably, a defining characteristic of the work, underscoring how the work of art, in this case the piano itself, its abjection illustrated by the perfunctory means typically used to dispose of them, is augmented or gains value through its social construction, over-and-above any that is originally ascribed to it. As Bourriaud writes, any kind of production takes on a social form which no longer has anything to do with its original usefulness. It acquires exchange value that partly covers and shrouds its primary “nature”. The fact is that a work of art has no a priori useful function—not that it is socially useless, but because it is available and flexible, and has an “infinite tendency”. (42) In the Dunlop’s press release, curator Blair Fornwald also confers a supplemental value ascribed to the reframed material object. She describes how the public space in front of the library, as a place of social interaction and cultural identification—of “being seen”—is augmented by the red piano: its presence in an unfamiliar setting underscores the multitude of creative and performative possibilities inherent within it, possibilities that may extend far beyond playing a simple melody. By extension, its presence asserts that the every day is a social, cultural, and physical environment rich with potentiality and promise. (Fornwald) Juxtaposed with the first red piano, the second was dramatically staged within the Dunlop gallery. The room, painted black, formally replicated the framing and focusing conventions of the theatre: its intention to propose other ways of “being seen” and to suggest the blurring of lines between “on stage and off,” and by extension, “on line and off.” A camera embedded in the front of the piano and a large projection screen in the space provided a celebrity moment for anyone approaching the instrument and implied, arguably, the ubiquitous surveillance associated with public space. Indeed, a plausible way of reading the red piano in the darkened gallery was as a provocation to think about how the digital and physical are increasingly enmeshed in our daily lives (Jurgenson). Lit by a chandelier and staged on a circular red carpet, this piano was also available to be played. Unlike the one outside of the building, it was augmented by speakers, a microphone, and a webcam. Through a custom-built digital system (using MaxMSP software), it recorded and played back the sound and image of everyone who sat down to perform, then repeated and superimposed these over similar previously captured material. Enhanced by the unusual stark acoustics of the gallery, the sound filled the reverberant space. Affixed to the gallery’s back wall was the projection screen made up of sheet music (Bach, Debussy and Mozart) taken from the Irwin family’s piano bench, a veritable time capsule from the 1950s. Image 2: Piano installed inside Dunlop Gallery (photo credit: Jeff Morton) In addition to the centrally placed piano, a miniature red piano was situated near the gallery entrance. It and a single red chair placed near the screen, repeated the vivid colour and drew the eye into and around the space underscoring its theatrical quality. The toy piano functioned as a lighthearted invitation, as well as a serious citation of other artists—Eikoh Sudoh, Margaret Leng Tan, John Cage, and Charles M. Schulz’s “Schroeder”—who have employed the miniature instrument to great advantage. It was intended as an illustration of the infinite resonances that material objects may provide and the diverse ways they may signify contingent on the viewer. Considered in a historical context, in the golden age of the upright and at the turn of the twentieth-century, piano lessons signified for many, the formation of a modern citizen schooled in European culture and values. Owning one of these intricately engineered and often beautiful machines, as one in five households did, reflected the social aspirations of its owners and marked their upward economic mobility (Canadian Encyclopedia). One hundred years later, pianos are often relegated to the basement or dump. Irretrievably out of tune, their currency as musical instruments largely devalued. Nonetheless, their cultural and social value persists, no longer the pervasive marker of status, but through the ways they are mediated by artists who prepare, deconstruct, and leave them to deteriorate in beautiful ways. They seem to retain their hold on us through the natural impulse to engage them kinetically, ergonomically, and metaphorically. Built to be an extension of the human hand, body, and imagination, they are a sublime human-scale augmentation of a precise musical system of notation, and a mechanism evolved over centuries through physical augmentations meant to increase the expressivity of both instrument and player. In PLAY, the use of the pianos referenced both their traditional role in public life, and our current relationship with forms of digital media that have replaced these instruments as our primary means of being linked, informed, and entertained—an affirmation of the positive attributes of technology and a reminder of what we may have lost. Indeed, while this was not necessarily clear from the written responses in the Gallery’s guest book (Gorgeous!: Neat!; Too, too cool!; etc.), we surmised that memory might have played a key role in the experience of the installation, set in motion by the precise arrangement of the few material objects – red piano, the piano bench, red chair, and toy piano, each object designed to fit the shape of the body and hold the memory of physical contact. These were designed to trigger a chain of recollections, each chasing the next; each actively participating in what follows. In the Gallery’s annual exhibition catalogue, Ellen Moffat suggests that the relationship the piano builds with the player is important: “the piano plays and is played by the performer. Performing the piano assigns a posture for the performer in relation to the keyboard physically and figuratively” (Moffat 80). Technically, the piano is the sum of many parts, understandable finally as a discrete mechanical system, but unbounded in imagination and limited only by our capacity to play it. Functionally, it acts as an affective repository of memory and feeling, a tool to control the variables of physical and expressive interaction. In PLAY, the digital system in the gallery piano captured, delayed and displayed audio and video clips according to a rubric of cause and effect. Controlled by computer software designed by Morton, the installation captured musical phrases played randomly by individuals and augmented these notes by playing them back at variable speeds and superimposing one over another—musical phrases iterated and reiterated. The effect was fugue-like—an indeterminate composition with a determinant structure, achieved by intertwining physical and digital systems with musical content supplied by participants. The camera hidden in the front of the piano recorded individuals as they sat at the instrument and, immediately, they saw themselves projected in extreme close up onto the screen behind. As the individual struck a note, their image faded and the screen was filled again with the image of a previous participant abstracted and in slow motion. The effect, we suggest, was dreamlike—an echo or a fleeting fragment of something barely remembered. Like the infinite variations the piano permits, the software was also capable of expressing immense variety—each sound and image adding to an expanding archive in an ever-changing improvised composition developed through iterative call and response. Drawing on elements of relational aesthetics, scenographic representation, and digital technology, in PLAY we attempted to cross disciplines in ways that distinguished it from the other piano projects seen over the past several years. Indeed, the image of the upright piano has resonated in the zeitgeist of the international art scene with colourful uprights placed in public places in urban centers across Europe and North America. Wherever they are, individuals engage enthusiastically with them and they, in turn, become the centre of attention: this is part of their appeal. The pianos seem to evoke a utopian sense of community, however temporary, providing opportunities to rediscover old neighbours and make new friends. In PLAY, we posed two different social and aesthetic encounters—one analogue, real, “off-line” and one digital, theatrical, and “on-line,” illustrating less a false binary between two possible realities that ascribes more value to one than the other, than a world where the digital and the physical comingle. Working within a public library, this was a germane train of thought considering how these institutes struggle to stay relevant in the age of Google search and the promise of technological augmentation. The piano also represents a dichotomy: both a failure to represent and an excess of meaning. For decades replete with social signification, they have now become an encumbrance, fit only for the bone yard. As these monumental relics come to the end of their mechanical life, there is more money made in their disposal than in musical production, and more value in their recycled metals, solid wooden bodies, and ivory keys then in their tone and function. The industry that supported their commodification collapsed years ago, as has the market for their sale and the popular music publishing industry that accompanied it. Of course, pianos will be with us for a long time in one form or another, but their history, as a culturally potent object, has diverged. The assumption could easily follow that they have been rendered useless as an aesthetic, generative, and social object. What this installation offered was the possibility of an alternative ending to the story of this erstwhile entertainment console even as we seek our amusement by other means and through other devices. Not surprisingly, the title of the installation suggests that the consideration of “play,” as social and recuperative engagement, is significant. In his seminal work, Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga discusses the importance of play, suggesting that it is primary to and a necessary condition of the making of culture. He writes, “In play there is something in play, which transcends the immediate needs of life and imparts meaning to the action” (Huizinga 97). According to games theorist Mary Flanagan, playing may serve as a way of creating something beautiful, offering frameworks for new ways of thinking, exploring divergent logic, or for imaging what is possible. She writes, “Games, both digital and analog, offer a space to explore creativity, agency, representation and emergent behaviour” (Flanagan 2010). In reaching out to Regina’s downtown community, the Dunlop Art Gallery dispersed some of the playfulness of PLAY in planned and accidental ways, as the outdoor piano became a daily destination for individuals who live rough or in the city’s hostels, some of whom who have enviable musical skills and considerable stage presence. One man came daily with sheet music in hand to practice on the indoor piano—ignoring the inevitable echo and repeat that the software triggered. Another young woman appeared regularly to perform at the outdoor piano, her umbrella raised against sun and rain, wedged under her arm to keep both hands free. Children invariably drew parents to it as they entered or exited the library—for some it may have been the first time they had touched such an instrument. Overall, in press, blogs, and the visitors’s book, responses to the pianos were enthusiastic and positive. One blogger wrote in response to an online publication, Art, Music, News (Beatty), chapeau June 13, 2013 at 11:51am this is most definitely up and running, and it would be interesting to see/hear all that will go on with that red piano. my two-and-a-half year old daughter and i jammed a bit yesterday morning, while a stranger watched and listened, then insisted that i play the same mostly crappy c-blues again while he sang! so i did, and he did, and my daughter and i learned a bit about what he feels about his dog via his singing. it was the highlight of the day for us—I mean really, jamming outside on a very red upright piano with strangers—good times! (Simpson) As evidence of public approbation, for the better part of the summer it stood unprotected on the sidewalk in front of the library encountering only one minor incident of defacement—a rather fragile tag in white spray paint, someone’s name in proper cursive writing. Once repaired and retuned, it became a dynamic focus for the annual Folk Festival that takes over the area for a week in August. In these ways, PLAY fulfilled the Library’s aim of encouraging literacy and reinforcing a sense of community—a social augmentation, in a manner of speaking. As Moffat writes, it encourages the social dimension of participation through community-engagement and dialogic practices. It blurs distinctions between spectator and participant, professional and amateur. It generates relationships between people or social actions. (Moffat 76) Finally, PLAY toyed with the overtones of the word itself—as verb, noun, and adjective—signifier, and metaphor. The title illustrated its obvious current potential and evoked the piano’s past, referencing the glittering world of the stage. While many may have more memories of seeing pianos in disrepair than in the concert hall, its iconic stage setting is never far from the imagination, although this too changes as people from other cultures and backgrounds recognize little cultural capital in such activity. In current vernacular, the word “play” also implies the re-imagination of ourselves in the digital overlays of the future. So we ask, what will be the fate of the piano and its meme in the 22nd century? Will the augmentation of reality enhance our experience of the world in inverse proportion to a loss of social interaction? Conclusion In her essay, Moffat notes that as digital technology replaces the analog piano, a surplus of second-hand uprights has become available. Citing artists Luke Jerram, Monica Yunus, and Camille Zamora (among others), she argues that the use of them as public art coincides with their disappearance, suggesting a farewell or memorial to a collective cultural icon (Moffat 76). What is there in this piece of furniture that speaks to us in art practice? The answer, it would seem, is potential. In a curatorial interview, Irwin suggested the possibility that beyond the artist’s initial meaning, there is always something more—an augmentation. The pleasure of discovering this supplement is part of the pleasure of the subjective experience of the spectator. Similarly, the aleatoric in music composition, refers to the pursuit of chance as a formal determinant and its openness to individual interpretation at the moment of reception. For Morton, the randomness of memory and affect are key components in composition. They cannot be predicted, controlled or quantified; nor can they be denied. There is no correct interpretation or response to music or, indeed, to relational art practice. Moffat concludes, as a multi-faceted media installation, PLAY proposed “a suite, chorus or a polyphony of things” (Moffat 76). Depending on your point of reference, the installation provided a dynamic venue for considering our relationships with material objects, with each other and with new technologies asking how they may or may not augment our reality in ways that supplement real-time, person-to-person interaction. References Beatty, Gregory. “Exciting Goings-On at Central Library.” Prairie Dog Blog 11 June 2013. Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Trans. Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods. Paris: Les Presses du Réel, 1998. Canadian Encyclopedia. “Piano Building.” ‹http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/en/article/piano-building-emc/›. Chapeau [David Simpson]. “One Response to ‘Exciting Goings-On at Central Library.’” Prairie Dog Blog 13 June 2013. Fornwald, Blair. PLAY. Regina, Saskatchewan: Dunlop Art Gallery. 2013. Flanagan, Mary. “Creating Critical Play.” In Ruth Catlow, Marc Garret and Corrado Morgana, eds., Artists Rethinking Games. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010. 49-53. Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995. Jerram, Luke. Play Me, I’m Yours. Site-Specific Piano Installation. Multiple Venues. 2008-2013. Jurgenson, Nathan. “Digital Dualism versus Augmented Reality.” Cybergology: The Society Pages 24 Feb. 2011. 1 Dec. 2013 ‹http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2011/02/24/digital-dualism-versus-augmented-reality/›. Moffat, Ellen. “Stages and Players” in DAG 2 (2013). Regina: Dunlop Art Gallery, 2013. 75-87. Walkin, Daniel J. “For More Pianos, Last Note Is Thud in the Dump.” New York Times 29 June 2012. Yunus, Monica, and Camille Zamora. Sing for Hope Pianos. Site-Specific Piano Installation and Performance. New York City. 2013.

Introduction In this article, I explore the phenomenon of augmentation by questioning its representational nature and analyzing aesthetic modes of our interrelationship with the environment. How can senses be augmented and how do they serve as mechanisms of enhancing the feeling of presence? Media art practices offer particularly valuable scenarios of activating such mechanisms, as the employment of digital technology allows them to operate on a more subtle level of perception. Given that these practices are continuously evolving, this analysis cannot claim to be a comprehensive one, but rather aims to introduce aspects of the specific relations between augmentation, sense of proprioception, technology, and art. Proprioception is one of the least detectable and trackable human senses because it involves our intuitive sense of positionality, which suggests a subtle equilibrium between a center (our individual bodies) and the periphery (our immediate environments). Yet, as any sense, proprioception implies a communicational chain, a network of signals traveling and exchanging information within the body-mind complex. The technological augmentation of this dynamic process produces an interference in our understanding of the structure and elements, the information sent/received. One way to understand the operations of the senses is to think about them as images that the mind creates for itself. Artistic intervention (usually) builds upon exactly this logic: representation of images generated in mind, supplementing or even supplanting the existing collection of inner images with new, created ones. Yet, in case of proprioception the only means to interfere with and augment these inner images is on bodily level. Hence, the question of communication through images (or representations) should be extended towards a more complex theory of embodied perception. Drawing on phenomenology, cognitive science, and techno-cultural studies, I focus on the potential of biofeedback technologies to challenge and transform our self-perception by conditioning new pathways of apprehension (sometimes by creating mechanisms of direct stimulation of neural activity). I am particularly interested in how the awareness of the self (grounded in the felt relationality of our body parts) is most significantly activated at the moments of disturbance of balance, in situations of perplexity and disorientation. Projects by Marco Donnarumma, Sean Montgomery, and other artists working with biofeedback aesthetically validate and instantiate current research about neuro-plasticity, with technologically mediated sensory augmentation as one catalyst of this process. Augmentation as Representation: Proprioception and Proprioceptive Media Representation has been one of the key ways to comprehend reality. But representation also constitutes a spatial relation of distancing and separation: the spectator encounters an object placed in front of him, external to him. Thus, representation is associated more with an analytical, rather than synthetic, methodology because it implies detachment and division into parts. Both methods involve relation, yet in the case of representation there is a more distinct element of distance between the representing subject and represented object. Representation is always a form of augmentation: it extends our abilities to see the "other", otherwise invisible sides and qualities of the objects of reality. Representation is key to both science and art, yet in case of the latter, what is represented is not a (claimed) "objective" scheme of reality, but rather images of the imaginary, inner reality (even figurative painting always presents a particular optical and psychological perspective, to say nothing about forms of abstract art). There are certain kinds of art (visual arts, music, dance, etc.) that deal with different senses and thus, build their specific representational structures. Proprioception is one of the senses that occupies relatively marginal position in artistic production (which is exactly because of the specificity of its representational nature and because it does not create a sense of an external object. The term "proprioception" comes from Latin propius, or "one's own", "individual", and capio, cepi – "to receive", "to perceive". It implies a sense of one's self felt as a relational unity of parts of the body most vividly discovered in movement and in effort employed in it. The loss of proprioception usually means loss of bodily orientation and a feeling of one's body (Sacks 43-54). On the other hand, in case of additional stimulation and training of this sense (not only via classical cyber-devices, like cyber-helmets, gloves, etc. that set a different optics, but also techniques of different kinds of altered states of mind, e.g. through psychotropics, but also through architecture of virtual space and acoustics) a sense of disorientation that appears at first changes towards some analogue of reactions of enthusiasm, excitement discovery, and emotion of approaching new horizons. What changes is not only perception of external reality, but a sense of one's self: the self is felt as fluid, flexible, with penetrable borders. Proprioception implies initial co-existence of the inner and outer space on the basis of originary difference and individuality/specificity of the occupied position. Yet, because they are related, the "external" and "other" already feels as "one's own", and this is exactly what causes the sense of presence. Among the many possible connections that the body, in its sense of proprioception, is always already ready for, only a certain amount gets activated. The result of proprioception is a special kind of meta-stable internal image. This image may not coincide with the optical, auditory, or haptic image. According to Brian Massumi, proprioception translates the exertions and ease of the body's encounters with objects into a muscular memory of relationality. This is the cumulative memory of skill, habit, posture. At the same time as proprioception folds tactility in, it draws out the subject's reactions to the qualities of the objects it perceives through all five senses, bringing them into the motor realm of externalizable response. (59) This internal image is not mediated by anything, though it depends directly on the relations between the parts. It cannot be grasped because it is by definition fluid and dynamic. The position in one point is replaced here by a position-in-movement (point-in-movement). "Movement is not indexed by position. Rather, the position is born in movement, from the relation of movement towards itself" (Massumi 179). Philosopher of "extended mind" Andy Clark notes that we should distinguish between a real body schema (non-conscious configuration) and a body image (conscious construct) (Clark). It is the former that is important to understand, and yet is the most challenging. Due to its fluidity and self-referentiality, proprioception is not presentable to consciousness (the unstable internal image that it creates resides in consciousness but cannot be grasped and thus re-presented). A feeling/sense, it is not bound by sensible forms that would serve as means of objectification and externalization. As Barbara Montero observes, while the objects of vision and hearing, i.e. the most popular senses involved in the arts, are beyond one's body, sense of proprioception relates directly to the bodily sensation, it does not represent any external objects, but the sensory itself (231). These characteristics of proprioception help to reframe the question of augmentation as mediation: in the case of proprioception, the medium of sensation is the very relational structure of the body itself, irrespective of the "exteroceptive" (tactile) or "interoceptive" (visceral) dimensions of sensibility. The body is understood, then, as the "body without image,” and its proprioceptive effect can then be described as "the sensibility proper to the muscles and ligaments" (Massumi 58). Proprioception in (Media) Art One of the most convincing ways of externalization and (re)presentation of the data of proprioception is through re-production of its structure and its artificial enhancement with the help of technology. This can be achieved in at least two ways: by setting up situations and environments that emphasize self-perspective and awareness of perception, and by presenting measurements of bio-data and inviting into dialogue with them. The first strategy may be connected to disorientation and shifted perspective that are created in immersive virtual environments that make the role of otherwise un-trackable, fluid sense of proprioception actually felt and cognized. These effects are closely related to the nuances of perception of space, for instance, to spatial illusion. Practice of spatial illusion in the arts traces its history as far back as Roman frescos, trompe l’oeil, as well as phantasmagorias, like magic lantern. Geometrically, the system of the 360º image is still the most effective in producing a sense of full immersion—either in spaces from panoramas, Stereopticon, Cinéorama to CAVE (Computer Augmented Virtual Environments), or in devices for an individual spectator’s usage, like a stereoscope, Sensorama and more recent Head Mounted Displays (HMD). All these devices provide a sense of hermetic enclosure and bodily engagement with its scenes (realistic or often fantastical). Their images are frameless and thus immeasurable (lack of the sense of proportion provokes feeling of disorientation), image apparatus and the image itself converge here into an almost inseparable total unity: field of vision is filled, and the medium becomes invisible (Grau 198-202; 248-255). Yet, the constructed image is even more frameless and more peculiarly ‘mental’ in environments created on the basis of objectless or "immaterial" media, like light or sound; or in installations prioritizing haptic sensation and in responsive architectures, i.e. environments that transform physically in reaction to their inhabitants. The examples may include works by Olafur Eliasson that are centered around the issues of conscious perception and employ various optical and other apparata (mirrors, curved surfaces, coloured glass, water systems) to shift the habitual perspective and make one conscious of the subtle changes in the environment depending on one's position in space (there have been instances of spectators in Eliasson's installations falling down after trying to lean against an apparent wall that turned out to be a mere optical construct.). Figure 1: Olafur Eliasson, Take Your Time, 2008. © Olafur Eliasson Studio. In his classic H2OExpo project for Delta Expo in 1997, the Dutch architect Lars Spuybroek experimented with the perception of instability. There is no horizontal surface in the pavilion; floors, composed of interconnected elliptical volumes, transform into walls and walls into ceilings, promoting a sense of fluidity and making people respond by falling, leaning, tilting and "experiencing the vector of one’s own weight, and becoming sensitized to the effects of gravity" (Schwartzman 63). Along the way, specially installed sensors detect the behaviour of the ‘walker’ and send signals to the system to contribute further to the agenda of imbalance and confusion by changing light, image projection, and sound.Figure 2: Lars Spuybroek, H2OExpo, 1994-1997. © NOX/ Lars Spuybroek. Philip Beesley’s Hylozoic Ground (2010) is also a responsive environment filled by a dense organic network of delicate illuminated acrylic tendrils that can extend out to touch the visitor, triggering an uncanny mixture of delight and discomfort. The motif of pulsating movement was inspired by fluctuations in coral reefs and recreated via the system of precise sensors and microprocessors. This reference to an unfamiliar and unpredictable natural environment, which often makes us feel cautious and ultra-attentive, is a reminder of our innate ability of proprioception (a deeply ingrained survival instinct) and its potential for a more nuanced, intimate, emphatic and bodily rooted communication. Figure 3: Philip Beesley, Hylozoic Ground, 2010. © Philip Beesley Architect Inc. Works of this kind stimulate awareness of both the environment and one's own response to it. Inviting participants to actively engage with the space, they evoke reactions of self-reflexivity, i.e. the self becomes the object of its own exploration and (potentially) transformation. Another strategy of revealing the processes of the "body without image" is through representing various kinds of bio-data, bodily affective reactions to certain stimuli. Biosignal monitoring technologies most often employed include EEG (Electroencephalogram), EMG (Electromyogram), GSR (Galvanic Skin Response), ECG (Electrocardiogram), HRV (Heart Rate Variability) and others. Previously available only in medical settings and research labs, many types of sensors (bio and environmental) now become increasingly available (bio-enabled products ranging from cardio watches—an instance of the "quantified self" trend—to brain wave-controlled video games). As the representatives of the DIY makers community put it: "By monitoring some phenomena (biofeedback) you can train yourself to modulate them, possibly improving your emotional state. Biosensing lets you interact more naturally with digital systems, creating cyborg-like extensions of your body that overcome disabilities or provide new abilities. You can also share your bio-signals, if you choose, to participate in new forms of communication" (Montgomery). What is it about these technologies besides understanding more accurately the unconscious and invisible signals? The critical question in relation to biofeedback data is about the adequacy of the transference of the initial signal, about the "new" brought by the medium, as well as the ontological status of the resulting representation. These data are reflections of something real, yet themselves have a different weight, also providing the ground for all sorts of simulative methods and creation of mixed realities. External representations, unlike internal, are often attributed a prosthetic nature that is treated as extensions of existing skills. Besides serving their direct purpose (for instance, maps give detailed picture of a distant location), these extensions provide certain psychological effects, such as disorientation, displacement, a shift in a sense of self and enhancement of the sense of presence. Artistic experiments with bio-data started in the 1960s most famously with employing the method of sonification. Among the pioneers were the composers Alvin Lucier, Richard Teitelbaum, David Rosenblum, Erkki Kurenemi, Pierre Henry, and others. Today's versions of biophysical performance may include not only acoustic, but also visual interpretation, as well as subtle narrative scenarios. An example can be Marco Donnarumma's Hypo Chrysos, a piece that translates visceral strain in sound and moving images. The title refers to the type of a punishing trial in one of the circles of hell in Dante's Divine Comedy: the eternal task of carrying heavy rocks is imitated by the artist-performer, while the audience can feel the bodily tension enhanced by sound and imagery. The state of the inner body is, thus, amplified, or augmented. The sense of proprioception experienced by the performer is translated into media perceivable by others. In this externalized form it can also be shared, i.e. released into a space of inter-subjectivity, where it receives other, collective qualities and is not perceived negatively, in terms of pressure. Figure 4: Marco Donnarumma, Hypo Chrysos, 2011. © Marco Donnarumma. Another example can be an installation Telephone Rewired by the artist-neuroscientist Sean Montgomery. Brainwave signals are measured from each visitor upon the entrance to the installation site. These individual data then become part of the collective archive of the brainwaves of all the participants. In the second room, the viewer is engulfed by pulsing light and sound that mimic endogenous brain waveforms of the previous viewers. As in the experience of Donnarumma's performance, this process encourages tuning in to the inner state of the other and finding resonating states in one's own body. It becomes a tool for self-exploration, self-knowledge, and self-control, as well as for developing skills of collective being, of shared body-mind topologies. Synchronization of mental and bodily states of multiple people serves here a broader and deeper goal of training collaborative and empathic abilities. An immersive experience, it triggers deep embodied neural circuits, reaching towards the most authentic reactions not mediated by conscious procedures and judgment. Figure 5: Sean Montgomery, Telephone Rewired, 2013. © Sean Montgomery. Conclusion The potential of biofeedback as a strategy for art projects is a rich area that artists have only begun to explore. The layer of the imaginary and the fictional (which makes art special and different from, for instance, science) can add a critical dimension to understanding the processes of augmentation and mediation. As the described examples demonstrate, art is an investigative journey that can be engaging, surprising, and awakening towards the more subtle and acute forms of thinking and feeling. This astuteness and percipience are especially needed as media and technologies penetrate and affect our very abilities to apprehend reality. We need new tools to make independent and individual judgment. The sense of proprioception establishes a productive challenge not only for science, but also for the arts, inviting a search for new mechanisms of representing the un-presentable and making shareable and communicable what is, by definition, individual, fluid, and ungraspable. Collaborative cognition emerging from the augmentation of proprioception that is enabled by biofeedback technologies holds distinct promise for exploration of not only subjective, but also inter-subjective states and aesthetic strategies of inducing them. References Beesley, Philip. Hylozoic Ground. 2010. Venice Biennale, Venice. Clark, Andy, and David J. Chalmers. “The Extended Mind.” Analysis 58.1 (1998):7-19. Donnarumma, Marco. Hypo Chrysos: Action Art for Vexed Body and Biophysical Media. 2011. Xth Sense Biosensing Wearable Technology. MADATAC Festival, Madrid. Eliasson, Olafur. Take Your Time, 2008. P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre; Museum of Modern Art, New York. Grau, Oliver. Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003. Massumi, Brian. Parables of the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. Montero, Barbara. "Proprioception as an Aesthetic Sense." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64.2 (2006): 231-242. Montgomery, Sean, and Ira Laefsky. "Biosensing: Track Your Body's Signals and Brain Waves and Use Them to Control Things." Make 26. 1 Oct. 2013 ‹http://www.make-digital.com/make/vol26?pg=104#pg104›. Sacks, Oliver. "The Disembodied Lady". The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales. Philippines: Summit Books, 1985. Schwartzman, Madeline, See Yourself Sensing. Redefining Human Perception. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2011. Spuybroek, Lars. Waterland. 1994-1997. H2O Expo, Zeeland, NL.

A Site for the Study of Ambience Deep in Melbourne’s subterranean belly lies a long, dark space dedicated to screen-based art. Built along disused train platforms, it’s even possible to hear the ghostly rumblings and clatter of trains passing alongside the length of the gallery on quiet days. Upon descending the single staircase leading into this dimly-lit space, visitors encounter a distinctive sensory immersion. A flicker of screens dapple the windowless vastness ahead, perhaps briefly highlighting entrances into smaller rooms or the faintly-outlined profiles of visitors. This space often houses time-based moving image artworks. The optical flicker and aural stirrings of adjacent works distract, luring visitors’ attention towards an elsewhere. Yet on other occasions, this gallery’s art is bounded by walls, private enclosures which absorb perceptions of time into the surrounding darkness. Some works lie dormant awaiting visitors’ intervention, while others rotate on endless loops, cycling by unheeded, at times creating an environment of visual and aural collision. A weak haze of daylight falls from above mid-way through the space, marking the gallery’s only exit – an escalator fitted with low glowing lights. This is a space of thematic and physical reinvention. Movable walls and a retractable mezzanine enable the 110 metre long, 15 metre wide and almost 10 metre high space to be reformed with each exhibition, as evidenced by the many exhibitions that this Screen Gallery has hosted since opening as a part of the Australian for the Moving Image (ACMI) in 2002. ACMI endured controversial beginnings over the public funds dedicated to its gallery, cinemas, public editing and games labs, TV production studio, and screen education programs. As media interrogation of ACMI’s role and purpose intensified, several pressing critical and public policy questions surfaced as to how visitors were engaging with and valuing this institution and its spaces. In this context, I undertook the first, in depth qualitative study of visitation to ACMI, so as to address these issues and also the dearth of supporting literature into museum visitation (beyond broad, quantitative analyses). Of particular interest was ACMI’s Screen Gallery, for it appeared to represent something experientially unique and historically distinctive as compared to museums and galleries of the past. I therefore undertook an ethnographic study of museum visitation to codify the expression of ACMI’s institutional remit in light of the modalities of its visitors’ experiences in the Gallery. This rich empirical material formed the basis of my study and also this article, an ethnography of the Screen Gallery’s ambience. My study was undertaken across two exhibitions, World without End and White Noise (2005). While WWE was thematically linear in its charting of the dawn of time, globalisation and apocalypse, visitor interaction was highly non-linear. The moving image was presented in a variety of forms and spaces, from the isolation of works in rooms, the cohabitation of the very large to very small in the gallery proper, to enclosures created by multiple screens, laser-triggered interactivity and even plastic bowls with which visitors could ‘capture’ projections of light. Where heterogeneity was embraced in WWE, WN offered a smoother and less rapturous environment. It presented works by artists regarded as leaders of recent practices in the abstraction of the moving image. Rather than recreating the free exploratory movement of WWE, the WN visitor was guided along one main corridor. Each work was situated in a room or space situated to the right-hand side of the passageway. This isolation created a deep sense of immersion and intimacy with each work. Low-level white noise was even played across the Gallery so as to absorb the aural ‘bleed’ from neighbouring works. For my study, I used qualitative ethnographic techniques to gather phenomenological material, namely longitudinal participant observation and interviews. The observations were conducted on a fortnightly basis for seven months. I typically spent two to three hours shadowing visitors as they moved through the Gallery, detailing patterns of interaction; from gross physical movement and speech, to the very subtle modalities of encounter: a faint smile, a hesitation, or lapsing into complete stillness. I specifically recruited visitors for interviews immediately after their visit so as to probe further into these phenomenological moments while their effects were still fresh. I also endeavoured to capture a wide cross-sample of responses by recruiting on the basis of age, gender and reason for visitation. Ten in-depth interviews (between 45 minutes and one hour) were undertaken, enquiring into the factors influencing impressions of the Gallery, such as previous museum and art experiences, and opinions about media art and technology. In this article, I particularly draw upon my interviews with Steven, Fleur, Heidi, Sean, Trevor and Mathew. These visitors’ commentaries were selected as they reflect upon the overall ambience of the Gallery–intimate recollections of moving through darkness and projections of light–rather than engagement with individual works. When referring to ambience, I borrow from Brian Eno’s 1978 manifesto of Ambient Music, as it offers a useful analogy for assessing the complexity within subtle aesthetic experiences, and more specifically, in a spatial environment generated by electronic means. An ambience is defined as an atmosphere, or a surrounding influence: a tint…Whereas the extant canned music companies proceed from the basis of regularizing environments by blanketing their acoustic and atmospheric idiosyncrasies, Ambient Music is intended to enhance these. Whereas conventional background music is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these qualities. And whereas their intention is to ‘brighten’ the environment by adding stimulus to it… Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think…Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting. (Eno, "Ambient Music")While Eno’s definition specifically discusses a listening space, it is comparable to the predominantly digital and visual gallery environment as it elicits similar states of attention, such as calm reflection, or even a peaceful emptying of thoughts. I propose that ACMI’s darkened Screen Gallery creates an exploratory space for such intimate, bodily, subjective experiences. I firstly locate this study within the genealogical context of visitor interaction in museum exhibition environments. We then follow the visitors through the Gallery. As the nuances of their journey are presented, I assess the significance of an alternate model for presenting art which encourages ‘active’ aesthetic experience by privileging ambiguity and subtlety–yet heightened interactivity–and is similar to the systemic complexity Eno accords his Ambient Music. Navigating Museums in the Past The first public museums appeared in the context of the emerging liberal democratic state as both a product and articulation of the early stages of modernity in the nineteenth century. Museum practitioners enforced boundaries by prescribing visitors’ routes architecturally, by presenting museum objects within firm knowledge categories, and by separating visitors from objects with glass cabinets. By making their objects publicly accessible and tightly governing visitors’ parameters of spatial interaction, museums could enforce a pedagogical regulation of moral codes, an expression of ‘governmentality’ which constituted the individual as both a subject and object of knowledge (Bennett "Birth", Culture; Hooper-Greenhill). The advent of high modernism in the mid-twentieth century enforced positivist doctrines through a firm direction of visitor movement, exemplified by Le Corbusier’s Musée à Croissance Illimitée (1939) and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York (1959) (Davey 36). In more recent stages of modernity, architecture has attempted to reconcile the singular authority imposed by a building’s design. Robert Venturi, a key theorist of post-modern architecture, argued that the museum’s pedagogical failure to achieve social and political reforms was due to the purist and universalist values expressed within modern architecture. He proposed that post-modern architecture could challenge aesthetic modernism with a playful hybridity which emphasises symbolism and sculptural forms in architecture, and expresses a more diverse set of pluralist ideologies. Examples might include Hans Hollein’s Abteiberg Museum (1972-1982), or the National Museum of Australia in Canberra (2001). Contemporary attempts to design museum interactions reflect the aspirations of the ‘new museum.’ They similarly address a pluralist agenda, but mediate increasingly individualised forms of participation though highly interactive technological interfaces (Message). Commenting about art galleries, Lev Manovich greets this shift with some pessimism. He argues that the high art of the ‘white cube’ gallery is now confronting its ‘ideological enemy’, the ‘black box’, a historically ‘lower’ art form of cinema theatre (10). He claims that the history of spatial experimentation in art galleries is being reversed as much moving image art has been exhibited using a video projection in a darkened room, thereby limiting visitor participation to earlier, static forms of engagement. However, he proposes that new technologies could have an important presence and role in cultural institutions as an ‘augmented space’, in which layers of data overlay physical space. He queries whether this could create new possibilities for spatial interaction, such that cultural institutions might play a progressive role in exploring new futures (14). The Screen Gallery at ACMI embodies the characteristics of the ‘new museum’ as far as it demands multiple modalities of participation in a technological environment. It could perhaps also be regarded an experimental ‘black box’ in that it houses multiple screens, yet, as we shall see, elicits participation unbefitting of a cinema. We therefore turn now to examine visitors’ observations of the Gallery’s design, thereby garnering the experiential significance of passage through a moving image art space. Descending into Darkness Descending the staircase into the Gallery is a process of proceeding into shadows. The blackened cavity (fig. 1) therefore looms ahead as a clear visceral departure from the bustle of Federation Square above (fig. 2), and the clean brightness of ACMI’s foyer (fig. 3). Figure 1: Descent into ACMI's Screen Gallery Figure 2: ACMI at Federation Square, Melbourne Figure 3: ACMI’s foyer One visitor, Fleur, described this passage as a sense of going “deep underground,” where the affective power of darkness overwhelmed other sensory details: “I can’t picture it in my mind – sort of where the gallery finishes… And it’s perfect, it’s dark, and it’s… quiet-ish.” Many visitors found that an entrance softened by shadows added a trace of suspense to the beginnings of their journey. Heidi described how, “because it’s dark and you can’t actually see the people walking about… it’s a little bit more mysterious.” Fleur similarly remarked that “you’re not quite sure what you’re going to meet when you go around. And there’s a certain anticipation.” Steven found that the ambiguity surrounding the conventions of procedure through Gallery was “quite interesting, that experience of being a little bit unsure of where you’re going or not being able to see.” He attributed feelings of disorientation to the way the deep shadows of the Gallery routinely obscured measurement of time: “it’s that darkness that makes it a place where it’s like a time sync… You could spend hours in there… You sort of lose track of time… The darkness kind of contributes to that.” Multiple Pathways The ambiguity of the Gallery compelled visitors to actively engage with the space by developing their own rules for procedure. For example, Sean described how darkness and minimal use of signage generated multiple possibilities for passage: “you kind of need to wander through and guide yourself. It’s fairly dark as well and there aren’t any signs saying ‘Come this way,’ and it was only by sort of accident we found some of the spaces down the very back. Because, it’s very dark… We could very well have missed that.” Katrina similarly explained how she developed a participatory journey through movement: “when you first walk in, it just feels like empty space, and not exactly sure what’s going on and what to look at… and you think nothing is going on, so you have to kind of walk around and get a feel for it.” Steven used this participatory movement to navigate. He remarked that “there’s a kind of basic ‘what’s next?’… When you got down you could see maybe about four works immediately... There’s a kind of choice about ‘this is the one I’ll pay attention to first’, or ‘look, there’s this other one over there – that looks interesting, I might go and come back to this’. So, there’s a kind of charting of the trip through the exhibition.” Therefore while ambiguous rules for procedure undermine traditional forms of interaction in the museum, they prompted visitors to draw upon their sensory perception to construct a self-guided and exploratory path of engagement. However, mystery and ambiguity can also complicate visitors’ sense of self determination. Fleur noted how crossing the threshold into a space without clear conventions for procedure could challenge some visitors: “you have to commit yourself to go into a space like that, and I think the first time, when you’re not sure what’s down there… I think people going there for the first time would probably… find it difficult.” Trevor found this to be the case, objecting that “the part that doesn’t work, is that it doesn’t work as a space that’s easy to get around.” These comments suggest that an ‘unintended consequence’ (Beck) of relaxing contemporary museum conventions to encourage greater visitor autonomy, can be the contrary effect of making navigation more difficult. Visitors struggling to negotiate these conditions may find themselves subject to what Daniel Palmer terms the ‘paradox of user control’, in which contemporary forms of choice prove to be illusory, as they inhibit an individual’s freedom through ‘soft’ forms of domination. The ambiguity created by the Gallery’s darkness therefore brings two disparate – if not contradictory – tendencies together, as concluded by Fleur: “The darkness is – it’s both an advantage and a disadvantage… You can’t sort of see each other as well, but there’s also a bit of freedom in that. In that it sort of goes both ways.” A Journey of Subtle Cues Several strategies to ameliorate disorienting navigation experiences were employed in the Screen Gallery, attempting to create new possibilities for meaningful interaction. Some reflect typical curatorial conventions, such as mounting didactic panels along walls and strategically placing staff as guides. However, visitors frequently eschewed these markers and were instead drawn powerfully to affective conventions, including the shadings of light and sound. Sean noted how small beacons of light at foot level were prominent features, as they illuminated the entrances to rooms and corridors: “That’s your over-whelming impression, because it’s dark and there’s just these feature spotlights… and they’re an interesting device, because they sort of lead your eye through the space as well, and say ‘oh that’s where the next event is, there’s a spotlight over there’.” The luminescence of artworks served a similar purpose, for within “the darkness, the boundaries are less visible, and… you’re drawn to the light, you know, you’re drawn to those screens.” He found that directional sound above artworks also created a comparable effect: “I was aware of the fact that things were quiet until you approached the right spot and obviously it’s where the sound was focussed.” These conventions reflect what Trini Castelli calls ‘soft design’, by which space is made cohesively sensual (Glibb in Mitchell 87-88). The Gallery uses light and sound to fashions this visceral ‘feeling’ of spatial continuity, a seamless ambience. Paul described how this had a pleasurable effect, where the “atmosphere of the space” created “a very nice place to be… Lots of low lighting.” Fleur similarly recalled lasting somatic impressions: “It’s a bit like a cave, I suppose… The atmosphere is so different… it’s warm, I find it quite a relaxing place to be, I find it quite calm…Yeah, it has that feeling of private space to it.” Soft design therefore tempers the spatial severity of museums past through this sensuous ‘participatory environment.’ Interaction with art therefore becomes, as Steven enthused, “an exhibition experience” where “it’s as much (for me) the experience of moving between works as attending to the work itself… That seems really prominent in the experience, that it’s not these kind of isolated, individual works, they’re in relation to each other.” Disruptions to this experiential continuity – what Eno had described as a ‘stimulus’ – were subject to harsh judgement. When asked why he preferred to stand against the back wall of a room, rather than take a seat on the chairs provided, Matthew protested that “the spotlight was on those frigging couches, who wants to sit there? That would’ve been horrible.” Visitors clearly expressed a preference towards a form of spatial interaction in which curatorial conventions heighten, rather than detract from, the immersive dynamic of the museum environment. They showed how the feelings of ambiguity and suspense which absorbed them in the Gallery’s entrance gradually began to dissipate. In their place, a preference arose for conventions which maintained the Gallery’s immersive continuity, and where cues such as focused sound and footlights had a calming effect, and created a cohesive sensual journey through the dark. The Ambience of Art Space Visitors’ comments acquire an additional significance when examined in light of Eno’s earlier definition of what he called Ambient Music. He suggested that even in relative stillness, there exists a capacity for active forms of listening which create a “space to think” and generate a “quiet interest.” In addition, and perhaps most importantly, these active forms of listening are augmented by the “atmospheric idiosyncrasies” which are derived from conditions of uncertainty. As I have shown, the darkened Screen Gallery obscures the rules for visitor participation and consequently elicits doubt and hesitation. Visitors must self-navigate and be guided by sensory perception, responding to the kinaesthetic touch of light on skin and the subtle drifts of sound to constructing a journey through the enveloping darkness. This spatial ambience can therefore be understood as the specific condition which make the Gallery a fertile site for new exchanges between visitors, artworks and curation within the museum. Arjun Mulder defines this kind of dynamism in architectural space as a form of systemic interactivity, the “default state of any living system,” in the way that any system can be considered interactive if it links into, and affects change upon another (Mulder 332). Therefore while museums have historically been spaces for interaction, they have not always been interactive spaces in the sense described by Mulder, where visitor participation and processes of exchange are heightened by the conditions of ambience, and can compel self-determined journeys of visitor enquiry and feelings of relaxation and immersion. ACMI’s Screen Gallery has therefore come to define its practices by heightening these forms of encounter, and elevating the affective possibilities for interacting with art. Traditional museum conventions have been challenged by playing with experiential dynamics. These practices create an ambience which is particular to the gallery, and historically unlike the experiential ecologies of preceding forms of museum, gallery or moving space, be it the white cube or a simple ‘black box’ room for video projections. This perhaps signifies a distinctive moment in the genealogy of the museum, indicating how one instance of an art environment’s ambience can become a rubric for new forms of visitor interaction. References Beck, Ulrich. “The Reinvention of Politics: Towards a Theory of Reflexive Modernization.” Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Eds. Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash. Cambridge: Politics, 1994. 1-55. Bennett, Tony. The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. London; New York: Routledge. 1995. ———. “Culture and Governmentality.” Foucault, Cultural Studies and Governmentality. Eds. J.Z. Bratich, J. Packer, and C. McCarthy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. 47-64. Davey, Peter. “Museums in an N-Dimensional World.” The Architectural Review 1242 (2000): 36-37. Eno, Brian. “Resonant Complexity.” Whole Earth Review (Summer 1994): 42-43. ———. “Ambient Music.” A Year with Swollen Appendices: The Diary of Brian Eno. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. 293-297. Hooper-Greenhill, Eileen. “Museums and Education for the 21st Century.” Museum and Gallery Education. London: Leicester University Press, 1991. 187-193. Manovich, Lev. “The Poetics of Augmented Space: Learning from Prada.” 27 April 2010 ‹http://creativetechnology.salford.ac.uk/fuchs/modules/creative_technology/architecture/manovich_augmented_space.pdf›. Message, Kylie. “The New Museum.” Theory, Culture and Society: Special Issue on Problematizing Global Knowledge. Eds. Mike Featherstone, Couze Venn, and Ryan Bishop, John Phillips. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006. 603-606. Mitchell, T. C. Redefining Designing: From Form to Experience. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993. Mulder, Arjun. “The Object of Interactivity.” NOX: Machining Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson, 2004. 332-340. Palmer, Daniel. “The Paradox of User Control.” Melbourne Digital Art and Culture 2003 Conference Proceedings. Melbourne: RMIT, 2003. 167-172. Venturi, Robert. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966.

In 1956, John Cage predicted that “in the future, records will be made from records” (Duffel, 202). Certainly, musical creativity has always involved a certain amount of appropriation and adaptation of previous works. For example, Vivaldi appropriated and adapted the “Cum sancto spiritu” fugue of Ruggieri’s Gloria (Burnett, 4; Forbes, 261). If stuck for a guitar solo on stage, Keith Richards admits that he’ll adapt Buddy Holly for his own purposes (Street, 135). Similarly, Nirvana adapted the opening riff from Killing Jokes’ “Eighties” for their song “Come as You Are”. Musical “quotation” is actively encouraged in jazz, and contemporary hip-hop would not exist if the genre’s pioneers and progenitors had not plundered and adapted existing recorded music. Sampling technologies, however, have taken musical adaptation a step further and realised Cage’s prediction. Hardware and software samplers have developed to the stage where any piece of audio can be appropriated and adapted to suit the creative impulses of the sampling musician (or samplist). The practice of sampling challenges established notions of creativity, with whole albums created with no original musical input as most would understand it—literally “records made from records.” Sample-based music is premised on adapting audio plundered from the cultural environment. This paper explores the ways in which technology is used to adapt previous recordings into new ones, and how musicians themselves have adapted to the potentials of digital technology for exploring alternative approaches to musical creativity. Sampling is frequently defined as “the process of converting an analog signal to a digital format.” While this definition remains true, it does not acknowledge the prevalence of digital media. The “analogue to digital” method of sampling requires a microphone or instrument to be recorded directly into a sampler. Digital media, however, simplifies the process. For example, a samplist can download a video from YouTube and rip the audio track for editing, slicing, and manipulation, all using software within the noiseless digital environment of the computer. Perhaps it is more prudent to describe sampling simply as the process of capturing sound. Regardless of the process, once a sound is loaded into a sampler (hardware or software) it can be replayed using a MIDI keyboard, trigger pad or sequencer. Use of the sampled sound, however, need not be a faithful rendition or clone of the original. At the most basic level of manipulation, the duration and pitch of sounds can be altered. The digital processes that are implemented into the Roland VariOS Phrase Sampler allow samplists to eliminate the pitch or melodic quality of a sampled phrase. The phrase can then be melodically redefined as the samplist sees fit: adapted to a new tempo, key signature, and context or genre. Similarly, software such as Propellerhead’s ReCycle slices drum beats into individual hits for use with a loop sampler such as Reason’s Dr Rex module. Once loaded into Dr Rex, the individual original drum sounds can be used to program a new beat divorced from the syncopation of the original drum beat. Further, the individual slices can be subjected to pitch, envelope (a component that shapes the volume of the sound over time) and filter (a component that emphasises and suppresses certain frequencies) control, thus an existing drum beat can easily be adapted to play a new rhythm at any tempo. For example, this rhythm was created from slicing up and rearranging Clyde Stubblefield’s classic break from James Brown’s “Funky Drummer”. Sonic adaptation of digital information is not necessarily confined to the auditory realm. An audio editor such as Sony’s Sound Forge is able to open any file format as raw audio. For example, a Word document or a Flash file could be opened with the data interpreted as audio. Admittedly, the majority of results obtained are harsh white noise, but there is scope for serendipitous anomalies such as a glitchy beat that can be extracted and further manipulated by audio software. Audiopaint is an additive synthesis application created by Nicolas Fournel for converting digital images into audio. Each pixel position and colour is translated into information designating frequency (pitch), amplitude (volume) and pan position in the stereo image. The user can determine which one of the three RGB channels corresponds to either of the stereo channels. Further, the oscillator for the wave form can be either the default sine wave or an existing audio file such as a drum loop can be used. The oscillator shapes the end result, responding to the dynamics of the sine wave or the audio file. Although Audiopaint labours under the same caveat as with the use of raw audio, the software can produce some interesting results. Both approaches to sound generation present results that challenge distinctions between “musical sound” and “noise”. Sampling is also a cultural practice, a relatively recent form of adaptation extending out of a time honoured creative aesthetic that borrows, quotes and appropriates from existing works to create new ones. Different fields of production, as well as different commentators, variously use terms such as “co-creative media”, “cumulative authorship”, and “derivative works” with regard to creations that to one extent or another utilise existing works in the production of new ones (Coombe; Morris; Woodmansee). The extent of the sampling may range from subtle influence to dominating significance within the new work, but the constant principle remains: an existing work is appropriated and adapted to fit the needs of the secondary creator. Proponents of what may be broadly referred to as the “free culture” movement argue that creativity and innovation inherently relies on the appropriation and adaptation of existing works (for example, see Lessig, Future of Ideas; Lessig, Free Culture; McLeod, Freedom of Expression; Vaidhyanathan). For example, Gwen Stefani’s 2004 release “Rich Girl” is based on Louchie Lou and Michie One’s 1994 single of the same title. Lou and One’s “Rich Girl”, in turn, is a reggae dance hall adaptation of “If I Were a Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof. Stefani’s “na na na” vocal riff shares the same melody as the “Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum” riff from Fiddler on the Roof. Samantha Mumba adapted David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes” for her second single “Body II Body”. Similarly, Richard X adapted Tubeway Army’s “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’ and Adina Howard’s “Freak Like Me” for a career saving single for Sugababes. Digital technologies enable and even promote the adaptation of existing works (Morris). The ease of appropriating and manipulating digital audio files has given rise to a form of music known variously as mash-up, bootleg, or bastard pop. Mash-ups are the most recent stage in a history of musical appropriation and they epitomise the sampling aesthetic. Typically produced in bedroom computer-based studios, mash-up artists use software such as Acid or Cool Edit Pro to cut up digital music files and reassemble the fragments to create new songs, arbitrarily adding self-composed parts if desired. Comprised almost exclusively from sections of captured music, mash-ups have been referred to as “fictional pop music” because they conjure up scenarios where, for example, Destiny’s Child jams in a Seattle garage with Nirvana or the Spice Girls perform with Nine Inch Nails (Petridis). Once the initial humour of the novelty has passed, the results can be deeply alluring. Mash-ups extract the distinctive characteristics of songs and place them in new, innovative contexts. As Dale Lawrence writes: “the vocals are often taken from largely reviled or ignored sources—cornball acts like Aguilera or Destiny’s Child—and recast in wildly unlikely contexts … where against all odds, they actually work”. Similarly, Crawford argues that “part of the art is to combine the greatest possible aesthetic dissonance with the maximum musical harmony. The pleasure for listeners is in discovering unlikely artistic complementarities and revisiting their musical memories in mutated forms” (36). Sometimes the adaptation works in the favour of the sampled artist: George Clinton claims that because of sampling he is more popular now than in 1976—“the sampling made us big again” (Green). The creative aspect of mash-ups is unlike that usually associated with musical composition and has more in common with DJing. In an effort to further clarify this aspect, we may regard DJ mixes as “mash-ups on the fly.” When Grandmaster Flash recorded his quilt-pop masterpiece, “Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel,” it was recorded while he performed live, demonstrating his precision and skill with turntables. Modern audio editing software facilitates the capture and storage of sound, allowing mash-up artists to manipulate sounds bytes outside of “real-time” and the live performance parameters within which Flash worked. Thus, the creative element is not the traditional arrangement of chords and parts, but rather “audio contexts”. If, as Riley pessimistically suggests, “there are no new chords to be played, there are no new song structures to be developed, there are no new stories to be told, and there are no new themes to explore,” then perhaps it is understandable that artists have searched for new forms of musical creativity. The notes and chords of mash-ups are segments of existing works sequenced together to produce inter-layered contexts rather than purely tonal patterns. The merit of mash-up culture lies in its function of deconstructing the boundaries of genre and providing new musical possibilities. The process of mashing-up genres functions to critique contemporary music culture by “pointing a finger at how stifled and obvious the current musical landscape has become. … Suddenly rap doesn’t have to be set to predictable funk beats, pop/R&B ballads don’t have to come wrapped in cheese, garage melodies don’t have to recycle the Ramones” (Lawrence). According to Theodor Adorno, the Frankfurt School critic, popular music (of his time) was irretrievably simplistic and constructed from easily interchangeable, modular components (McLeod, “Confessions”, 86). A standardised and repetitive approach to musical composition fosters a mode of consumption dubbed by Adorno “quotation listening” and characterised by passive acceptance of, and obsession with, a song’s riffs (44-5). As noted by Em McAvan, Adorno’s analysis elevates the producer over the consumer, portraying a culture industry controlling a passive audience through standardised products (McAvan). The characteristics that Adorno observed in the popular music of his time are classic traits of contemporary popular music. Mash-up artists, however, are not representative of Adorno’s producers for a passive audience, instead opting to wrest creative control from composers and the recording industry and adapt existing songs in pursuit of their own creative impulses. Although mash-up productions may consciously or unconsciously criticise the current state of popular music, they necessarily exist in creative symbiosis with the commercial genres: “if pop songs weren’t simple and formulaic, it would be much harder for mashup bedroom auteurs to do their job” (McLeod, “Confessions”, 86). Arguably, when creating mash-ups, some individuals are expressing their dissatisfaction with the stagnation of the pop industry and are instead working to create music that they as consumers wish to hear. Sample-based music—as an exercise in adaptation—encourages a Foucauldian questioning of the composer’s authority over their musical texts. Recorded music is typically a passive medium in which the consumer receives the music in its original, unaltered form. DJ Dangermouse (Brian Burton) breached this pact to create his Grey Album, which is a mash-up of an a cappella version of Jay-Z’s Black Album and the Beatles’ eponymous album (also known as the White Album). Dangermouse says that “every kick, snare, and chord is taken from the Beatles White Album and is in their original recording somewhere.” In deconstructing the Beatles’ songs, Dangermouse turned the recordings into a palette for creating his own new work, adapting audio fragments to suit his creative impulses. As Joanna Demers writes, “refashioning these sounds and reorganising them into new sonic phrases and sentences, he creates acoustic mosaics that in most instances are still traceable to the Beatles source, yet are unmistakeably distinct from it” (139-40). Dangermouse’s approach is symptomatic of what Schütze refers to as remix culture: an open challenge to a culture predicated on exclusive ownership, authorship, and controlled distribution … . Against ownership it upholds an ethic of creative borrowing and sharing. Against the original it holds out an open process of recombination and creative transformation. It equally calls into question the categories, rifts and borders between high and low cultures, pop and elitist art practices, as well as blurring lines between artistic disciplines. Using just a laptop, an audio editor and a calculator, Gregg Gillis, a.k.a. Girl Talk, created the Night Ripper album using samples from 167 artists (Dombale). Although all the songs on Night Ripper are blatantly sampled-based, Gillis sees his creations as “original things” (Dombale). The adaptation of sampled fragments culled from the Top 40 is part of Gillis’ creative process: “It’s not about who created this source originally, it’s about recontextualising—creating new music. … I’ve always tried to make my own songs” (Dombale). Gillis states that his music has no political message, but is a reflection of his enthusiasm for pop music: “It’s a celebration of everything Top 40, that’s the point” (Dombale). Gillis’ “celebratory” exercises in creativity echo those of various fan-fiction authors who celebrate the characters and worlds that constitute popular culture. Adaptation through sampling is not always centred solely on music. Sydney-based Tom Compagnoni, a.k.a. Wax Audio, adapted a variety of sound bytes from politicians and media personalities including George W. Bush, Alexander Downer, Alan Jones, Ray Hadley, and John Howard in the creation of his Mediacracy E.P.. In one particular instance, Compagnoni used a myriad of samples culled from various media appearances by George W. Bush to recreate the vocals for John Lennon’s Imagine. Created in early 2005, the track, which features speeded-up instrumental samples from a karaoke version of Lennon’s original, is an immediate irony fuelled comment on the invasion of Iraq. The rationale underpinning the song is further emphasised when “Imagine This” reprises into “Let’s Give Peace a Chance” interspersed with short vocal fragments of “Come Together”. Compagnoni justifies his adaptations by presenting appropriated media sound bytes that deliberately set out to demonstrate the way information is manipulated to present any particular point of view. Playing the media like an instrument, Wax Audio juxtaposes found sounds in a way that forces the listener to confront the bias, contradiction and sensationalism inherent in their daily intake of media information. … Oh yeah—and it’s bloody funny hearing George W Bush sing “Imagine”. Notwithstanding the humorous quality of the songs, Mediacracy represents a creative outlet for Compagnoni’s political opinions that is emphasised by the adaptation of Lennon’s song. Through his adaptation, Compagnoni revitalises Lennon’s sentiments about the Vietnam War and superimposes them onto the US policy on Iraq. An interesting aspect of sampled-based music is the re-occurrence of particular samples across various productions, which demonstrates that the same fragment can be adapted for a plethora of musical contexts. For example, Clyde Stubblefield’s “Funky Drummer” break is reputed to be the most sampled break in the world. The break from 1960s soul/funk band the Winstons’ “Amen Brother” (the B-side to their 1969 release “Color Him Father”), however, is another candidate for the title of “most sampled break”. The “Amen break” was revived with the advent of the sampler. Having featured heavily in early hip-hop records such as “Words of Wisdom” by Third Base and “Straight Out of Compton” by NWA, the break “appears quite adaptable to a range of music genres and tastes” (Harrison, 9m 46s). Beginning in the early 1990s, adaptations of this break became a constant of jungle music as sampling technology developed to facilitate more complex operations (Harrison, 5m 52s). The break features on Shy FX’s “Original Nutta”, L Double & Younghead’s “New Style”, Squarepusher’s “Big Acid”, and a cover version of Led Zepplin’s “Whole Lotta Love” by Jane’s Addiction front man Perry Farrell. This is to name but a few tracks that have adapted the break. Wikipedia offers a list of songs employing an adaptation of the “Amen break”. This list, however, falls short of the “hundreds of tracks” argued for by Nate Harrison, who notes that “an entire subculture based on this one drum loop … six seconds from 1969” has developed (8m 45s). The “Amen break” is so ubiquitous that, much like the twelve bar blues structure, it has become a foundational element of an entire genre and has been adapted to satisfy a plethora of creative impulses. The sheer prevalence of the “Amen break” simultaneously illustrates the creative nature of music adaptation as well as the potentials for adaptation stemming from digital technology such as the sampler. The cut-up and rearrangement aspect of creative sampling technology at once suggests the original but also something new and different. Sampling in general, and the phenomenon of the “Amen break” in particular, ensures the longevity of the original sources; sampled-based music exhibits characteristics acquired from the source materials, yet the illegitimate offspring are not their parents. Sampling as a technology for creatively adapting existing forms of audio has encouraged alternative approaches to musical composition. Further, it has given rise to a new breed of musician that has adapted to technologies of adaptation. Mash-up artists and samplists demonstrate that recorded music is not simply a fixed or read-only product but one that can be freed from the composer’s original arrangement to be adapted and reconfigured. Many mash-up artists such as Gregg Gillis are not trained musicians, but their ears are honed from enthusiastic consumption of music. 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(May 2007) "Amen to That: Sampling and Adapting the Past," M/C Journal, 10(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/09-collins.php>.