Recent Submissions

  • Emptying Frames

    Henderson, Neil (2010-10-01)
    This short essay brings together some thoughts about two films, both of which take as their starting point the photographic still image and use film to expand and question the immobility of that image, teasing out small shifts and changes in its appearance. What follows are some observations about how these films reflect on their photographic materiality, the relationship between the still and moving image, the filmic interval, and the film and its projector. In the context of animation both films explore the boundaries of what constitutes the form. What are the most minimal conditions for ‘animation’ to take place? Can movement come from a single still image? In Candle (2007) and Tidal (2007), two obsolete and disappearing media come together to reflect on their own condition, their material and temporalit
  • We have eyes as well as ears: experimental music and the visual arts

    Ryan, David; Anglia Ruskin University (Ashgate Academic Press, 2009-09)
    This chapter deals with the relationship, influence, and reciprocal nature, of the visual arts and experimental music. While it connects with contemporary practices, it also attempts to trace certain historical threads back to Cage, the abstract expressionist painters and the discourses evolving from these. It looks at dominant ideas emanating from modernist notions – firstly formalist and media specific ideas and then conceptual and environmental influences. It argues that visual art’s evolving open space of discourse has allowed a platform for experimental music that traditional musical contexts have denied.
  • Ballard's Story of O: ‘The Voices of Time’ and the Quest for (Non)Identity

    Wymer, Rowland; Anglia Ruskin University (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012-01)
    The Voices of Time’ is the key work from Ballard’s early period, prefiguring the tone and narrative direction of the ‘disaster’ novels and eloquently articulating one of his lifelong preoccupations – the search for identity in a changing environment. At one level the story is a poetic meditation on time and death, an evocation of change and degeneration on a cosmic scale which recalls such works as Spenser’s ‘Mutabilitie Cantos’ or Donne’s ‘The First Anniversary’. Like Donne, Ballard employs up-to-the-minute scientific rhetoric to reinvigorate and revalidate a very traditional lament about the inevitability of decay. Such a lament is also present both in ‘classic’ science fiction texts such as The Time Machine or John W. Campbell’s ‘Twilight’ and in important ‘New Wave’ stories like M. John Harrison’s ‘Running Down’ or Pamela Zoline’s ‘The Heat Death of the Universe’. However, Ballard’s handling of this theme acquires some of its uniqueness from the fact that he was strongly interested in the ideas of both Freud and Jung. Consequently, the protagonist’s quest for identity within the ceaseless flow of time can be read with equal ease as a successful process of Jungian individuation or as a disastrous surrender to the Freudian death drive. At the heart of the story is what Rosemary Jackson has called the ‘goal which lies behind all fantastic art . . . the arrival at a point of absolute unity of self and other, subject and object, at a zero point of entropy’. Whether this ‘zero point’ represents a completion of self or a loss of self, whether the ‘O’ is full or empty, becomes impossible to say, as is also the case with Pauline Reage’s erotic classic The Story of O, which Ballard greatly admired.
  • Form and function: examples of music interface design

    Hoadley, Richard; Anglia Ruskin University (British Computer Society, 2010-09)
    This paper presents observations on the creation of digital music controllers and the music that they generate from the perspectives of the designer and the artist. In the case of musical instruments, what is the role of the form (the hardware) where it concerns the function (the production of musically interesting sounds)? Specific projects are presented, and a set of operational principles is supported from those examples. The associated encounter session will allow delegates to experiment with the interfaces exhibited, further informing these principles.
  • Implementation and development of interfaces for music performance through analysis of improvised dance movements

    Hoadley, Richard; Anglia Ruskin University (Audio Engineering Society, 2010-04)
    Electronic music, even when designed to be interactive, can lack performance interest and is frequently musically unsophisticated. This is unfortunate because there are many aspects of electronic music that can be interesting, elegant, demonstrative and musically informative. The use of dancers to interact with prototypical interfaces comprising clusters of sensors generating music algorithmically provides a method of investigating human actions in this environment. This is achieved through collaborative work involving software and hardware designers, composers, sculptors and choreographers who examine aesthetically and practically the interstices of these disciplines. The proposed paper investigates these interstices.
  • Implementation and development of sculptural interfaces for digital performance of music through embodied expression

    Hoadley, Richard; Anglia Ruskin University (British Computer Society, 2010-07)
    This demonstration paper describes the conception, design and implementation of a hardware/software musical interface and its use in performance with a group of dancers and a choreographer. It investigates the design and development of such interfaces in the light of these experiences and presents material from two of these custom interfaces. The work examines the nature of digital interfaces for musical expression through the use of multiple sensors, the data from which is used to generate and control multiple musical parameters in software. This enables levels of expression and diversity not generally available using conventional electronic interfaces, the latter frequently being limited to the direct control of a limited number of musical parameters. The combination of hardware design and algorithmic manipulation combined with the expressive potential of dance and embodied movement is of particular interest. Reflecting links between embodied movement and expression in live performance, the feedback between form and function is also considered, as are collaborations with sculptors to develop and enhance the physical behaviour and visual appearance of these devices.
  • From Visual Semantic Parameterization to Graphic Visualization

    Xin Zeng; Mehdi, Q.H.; Gough, N.E. (2013-06-28)
  • CIRCUS for Beginners

    Boehm, Carola; Patterson, John (2001)
    This paper describes “Content Integrated Research in Creative User Systems” (CIRCUS), a working group of the ESPRIT programme of the European Union; describing its origins, its main concerns, and viewing some of its conclusions. The paper examines the distinction between the practice-based art and design community and the more knowledge-based computer technology community. The CIRCUS research agenda has been led by the concept of creative pull, a concept which gives priority, even control, to the creative maker or user in the development of technological capability. The paper examines the working group and its focus on this concept and how to support it through technological means.
  • An interactive speech interface for virtual characters in dynamic environments

    Mehdi, Qasim; Zeng, Xin; Gough, Norman (2004)
    In this paper, we propose a new improvement to our 3D Virtual Story Environment System (3DVSE) by adding a real-time animation with voice synthesis. The new system offers a flexible and easy way to generate an interactive 3D virtual Environment (3DVE) as compared to traditional 3D packages. It enables the user to control and interact with the virtual characters via speech instructions so that the characters can respond to the commands in real time. This system has the potential, if combined with artificial intelligence, to act as a dialogue interface for believable agents that have many applications such as computer games, and intelligent multimedia applications. In this system, the agent can talk and listen to fellow agents and human users.
  • MuTaTeD’ll A System for Music Information Retrieval of Encoded Music

    Boehm, Carola (Library and Information Commission, 2001)
    This is the final publication of the results of the project “MuTaTed’II”, A system for Information Retrieval of Encoded Music”. The aim of the project was to design and implement an information retrieval system with delivery/access services for digital music and sound. The project was documented and the results presented at various conferences; (ICMC 2000 Berlin, ISMI 2000 Massachusetts, Euromicro 2000 Amsterdam).