Capital music : personal expression with a public display of song choice

Using information and communication technology devices in public urban places can help to create a personalised space. Looking at a mobile phone screen or listening to music on an MP3 player is a common practice avoiding direct contact with others e.g. whilst using public transport. However, such devices can also be utilised to explore how to build new meaningful connections with the urban space and the collocated people within. We present findings of work-in-progress on Capital Music, a mobile application enabling urban dwellers to listen to music songs as usual, but also allowing them to announce song titles and discover songs currently being listened to by other people in the vicinity. We study the ways that this tool can change or even enhance people’s experience of public urban spaces. Our first user study also found changes in choosing different songs. Anonymous social interactions based on users’ music selection are implemented in the first iteration of the prototype that we studied.

Music is a Wordless Knowing of Others : Resilience in Virtual Ensembles

Music making affects relationships with self and others by generating a sense of belonging to a culture or ideology (Bamford, 2006; Barovick, 2001; Dillon & Stewart, 2006; Fiske, 2000; Hallam, 2001). Whilst studies from arts education research present compelling examples of these relationships, others argue that they do not present sufficiently validated evidence of a causal link between music making experiences and cognitive or social change (Winner & Cooper, 2000; Winner & Hetland, 2000a, 2000b, 2001). I have suggested elsewhere that this disconnection between compelling evidence and observations of the effects of music making are in part due to the lack of rigor in research and the incapacity of many methods to capture these experiences in meaningful ways (Dillon, 2006). Part of the answer to these questions about rigor and causality lay in the creative use of new media technologies that capture the results of relationships in music artefacts. Crucially, it is the effective management of these artefacts within computer systems that allows researchers and practitioners to collect, organize, analyse and then theorise such music making experiences.

Voices of the Unheard

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant. Horace - Roman lyric poet and satirist 65BC – 8 BC This quotation from Horace could well be the chorus to a medley of songs sung by people who face extraordinary adversity and have gained emotional resilience through music making. In this chapter we present three composition ventures that are stories or verses in a new song and whose chorus summarises the nature of the resilience factors present in the narratives. We are aware that words on a page like this can have the effect of filtering out the engaging nature of musical experience and reduce music to a critique or an evaluation of its aesthetic value. This disjuncture between language and the ephemeral, embodied experience is a problem for those who use these creative processes in therapeutic and salutogenic ways (Antonovsky, 1996) for public health. The notion of salutogenic health, put simply, delineates it from therapy in that the processes focus upon wellness rather than therapy. Whilst we include evidence from the fields of community music therapy (Pavlicevic, 2004; Leitschuh et al., 1991), neuroscience (Bittman et al., 2001) and community music (Bartleet et al., 2009) the framework for a salutogenic health outcome in community music is one which seeks to employ music practices and the qualities of music making that provide positive health benefit to communities –to enhance health and well being rather than the “treatment” of disorders. It is essentially a holistic and interdisciplinary study. Therapy and salutogenic health are not mutually exclusive as both depend upon the qualities of music experience to affect change. Collecting, analysing and presenting evidence of change in human behaviour that can be directly attributed to creative music making is a problem of evaluation.

The record producer as nexus : creative inspiration, technology and the recording industry

What is a record producer? There is a degree of mystery and uncertainty about just what goes on behind the studio door. Some producers are seen as Svengali-like figures manipulating artists into mass consumer product. Producers are sometimes seen as mere technicians whose job is simply to set up a few microphones and press the record button. Close examination of the recording process will show how far this is from a complete picture. Artists are special—they come with an inspiration, and a talent, but also with a variety of complications, and in many ways a recording studio can seem the least likely place for creative expression and for an affective performance to happen. The task of the record producer is to engage with these artists and their songs and turn these potentials into form through the technology of the recording studio. The purpose of the exercise is to disseminate this fixed form to an imagined audience—generally in the hope that this audience will prove to be real. Finding an audience is the role of the record company. A record producer must also engage with the commercial expectations of the interests that underwrite a recording. This dissertation considers three fields of interest in the recording process: the performer and the song; the technology of the recording context; and the commercial ambitions of the record company—and positions the record producer as a nexus at the interface of all three. The author reports his structured recollection of five recordings, with three different artists, that all achieved substantial commercial success. The processes are considered from the author’s perspective as the record producer, and from inception of the project to completion of the recorded work. What were the processes of engagement? Do the actions reported conform to the template of nexus? This dissertation proposes that in all recordings the function of producer/nexus is present and necessary—it exists in the interaction of the artistry and the technology. The art of record production is to engage with these artists and the songs they bring and turn these potentials into form.

Contemporary take on deconstructed Medea : a review

THEATRE: The New Dead: Medea Material. By Heiner Muller. Stella Electrika in association with La Boite Theatre Company, Brisbane, November 19. THERE has been a lot of intensity in independent theatre in Brisbane during the past year, as companies, production houses and producers have begun building new programs and platforms to support an expansion of pathways within the local theatre ecology. Audiences have been exposed to works signalling the diversity of what Brisbane theatre makers want to see on stage, from productions of new local and international pieces to new devised works, and the results of residencies and development programs. La Boite Theatre Company closes its inaugural indie season with a work that places it at the contemporary, experimental end of the spectrum. The New Dead: Medea Material is emerging director Kat Henry's interpretation of Heiner Muller's 1981 text Despoiled Shore Medea Material Landscape with Argonauts. Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar. End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar. Muller is known for his radical adaptations of historical dramas, from the Greeks to Shakespeare, and for deconstructed texts in which the characters - in this case, Medea - violently reject the familial, cultural and political roles society has laid out for them. Muller's combination of deconstructed characters, disconnected poetic language and constant references to aspects of popular culture and the Cold War politics he sought to abjure make his texts challenging to realise. The poetry entices but the density, together with the increasing distance of the Cold War politics in the texts, leaves contemporary directors with clear decisions to make about how to adapt these open texts. In The New Dead: Medea Material, Henry works with some interesting imagery and conceptual territory. Lucinda Shaw as Medea, Guy Webster as Jason and Kimie Tsukakoshi as King Creon's daughter Glauce, the woman for whom Jason forsakes his wife Medea, each reference different aspects of contemporary culture. Medea is a bitter, drunken, satin-gowned diva with bite; Jason - first seen lounging in front of the television with a beer in an image reminiscent of Sarah Kane's in-yer-face characterisation of Hippolytus in Phaedra's Love - has something of the rock star about him; and Glauce is a roller-skating, karaoke-singing, pole-dancing young temptress. The production is given a contemporary tone, dominated by Medea's twisted love and loss, rather than by any commentary on her circumstances. Its strength is the aesthetic Henry creates, supported by live electro-pop music, a band stage that stands as a metaphor for Jason's sea voyage, and multimedia that inserts images of the story unfolding beyond these characters' speeches as sorts of subconscious flashes. While Tsukakoshi is engaging throughout, there are moments when Shaw and Webster's performances - particularly in the songs - are diminished by a lack of clarity. The result is a piece that, while slightly lacking in its realisation at times, undoubtedly flags Henry's facility as an emerging director and what she wants to bring to the Brisbane theatre scene.

Australian ePortfolio Project–Stage 2 ePortfolio use by university students in Australia : Developing a sustainable community of practice Case studies extracted from the final project report December 2009

Fourteen sase studies extracted from the final project report - December 2009 Australian Flexible Learning Framework: E-portfolios Community of Practice (Aus) Personal learning plans and ePortfolio (Aus) RMIT University: Introducing ePortfolios (Aus) ePortfolio Practice: ALTC Exchange (Aus) Australian PebblePad User Group (APpUG) (Aus) ePortfolios in the library and information services sector (Aus) PDP and ePortfolios UK (UK) SURF NL Portfolio (Netherlands) University of Canterbury ePortfolio (NZ) AAEEBL: Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning (USA) Midlands Eportfolio Group, West Midlands(UK) EPAC: Electronic Portfolio Action and Communication (USA) Scottish Higher Education PDP Forum (UK) Centre for Recording Achievement (CRA)(UK)

Producing better outcomes : music and public services

Music has played an important role in social life for thousands of years, and its varied forms of communication have significantly influenced the types of public services reported in this book. It is now time for practitioners and academics to sing songs of resilience that reinvigorate the public’s understanding of the positive role music can play in all of our lives, and for public services to better resource music projects. The last twenty years have seen major advances in studies of music and its affects on the brain’s neuroplasticity, but as yet no one has managed to provide a comprehensive response to Oliver Sachs’ (2006) question: why does music, for better or worse, have so much power? This chapter seeks to demonstrate the power of those music making experiences that bridge the gap between the physicaland social sciences across commercial, social and cultural contexts.

Resourcing resilience through recreational music programs

Many music programs in Australia deliver a United States (US) package created by the Recreational Music-Making Movement, founded by Karl Bruhn and Barry Bittman. This quasi-formal group of music makers, academics and practitioners uses the logic of decentralised global networks to connect with local musicians, offering them benefits associated with their ‘Recreational Music Program’ (RMP). These RMPs encapsulate the broad goals of the movement, developed in the US during the 1980s, and now available as a package, endorsed by the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), for music retailers and community organisations to deliver locally (Bittman et al., 2003). High participation rates in RMPs have been historically documented amongst baby boomers with disposable income. Yet the Australian programs increasingly target marginalised groups and associated funding sources, which in turn has lowered the costs of participation. This chapter documents how Australian manifestations of RMPs presently report on the benefits of participation to attract cross-sector funding. It seeks to show the diversity of participants who claim to have developed and accessed resources that improve their capacity for resilience through recreational music performance events. We identify funding issues pertaining to partnerships between local agencies and state governments that have begun to commission such music programs. Our assessment of eight Australian RMPs includes all additional music groups implemented since the first program, their purposes and costs, the skills and coping strategies that participants developed, how organisers have reported on resources, outcomes and attracted funding. We represent these features through a summary table, standard descriptive statistics and commentaries from participants and organisers.

The media and parliament

For decades, indeed centuries, the Scottish media have been a source of national pride. Alongside the education system, the Church of Scotland and the legal apparatus the media have been rightly viewed as a distinctive Scottish cultural institution, a key part of what makes Scotland a nation rather than a region. Scotland has long sustained, per capita, one of the richest and most diverse media systems in the world, encapsulating a heady mix of local newspapers such as the West Highland Free Press, national [i.e., Scotland-wide] newspapers and broadcast outlets such as BBC Scotland and the Scotsman, and UK-based media with Scottish editions such as the Sun and the Mail. These media have reflected and fuelled what is in turn a distinctive Scottish political identity separate from, though connected with that of the United Kingdom as a whole. There has, for example, been no major paper with a pro-Tory editorial line north of the border for longer than most of us can remember, reflecting (and perhaps contributing to) the Conservative Party’s poor showing in successive Scottish elections.

CDKN2A mutation in a non-FAMMM kindred with cancers at multiple sites results in a functionally abnormal protein

The CDKN2A gene encodes p16 (CDKN2A), a cell-cycle inhibitor protein which prevents inappropriate cell cycling and, hence, proliferation. Germ-line mutations in CDKN2A predispose to the familial atypical multiple-mole melanoma (FAMMM) syndrome but also have been seen in rare families in which only 1 or 2 individuals are affected by cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM). We therefore sequenced exons 1alpha and 2 of CDKN2A using lymphocyte DNA isolated from index cases from 67 families with cancers at multiple sites, where the patterns of cancer did not resemble those attributable to known genes such as hMLH1, hMLH2, BRCA1, BRCA2, TP53 or other cancer susceptibility genes. We found one mutation, a mis-sense mutation resulting in a methionine to isoleucine change at codon 53 (M531) of exon 2. The individual tested had developed 2 CMMs but had no dysplastic nevi and lacked a family history of dysplastic nevi or CMM. Other family members had been diagnosed with oral cancer (2 persons), bladder cancer (1 person) and possibly gall-bladder cancer. While this mutation has been reported in Australian and North American melanoma kindreds, we did not observe it in 618 chromosomes from Scottish and Canadian controls. Functional studies revealed that the CDKN2A variant carrying the M531 change was unable to bind effectively to CDK4, showing that this mutation is of pathological significance. Our results have confirmed that CDKN2A mutations are not limited to FAMMM kindreds but also demonstrate that multi-site cancer families without melanoma are very unlikely to contain CDKN2A mutations.

The politicization of youth crime in Scotland and the rise of the 'Burberry Court'

In 2003, the youth justice system in Scotland entered a new phase with the introduction of a pilot youth court. The processing of persistent 16 and 17 year old (and serious 15 year olds) represented a stark deviation from a ‘child centred’ and needs-oriented state apparatus for dealing with young offenders to one based on deeds and individual responsibility. This article, based on an evaluation funded by the Scottish Executive, is the first to provide a critical appraisal of this youth justice reform. It examines the views of the judiciary and young offenders and reveals that the pilot youth court in Scotland represents a punitive excursion that poses serious concerns for due process, human rights and net widening.

Punishing 'poor parents': 'Respect', 'responsibility' and parenting orders in Scotland

This article critiques the rise of parenting orders in Scotland within New Labour’s self-styled model of ‘respect’ and ‘responsibility’. It examines the emergence of parenting orders in Scotland, which became available in April 2005, and argues that Scottish local authorities are sceptical of an approach they perceive as an ideological and legislative mix premised on punitive notions of individual responsibility and justice.

Performance recordivity : studio music in a live context

A broad range of positions is articulated in the academic literature around the relationship between recordings and live performance. Auslander (2008) argues that “live performance ceased long ago to be the primary experience of popular music, with the result that most live performances of popular music now seek to replicate the music on the recording”. Elliott (1995) suggests that “hit songs are often conceived and produced as unambiguous and meticulously recorded performances that their originators often duplicate exactly in live performances”. Wurtzler (1992) argues that “as socially and historically produced, the categories of the live and the recorded are defined in a mutually exclusive relationship, in that the notion of the live is premised on the absence of recording and the defining fact of the recorded is the absence of the live”. Yet many artists perform in ways that fundamentally challenge such positions. Whilst it is common practice for musicians across many musical genres to compose and construct their musical works in the studio such that the recording is, in Auslander’s words, the ‘original performance’, the live version is not simply an attempt to replicate the recorded version. Indeed in some cases, such replication is impossible. There are well known historical examples. Queen, for example, never performed the a cappella sections of Bohemian Rhapsody because it they were too complex to perform live. A 1966 recording of the Beach Boys studio creation Good Vibrations shows them struggling through the song prior to its release. This paper argues that as technology develops, the lines between the recording studio and live performance change and become more blurred. New models for performance emerge. In a 2010 live performance given by Grammy Award winning artist Imogen Heap in New York, the artist undertakes a live, improvised construction of a piece as a performative act. She invites the audience to choose the key for the track and proceeds to layer up the various parts in front of the audience as a live performance act. Her recording process is thus revealed on stage in real time and she performs a process that what would have once been confined to the recording studio. So how do artists bring studio production processes into the live context? What aspects of studio production are now performable and what consistent models can be identified amongst the various approaches now seen? This paper will present an overview of approaches to performative realisations of studio produced tracks and will illuminate some emerging relationships between recorded music and performance across a range of contexts.

Little Birung

The field of research was contemporary indigenous theatre practice. The aim of the project was to produce theatre that remained as close and true to its source as possible, in both form and content. Little Birung is the final part of a 6-year mentorship of young indigenous artist, Megan Samardin, conducted by renowned musician and composer, John Rodgers, producer Leah Cotterell and director Sean Mee. The culminating event of the mentorship was to develop to create an original music theatre piece, composed by John Rodgers and Megan Samardin, that featured both Megan’s prodigious talent as a singer and her family’s remarkable story. Creative development consisted of extensive interviews with family members, creative development workshops (supported by both State and Federal Government) and critique and input from leading indigenous creatives such as Wesley Enoch (artistic director, Queensland Theatre Company). The challenge was to keep faith with the family and their story whilst creating a work that would appeal to national/international producers and their audiences. The result is a song cycle of 12 original songs that presents an intensely personal exploration of 6 generations of Megan’s family down the maternal line, as told through Megan’s sometimes uneasy relationship with her great grandmother, Flora. Uniquely, each of the 12 songs presents the personal response of each of the women as they confronted the often-brutal consequences of institutionalised racism and government-imposed oppression. The work was produced in Cairns in 2011 as part of the Cairns Festival to substantial critical acclaim and was an official event of Cairns Indigenous Arts Fair. A revised version was successfully presented at the Judith Wright Centre, Brisbane in November 2011. As a result of the Brisbane season, Little Birung has been invited to make a presentation at the 2012 APAM (Australian Performing Arts Market) in Adelaide. Importantly, the family and the indigenous community have embraced the work and have continued their fervent support. It has strengthened them as a family and as a part of the indigenous people of Australia.

Evaluation of the Airdrie Sheriff Youth Court Pilot

A pilot Youth Court was introduced at Airdrie Sheriff Court in June 2004. Its objectives were to: • reduce the frequency and seriousness of re-offending by 16 and 17 year old offenders, particularly persistent offenders (and some 15 year olds who are referred to the court); • promote the social inclusion, citizenship and personal responsibility of these young offenders while maximising their potential; • establish fast track procedures for those young persons appearing before the Youth Court; • enhance community safety, by reducing the harm caused to individual victims of crime and providing respite to those communities which are experiencing high levels of crime; and • test the viability and usefulness of a Youth Court using existing legislation and to demonstrate whether legislative and practical improvements might be appropriate. An evaluation of the pilot commissioned by the Scottish Executive found that it appeared in many respects to be working well. It was a tightly run court that dealt with a heavy volume of business. With its fast track procedures and additional resources it was regarded as a model to be aspired to in all summary court business. Whether a dedicated Youth Court was required or whether procedural improvements would have been possible in the absence of dedicated resources and personnel was, however, more difficult to assess. Two issues in particular required further attention. First, consideration needed to be given to whether the Youth Court should be more explicitly youth focused and what this might entail. Second, greater clarity was required regarding for whom the Youth Court was intended to avoid the risk of net-widening and its consequences for young people.