Between Sound and Sight: Framing the Exotic in Roysten Abel's The Manganiyar Seduction

Roysten Abel’s The Manganiyar Seduction is perhaps the most popular performance of Indian folk music on the global festival market today. This performance of Rajasthani folk music is an apt exemplification of an auto-exoticism framed as cultural commodity. Its mise en scéne of musicians framed, literally, by illuminated red square boxes ‘theatricalises’ Rajasthan’s folk culture of orality and renders such a tradition the quality of strangeness that borders on theatre and music, contemporary and traditional. The ‘dazzling’ union of the Manganiyar’s music and scenography of Amsterdam’s red light district engendered an exotic seduction that garnered raving reviews on its global tour. This paper then examines the production’s performative interstices: the in betweenness of sound and sight where aural tradition is ‘spectacularised’, and the shifting convergences of tradition and cultural consumption. It further interrogates the role of reception in the construction of such ‘exotic’ spectacles.

Creating a Circus of Words, Music, and Sound: From Roaratorio to Owenvarragh

This article documents the creation of a work by the authors based on a score written by the composer John Cage entitled 'Owenvarragh: A Belfast Circus on The Star Factory.' The article is part of a documentary portfolio in the journal which also includes a volume of the poetry created by Dowling in accordance with the instructions of the Cage score, and a series of documentary videos on the creation of the work and its first performance. Cage's score is based on his work 'Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegan's Wake' (1979) and it provides a set of detailed instructions for the musical realisation of a literary work. The article documents this first fully realised version of the score since Cage first produced 'Roaratorio' in 1979. The work, which was motivated by the Cage centenary year in 2012, musically realises Carson's book 'The Star Factory' (1998), a novelestic autobiography of Carson's Belfast childhood. The score required the creation of a fixed media piece based on over 300 field recordings of the sounds and places mentioned in the book, a volume of poetry created from the book which is recited to form the rhythmic spine of the work, and the arrangement of a performance including these two components along with live musical performance by the authors in collaboration with three other musicians under their direction, and a video installation created for the work. The piece has been performed three times: in association with the Sonorities 2012 Festival at Queen's University of Belfast (March 2012), at The Belfast Festival at Queen's (October 2012), and in the Rymer Auditoium of the University of York (June 2013).

Additional information:

The work which the article documents was conceived by Monaghan and Dowling, and the project was initiated by Monaghan after a she received a student prize to support its development and first performance. Elements of the project will be included in her PhD dissertation for which Dowling is a supervisor. Monaghan created the fixed media piece based on over 300 field recordings, the largest single aspect of realising Cage's score. Dowling was responsible for initiating the collaboration with Ciaran Carson, and for two other components: the creation of a volume of poetry derived from the literary work which is recited in the performance, and the creation of and supervision of the technical work on a video which accompanies the piece. The co-authors consulted closely during the work on these large components from May 2011 until March 2012 when the first performance took place. The co-authors also shared in numerous other artistic and organisational aspects of the production, including the arrangement and performnance of the music, musical direction to other performers, and marketing.

Biomonitoring of polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) pollution: A field study

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and cytochrome P450 enzyme activities were investigated in European eels (Anguilla anguilla) collected from seven sites in a coastal lagoon in the north-western Mediterranean Sea, Orbetello lagoon (Italy). Twelve PBDE congeners were measured in muscle and two CYP1A enzyme activities, 7-ethoxyresorufin-O-deethylase (EROD) and benzo(a)pyrene monooxygenase (BP (a)PMO), were investigated in liver microsomal fraction in order to obtain insights into the health of the lagoon environment. PBDE muscle levels were low and the most abundant congeners were 2,2',4,4'-tetrabronnodiphenylether (BDE-47), 2,2',4,4',5,5'-hexaBDE (BDE-153) and 2,2',4,5'-tetraBDE (BDE-49). EROD and B(a)PMO activities were also low and no differences were observed between eels from different sites. Multivariate analysis (PCA) did not indicate correlations between PBDEs and either P450 activities. (c) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Arsenic, cadmium, and lead pollution and uptake by rice (Oryza sativa L.) grown in greenhouse

Purpose: Hunan province is well-known for its extensive base-metal extraction and smelting industries. However, the legacies of excavation operations, transportation, and selective smelting activities within Hunan have resulted in the generation of large quantities of mine wastes, which will become the sources of metal contamination in the environment. Thus, there is an increasingly important health issue underlying the study of arable land pollution and transfer of As, Cd, and Pb in the paddy soil–rice system.
Materials and methods: Paddy soils collected from mining- and smelting-impacted areas in Hunan province and rice seed (Oryza sativa L. cv Jia Hua-1) were used for pot experiments under greenhouse conditions. One 30-day-old seedling was transplanted into one pot containing 5.0 kg pretreated soil. At harvest, rice grains and shoots were washed with distilled water to remove surface soil, and oven-dried at 65°C for 96 h until a constant weight was reached. Roots were washed carefully with distilled water for the next process of extracting iron plaque using dithionite–citrate–bicarbonate solution. Total concentrations of As, Cd, and Pb in soil and rice plant tissues were measured by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer.
Results and discussion: Total concentrations of As, Cd, and Pb in the soils collected from 12 mining- and smelting-impacted areas in Hunan province were much higher than Hunan background values and exceeded the maximum concentration limit for soils set by the Ministry of Environmental Protection. The yields of rice grain from Pb/Zn mining and smelting sites were negatively correlated to overall pollution scores. Distributions of As, Cd, and Pb in rice plant followed: root >> shoot > husk > whole grain. About 30.1–88.1% of As, 11.2–43.5% of Cd, and 14.0–33.9% of Pb were accumulated in iron plaque on root surfaces.
Conclusions: High concentrations of As, Cd, and Pb are observed in paddy soils from mining- and smelting-impacted areas in Hunan province, indicating those paddy soils suffer serious combined heavy metal contamination. In particular, Cd is the dominant contaminant followed by As and Pb in paddy soils from most locations. The distributions of As, Cd, and Pb in rice tissue were: root >> shoot > husk > whole grain. Concentrations of Pb in all whole grain and of As and Cd in 50% of whole grain samples exceeded Chinese Hygienic Standard values for food.

Recomposing the City: A Survey of Recent Sound Art in Belfast

This article introduces examples of recent sound art in Belfast, a city that has undergone radical transformation over the past decade and is home to a burgeoning community of sound artists. The text investigates the ways in which sonic art can redraw boundaries in a city historically marked by myriad political, socioeconomic,
religious and sectarian divisions. The article focuses on sound works that reimagine a “post-conflict” Belfast. These include site-specific sound installations in urban and public spaces, soundwalks, sculptures, locative and online works, and experimental
sonic performances that draw upon traditional Irish song and music.

How Does Justice Sound? Enunciative Modalities, Law’s Logos and Woman’s Voice

In the throes of her mimetic exposure of the lie of phallocratic discursive unity in 'Speculum of the Other Woman', Irigaray paused on the impossibility of woman’s voice and remarked that ‘it [was] still better to speak only in riddles, allusions, hints, parables.’ Even if asked to clarify a few points. Even if people plead that they just don’t understand. After all, she said, ‘they never have understood.’ (Irigaray 1985, 143).

That the law has never understood a uniquely feminine narrative is hardly controversial, but that this erasure continues to have real and substantive consequences for justice is a reality that feminists have been compelled to remain vigilant in exposing. How does the authority of the word compound law’s exclusionary matrix? How does law remain impervious to woman’s voice and how might it hear woman’s voice? Is there capacity for a dialogic engagement between woman, parler femme, and law?

This paper will explore these questions with particular reference to the experience of women testifying to trauma during the rape trial. It will argue that a logically linked historical genealogy can be traced through which law has come to posit itself as an originary discourse by which thinking is very much conflated with being, or in other terms, law is conflated with justice. This has consequences both for women’s capacity to speak or represent the harm of rape to law, but also for law’s ability to ‘hear’ woman’s voice and objectively adjudicate in cases of rape. It will suggest that justice requires law acknowledge the presence of two distinct and different subjects and that this must be done not only at the symbolic level but also at the level of the parole, syntax and discourse.

Sound on a String

Interactive sound installation commissioned by the Dublin City of Science (with Cavan Fyans, Javier Jaimovich and Adnan Marquez-Borbon).