Sound Art and Public Engagement in the Built Environment: Reflections from an Architecture Center

This article explores the deployment of sound in architectural-curatorial and community engagement contexts through the work of PLACE, a multidisciplinary not-for-profit architecture center in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The author, who worked with PLACE and contributed to the projects discussed here, contextualizes architecture centers and their relationship with sound before examining the specific case of sound and sound art in Northern Ireland and case studies of projects delivered by PLACE. Specifically, the article evaluates two sound installation artworks and three community engagement projects for young audiences. As a means of curating urbanism and architecture, sound-art-as-public-art affords useful strategies to examine, describe or critique the environment as alternatives to traditional architecture exhibition formats. Sound’s temporality and materiality allow sound art works to exist as temporary sculptural interventions in the urban sphere, with attendant implications for public art procurement and urban acoustics. Rich territories of engagement are opened when using sound in a community participatory context.

Engaging the Senses: Object-based learning in higher education

The use of museum collections as a path to learning for university students is fast becoming a new pedagogy for higher education. Despite a strong tradition of using lectures as a way of delivering the curriculum, the positive benefits of ‘active’ and ‘experiential learning’ are being recognised in universities at both a strategic level and in daily teaching practice. As museum artefacts, specimens and art works are used to evoke, provoke, and challenge students’ engagement with their subject, so transformational learning can take place. This unique book presents the first comprehensive exploration of ‘object-based learning’ as a pedagogy for higher education in a broad context. An international group of authors offer a spectrum of approaches at work in higher education today. They explore contemporary principles and practice of object-based learning in higher education, demonstrating the value of using collections in this context and considering the relationship between academic discipline and object-based learning as a teaching strategy.

The Representation of the Female Body in the Multimedia Works of Regina José Galindo

The female body is central to the performance art, poetry and blog site interventions of Guatemalan Regina José Galindo. While Galindo is best known for her performance work, this article compares the hereto overlooked, distinctive and often shocking representations of the female body across her multimedia outputs. We first consider the ways in which, in all three media, Galindo presents an ‘excessive’, carnivalised, grotesque and abject female body. Second, we analyse representations of the female body that has been subjected to violence at a private and public level. In so doing, we show how Galindo not only contests hegemonic visions of gender and (national) identity but also challenges the viewer/reader to engage with, rather than look away from, the violence to which women are subjected in patriarchal society.

Epistolarum Familiarium Liber Unus in The Complete Works of John Milton: Volume XI (672pp.)

This edition of Milton’s Epistolarum Familiarium Liber Unus and of his Uncollected Letters, will appear as 672 pp. of The Complete Works of John Milton Volume XI, eds. Gordon Campbell and Edward Jones (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2016). A diplomatic Latin text and a new facing English translation are complemented by a detailed Introduction and commentary that situate Milton’s Latin letters in relation to the classical, pedagogical and essentially humanist contexts at the heart of their composition. Now the art of epistolography advocated and exemplified by Cicero and Quintilian and embraced by Renaissance pedagogical manuals is read through a humanist filter whereby, via the precedent (and very title) of Epistolae Familiares, the Miltonic Liber is shown to engage with a neo-Latin re-invention of the classical epistola that had come to birth in quattrocento Italy in the letters of Petrarch and his contemporaries. At the same time the Epistolae are seen as offering fresh insight into Milton’s views on education, philology, his relations with Italian literati, his blindness, the poetic dimension of his Latin prose, and especially his verbal ingenuity as the ‘words’ of Latin ‘Letters’ become a self-conscious showcasing of etymological punning on the ‘letters’ of Latin ‘words’. The edition also announces several new discoveries, most notably its uncovering and collation of a manuscript of Henry Oldenburg’s transcription (in his Liber Epistolaris held in Royal Society, London) of Milton’s Ep. Fam. 25 (to Richard Jones). Oldenburg’s transcription (from the original sent to his pupil Jones) is an important find, given the loss of all but two of the manuscripts of Milton’s original Latin letters included in the 1674 volume. The edition also presents new evidence in regard to Milton’s relationships with the Italian philologist Benedetto Buonmattei, the Greek humanist Leonard Philaras, the radical pastor Jean Labadie (and the French church of London), and the elusive Peter Heimbach.

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.

Empowering Art: Reconfiguring narratives of trauma and hope in the Australian national imaginary

Aboriginal art has been the source of much contention between art curators, gallery owners, art critics and Aboriginal artists themselves. Early aesthetic debates about whether so-called traditional works should be considered ethnographic or artistic have led, at times, to conflicts over the rights of Aboriginal people to have their works exhibited according to the criteria applied to other kinds of Western artworks. This article explores how the dilemmas of troubled ethno-histories are critically embodied and reconfigured in texture and colour. It considers the problems that silenced histories pose for those responsible for their display to the public. As Aboriginal images often conceal troubled intercultural encounters it asks how artworks can be used to provide a counter-polemic to national rhetoric as artists seek to reshape and improve intergenerational futures. This text is published as a counterpart to the contribution to Disturbing Pasts from the artist Heather Kamarra Shearer.

Construction Disputes in Small to Medium Enterprises in Ireland during Recession: Identification of Critical Factors

Purpose - To identify the critical factors causing construction disputes in Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Ireland during the recent recession period of 2007 to 2013.
Design/Methodology/Approach - A mixed method approach incorporating a literature review, case studies and questionnaire survey, with results analysed using exploratory (data reduction) factor analysis.
Findings - The results indicate seven core critical factors which result in construction disputes in SMEs in Ireland during a recession: Payment and extras; Physical work conditions; Poor financial/legal practise; Changes to the agreed scope of works; Time overrun; Defects; and Requests for increase in speed of project and long-term defects.
Research Limitations/Implications - With Ireland emerging from the current economic recession and the prevalence of SMEs to the construction sector, it is essential to document the core critical factors of construction disputes which emerge within this particular segment of the built environment.
Practical Implications - To address the adversarial nature of the construction sector and the prevalence of SMEs, it is essential to identify and document the critical factors of construction disputes within this remit. It is envisaged that the results of this research will be acknowledged, and the recommendations adopted, by construction SMEs, particularly within Ireland, as they emerge from the economic recession.
Originality/Value - This paper fulfils a gap in knowledge with the emergence of the economic recession and the identification of critical factors of construction dispute within SMEs in the Irish construction industry.

Big Ears – sonic art for public ears: Reflections on collaborative training

This text critically reflects on the higher education public engagement training program, entitled ‘Big Ears – sonic art for public ears’. The authors detail the objectives and aims as well as the benefits of this initiative for the enhancement of the student learning experience. We consider Schmidt’s (Schmidt, 2012) notion of mis-listening and Christopher Small’s concept of ‘musicking’ (Small, 1998), and develop a critical argument on how public engagement has changed researchers’ views and attitudes about their own research. The text explores how the creative interaction with a young audience has had great impact on the students’ learning experience as well as on their employability/transferable skills, because Big Ears stresses the importance of pulling practice as research away from the academic argument of why artists should be supported inside an institution, and into the realm of the real – what to do when making art, how to make it relevant and applicable to audiences.

Distributed Sounding Art – Practices in Distributing Sound (eds. Barry Truax, Marcel Cobussen and Vincent Meelberg)

This chapter examines distributed sounding art by focusing on three key aspects that we consider essentially tied to the notion of distribution: assignment, transport and sharing. These aspects aid us in navigating through a number of nodes in a history of sounding art practices where sound becomes assigned, transported and shared between places and people. Sound or data become distributed, and in the process of distribution, meanings become assigned and altered through differing socio-cultural contexts of places and people. We have selected several works, commencing in the 1960’s as we consider this period as having produced some of the seminal works that address distribution.
We draw on works by composers, performers and sound artists and thus present a history of sounding art, which is amongst the many histories of sounding art in the 20th and 21st century.

Power Capping: What Works, What Does Not

Peak power consumption is the first order design constraint of data centers. Though peak power consumption is rarely, if ever, observed, the entire data center facility must prepare for it, leading to inefficient usage of its resources. The most prominent way for addressing this issue is to limit the power consumption of the data center IT facility far below its theoretical peak value. Many approaches have been proposed to achieve that, based on the same small set of enforcement mechanisms, but there has been no corresponding work on systematically examining the advantages and disadvantages of each such mechanism. In the absence of such a study,it is unclear what is the optimal mechanism for a given computing environment, which can lead to unnecessarily poor performance if an inappropriate scheme is used. This paper fills this gap by comparing for the first time five widely used power capping mechanisms under the same hardware/software setting. We also explore possible alternative power capping mechanisms beyond what has been previously proposed and evaluate them under the same setup. We systematically analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each mechanism, in terms of energy efficiency, overhead, and predictable behavior. We show how these mechanisms can be combined in order to implement an optimal power capping mechanism which reduces the slow down compared to the most widely used mechanism by up to 88%. Our results provide interesting insights regarding the different trade-offs of power capping techniques, which will be useful for designing and implementing highly efficient power capping in the future. 

Sound Art and Spatial Practices: Situating Sound Installation Art Since 1958

This dissertation examines the emergence and development of sound installation art, an under-recognized tradition that has developed between music, architecture, and media art practices since the late 1950s. Unlike many musical works, which are concerned with organizing sounds in time, sound installations organize sounds in space; they thus necessitate new theoretical and analytical models that take into consideration the spatial situated-ness of sound. Existing discourses on “spatial sound” privilege technical descriptions of sound localization. By contrast, this dissertation examines the ways in which concepts of space are socially, culturally, and politically construed, and how spatially-organized sound works reflect and resist these different constructions. Using an interdisciplinary methodology of critical spatial analysis and critical studies in music, this dissertation explores such topics as: conceptions of acoustic space in postwar Western art music, architecture, and media theory; the development of sound installation art in relation to philosophies of everyday life and social space; the historical links between musical performance, conceptual art, and sound sculpture; the body as a site for sound installations; and sonicspatial strategies that confront politics of race and gender. Through these different investigations, this dissertation proposes an “ontopological” model for considering sound: a critical model of analysis and reception that privileges an understanding of sound in relation to ontologies of space and place.