Reassembled, Slightly Askew:Composition & Sound Design

Reassembled, Slightly Askew is an autobiographical, immersive audio-based artwork based on Shannon Sickels’ experience of falling critically ill with a rare brain infection and her journey of rehabilitation with an acquired brain injury. Audience members experience Reassembled individually, listening to the audio via headphones while lying on a bed. The piece makes use of binaural microphone technology and spatial sound design techniques, causing listeners to feel they are inside Shannon’s head, viscerally experiencing her descent into coma, brain surgeries, early days in the hospital, and re-integration into the world with a hidden disability. It is a new kind of storytelling, never done before about this topic, that places the listener safely in the first-person perspective with the aim of increasing empathy and understanding. Reassembled… was made through a 5-year collaboration with an interdisciplinary team of artists led by Shannon Sickels (writer & performer), Paul Stapleton (composer & sound designer), Anna Newell (director), Hanna Slattne (dramaturgy), Stevie Prickett (choreography), and Shannon’s consultant neurosurgeon and head injury nurse. It’s development and production has been made possible with the support of a Wellcome Trust Arts Award, the Arts Council NI, Sonic Arts Research Centre, Belfast's Metropolitan Arts Centre, and grants from the Arts & Disability Award Ireland scheme. In its 2015 premiere year, Reassembled had 99 shows across Northern Ireland, including at the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival (the MAC, Belfast) and BOUNCE Arts & Disability Forum Festival (Lyric Theatre, Belfast). It was awarded 5 stars in the Stage, a Hospital Club h100 Theatre & Performance Award, and been shared at medical conferences and trainings across the UK. It continues to be presented in diverse artistic and educational contexts, including as part of A Nation’s Theatre Festival in 2016 at Battersea Arts Centre in London where it was given 4 star reviews in the Guardian, Time Out London and the Evening Standard. "A real-life ordeal, captured by a daring, disorientating artistic collaboration, which works brilliantly on so many levels…It should be available on prescription.” — The Stage ★★★★★ www.reassembled.co.uk Audio clips and documentary footage available here: http://www.paulstapleton.net/portfolio/reassembled-slightly-askew

Oscar Wilde at Home

Oscar, Constance, Speranza (and Bosie) are “at home” in the exquisitely beautiful Florence Court House this Mayday weekend. House guests will include Jack, Algy, Gwendolen and Cecily from the Importance of Being Earnest, (not to mention the redoubtable Lady Bracknell), Lord and Lady Windermere, the impetuous Lord Darlington, and the precocious Dorian Gray. Visitors will be conducted throughout the house where a range of short scenes from Wilde’s most popular works will be performed live by actors in each of the principal rooms. Is it life or is it art? Come and decide for yourself as we welcome you to the witty, complex and contradictory world of Oscar Wilde. Conceived and directed by David Grant.

Dramatis Personae
Oscar Wilde (and Lord Henry Wotton) – Donal Morgan
Constance Wilde (Lady Wotton, and Cecily Cardew) – Julie Lamberton
Lady Speranza Wilde (Lady Bracknell and Mrs Erlynne) – Antoinette Morelli
Lord Alfred Douglas (and Dorian Gray) – Sydney Bull
Lord Darlington and Basil Hallward – Richard Croxford
Lady Windermere and Gwendolen Fairfax – Stephanie Dale
Jack Worthing – Patrick McBrearty
Algernon Moncrieff and Lord Windermere – Stefan Dunbar
Lane and Parker – Curtis Reed and tbc

Production Team
Costume Design – Enda Kenny
Sound Design – Sydney Bull
Sound Operator – Seth Taylor
Stage Manager – Bronagh McFeely
Company Manager – Eamon Quinn
Director – David Grant

Design Methodology for Real-Time FPGA-Based Sound Synthesis

Explicit finite difference (FD) schemes can realise highly realistic physical models of musical instruments but are computationally complex. A design methodology is presented for the creation of FPGA-based micro-architectures for FD schemes which can be applied to a range of applications with varying computational requirements, excitation and output patterns and boundary conditions. It has been applied to membrane and plate-based sound producing models, resulting in faster than real-time performance on a Xilinx XC2VP50 device which is 10 to 35 times faster than general purpose and DSP processors. The models have developed in such a way to allow a wide range of interaction (by a musician) thereby leading to the possibility of creating a highly realistic digital musical instrument.

An Enactive Approach to the Design of New Tangible Musical Instruments

In this paper, we propose a theoretical framework for the design of tangible interfaces for musical expression. The main insight for the proposed approach is the importance and utility of familiar sensorimotor experiences for the creation of engaging and playable new musical instruments. In particular, we suggest exploiting the commonalities between different natural interactions by varying the auditory response or tactile details of the instrument within certain limits. Using this principle, devices for classes of sounds such as coarse grain collision interactions or friction interactions can be designed. The designs we propose retain the familiar tactile aspect of the interaction so that the performer can take advantage of tacit knowledge gained through experiences with such phenomena in the real world.

Estimation of speed of sound of ionic liquids using surface tensions and densities: A volume based approach

The limited availability of experimental data and their quality have been preventing the development of predictive methods and Computer Aided Molecular Design (CAMD) of ionic liquids (ILs). Based on experimental speed of sound data collected from the literature, the inter-relationship of surface tension (s), density (?), and speed of sound (u) has been examined for imidazolium based ILs containing hexafluorophosphate (PF6), tetrafluoroborate (BF4), bis(trifluoromethanesulphonyl) amide (NTf2), methyl sulphate (MeSO4), ethyl sulphate (EtSO4), and trifluoromethanesulphonate (CF3SO3) anions, covering wide ranges of temperature, 278.15–343.15 K and speed of sound, 1129.0–1851.0 m s-1. The speed of sound was correlated with a modified Auerbach's relation, by using surface tension and density data obtained from volume based predictive methods previously proposed by the authors. It is shown that a good agreement with literature data is obtained. For 133 data points of 14 ILs studied a mean percent deviation (MPD) of 1.96% with a maximum deviation inferior to 5% was observed. The correlations developed here can thus be used to evaluate the speeds of sound of new ionic liquids.

Parametric FIR Design of Propagation Loss Filters in Digital Waveguide String Models

One of the attractive features of sound synthesis by physical modeling is the potential to build acoustic-sounding digital instruments that offer more flexibility and different options in its design and control than their real-life counterparts. In order to develop such virtual-acoustic instruments, the models they are based on need to be fully parametric, i.e., all coefficients employed in the model are functions of physical parameters that are controlled either online or at the (offline) design stage. In this letter we show how propagation losses can be parametrically incorporated in digital waveguide string models with the use of zero-phase FIR filters. Starting from the simplest possible design in the form of a three-tap FIR filter, a higher-order FIR strategy is presented and discussed within the perspective of string sound synthesis with digital waveguide models.

Sonification as Concurrent Augmented Feedback for Motor Skill Learning and the Importance of Mapping Design

In recent years, sonification of movement has emerged as a viable method for the provision of feedback in motor learning. Despite some experimental validation of its utility, controlled trials to test the usefulness of sonification in a motor learning context are still rare. As such, there are no accepted conventions for dealing with its implementation. This article addresses the question of how continuous movement information should be best presented as sound to be fed back to the learner. It is proposed that to establish effective approaches to using sonification in this context, consideration must be given to the processes that underlie motor learning, in particular the nature of the perceptual information available to the learner for performing the task at hand. Although sonification has much potential in movement performance enhancement, this potential is largely unrealised as of yet, in part due to the lack of a clear framework for sonification mapping: the relationship between movement and sound. By grounding mapping decisions in a firmer understanding of how perceptual information guides learning, and an embodied cognition stance in general, it is hoped that greater advances in use of sonification to enhance motor learning can be achieved.