Cidade Museu

Through the concept of sonic resonance, the project Cidade Museu – Museum City explores five derelict or transitional spaces in the city of Viseu. The activation and capture of these spaces develops an audio- visual memory that reflects architectures, stories and experiences, while creating a sense of place through sounds and images.

The project brings together musicians with a background in contemporary music, electroacoustic music and improvisation and a visual artist focusing on photography and video.

Each member of the collective explores the selected spaces in order to activate them with the help of their respective instruments and through sound projection in an iterative process in which the source of activation gradually gives way to the characteristics of each space, their resonances and acoustic characteristics. The museum city (a nickname for the city of Viseu), in this performance, exposes the contrast between the grandeur and multi-faceted architecture of Viseu’s Cathedral with spaces that spread throughout the city waiting for a new future.

The performance in the Cathedral (Sé) is characterised by a trio ensemble, an eight channel sound system and video projecting audio recordings and images made in each of the five spaces. The audience is invited to explore the relations between the various buildings and their stories while being immersed in their resonances and visual projections.

The performance explores the following spaces in Viseu: the old Orfeão (music hall), an old wine cellar, a mansion home to the national road services, a house with its grounds in Rua Silva Gaio and an old slaughterhouse.

Belfast Soundwalks

The Belfast Soundwalks project, led by Professor Pedro Rebelo and co-ordinated by Dr Sarah Bass (Sonic Arts Research Centre) in collaboration with Belfast City Council (BCC), aims to use sonic art to engage the public through the development of a locative mobile phone app. Targeting both tourists and citizens of the city, this project aims to sonically enhance the experience of a number of areas of the city, including destinations that may not traditionally be accessed as attractions by visitors and/or disregarded or undervalued by local residents. The project will bring together a number of sonic artists/composers who will create approximately ten soundwalks around the city, while liaising with BCC to distribute the resulting app to the public in line with their tourism and cultural strategy. The project is centred on the development of smart phone apps which provide unique listening experiences associated with key places in the city. The user’s location in the city is tracked through GPS which triggers sound materials ranging from speech to environmental sound and abstract imagined sound worlds. Additionally, local community groups will be consulted in order to evaluate and reflect upon the effectiveness of the soundwalks.

The project builds on the success of the Literary Belfast app and aims to further strengthen links between Queen’s University Belfast and Belfast City Council through facilitating the dissemination of an art form not widely experienced by the general public. Through the newly created Institute for Collaborative Research in the Humanities, directed by Professor John Thompson we are articulating this project with Queen’s consortium partners, Newcastle University and Durham University.

“The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funds world-class, independent researchers in a wide range of subjects: ancient history, modern dance, archaeology, digital content, philosophy, English literature, design, the creative and performing arts, and much more. This financial year the AHRC will spend approximately £98m to fund research and postgraduate training in collaboration with a number of partners. The quality and range of research supported by this investment of public funds not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK. For further information on the AHRC, please go to: www.ahrc.ac.uk”.

Som da Maré: Um Projeto Participativo de Arte Sonora

In May 2014, the participative Project Som da Maré brings together the creative energy of a group of inhabitants from a cluster of favelas in Maré (Rio de Janeiro)* through the sonic arts. The work recalls everyday experiences, memories, stories and places. These memories elicit narratives that leave traces in space while contributing to the workings of local cultural.

The result of four months of workshops and fieldwork forms the basis of two cultural interventions: an exhibition in Museu da Maré** and guided soundwalks in the city of Rio de Janeiro. These interventions present realities, histories and ambitions of everyday life in the Maré favelas through immersive sound installation, documentary photography, text and objects.

Som da Maré brings together various groups of participants who together have developed themes, materials and strategies for the articulation of elements of everyday life in Maré. Participants include secondary level students under the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ) “Young Talent” scholarships and their families, post-graduate students at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), PhD students from the Sonic Arts Research Centre (Queen’s University Belfast) and members of the Cia Marginal, a theatre company based in Maré. The project also counts with the participation of academics from music, ethnomusicology, visual art and architecture at the UFRJ and a partnership with the Museu da Maré. Over thirty people have come together to make this project possible.

Petals of Resonance: A performance system for the transformation of small body sounds

A system of software and hardware that combines signal processing and contact microphones using normally inaudible body sounds, including heartbeat/pulse, respiration and internal sounds from the vocal tract that can be heard internally by the performer but not externally by others, to drive resonant filters. Performance at SARC Sonic Lab, Belfast, 19 Feb 2015 in collaboration with Birgit Ulher.

Feedback Networks and Self-Oscillating Objects

A system of self-designed microphones, speakers and transducers creating performable feedback networks and self-oscillating objects. Performance SARC Sonic Lab, Belfast, 18 March 2015

Museum City - Improvisation and the narratives of space

This paper provides four viewpoints on the narratives of space, allowing us to think about possible relations between sites and sounds, reflecting on how places might tell stories, or how practitioners embed themselves in a place in order to shape cultural, social and/or political narratives through the use of sound. I propose four viewpoints that investigate the relationship between sites and sounds, where narratives are shaped and made through the exploration of specific sonic activities. These are:
- sonic activism
- sonic preservation
- sonic participatory action
- sonic narrative of space

I examine each of these ideas in turn before focusing in more detail on the final viewpoint, which provides the context for discussing and analysing a recent site-specific music improvisation project, entitled ‘Museum City’, a work that aligns closely with my proposal for a ‘sonic narrative of space’.
The work ‘Museum City’ by Pedro Rebelo, Franziska Schroeder, Ricardo Jacinto and André Cepeda specifically enables me to reflect on how derelict and/or transitional spaces might be re-examined through the use of sound, particularly through means of live music improvisation. The spaces examined as part ‘Museum City’ constitute either deserted sites or sites about to undergo changes in their architectural layout, their use and sonic make-up. The practice in ‘Museum City’ was born out of a performative engagement with[in] those sites, but specifically out of an intimate listening relationship by three improvisers situated within those spaces.
The theoretical grounding for this paper is situated within a wider context of practising and cognising musical spatiality, as proposed by Georgina Born (2013), particularly her proposition for three distinct lineages that provide an understanding of space in/and music. Born’s third lineage, which links more closely with practices of sound art and challenges a Euclidean orientation of pitch and timbre space, makes way for a heightened consideration of listening and ‘the place’ of sound. This lineage is particularly crucial for my discussion, since it positions music in relation to social experiences and the everyday, which the work ‘Museum City’ endeavoured to embrace.

Avaliação do ambiente sonoro em zonas urbanas: integração de aspectos qualitativos

O presente trabalho propõe-se integrar a percepção que os indivíduos fazem das medidas de minimização de ruído, utilizadas em Portugal, na avaliação do ambiente sonoro em zonas urbanas. O trabalho é composto por um estudo sobre a avaliação da estrutura cognitiva (atitude) dos indivíduos, nomeadamente o significado que eles atribuem ao ruído de tráfego urbano, pela avaliação acústica e psicoacustica de várias medidas de minimização de ruído utilizadas em Portugal, e por um inquérito sócio acústico que pretende relacionar ambos os aspectos referidos. Pela análise dos estudos desenvolvidos, é elaborada uma metodologia para a integração de aspectos qualitativos (percepção humana), na avaliação do ambiente sonoro.

Folgazões do mogi-abaixo : música, caipiridade e paisagens cantadas

Esta investigação tem por objetivo perceber os protagonismos associados à música raiz na região do Sul de Minas, estado brasileiro de Minas Gerais. Desenvolvido no âmbito da etnomusicologia, trata-se de um estudo etnográfico realizado entre os anos de 2009 e 2012 no município de Jacutinga, localizado no Vale do Sapucaí. Como música raiz entende-se nesse contexto um universo musical que engloba vários “ritmos”, “formas” ou “estilos”, como a moda-de-viola, o pagode-de-viola, a querumana, a guarânia, dentre outros, performado por uma dupla cantando em dueto com acompanhamento da viola caipira. O termo engloba os segmentos música caipira e música sertaneja no sentido em que, para os protagonistas, as classificações convergem. O conceito de paisagem cantada é adotado como principal ferramenta de análise uma vez que no romance – gênero cantado e central da música raiz - a poética-narrativa atua como testemunha da história de um universo associado ao modo de vida rural do centro-sudeste brasileiro. A memória é portanto entextualizada na moda – unidade mínima musical de análise – que ao ser performada evoca um catálogo de elementos identificadores de uma cartografia humana, territorial e sonora, associadas a um universo designado por caipira. O sentido de pertencimento e de identificação com este paradigma promove uma recontextualização destes elementos fazendo emergir novas paisagens e novas práticas onde eles são ressignificados, adquirindo, em alguns casos, o valor de marcos sonoros (ex: o carro-de-boi, o berrante e o monjolo). Paralelamente, o processo de materialização da música que conduziu à sua fixação em disco e ao aparente desaparecimento da situação de performance participativa, transformou a própria música raiz num marco sonoro através do qual a caipiridade é representada.

The Trembling Line

The Trembling Line is a film and multi-channel sound installation exploring the visual and acoustic echoes between decipherable musical gestures and abstract patterning, orchestral swells and extreme high-speed slow-motion close-ups of strings and percussion. It features a score by Leo Grant and a newly devised multichannel audio system by the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, University of Southampton. The multi-channel speaker array is devised as an intimate sound spatialisation system in which each element of sound can be pried apart and reconfigured, to create a dynamically disorienting sonic experience. It becomes the inside of a musical instrument, an acoustic envelope or cage of sorts, through which viewers are invited to experience the film and generate cross-sensory connections and counterpoints between the sound and the visuals. Funded by a Leverhulme Artist-in-Residence Award and John Hansard Gallery, with support from ISVR and the Music Department, University of Southampton. The project provided a rare opportunity to work creatively with new cutting edge developments in sound distribution devised by ISVR, devising a new speaker array, a multi- channel surround listening sphere which spatialises the auditory experience. The sphere is currently used by ISVR for outreach and teaching purposes, and has enables future collaborations between music staff and students at Southampton University and staff and ISVR. Exhibitions: Solo exhibition at John Hansard Gallery, Southampton (Dec 2015-Jan 2016), across 5 rooms, including a retrospective of five previous film-works and a new series of photographic stills. Public lectures: two within the gallery. Reviews and interviews: Art Monthly, Studio International, The Quietus, The Wire Magazine.

Fluid Ontologies in the Search for MH370

This paper gives an account of the disappearance of Malaysian Airways Flight MH370 into the southern Indian Ocean in March 2014 and analyses the rare glimpses into remote ocean space this incident opened up. It follows the tenuous clues as to where the aeroplane might have come to rest after it disappeared from radar screens – seven satellite pings, hundreds of pieces of floating debris and six underwater sonic recordings – as ways of entering into and thinking about ocean space. The paper pays attention to and analyses this space on three registers – first, as a fluid, more-than-human materiality with particular properties and agencies; second, as a synthetic situation, a composite of informational bits and pieces scopically articulated and augmented; and third, as geopolitics, delineated by the protocols of international search and rescue. On all three registers – as matter, as data and as law – the ocean is shown to be ontologically fluid, a world defined by movement, flow and flux, posing intractable difficulties for human interactions with it.

HES1 in immunity and cancer

Hairy and enhancer of split homolog-1 (HES1) is a part of an extensive family of basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) proteins and plays a crucial role in the control and regulation of cell cycle, proliferation, cell differentiation, survival and apoptosis in neuronal, endocrine, T-lymphocyte progenitors as well as various cancers. HES1 is a transcription factor which is regulated by the NOTCH, Hedgehog and Wnt signalling pathways. Aberrant expression of these pathways is a common feature of cancerous cells. There appears to be a fine and complicated crosstalk at the molecular level between the various signalling pathways and HES1, which contributes to its effects on the immune response and cancers such as leukaemia. Several mechanisms have been proposed, including an enhanced invasiveness and metastasis by inducing epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT), in addition to its strict requirement for tumour cell survival. In this review, we summarize the current biology and molecular mechanisms as well as its use as a clinical target in cancer therapeutics.

Landscapes of the invisible: sounds, cosmologies and poetics of space

In this PhD by Publication I revisit and contextualize art works and essays I have collaboratively created under the name Flow Motion between 2004-13, in order to generate new insights on the contributions they have made to diverse and emerging fields of contemporary arts practice/research, including digital, virtual, sonic and interdisciplinary art. The works discussed comprise the digital multimedia installation and sound art performance Astro Black Morphologies/Astro Dub Morphologies (2004-5), the sound installation and performance Invisible (2006-7), the web art archive and performance presentation project promised lands (2008-10), and two related texts, Astro Black Morphologies: Music and Science Lovers (2004) and Music and Migration (2013). I show how these works map new thematic constellations around questions of space and diaspora, music and cosmology, invisibility and spectrality, the body and perception. I also show how the works generate new connections between and across contemporary avant-garde, experimental and popular music, and visual art and cinema traditions. I describe the methodological design, approaches and processes through which the works were produced, with an emphasis on transversality, deconstruction and contemporary black music forms as key tools in my collaborative artistic and textual practice. I discuss how, through the development of methods of data translation and transformation, and distinctive visual approaches for the re-elaboration of archival material, the works produced multiple readings of scientific narratives, digital X-ray data derived from astronomical research on black holes and dark energy, and musical, photographic and textual material related to historical and contemporary accounts of migration. I also elaborate on the relation between difference and repetition, the concepts of multiplicity and translation, and the processes of collective creation which characterize my/Flow Motion’s work. The art works and essays I engage with in this commentary produce an idea of contemporary art as the result of a fluid, open and mutating assemblage of diverse and hybrid methods and mediums, and as an embodiment of a cross-cultural, transversal and transdisciplinary knowledge shaped by research, process, creative dialogues, collaborative practice and collective signature.

Genome-wide association analysis identifies 20 loci that influence adult height.

Adult height is a model polygenic trait, but there has been limited success in identifying the genes underlying its normal variation. To identify genetic variants influencing adult human height, we used genome-wide association data from 13,665 individuals and genotyped 39 variants in an additional 16,482 samples. We identified 20 variants associated with adult height (P < 5 x 10(-7), with 10 reaching P < 1 x 10(-10)). Combined, the 20 SNPs explain approximately 3% of height variation, with a approximately 5 cm difference between the 6.2% of people with 17 or fewer 'tall' alleles compared to the 5.5% with 27 or more 'tall' alleles. The loci we identified implicate genes in Hedgehog signaling (IHH, HHIP, PTCH1), extracellular matrix (EFEMP1, ADAMTSL3, ACAN) and cancer (CDK6, HMGA2, DLEU7) pathways, and provide new insights into human growth and developmental processes. Finally, our results provide insights into the genetic architecture of a classic quantitative trait.

Metal music as critical dystopia : humans, technology and the future in 1990s science fiction metal

Metal Music as Critical Dystopia: Humans, Technology and the Future in 1990s Science Fiction Metal seeks to demonstrate that the dystopian elements in metal music are not merely or necessarily a sonic celebration of disaster. Rather, metal music's fascination with dystopian imagery is often critical in intent, borrowing themes and imagery from other literary and cinematic traditions in an effort to express a form of social commentary. The artists and musical works examined in this thesis maintain strong ties with the science fiction genre, in particular, and tum to science fiction conventions in order to examine the long-term implications of humanity's complex relationship with advanced technology. Situating metal's engagements with science fiction in relation to a broader practice of blending science fiction and popular music and to the technophobic tradition in writing and film, this thesis analyzes the works of two science fiction metal bands, VOlvod and Fear Factory, and provides close readings of four futuristic albums from the mid to late 1990s that address humanity's relationship with advanced technology in musical and visual imagery as well as lyrics. These recorded texts, described here as cyber metal for their preoccupation with technology in subject matter and in sound, represent prime examples of the critical dystopia in metal music. While these albums identify contemporary problems as the root bf devastation yet to come, their musical narratives leave room for the possibility of hope , allowing for the chance that dystopia is not our inevitable future.

Expérience sonore des usagers dans l'espace public urbain: l'exemple du boulevard Saint-Laurent à Montréal.

La recherche sur le phénomène sonore, depuis les théorisations de Pierre Schaeffer entourant le concept de « l’objet sonore », a largement évolué nous permettant d’en saisir toute sa complexité. Poursuivant ce même dessein, nous proposons une approche compréhensive du phénomène sonore dans l’espace public urbain en nous penchant plus spécifiquement sur l’interprétation sonore des usagers empruntant les grandes rues commerciales de la ville et en l’occurrence, celles de Montréal. Au quotidien, le citadin déambule et chemine dans l’espace public en prenant conscience de son environnement à l’aide de ses sens. Outre l’aspect visuel, l’ensemble des autres sens sont, pour la plupart du temps, négligés par les designers de l’espace urbain. Il en résulte une conception du projet urbain relativement pauvre au niveau sonore. Dans ce mémoire, il sera question d’aborder le son sous l’angle de l’expérience subjective telle qu’elle est vécue par les usagers. L’objectif de nos travaux tend donc à approfondir la compréhension de l’expérience sonore de l’usager dans l’espace public urbain afin d’en intégrer les principes en amont du processus de conception. Les théories et méthodes issues du domaine de l’environnement sonore voient leur champ d’investigation élargi par l’anthropologie des sens. La richesse de cette approche permet de mieux saisir les multiples dimensions qui façonnent le vécu sonore des usagers. Le cadre de références puise également dans les pratiques artistiques. L’analyse de ces dernières fait émerger des dimensions utiles à la compréhension de l’expérience sonore. Cette expérimentation a été effectuée à l’aide de différentes méthodes de collecte de données permettant de recueillir un maximum de matière qualitative. Ainsi, des observations, des parcours d’écoute qualifiée, des parcours commentés et finalement des entretiens en profondeur ont été menés. Cette recherche a permis de mieux comprendre le dialogue existant entre le son, l’espace et l’usager en révélant les différentes dimensions de l’expérience sonore de la grande rue commerciale et notamment, celles entourant la culture des sens.