Blood and memory

Book review of 'The ethics of memory' by A. Margalit.

Democracy and identity: educating the student voice

Considering the role of student voice in music education in connection with the role of music in identity formation. A report on a small-scale study.

The Clean Development Mechanism as ethical development? Reconciling emissions trading and local development

This paper examines the ethics of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in its architecture, processes and outcomes and its potential to allocate resources to the poor as ‘ethical development’. Two specific examples of CDM projects help us to explore some of the quandaries that seem to be quickly defining operating procedure for the CDM in its efforts to bring entitlementsto the poor. The paper concludes with reflections on the normative and social complications of the CDM and closes with three key areas of further investigation.

Everything and nothing project

An EPRSC ‘Partnerships for Public Engagement’ scheme 2010. FEC 122,545.56/UoR 10K everything and nothing is a performance and workshop which engages the public creatively with mathematical concepts: the Poincare conjecture, the shape of the universe, topology, and the nature of infinity are explored through an original, thought provoking piece of music theatre. Jorge Luis Borges' short story 'The Library of Babel' and the aviator Amelia Earhart’s attempt to circumnavigate the globe combine to communicate to audience key mathematical concepts of Poincare’s conjecture. The project builds on a 2008 EPSRC early development project (EP/G001650/1) and is led by an interdisciplinary team the19thstep consisting of composer Dorothy Ker, sculptor Kate Allen and mathematician Marcus du Sautoy. everything and nothing has been devised by Dorothy Ker and Kate Allen, is performed by percussionist Chris Brannick, mezzo soprano Lucy Stevens and sound designer Kelcey Swain. The UK tour targets arts-going audiences, from the Green Man Festival to the British Science Festival. Each performance is accompanied with a workshop led by Topologist Katie Steckles. Alongside the performances and workshops is a website, http://www.everythingandnothingproject.com/ The Public engagement evaluation and monitoring for the project are carried out by evaluator Bea Jefferson. The project is significant in its timely relation to contemporary mathematics and arts-science themes delivering an extensive programme of public engagement.

Drama, disability and education

This book explores the question, what can society learn about disability through the way it is portrayed in TV, films and plays? The text examines and analyses the way disability is portrayed in drama, and how that portrayal may be interpreted by young audiences. Investigating how disabilities have been represented on stage in the past, this book discusses what may be inferred from plays which feature disabled characters through a variety of critical approaches. The book provides an annotated chronology that traces the history of plays that have featured disabled characters. It analyses how disability is used as a dramatic metaphor and considers the ethics of dramatising a disabled character. Critical accounts of units of work in mainstream school seeking to raise disability awareness through engagement with practical drama and dramatic texts are given along with detailed discussions of the issues underpinning two previously unpublished playscripts written for young audiences and description and evaluation of a drama project in a special school. In tackling questions and issues that have not, hitherto, been well covered, Drama, Disability and Education will be of enormous interest to drama students, teachers, researchers and pedagogues who work with disabled people or are concerned with raising awareness and understanding of disability.

Young people’s caring relations and transitions within families affected by HIV

This chapter provides insight into young people’s caring relations and transitions within what is often considered a particularly ‘troubling’ familial context in both the global North and South: living with HIV. I analyse the findings from two qualitative studies of young people’s caring roles in families affected by HIV in the UK, Tanzania and Uganda from the perspective of a feminist ethics of care, emotion work and life course transitions.

The Bomb: Nuclear Weapons in their Historical, Strategic and Ethical Context

This book examines to what extent the invention and first use of nuclear weapons was a turning point in the history of warfare and strategy(to what extent was it a mere continuation or perfection of air power strategy? Were the casualty numbers really unprecedented?), the ethics of war (was this form of war against civilians unprecedented?), and it asks whether it was an expression of total war or did it create total war

Investigating affect in algorithmic composition systems

There has been a significant amount of work implementing systems for algorithmic composition with the intention of targeting specific emotional responses in the listener, but a full review of this work is not currently available. This gap creates a shared obstacle to those entering the field. Our aim is thus to give an overview of progress in the area of these affectively driven systems for algorithmic composition. Performative and transformative systems are included and differentiated where appropriate, highlighting the challenges these systems now face if they are to be adapted to, or have already incorporated, some form of affective control. Possible real-time applications for such systems, utilizing affectively driven algorithmic composition and biophysical sensing to monitor and induce affective states in the listener are suggested.

Climate justice in a carbon budget

The fact of a carbon budget given commitment to limiting global-mean temperature increase to below 2°C warming relative to pre-industrial levels makes CO2 emissions a scarce resource. This fact has significant consequences for the ethics of climate change. The paper highlights some of these consequences with respect to (a) applying principles of distributive justice to the allocation of rights to emissions and the costs of mitigation and adaptation, (b) compensation for the harms and risks of climate change, (c) radical new ideas about a place for criminal justice in tackling climate change, and (d) catastrophe ethics.

HIV care and interdependence in Tanzania and Uganda

Within many communities in East Africa, people living with HIV are increasingly involved in delivering home-based care and healthcare for family members and peers. Such interdependent caring relations blur conventional boundaries between ‘care-givers’ and ‘care-recipients’, and constructions of 'service users' as dependent, passive recipients of healthcare. The participation of people living with HIV in healthcare provision, home-based care and peer support groups can enhance ‘relational autonomy’ for both care-givers and care-recipients, although such initiatives often play out in highly gendered ways. The care and support of people living with HIV, particularly the emotion work of caring, however, continues to be associated with women's and girls' assumed 'natural' nurturing roles and has been largely devalued and overlooked in HIV policy and practice to date.

Med musik som försäljningsredskap : En studie av musikens kommunikationsvärde i TV-reklam

This essay examines the persuasive side of music and its affect on consumer behavior when utilized in television commercials. It includes an interpretation of twelve study cases, in which three groups of four people is presented the same commercial, with different music being the only item dividing the groups. This is followed by a few questions about the product. The aim is then to see how the answers differ from one group to another, and how they match the music’s presupposed connotations suggested in the theory part of the essay, thus, observing the communicative, and eventually persuasive, power of music in television commercials. The main question is: how might music utilized in a television commercial power people’s opinions about the product in that commercial. The results show how music may alter people’s opinions about the product in the commercial, and that the interviewees’ opinions, in most cases, match the music’s presupposed connotations. The study’s results confirm what was previously found by Adolfsson in 2007. By comparing results from then and now it adds to the understanding of musical meaning in everyday life.

Filmmusikens betydelse : En receptionsstudie om hur musik i film bidrar till förståelse

This essay is about film music and how people react in a study where the music and picture comes from two different genres that both has unique conventions, of how the “standard” music ought to be composed. The purpose of this essay is mainly to try and get an understanding of film music’s importance in the movies dramatic structure, and how people react when the conventions of music is broken and two genres are combined into one.The questions that are to be answered in this essay are: *how could music as a tool change the character of a film? *How does the participants, of this inquire, experience the film depending on what music they hear? *And what is it that the participants think that the music brings to the movies narration?The method of this survey is based on a number of participants that have responded on questions of how they experienced the movie, both with music and without. This study has shown that when music and picture, which comes from different genres, interact with each other it tends to create comical features and a sense of that the music has an advantage in terms of the genre that people feel that the film has.

Populärmusik i TV-reklam : En kvalitativ undersökning av musiken som betydelsebärande teckensystem

This paper examines a popular music song (Heartbeats by Jose Gonzalez) as a sign system in television advertising. The study was conducted through qualitative questionnaires in connection to an audio-visual method of analysis called Masking. The method facilitates the analysis of isolated parts in the audio-visual spectrum by masking/hiding parts of the audio-visual totality.The survey had seven respondents where a hermeneutic epistemological approach was used. For the analysis Cooper's theory of brand identity (Practical and Symbolic Attitudes to Buying Brands) was used together with an interaction model for music in audio-visual advertising called "Modes of music-image interaction”. The results showed that the music was associated with values as genuine, honest, responsibility, purity, independence and innovation. The music's symbolic values helped to position the brand in a lifestyle context. The music also helped to express the target group’s identity and attitudes by being innovative and independent. It also enhanced the perception of the visual colour rendition in the film. In general the television advertisement perceived more positive and entertaining when the music was present. In other words the music's social and cultural position contributed to raise the film's credibility. A deeper social and cultural value was created in the movie through resonance between symbolic values of the music and symbolic values of the film.