Exploring micro-worlds of music meanings

A musical practice may have exclusive meanings shared only by some groups of people within a society. In fact, music has the capacity to create spaces for reserved communication between groups of individuals. Within these ambits, performance activity accompanies more or less articulated forms of thinking of the same performers and parts of competent listeners, since, if nothing else, each musical event is imagined previously and discussed afterwards. This shared knowledge impregnates the concreteness of musical expression, often explaining the variability which is perceptible when listening from outside the group. To investigate this kind of ambit of construction of meanings, it is necessary to try to get as close as possible to the cognitions shared by those who belong to it. To this end, a very significant contribution can come from heuristic approaches based on the strategies of dialogue, above all, negotiated dialogues (and not simple juxtapositions of different opinions) where, on the basis of deep mutual trust, through the intertwining and interaction of different points of view, elements of interpretation emerge for the scholar. This text aims to deal with this, based on a concrete methodological experience

Current creativities in multipart singing practice

The pervasive diffusion of instruments for sound recording and reproduction has radically changed (and is still continuously changing) our concept of music inducing us to think of music as a thing. It afflicts all the making music scenarios all over the world with different impacts and consequences. Within what we still call “oral music” - but it would be better to use the Walter Ong's concept of “secondary orality” since a real “pure orality” is only a theoretical abstraction – a very wide range of deep “in becoming” transformations concerns both the music performances and its conversational representations. It is particularly manifest within multipart music oral practices that, as coordinate collective actions, show symbolically elaborated formulations of music creativities consciously shared by the performers. This is what the paper deals with on the basis of a lengthy dialogical research experience on a multipart singing practice in a Sardinian village, Santu Lussurgiu.La difusión generalizada de instrumentos para la grabación de sonido ha cambiado y sigue cambiando radicalmente nuestro concepto de música induciéndonos a pensar en ella como un objeto. Afecta a todas las formas de hacer música en el mundo con diferentes consecuencias e impacto. Dentro de lo que todavía llamamos "música oral" (aunque sería mejor utilizar el concepto de Walter Ong de "oralidad secundaria", ya que una "oralidad pura" ya es sólo una abstracción teórica), un amplio rango de profundas transformaciones continuas implica tanto a las actuaciones musicales como a sus representaciones. Esto se aprecia particularmente en músicas orales a varias voces que, al coordinar acciones colectivas, muestran simbólicas y elaboradas formulaciones de creatividad musical conscientemente compartidas por los músicos. Este artículo aborda esta problemática a partir de una larga experiencia de investigación dialógica sobre una práctica de canto a varias voces en Santu Lussurgiu, un pueblo de Cerdeña

Una tenda araba in Casteddu. Identità e geografie musicali ante litteram

Strumenti di comunicazione delle élite socio-economiche, i quotidiani italiani dell’Ottocento dedicano ben poco interesse alle espressioni musicali del ‘popolo’ e di altre culture. Su tali espressioni, tutt’al più, si trovano brevi osservazioni e commenti all’interno di cronache locali, oppure sporadici articoli, sovente con tono di divertissement. Si tratta comunque di materiali che criticamente verificati, alla luce anche delle conoscenze di altre fonti letterarie ed iconografiche coeve (diari di viaggiatori, testi etnografici ante litteram eccetera), possono offrire indicazioni sul paesaggio sonoro dell’epoca e sulle narrazioni connesse con l’attività musicale. Su questa base, il saggio focalizza un piccolo corpus di materiali schedati nella banca dati Artmus e ricavati da giornali della Sardegna. Al di là dei contenuti, tali materiali presentano tracce significative sul sorgere della questione dell’identità culturale dell’isola, e sull’immaginario esotico condiviso dagli uomini colti e delle classi sociali agiate del tempo

Real-Time Detection of Sea Turtles Using UAV and Neural Networks on Edge Devices

Sea turtle populations continue to diminish around the globe for various reasons. Therefore, the need for innovative solutions to monitor sea turtles has been increasing. This research paper focuses on an innovative application of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) together with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to improve sea turtle conservation efforts. We outline the design, implementation, and evaluation of a system that deploys UAVs equipped with high-resolution cameras, coupled with a purpose-built neural network to recognize, classify, and monitor sea turtles. This project thus serves as a platform for understanding the wider applicability and limitations of this technology in the realm of wildlife conservation, while placing particular emphasis on the protection of sea turtles