Terpsichorean Architecture: Guest Editor’s Introduction

‘Writing about music is like dancing about architecture – it’s a really stupid thing to want to do,’ is a statement usually attributed to Elvis Costello in Musician magazine No. 60 (October 1983, 52), which has long been quoted as evidence of the impossibility of writing adequately about the processes of producing and listening to music. Leaving aside the fact that Costello has denied he ever said it, and it has been mistakenly attributed to a number of other musicians over the years, including Laurie Anderson, David Byrne and Frank Zappa (who actually said ‘rock journalism is people who can't write, preparing stories based on interviews with people who can't talk, in order to amuse people who can't read’), this special journal issue sets out to prove the contrary. The papers in this special issue draw on evidence of the volume of important writing that exists about all forms of music, in academic, journalistic and creative fields, and discuss different ways in which music has been ‘translated’ into language. The English jazz writer Paul Savage, for example, describing the music of John Coltrane, refers to ‘a musical monument like that feat of terpsichorean architecture Giant Steps’. And in a 2004 issue of the Architectural Review (vol. 216, August) entitled ‘Terpsichore and the Architects,’ Simon Goldhill notes that in ancient Greek theatre, ‘the chorus danced the architecture of the theatrical space into being’ and ‘the dancer was a storyteller whose body told a story, like a sculpture coming alive or a mobile embodiment of tradition.’ Choreographer Siobhan Davies speaks of the dancer building ‘an inner architecture with volume, texture and rhythm, which allows you to slice up space … Classical ballet and classical architecture share proportion, grandeur, and the idea of being at the centre of the universe … Light and acoustics are very important in dance and architecture: we have to consider how we introduce light to form and how we hear ourselves live in that form.’ This special issue, guest edited by Tony Mitchell, University of Technology Sydney, contains papers that discuss a wide range of different modes and forms of music and music writing in all fields, and in many parts of the world, from a perspective of history, performance, and architecture (including ‘natural’ architectural forms)

Migration, Memory and Hong Kong as a 'Space of Transit' in Clara Law's Autumn Moon

Macau-born and Melbourne-based film maker Clara Law and her screenwriter-producer-director husband Eddie Fong have produced a transnational output of films which are beginning to receive critical recognition as major contributions to contemporary cinema. These ‘films of migration’ explore what Gina Marchetti has encapsulated as ‘the Chinese experience of dislocation, relocation, emigration, immigration, cultural hybridity, migrancy, exile, and nomadism—together termed the “Chinese diaspora”’. The self-imposed ‘relocation’ of Law and Fong to Australia in 1994 was the result of increasing frustration with the rampantly commercial imperatives of Hong Kong cinema and its lack of appreciation for the auteur cinema they wanted to pursue

Music and the Production of Place: Introduction

Introductio

Sigur Rós's Heima: An Icelandic Psychogeography

This paper examines the sonic geography of the Icelandic ambient rock group Sigur Rós with particular reference to their documentary film Heima, which documents a tour the group made of remote places in their home country. Known for causing some people to faint or burst into tears during their concerts, Sigur Rós’s music could be said to express sonically both the isolation of their Icelandic location and to induce a feeling of hermetic isolation in the listener through the climactic and melodic intensity of their sound. This is distinguished by lead guitarist Jónsi Birgisson’s falsetto vocals and Gibson Les Paul guitar played through reverb with a well-resined cello bow, heavily amplified drums, and the use of various types of keyboards, including church organ, minimally emphatic bass, and an all-female string section called Anima who play instruments such as xylophone, celeste, a glass of water, a musical saw and a laptop. Singing both in Icelandic and an invented language called Hopelandic (vonlenska), Jónsi, who is gay and blind in one eye, channels a striking form of glossolalia in his vocals which links the group’s music to ambient rock predecessors such as the Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance. As Edward D. Miller has stated, ‘Glossolalia reveals the tension between voice and signification, and exposes the communicativeness of sounds itself. The casual listener to Sigur Rós easily becomes an involved one. S/he is listening to made up words and in accepting the meaning of their arrangement in a melody, imagines what the lyrics might mean. This dual dynamic creates a strong emotional correspondence between the band and its listener’ (2003: 8). The group acknowledges a strong degree of Icelandic animism in their music – they have referred to ‘the presence of mortality’ in the Icelandic landscape, and their links to stories, sagas, magic and ritual in a remote country where ‘the majority of the population believes in elves and power spots … the invisible world is always with us’ (Young 2001:33). In their music they create geomorphic soundscapes which transport the active listener into an imaginary world. As bass player Georg Holm, who is demophobic, has stated, ‘we provide the colours and the frame and you paint the picture’ (Zuel 2005). This paper mobilises Barthes’ ‘jouissance’, Michael Bull’s work on personal stereos, and Daniel Grimley’s work on music and Nordic identity along with various notions of musical affect to discuss relations between Sigur Rós’s music, arctic landscape and its resonances outside Scandinavia

Mapping Australian Music. Review Essay

Review Essa

Recommending Learning Algorithms and Their Associated Hyperparameters

The success of machine learning on a given task dependson, among other things, which learning algorithm is selected and its associated hyperparameters. Selecting an appropriate learning algorithm and setting its hyperparameters for a given data set can be a challenging task, especially for users who are not experts in machine learning. Previous work has examined using meta-features to predict which learning algorithm and hyperparameters should be used. However, choosing a set of meta-features that are predictive of algorithm performance is difficult. Here, we propose to apply collaborative filtering techniques to learning algorithm and hyperparameter selection, and find that doing so avoids determining which meta-features to use and outperforms traditional meta-learning approaches in many cases.Comment: Short paper--2 pages, 2 table

Nuclear Thermal Propulsion

Development efforts in the United States for nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) systems began with Project Rover (1955-1973) which completed 22 high-power rocket reactor tests. Results indicated that an NTP system with a high thrust-to-weight ratio and a specific impulse greater than 900 s would be feasible. John F. Kennedy, in his historic special address to Congress on the importance of Space on May 25, 1961, said, "First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth..." This was accomplished. He also said, "Secondly ... accelerate development of the Rover nuclear rocket. This gives promise of someday providing a means for even more exciting and ambitious exploration of space... to the very end of the solar system itself." The current NTP project focuses on demonstrating the affordability and viability of a fully integrated NTP system with emphasis on fuel fabrication and testing and an affordable development and qualification strategy. The goal is to enable NTP to be considered a mainstream option for supporting human Mars and other missions beyond Earth orbit

Guidance, Navigation, and Control Considerations for Nuclear Thermal Propulsion

The fundamental capability of Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) is game changing for space exploration. A first generation NTP system could provide high thrust at a specific impulse above 900 s, roughly double that of state of the art chemical engines. Characteristics of fission and NTP indicate that useful first generation systems will provide a foundation for future systems with extremely high performance. The role of a first generation NTP in the development of advanced nuclear propulsion systems could be analogous to the role of the DC-3 in the development of advanced aviation. Progress made under the NTP project could also help enable high performance fission power systems and Nuclear Electric Propulsion (NEP). Guidance, navigation, and control of NTP may have some unique but manageable characteristics

‘Smart Cities’ – Dynamic Sustainability Issues and Challenges for ‘Old World’ Economies: A Case from the United Kingdom

The rapid and dynamic rate of urbanization, particularly in emerging world economies, has resulted in a need to find sustainable ways of dealing with the excessive strains and pressures that come to bear on existing infrastructures and relationships. Increasingly during the twenty-first century policy makers have turned to technological solutions to deal with this challenge and the dynamics inherent within it. This move towards the utilization of technology to underpin infrastructure has led to the emergence of the term ‘Smart City’. Smart cities incorporate technology based solutions in their planning development and operation. This paper explores the organizational issues and challenges facing a post-industrial agglomeration in the North West of England as it attempted to become a ‘Smart City’. In particular the paper identifies and discusses the factors that posed significant challenges for the dynamic relationships residents, policymakers and public and private sector organizations and as a result aims to use these micro-level issues to inform the macro-debate and context of wider Smart City discussions. In order to achieve this, the paper develops a range of recommendations that are designed to inform Smart City design, planning and implementation strategies