UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA

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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Becoming-Communication Some Collisions in
Conceptualising Communication in Humanities, the
Arts, and Cultural Studies Keynote Presentation
at ConCom05, UNE, Armidale 2005.12 Prof. Roger
Dean, Founder/Co-Leader, Sonic Communications
Research Group (and Vice-Chancellor and
President) University of Canberra
Founder/Artistic Director, austraLYSIS, Sydney
roger.dean_at_canberra.edu.au dr.metagroove_at_mindless
.com
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Members of SCRG at UC (www.canberra.edu.au/vc-for
um/scrg) Prof Roger Dean (co-leader) A/Prof
Stephen Barrass (co-leader) Dr Freya Bailes Sam
Hinton Dr Hazel Smith Dr Mitchell
Whitelaw David Worrall Some of our research
reported in this presentation is supported by an
Australian Research Council Discovery grant
(DP0453179) awarded to Professor Roger
Dean. Collaborators austraLYSIS, sound and
multimedia creative ensemble (www.australysis.com)
Dr Kate Stevens (MARCS Auditory Labs, UWS) Greg
White (Great White Noise) SCRG is a participant
in the ARC Network Human Communication
Science. Much of our creative sonic and
intermedia mentioned has been supported in part
by the Australia Council for the Arts, via
austraLYSIS Productions Inc. Expertise
Range Sonification music and sound cognition
computer sound generation computer-interaction
improvisation cultural studies scientific
approaches, cultural studies approaches creative
work aesthetic impacts on involvement and
response sound spatialisation and streaming
internet history and future commercialisation of
IP.
roger.dean_at_canberra.edu.au dr.metagroove_at_mindless
.com
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
TopicsSome communication studies
approaches Overlapping issues in Classical
literary studies Communication in non-verbal
arenas Cultural studies Cognitive studies The
case of Sonic Communication in music, and
relevant cultural policy
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Issues of Perspective The author The
reader The listener The viewer (and
vuser) The screener The audience member
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Some Issues of method Analytical the fixed
text (and what is in the musical
text?) Analytical the changing and
self-constructing culture Empirical the
cognition of an individual, constructing goals
(and hence emotions) Empirical social
psychology c.f. Deleuze and Guattari/Massumi an
affect is a prepersonal intensity corresponding
to the passage from one experiential state of the
body to another and implying an alteration in
capacity to act. (1000 Plateaus p.xvi)
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Some Issues of Generalisability of the
Study Literary studies to the text only? Or to
the society in which it was made? Cultural
studies e.g. recent Cultural Studies
Association of Australia topics, Cover bands,
Death metal bands, working class
communities Ethnology/anthropology Experimental
cognition to the subjects only?? Empirical
social psychology to the subjects in a
particular environment?
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
emotion culturally coded categories of feeling
located within particular subjects and particular
cognitive precepts affect sensation/flux of
sensations (based on work by Dr. Hazel Smith,
SCRG)
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Literature on affect/ theoretical underpinning
cognitive psychologist Keith Oatley
real-life situations, human subjects,
empirical research.  emotions are cognitive
responses which arise out of our need to
coordinate our (often conflicting) plans and
goals.  positive emotions arise when the
coordination of our plans is fulfilled, negative
emotions when it is thwarted/interrupted.
literary examples/realism. (Summary courtesy
Hazel Smith, SCRG)
roger.dean_at_canberra.edu.au dr.metagroove_at_mindless
.com
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Literature on affect/theoretical underpinning
cultural studies/ Deleuze and Guattari

• less subject/person-based. Stresses affective
  intensities, the flow of sensations, rather
  than categories of emotion.
• in artworks emotions and perceptions become
  affects and percepts, at least partially
  detached from a point of view centred in a
  specific subject. Percept, Affect, and Concept
  in What is Philosophy?
• affects cross over, engage with, move between
  human and non-human bodies and are always
  becoming.
• sensations couple (the embrace or clinch) and
  uncouple (withdrawal, division and distension).
• anti-representational (avant-garde poetics,
  problematising of genre and language, art and
  music).
• the relationship between politics/social
  practices and affect
• our media-based society is strongly affectively
  driven (Massumi).
• manipulation of affective response by
  politicians.
• (Summary based on Hazel Smith, SCRG)

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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Music as becoming Deleuze, Affect, and the
Creative Commons So Affect as separable from
individual creators and individual
participants/audience everything is in a
rhizomatic state of becoming Affective
intensity vs emotion So, tangentially, why not A
creative commons amongst soundsmiths, whether
trained as musicians or not? Can their musicality
be pre-personal? (Will this enhance any
social benefits of music? Or simply undermine the
status and viability of the professional
musician?)
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.com
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Sound as communication Musicology and the
score Ethnomusicology Improvisation to
improvise is to join with the World, or to meld
with it. One ventures from home on the thread of
a tune. (D G,1980, p.311) The computer
improviser (see Deans Hyperimprovisation, A-R
Editions, 2003)
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP

• Understanding the Cognitive (In)tangibility of
  Musical Structure (1)
• Music Analysis dependence on notation
• Tonal Music (Schenker and reduction)
• Atonal Music (Forte and set theory)
• Structures in improvised music
• Music Cognition what does it depend on??
• Superficial phrase structure
• Tonal closure??
• Instrumental music vs textural music

References Dean, 1992, New Structures in Jazz
and Improvised Music, Open University Press
Smith and Dean, 1997, Improvisation, Hypermedia
and the Arts since 1945, Harwood Academic.
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Understanding the Cognitive (In)tangibility of
Musical Structure (2) Some experiments on
Digital textural sound segmentation, in
collaboration with Dr Freya Bailes (SCRG) and the
MARCS Lab at UWS "Hegel is inclined to share
Kant's lowish opinion of music. It has, he
agrees, sadly little to do with intellectual
conceptions, and 'for this very reason musical
talent declares itself as a rule in early youth,
when the head is still empty' ". (Carey, 2005
What Good are the Arts) another
pre-personal feature?
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Background

• Perception of structure
• Advantages of computer music
• What do we know?
• timbre/texture vs. pitch/rhythm
• Detecting change
• Structures perceived in musical context,
  characteristics, and overlap with algorithmic
  input?

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Aims

• Project-wide
• Investigate listener perception of different
  sonic structures in largely textural/timbral
  computer-generated music
• Balance controlled experimental material with
  real digital music textures
• Correlate affective or emotional response with
  identification of segmentation?
• 4. Illuminate socio-cultural influences on
  cognition and affect of such music
• Here
• Test ability of non-musicians to detect sound
  segmentation

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Method

• Perception of change vs. continuation in sound
• Difference between sound A vs. sound B
• inferences about structure?
• Range of stimuli representative of sound employed
  in computer-generated music (use of sounds for
  use in future experiments)
• Two experiments to test detection of segmentation
  in computer-generated sound sequences

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Experiment 1

• Participants (N 12)
• Volunteers from University of Canberra community
• 6F, 6M, mean age 43 years (s.d. 12.3)
• Mean of 13 hours music listening a week
• 3 participants had received musical training
  beyond school, one still played an instrument
• Stimuli
• Length - 14 seconds
• Segments generated in MAX/MSP, recorded to AIFF
  by AudioHiJack, normalised to -1dB in ProTools
• 12 x AB, 12 x BA, 12 x AA, 3 x practice trials
• Range of content, e.g. periodic patterns, single
  tones
• Easy contrasts

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Experiment 2

• Participants (N 16)
• 10F, 6M, mean age 31 years (s.d. 13.7)
• Mean of 24 hours music listening a week
• 8 participants had received musical training
  beyond school, 4 still played an instrument
• Stimuli
• 15 x AB, 15 x BA, 15 x AA, 3 x practice trials
• Variants using Forbidden Planet algorithm, i.e.
  controlled changes in filtering between segments

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Apparatus

• Files played by experimenter using iTunes
• 400MHz PowerPC G4
• Yamaha MSP5A speakers
• Isolated studio setting

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Procedure

• Participants in groups (mean 3 participants)
• - different random ordering of trials
• Instructions
• You will hear a passage of computer-generated
  sound. Your task is to detect whether the sound
  changes and there are two segments of sound,
  sound A followed by sound B, or whether the sound
  stays the same so there is really only one long
  segment of sound, one long sound A.
• Tick response categories on answer sheet
• 3 practice trials with feedback
• Break with questionnaire for musical background

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Results (1)

• Participants (mostly without musical training)
  are able to detect segmentation
• Experiment 1
• Errors (13.3) significantly fewer than chance
• t35 2.03, p lt 0.00001
• False identification of 1-segment as 2-segments
  for busy sonic textures
• Correlation of error with trial position
• r -0.369, p lt 0.05

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Results (2)

• Experiment 2
• Errors (18.9) significantly fewer than chance
• t44 2.02, p lt 0.00001
• False identification of 1-segment as 2 segments
  when aperiodic fluctuations within the sound
• False identification of 2-segments as 1 segment
  for subtly different juxtaposed sounds
• Asymmetrical AB, BA response
• FB01FB04, chance accuracy only
• FB04FB01, above chance accuracy

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Current Experiments

• Real-time perception and response
• Individual testing, hearing over headphones
• Instructed to press the spacebar as soon as a
  change in sound segment is detected
• RT (ms) aligned with structure of sound
  sequence for analysis
• Some Predictions
• Participants without musical training will be
  able to detect segmentation
• Real-time task higher rate of 2-segment
  responses

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Discussion and Conclusions

• Segmentation - structural element concerned with
  surface features of music (Deliège et al., 1996
  Deliège Melen, 1997 Dibben, 1994 Imberty,
  1993)
• Limits of segmentation detection (obvious to
  subtle)
• Non-musicians able to detect segmentation
• Role of context in structural judgements (Deliège
  et al., 1996) - demonstrated on micro level
  (ramp archetype)
• Real-time listening tasks, use of transitions,
  longer listening using controlled and
  ecologically valid music
• e.g. New data on detection of segments in Miles
  Davis Shh/Peaceful
• Emotive aspects of speech more(?) a function of
  acoustic structure than of phonemic structure.

Reference Bailes and Dean, 2005. Proceedings
APSCOM, p,155.
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Understanding the Cognitive (In)tangibility of
Musical Structure (3) Voicescapes NoiseSpeech
Algorithmic synaesthesia The Slow Jet Time,
the Magician. The influence of creative
technologies on soundsmiths
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.com
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Understanding the Cognitive (In)tangibility of
Musical Structure (4) Voicescapes Uses live as
well as digital voices e.g. Nuraghic Echoes, The
Erotics of Gossip for the Listening
Room Projection, disjunction, cross-dressing,
challenge identity and location (cf
mainstream) Relation to tradition of Dodge,
Lansky Cf. Soundscapes (of place) can there be a
cognitively accessible soundscape of place? New
work The peace of Molonglo.
References VoicescapesSmith and Dean, 2003
Performance Research 8, 112 Place Bailes, Dean,
Smith in Hearing Places (ed Bandt and Duffy), in
press. And CDs on Tall Poppies, Rufus, as well as
web pieces.
www.australysis.com
roger.dean_at_canberra.edu.au dr.metagroove_at_mindless
.com
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Understanding the Cognitive (In)tangibility of
Musical Structure (5) Narrative structure in
sonic intermedia Traditional ideas of musical
narrative Performance as narrative (Rink et
al) Sonic intermedia structures as narrative
Cooks argument on verbal dominance Contemporar
y applications Sonic spatialisation Who are the
narrators?
Reference Dean and Smith (2003/2005),
Australasian Music Research, 8, 91
www.australysis.com
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Understanding the Cognitive (In)tangibility of
Musical Structure (6) NoiseSpeech Noise as
sonic genre ( including glitch) Speech has
characteristic acoustics Can sound without
detectable words seem to derive from speech? Is
this cognitively significant? Affectively
significant? Our production of the genre
NoiseSpeech
Dean 2005 J. New Media and Culture, 2005. 3(Fall
2004). Open source on line.
www.australysis.com
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.com
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Understanding the Cognitive (In)tangibility of
Musical Structure (7) Algorithmic
synaesthesia Algorithmic process shared between
media Sharing of data sonification vs
visualisation e.g. The Slow Jet (2005) and Time,
the Magician (2005) by Hazel Smith, Roger Dean
and austraLYSIS each used MAX/MSP/Jitter,
SoundHack, algorithmic sound, plus live
performance show sample if time permits
Reference Dean, Whitelaw, Smith, Worrall (in
press), Contemporary Music Review
www.australysis.com
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Understanding the Cognitive (In)tangibility of
Musical Structure (8) The influence of creative
technologies on soundsmiths Instruments and their
techniques Vocal technique Voicing the instrument
(extended techniques) Computer technique Computeri
sing the instrument The Computer as
hyperinstrument, hyperimproviser,
hyperimprovisation medium ??The
evaluation/utility of those influences?? "I do
not see how it could make sense to claim to
evaluate the experience or the artwork
scientifically, or to claim that the experience
can be shown to be identical with the experience
of some different person. (Carey, 2005 p.95.)
References Dean (2003), Hyperimprovisation, A-R
Editions Dean and Smith 2005, Sounds Australian
65, 16, on the evolution of technology in
austraLYSIS work.
www.australysis.com
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.com
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Some Core Policy Issues for Creative (vs
Perfrorming) Musicians How should funding
agencies divide their resource between these
categories of activity, and that of Community
Creative Development? How should a bureacracy
divide the relative funding level ( per event,
per attendance) between recreative and creative
efforts? (Opera vs new music for example). In
English Theatre, subsidy correlates inversely
with conventionality of works produced. Is this
true for Australian Opera??
Reference OHagan and Neligan, 2005, J Cultural
Economics 29, 35.
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Some facts and some pretences in (mainly
Australian) Cultural Economics and Politics 50
of professional artists earn lt 7300 from their
art and lt30000 total p.a. (Throsby 2003)
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Throsby and Hollister (2003) c. 12500
professional musicians in Australia in 2001,
including c 1500 composers. My derivations c.
2000 jazz musicians. Jazz musicians income from
jazz even lower than for other musicians
creative income as in the last
graph. Population 1981 15M 1996 18M. c 20
increase (cf 70 increase in Musicians.
Key References Guldberg, 1999 on Jazz
Musicians Dean (2005), Sounds from the
CornerAustralian Contemporary Jazz on CD,
Australian Music Centre.
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
roger.dean_at_canberra.edu.au dr.metagroove_at_mindless
.com
35
UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Some facts and some pretences in (mainly
Australian) Cultural Economics and Politics
roger.dean_at_canberra.edu.au dr.metagroove_at_mindless
.com
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Some facts and some pretences in (mainly
Australian) Cultural Economics and
Politics Methods of valuing cultural goods?
hypothetical choice approach (criticised by
Throsby 2003) travel time distributions (Boter
2005), adaptive utility approach (Ulibarri,
2005)... The Role of the Australia
Council Australia Council committed to the best
possible peer assessment for its grant funding
(Cultural Trade 2002 document) doubtful when
c.f. ARC! Australia Council 2005 Handbook Goal
5 (until June 2005) To foster a greater
emphasis on artistic innovation, experimentation,
and research and development. The 1975 Act v.
To foster the expression of a national identity
by means of the arts.
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Other Musical intangibles Cultural
socio-politicsreturning to issues of method and
generalisability What are the intangible
(non-financial) or indirect benefits of music?
(e.g. Richard Florida, The Rise of... And The
Flight of The Creative Class) Matarassos
argument for participatory arts as social
positive (cf Merlis critique) Music as
evolutionary vestige or force? Music as pressure
for social bonding and support? (Aegis Study for
Cultural Ministers Council, 2004, critical of
evidence for this effect of the arts more
broadly. Carey (2005) "Where it has been
attempted to assess the contention that 'the
arts make people better' as in the work of
Bourdieu and Laski the results do not support
the conventional belief that exposure to the arts
makes people better.) Cognitive benefits?
Intrinsic value? Do these effects of music
justify enhanced income for creative musicians?
References Merli, 2002 Int J Cultural Policy 8,
107 Throsby and Hollister, 2003, Dont give up
your day job, Australia Council
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Some simple propositions to support creative (and
communicative!) work in the Australian sonic
arts Fund creative ensembles and individuals
realistically (cf. full economic cost funding
in UK higher education average OzCo grant
currently only 13K) Remove artistic boundaries in
funding mechanisms Erect critical and political
public discussion of sonic arts and provide a
complete statistical framework (Guldberg and
Letts, 2005) Consider rationally the relative
funding and presentation of new work from our own
community versus old work from others
Reference Dean and Smith 2005, Sounds Australian
65, 16
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UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
SONIC communications research GROUP
Thank you for your interest!
www.australysis.com
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