The Sound of Architecture

Acoustic atmospheres can be fleeting, elusive, or short-lived. Sometimes they are constant, but more often they change from one moment to the next, forming distinct impressions each time we visit certain places. Stable or dynamic, acoustic atmospheres have a powerful effect on our spatial experience, sometimes even more so than architecture itself. This book explores the acoustic atmospheres of diverse architectural environments, in terms of scale, function, location, or historic period—providing an overview of how acoustic atmospheres are created, perceived, experienced, and visualized. Contributors explore how sound and its atmospheres transform architecture and space. Their essays demonstrate that sound is a tangible element in the design and staging of atmospheres and that it should become a central part of the spatial explorations of architects, designers, and urban planners. The Sound of Architecture will be of interest to architectural historians, theorists, students, and practicing architects, who will discover how acoustic atmospheres can be created without complex and specialized engineering. It will also be of value to scholars working in the field of history of emotions, as it offers evocative descriptions of acoustic atmospheres from diverse cultures and time periods.

Queen Of The Bands: Carnival And “Monarchy” In The (416)

Queen of the Bands: Carnival and “Monarchy” in the (416) is a solo multimedia gallery installation which explores the complexity of Queenliness through the audio and photographic documentation of four women who perform as the head female masqueraders within the complex political framework of Toronto Caribbean Carnival's 2017 King and Queen competition. The Canadian national narrative reserves Queenliness for historically dominant European figures such as the Queen of England, so what does it mean to be a woman of colour performing as a queen in a Canadian carnival celebration? The complexity of this history and the prominence of African masking traditions in carnival Mas’ making, among other cultural influences in the Caribbean, contribute to the notion of Queenliness within the framework of carnival. <div>The purpose of my photographic investigation is both to capture a tangible element of carnival’s relationship to Emancipation Day history in Toronto and, among other things, to examine the women’s representation and power in Afro-Caribbean communal celebrations. My additional objectives were the following: First, to evaluate how the historical framework of Emancipation Day in Ontario has shaped the current production of these celebrations in Toronto. Second, to contextualize the head female masquerader’s position within the historical framework of emancipation and carnival. Third, to determine the role carnival celebrations play in defining a racialized woman’s identity in Canadian society. Fourth, to investigate how employing documentary photography practices can shape the understanding of Emancipation Day and contextualize African Canadian history. Lastly, to investigate the effect British monarchal representation in Canada has on Queenliness when performed by women of colour.</div>

Queen Of The Bands: Carnival And “Monarchy” In The (416)

Queen of the Bands: Carnival and “Monarchy” in the (416) is a solo multimedia gallery installation which explores the complexity of Queenliness through the audio and photographic documentation of four women who perform as the head female masqueraders within the complex political framework of Toronto Caribbean Carnival's 2017 King and Queen competition. The Canadian national narrative reserves Queenliness for historically dominant European figures such as the Queen of England, so what does it mean to be a woman of colour performing as a queen in a Canadian carnival celebration? The complexity of this history and the prominence of African masking traditions in carnival Mas’ making, among other cultural influences in the Caribbean, contribute to the notion of Queenliness within the framework of carnival. <div>The purpose of my photographic investigation is both to capture a tangible element of carnival’s relationship to Emancipation Day history in Toronto and, among other things, to examine the women’s representation and power in Afro-Caribbean communal celebrations. My additional objectives were the following: First, to evaluate how the historical framework of Emancipation Day in Ontario has shaped the current production of these celebrations in Toronto. Second, to contextualize the head female masquerader’s position within the historical framework of emancipation and carnival. Third, to determine the role carnival celebrations play in defining a racialized woman’s identity in Canadian society. Fourth, to investigate how employing documentary photography practices can shape the understanding of Emancipation Day and contextualize African Canadian history. Lastly, to investigate the effect British monarchal representation in Canada has on Queenliness when performed by women of colour.</div>

Aural disturbance in the stories of M. R. James

The physical process of receiving and interpreting sound creates not just an auditory experience through vibrations registering within our bodies; sounds can also evoke feeling and conjure up mental images. This is especially true of acousmatic sounds, which Michel Chion describes as sounds that are heard while their source remains invisible, and such sounds are thus perfect vehicles for conveying one feeling in particular: terror. If one is not able to see what one can hear, the ensuing sense of terror is heightened. Through the use of sound, and indeed the deliberate absence of sound, M. R. James, I would like to argue, is able to concoct in his stories an atmosphere of malevolence, in which his ‘executors of unappeasable malice’ (as Michael Cox describes them) are often heard rather than seen. This emphasis on sound over image, and the manipulation of it, can be traced back to the fact that James was an oral storyteller before he was a writer of fiction, and that his tales were originally intended for a listening audience. A linguist with an ‘ear’ for language and an aptitude for mimetic brilliance, James deploys alien soundscapes and aural disturbance to create sound as a tangible element within rich sonic tapestries that feature unique aural signatures and instances of acoustic chaos. Drawing on the work of David Hendy on ‘the primalness of the auditory’, Leigh Schmidt on ‘sound corporeality’, and Jonathan Sterne on ‘acoustic culture’, this article demonstrates how James utilized auscultation (or the act of listening) to promulgate terror through auditory images as elusive shape-shifters.

Modelling behavioural change from sea-based ‘helicopter latrines’ to land-based shared improved latrines in the Demaan, Jepara, Indonesia

The government of Indonesia pursued a slum-upgrading programme from 2011 to 2018 which included replacing ‘helicopter latrines’ with shared improved latrines. However, these latrines have not been fully utilised by slum dwellers yet. This study aimed to construct a model of behaviour change to urge people to switch from using helicopter latrines to using shared improved latrines through the process of community empowerment. A qualitative research method was conducted. Purposive and snowball sampling techniques were deployed to select study participants. Data were collected through interviews and focus group discussions. The results showed that the challenge in improving communities' sanitation behaviour can be answered with a bottom-up approach that integrates tangible and intangible elements. These elements have the dimensions of form, meaning and activity. Form is a tangible element namely shared improved latrine building that is physically acceptable to the community. Meaning and activity are intangible elements. Meaning involves the cognitive aspects to create a sense of ownership and action from affective aspects involves the activity of using the latrines. To improve the sanitation conditions, governments should involve the community in every activity, empower the community through education campaigns, and conduct supervision until the community can be independent.

Expanding the Methodological Approach to the Social Servicescape: Moving From Measurement to Manipulation

Recently, research of the servicescape has expanded to include a social element in addition to the traditionally identified physical/tangible element. Typically, this social servicescape construct has been treated as a measured variable, reflecting the other customers in the service environment across three dimensions (i.e., similarity, behavior, and appearance). However, the exclusive use of measurement to operationalize a phenomenon limits both the types of methods that can be used and, correspondingly, the types of research questions that can be asked. Accordingly, the purpose of this research is to propose and test a scenario-based manipulation of the customer social servicescape construct so that future research can address the phenomenon using experimental design. Scenarios crossing the social servicescape with social density (i.e., crowding) are constructed in three different domains (restaurant, hotel, and retail) and tested in terms of their nomological validity by assessing the effects of the manipulated variables on attitudes and satisfaction. Our results demonstrate that the three elements of the social servicescape—similarity, appearance, and behavior—each had a direct and significant effect on attitude and satisfaction. In addition, these results were consistent across the hotel, restaurant, and retail contexts. The clarity and consistency of these findings indicate the viability of the social servicescape manipulations as a research tool.

TARogic: Tangible augmented reality game

Augmented Reality (AR) has been around for the past decade. It has been applied in many fields and one of the common fields is in education. In this paper, we have make use of Tangible Augmented Reality technology in creating an interactive game called TARogic that teaches students on the basic of programming logics. Tangible Augmented Reality is a combination of Augmented Reality (AR) technology and Tangible User Interface (TUI), which uses real environment objects to interact with the Augmented Reality (AR) environment. In this project, we have created a hardware console that uses USB drive as a tangible element to interact with the game. The USB drive is plug on to the console (Arduino module) to transfer the information of the game input to a smartphone via Bluetooth. The output is displayed on the smartphone in the form of Augmented Reality (AR) game objects and environment. By qualitative user evaluation of two groups of participants, 10 for each groups, 60% of the participants were positive with the overall learning experience using TARogic.

Twelve Communicational Principles of Propaganda

This study examines how is structured the propaganda (pyramid of propaganda) and the steps of development of propaganda, in order to detach operating principles of propaganda. Investigative approach is meta-analytical. It assumes that propaganda is a type of persuasive communication. It examines, first, the ontological elements of communication and it is found that critical elements are the target-group, the propagandistic message and the planning. It is a tangible element (target-group) and two ideational and intangible elements (propagandistic message and planning). Then, starting from the 6 propaganda techniques and rules set by Jean-Marie Domenach (1965, 2004), we identify 12 communicational principles of propaganda. The 12 principles are not regarded as principles of existence, but as principles of efficiency of propaganda.