This book is a comprehensive overview of what sound means in this century. It's primary argument is that sound is the newest sense, having been elevated with the advent of sound recording approximately 100 years ago. With chapters ranging from sound recording to the acquisition of language, this study is meant to engage readers on what the author argues is our primary sense. Chapters on the weaponization of sound, sound refuges, and sound design (...) are also part of these extensive study by a scholar focused on contemporary rhetoric and mass media. (shrink)

This article aims at sketching a philosophical theory of sound based on the perspective of sound designers: unique agents blurring the boundaries between engineering, music, acoustics and sound-based art. After having introduced the general framing in Section 1, focusing on a short history of the theory and practice of sound design, in Section 2 we propose a reading of sound as monad. We derive such intuition from the technology of digital sampling of audio signals, based (...) on the decomposition of complex sound waves in a number of elementary sinusoidal waves. Thus, in Section 3, we attempt at grounding the resulting “sound-atom” on Leibniz’s notion of monad, intended both as a “simple substance without parts” and as a “nucleus of forces in statu possibilitatis.” The insight is resumed and further discussed in Section 4, where we draw our conclusions by demonstrating the fitness of such framing with regards to the standpoint of sound design, while accounting for the work of sound artists Carsten Nicolai and Ryoji Ikeda. (shrink)

SummaryThe establishment of the discipline of architectural acoustics is generally attributed to the physicist Wallace Clement Sabine, who developed the formula for reverberation time around 1900, and with it the possibility of making calculated prognoses about the acoustic potential of a particular design. If, however, we shift the perspective from the history of this discipline to the history of architectural knowledge and praxis, it becomes apparent that the topos of ‘good sound’ had already entered the discourse much earlier. This (...) paper traces the Europe-wide discussion on theatre architecture between 1750 and 1830. It will be shown that the period of investigation is marked by an increasing interest in auditorium acoustics, one linked to the emergence of a bourgeois theatre culture and the growing socio-political importance of the spoken word. In the wake of this development the search among architects for new methods of acoustic research started to differ fundamentally from an analogical reasoning on the nature of sound propagation and reflection, which in part dated back to antiquity. Through their attempts to find new ways of visualising the behaviour of sound in enclosed spaces and to rethink both the materiality and the mediality of theatre auditoria, architects helped pave the way for the establishment of architectural acoustics as an academic discipline around 1900. (shrink)

Conveying emotions in spoken poetry may be based on a poem’s semantic content and/or on emotional prosody, i.e. on acoustic features above single speech sounds. However, hypotheses of more direct sound–emotion relations in poetry, such as those based on the frequency of occurrence of certain phonemes, have not withstood empirical (re)testing. Therefore, we investigated sound–emotion associations based on prosodic features as a potential alternative route for the, at least partially, non-semantic expression and perception of emotions in poetry. We (...) first conducted a pre-study designed to validate relevant parameters of joy- and sadness-supporting prosody in the recitation, i.e. acoustic production, of poetry. The parameters obtained thereof guided the experimental modification of recordings of German joyful and sad poems such that for each poem, three prosodic variants were constructed: one with a joy-supporting prosody, one with a sadness-supporting prosody, and a neutral variant. In the subsequent experiment, native German speakers and participants with no command of German rated the joyfulness and sadness of these three variants. This design allowed us to investigate the role of emotional prosody, operationalized in terms of sound-emotion parameters, both in combination with and dissociated from semantic access to the emotional content of the poems. The findings from our pre-study showed that the emotional content of poems (based on pre-classifications into joyful and sad) indeed predicted the prosodic features pitch and articulation rate. The subsequent perception experiment revealed that cues provided by joyful and sad prosody specifically affect non-German-speaking listeners’ emotion ratings of the poems. Thus, the present investigation lends support to the hypothesis of prosody-based iconic relations between perceived emotion and sound qualia. At the same time, our findings also highlight that semantic access substantially decreases the role of cross-language sound–emotion associations and indicate that non-German-speaking participants may also use phonetic and prosodic cues other than the ones that were targeted and manipulated here. (shrink)

Our world is changing in rapid and unanticipated ways. Given technology’s central role in those changes, engineers face difficult design decisions. In dominant consequentialist and deontological engineering ethics paradigms, making design choices implies having sufficient information on those choices and their trade-offs, which is often lacking. Some scholars have pointed to virtue ethics as an alternative approach to engineering ethics, but how can virtue ethics support engineers in situations of uncertainty? In this chapter, we explore how virtue ethics is conducive (...) to sound engineering in different conditions of uncertainty. (shrink)

Poverty is a challenge leading to food insecurity in people's minds. This article discusses food governance as a psychological mechanism to facilitate the sense of wellness in people's minds in the context of tourism poverty alleviation. Mainly, we argue that, when a government is implementing tourism poverty alleviation, not only are economic efforts, but also positive psychological feelings are required. We, thus, argue that sound food governance may increase the sense of wellness in the minds of people as food (...) consumers by increasing food safety and security. This perspective paper contributes by explicating the influences of macrolevel governance design of safer and more secure food systems on people's psychological wellness, especially against the background of tourism poverty alleviation in developing countries. (shrink)

Daniel Samoilovich. Estéticas del error. Apuntes sobre arte y poesía. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2024, 315 páginas. Tiago Martins, Nereida Rodríguez-Fernández y Sérgio M. Rebelo (eds.). Artificial Intelligence in Music, Sound, Art and Design. Cham: Springer, 2022, 416 páginas.

Aims and hypothesesIn an environment of absolute silence, researchers have found many of their participants to perceive phantom sounds. With this between-subject experiment, we aimed to elaborate on these research findings, and specifically investigated whether–in line with the fear-avoidance model of tinnitus perception and reactivity–fear or level of perceived threat influences the incidence and perceptual qualities of phantom sound percepts in an anechoic room. We investigated the potential role of individual differences in anxiety, negative affect, noise sensitivity and subclinical (...) hearing loss. We hypothesized that participants who experience a higher level of threat would direct their attention more to the auditory system, leading to the perception of tinnitus-like sounds, which would otherwise be subaudible, and that under conditions of increased threat, narrowing of attention would lead to perceptual distortions.MethodsIn total, N = 78 normal-hearing volunteers participated in this study. In general, the study sample consisted of young, mostly female, university students. Their hearing was evaluated using gold-standard pure tone audiometry and a speech-in-noise self-test, which is a sensitive screening test to identify subclinical hearing loss. Prior to a four-minute stay in an anechoic room, we randomized participants block design-wise in a threat and no-threat condition. Participants in the threat condition were deceived about their hearing and were led to believe that staying in the room would potentially harm their hearing temporarily. Participants were asked whether they perceived sounds during their stay in the room and rated the perceptual qualities of sound percepts. They were also asked to fill-out standardized questionnaires measuring anxiety, affect and noise sensitivity. The internal consistency of the questionnaires used was verified in our study sample and ranged between α = 0.61 and α = 0.90.ResultsIn line with incidence rates reported in the literature, 74% of our participants reported having heard tinnitus-like sounds in the anechoic room. Speech-in-noise identification ability was comparable for both groups of participants. The experimental manipulation of threat was proven to be effective, as indicated by significantly higher scores on a Threat Manipulation Checklist among participants in the threat condition as compared to those in the no-threat condition. Nevertheless, participants in the threat condition were as likely to report tinnitus percepts as participants in the no-threat condition, and tinnitus percepts were not rated as being louder or more unpleasant as a function of level of threat. For participants who did experience tinnitus percepts, a higher level of threat was associated with a higher degree of experienced unpleasantness. These associations were absent in those who did not experience tinnitus. Higher negative affect was only slightly associated with higher ratings of tinnitus unpleasantness.ConclusionWhereas our threat manipulation was successful in elevating the level of fear, it did not contribute to a higher percentage of participants perceiving tinnitus-like sounds in the threat condition. However, higher levels of perceived threat were related to a higher degree of perceived tinnitus unpleasantness. The findings of our study are drawn from a rather homogenous participant pool in terms of age, gender, and educational background, challenging conclusions that are applicable for the general population. Participants generally obtained normophoric scores on independent variables of interest: they were low anxious, low noise-sensitive, and there was little evidence for the presence of subclinical hearing loss. Possibly, there was insufficient variation in scores to find effects. (shrink)

The Routledge Companion to Sounding Art presents an overview of the issues, methods, and approaches crucial for the study of sound in artistic practice. Thirty-six essays cover a variety of interdisciplinary approaches to studying sounding art from the fields of musicology, cultural studies, sound design, auditory culture, art history, and philosophy. The companion website hosts sound examples and links to further resources. The collection is organized around six main themes: Sounding Art: The notion of sounding art, its (...) relation to sound studies, and its evolution and possibilities. Acoustic Knowledge and Communication: How we approach, study, and analyze sound and the challenges of writing about sound. Listening and Memory: Listening from different perspectives, from the psychology of listening to embodied and technologically mediated listening. Acoustic Spaces, Identities and Communities: How humans arrange their sonic environments, how this relates to sonic identity, how music contributes to our environment, and the ethical and political implications of sound. Sonic Histories: How studying sounding art can contribute methodologically and epistemologically to historiography. Sound Technologies and Media: The impact of sonic technologies on contemporary culture, electroacoustic innovation, and how the way we make and access music has changed. With contributions from leading scholars and cutting-edge researchers, The Routledge Companion to Sounding Art is an essential resource for anyone studying the intersection of sound and art. (shrink)

Visually impaired people have unique perceptions of and usage requirements for various urban spaces. Therefore, understanding these perceptions can help create reasonable layouts and construct urban infrastructure. This study recruited 26 visually impaired volunteers to evaluate 24 sound environments regarding clarity, comfort, safety, vitality, and depression. This data was collected in seven different types of urban spaces. An independent sample non-parametric test was used to determine the significance of the differences between environmental evaluation results for each evaluation dimension and (...) to summarize the compositions of sound and space elements in the positive and negative influence spaces. The results suggested that visually impaired people (1) feel comfort, safety, and clarity in parks, residential communities, and shopping streets; (2) have negative perceptions of vegetable markets, bus stops, hospitals, and urban departments; (3) feel anxious when traffic sounds, horn sounds, manhole cover sounds, and construction sounds occur; and (4) prefer spaces away from traffic, with fewer and slower vehicles, with a suitable space scale, and moderate crowd density. These results provide a reference for the future design of activity venues (i.e., residential communities, vegetable markets, bus stops, parks, shopping streets, hospitals, and urban functional departments) and the planning of accessibility systems for visually impaired urban residents. (shrink)

This research project aims to accomplish two primary objectives: (1) propose an argument that a posthuman ethics in the design of technologies is sound and thus warranted and, (2) how can existent SBD approaches begin to envision principled and methodological ways of incorporating nonhuman values into design. In order to do this this MRP will provide a rudimentary outline of what constitutes SBD approaches. A particular design approach - Value Sensitive Design (VSD) - is taken up as an illustrative (...) example given that it, among the other SBD frameworks, most clearly illustrates a principled approach to the integration of values in design. -/- This explication will be followed by the strongest arguments for a posthumanist ethic, primarily drawing from the works of the Italian philosophers Leonardo Caffo and Roberto Marchesini and Francesa Ferrando. In doing so I will show how the human imperative to account for nonhuman values is a duty and as such must be continually ready-to-hand when making value-critical decision. (shrink)

The Body in Sound, Music and Performance brings together cutting-edge contributions from women working on and researching contemporary sound practice. This highly interdisciplinary book features a host of international contributors and places emphasis on developments beyond the western world, including movements growing across Latin America. Within the book, the body is situated as both the site and centre for knowledge making and creative production. Chapters explore how insightful theoretical analysis, new methods, innovative practises, and sometimes within the socio-cultural (...) conditions of racism, sexism and classicism, the body can rise above, reshape and deconstruct understood ideas about performance practices, composition, and listening/sensing. This book will be of interest to both practitioners and researchers in the fields of sonic arts, sound design, music, acoustics and performance. (shrink)

PurposeHelping Autism‐diagnosed teenagers navigate and develop socially is an EU research project in progress. The aim of HANDS is to investigate the potential of persuasive technology as a tool to help young people diagnosed, to whatever degree, as autistic. The HANDS project set out to develop mobile ICT solutions to help young people with autism become more fully integrated into society and the purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the design behind the HANDS toolset.Design/methodology/approachThe topic of (...) credibility is approached from an analytical, as well as an ethical, angle in order to address issues of credibility in relation to designing assistive technological tools. In addition, the authors set out to explore possible ways in which credibility can be evaluated. The paper presents a preliminary method for the evaluation of credibility; but which requires further refinement, as well as empirical support in order to inform us about issues of system credibility. Therefore, the suggested method reflects a working hypothesis which may serve as a springboard for further investigation.FindingsThe authors propose a preliminary method which reveals the necessity of certain preconditions requisite for evaluating the credibility of a system; and, in this way, seek to establish an ethically sound evaluation procedure for analysing credibility, by combining quantitative and qualitative assessments of system credibility.Research limitations/implicationsFurther investigation of the evaluation process is needed to develop a standard for resolving the credibility of a system. Naturally, such a standard would serve not only as a tool for measuring credibility but also as a didactic tool for scaffolding a pedagogic dialogue between teacher and learner. It becomes important, therefore, to undertake the task of developing this standard in collaboration with the teachers in the HANDS project.Originality/valueThe paper discusses credibility issues and ethical concerns with a view to designing mobile solutions for autism‐diagnosed teenagers. The ideas expressed and developed herein are applicable to many assistive, technological tools available to persons with special needs. (shrink)

This article reflects on an ongoing artistic research practice that deals with sound, gender, power, spatiality, and human–nonhuman entanglement. Sparked by a sound design for a less crunchy “lady-friendly” crisp, the research inquires the relationship between gender and sound at human–nonhuman encounter through making and thinking. Drawing on queer theory, sound studies, and posthumanism, it aims to transcend essentialist, vision-focused, and anthropocentric conceptualisations of gender and, as an insight gained from working with low-frequency sound waves, (...) it reflects on sound as material-philosophically demonstrating human–nonhuman interconnectedness. The latter, as this article proposes, may encourage us to horizontalise hierarchies between the human and nonhuman. Finally, this text situates sonic thinking as a mode of trans*formative thinking: a process-oriented philosophy that aims to embrace the messy, queer ways of human–nonhuman relationality, which characterises a vibrant space from which this artistic research will further develop. (shrink)

From its use in literary theory, film criticism and the discourse of games design, Salomé Voegelin expands 'possible world theory' to think the worlding of sound in music, in art and in the everyday. The modal logic of possible worlds, articulated principally via David K. Lewis and developed through Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological life-worlds, creates a view on the invisible slices of the world and reflects on how to make them count, politically and aesthetically. How to make them thinkable and (...) accessible as the possibility of the everyday and of art: to reach a new materialist understanding from the invisible and to develop an ear for the as yet inaudible. This revised edition continues Voegelin's exploration of the sonic possibility of the world into the sonic possibility and impossibility of the body. Listening to work by Áine O'Dwyer, Hannah Silva and Jocy de Oliveira, it considers sonic possible worlds' radical power to rethink normative constructions and to fabulate a different body from its sound: Hearing the Continuum Between Plural Bodies ; between humans, humanoid aliens, monsters, vampires, plants, things and anything we have no name for yet but which a sonic philosophy might start to hear and call. (shrink)

This study sought to find out the effect of the Hot Seat Strategy on eighth graders’ achievement in Wave Motion and Sound Unit in their Life and Science textbook. The researcher used the quasi-experimental design to achieve the aim of the study. The population of the study was all eighth graders (No=934) in Qalqilya public schools. The study sample, randomly chosen, was 208 students in the eighth grade. Of five eighth-grade sections, the researcher randomly chose two sections: one experimental (...) and another control. After data collection, it was obtained that the Hot Seat Strategy positively impacted students’ achievement. There was a statistically significant difference at α = 0.05 in students’ achievement level as well as level of knowledge, memorization, understanding, and application in favor of the experimental group. (shrink)

In this issue, Pila (2009) has criticised the recommendations made by requirements engineers involved in the design of a grid technology for the support of distributed readings of mammograms made by Jirotka et al. (2005). The disagreement between them turns on the notion of “biographical familiarity” and whether it can be a sound basis for trust for the performances of professionals such as radiologists. In the first two sections, this paper gives an interpretation of the position of each side (...) in this disagreement and their recommendation for the design of technology for distributed reading, and in the third the underlying reasons for this disagreement are discussed. It is argued that Pila, in attempting to make room for mistrust as well as trust, brings to the fore the question of having and reflecting upon reasons for trust or mistrust. Pila holds that biographical familiarity is not a sound reason for trust/mistrust, as it seems to obliterate the possibility of mistrust. In response to her proposal, an analysis is proposed of the forms of trust involved in biographical familiarity. In particular, implicit trust is focused upon—as a form of trust in advance of reasons, and as a form of trust contained (in the logical sense) within other reasons. It is proposed that implicit trust has an important role in establishing an intersubjectively shared world in which what counts as a reason for the acceptability of performances such as readings of X-rays is established. Implicit trust, therefore, is necessary for professionals to enter into a “space of reasons”. To insist upon judgements made in the absence of the form of implicit trust at play in biographical familiarity is to demand that radiologists (and other relevantly similar professionals) make judgements regarding whether to trust or mistrust on the basis of reasons capable of being reflected upon, but at the same time leave them without reasons upon which to reflect. (shrink)

Sound and listening are intrinsically linked to how we experience and engage with places and communities. This guide invites landscape architects and urban designers to become soundscape architects and offers practical advice on sound and listening applicable to each stage of a design project: from reading the environment to intervening on it. This book foregrounds listening as an affective mediator between subjects and multispecies environments, and a vehicle to think and conceptualise environmental design beyond prevailing visual and human-centred (...) modes. The guide expands landscape architects' and urban designers' tools and skills to assess existing soundscapes, predict how those soundscapes will be altered through their designs, consider sound as a creative and active part of the design process, and envisage how users might perceive and be affected by those soundscapes as they evolve in time. The volume sits in the interface of research and practice, and incorporates theoretical, methodological and creative contributions from acoustic ecology, ecoacoustics, bioacoustics and sound art. Each of the design stages is illustrated through project examples that demonstrate the many advantages of incorporating attentive listening and sound into Landscape Architecture and Urban Design Practice. The book shows how incorporating listening and sounding as part of the design process promotes slow and subtle ways of practice, adds social and ecological value through the reduction of noise pollution and by monitoring the health of habitats, and enables the design of soundscapes that complement the character and design intent of a scheme and elicit joy and wonder. The book will be of interest to landscape architects, together with other design professionals such as urban designers, architects, geographers and engineers, who play a primary role in the composition of the soundscape. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Pila has criticised the recommendations made by requirements engineers involved in the design of a grid technology for the support of distributed readings of mammograms made by Jirotka et al. The disagreement between them turns on the notion of ‘biographical familiarity’ and whether it can be a sound basis for trust for the performances of professionals such as radiologists. In the first two sections, the paper gives an interpretation of the position of each side in (...) this disagreement and their recommendation for the design of technology for distributed reading, and in the third the underlying reasons for this disagreement are discussed. It is argued that Pila, in attempting to make room for mistrust as well as trust, brings to the fore the question of having and reflecting upon reasons for trust or mistrust. Pila holds that biographical familiarity is not a sound reason for trust/mistrust, as it seems to obliterate the possibility of mistrust. In response to her proposal, an analysis is proposed of the forms of trust involved in biographical familiarity. In particular, implicit trust is focused upon, as a form of trust in advance of reasons, and as a form of trust contained within other reasons. It is proposed that implicit trust has an important role in establishing an intersubjectively shared world in which what counts as a reason for the acceptability of performances such as readings of x-rays is established. Implicit trust, therefore, is necessary for professionals to enter into a ‘space of reasons’. To insist upon judgements made in the absence of the form of implicit trust at play in biographical familiarity is to demand that radiologists make judgements regarding whether to trust or mistrust on the basis of reasons capable of being reflected upon, but at the same time to leave them without reasons upon which to reflect. (shrink)

The focus of much sensory language research has been on vocabulary and codability, not how language is used in communication of sensory perceptions. We make a case for discourse-oriented research about sensory language as an alternative to the prevailing vocabulary orientation. To consider the language of sound in authentic textual data, we presented participants with 20 everyday sounds of unknown sources and asked them to describe the sounds in as much detail as possible, as if describing them to someone (...) who could not hear them. We explored how the participants use language to describe these sounds. Do they describe their listening experiences (stressful), sound properties (intermittent beeping), and/or the events that caused the sounds (eating an apple)? The results show that out of these three soundscape elements, events are the most frequent and most indispensable element. We let the results from the study illustrate the need for more discursive data in studies of sensory language and argue that there is no designated language of sound. Our study highlights that in order to account for sensory language use, we need an analytical framework that accommodates discursive language in a non-trivial way beyond stable couplings between individual words and meanings. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a distinction between design and teleology, referring mostly to thehistory of these two terms, in order to suggest an alternative strategy for arguments thatintend to demonstrate the existence of the divine. I do not deal with the soundness ofeither design or teleological arguments. I rather emphasise the differences between thesetwo terms, and how these differences involve radically different arguments for the existence of the divine. I argue that the term „design‟ refers to an extrinsic feature (...) that was in history understood to be imposed by God in nature, while one may argue for an internal tendency, what I call „teleology‟. I first offer a historical tour of design arguments and how the basic notion of design was understood in extrinsic terms. I then briefly present three kinds of objections available in history to these arguments: philosophical, scientific, and theological. I finally move to discussing an intrinsicunderstanding of teleology, and how this notion differs from that of extrinsic design. Iend the paper showing how this notion could be useful in interpreting processes innature, in particular the reproductive tendencies in living beings. (shrink)

The contemporary design practice known as data sonification allows us to experience information in data by listening. In doing so, we understand the source of the data in ways that support, and in some cases surpass, our ability to do so visually. -/- In order to assist us in negotiating our environments, our senses have evolved differently. Our hearing affords us unparalleled temporal and locational precision. Biological survival has determined that the ears lead the eyes. For all moving creatures, in (...) situations where sight is obscured, spatial auditory clarity plays a vital survival role in determining both from where the predator is approaching or to where the prey has escaped. So, when designing methods that enable listeners to extract information from data, both with and without visual support, different approaches are necessary. -/- A scholarly yet approachable work by one of the recognized leaders in the field of auditory design, this book will -/- - Lead you through some salient historical examples of how non-speech sounds have been used to inform and control people since ancient times. -/- - Comprehensively summarize the contemporary practice of Data Sonification. -/- - Provide a detailed overview of what information is and how our auditory perceptions can be used to enhance our knowledge of the source of data. -/- - Show the importance of the dynamic relationships between hearing, cognitive load, comprehension, embodied knowledge and perceptual truth. -/- - Discuss the role of aesthetics in the dynamic interplay between listenability and clarity. -/- - Provide a mature software framework that supports the practice of data sonification design, together with a detailed discussion of some of the design principles used in various examples. -/- David Worrall is an internationally recognized composer, sound artist and interdisciplinary researcher in the field of auditory design. He is Professor of Audio Arts and Acoustics at Columbia College Chicago and a former elected president of the International Community for Auditory Display (ICAD), the leading organization in the field since its inception over 25 years ago. -/- Code and audio examples for this book are available at -/- https:// github. com/david-worrall/springer/. (shrink)

This book transforms phenomenology, music, technology, and the cultural arts from within. Gathering contributions by performing artists, media technology designers, nomadic composers, and distinguished musicological scholars, it explores a rich array of concepts such as embodiment, art and technology, mindfulness meditation, time and space in music, self and emptiness, as well as cultural heritage preservation. It does so via close studies on music phenomenology theory, works involving experimental music and technology, and related cultural and historical issues. This book will be (...) of considerable interest to readers from the fields of sound studies, science and technology studies, phenomenology, cultural studies, media studies, and sound art theory. This book is equally relevant and insightful for musicians, composers, media artists, sound artists, technology designers, and curators and arts administrators from the performing and visual arts. (shrink)

This paper explores the issue of performative spaces in the medieval Latin Church, examining the mindsets of the time and the ways practitioners adopted the Platonic notion of world harmony. We then look at the Palatine Chapel of Aachen in the light of the Plato’s doctrine. At the heart of this analysis will be the cosmological drama at the creation of the world, described by Ambrose as a chorus of the constitutive elements. It is from this image that the proto-model (...) of the Christian Church as ‘moving waters’ was derived, a vision shared by both the Eastern and the Western world. To this day, the Palatine chapel of Aquisgranum conveys the appearance of the Ambrosian vision of the primordial waters, with its renewed marble revetments imitating the cosmic waters. The church is designed according to propria dispositione, i. e. modularity. Augustine’s concept of modularity and his psychology of sound, space, movement, and time will be explored in the hypothetical inquiry into the dramatization of space at Aachen. Here, we find that the Chapel has two choreographies which unfold in the space like-stage set up as a synthesis of the arts shaped according to numbers. Relevant concepts to our topic will emerge in the analysis, such as concord, consonance and agreement, measure and movement – metaphors of the idea of a ‘dance’ that exceeds the character of a mere performance. (shrink)

The design argument has taken on different formulations among Muslim thinkers. Arguably, most of these approaches might be described as Paleyan. In this chapter, however, I seek to develop a non-Paleyan approach toward design discourse by focusing on the thought of the Muslim theologian, Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328 CE). In developing a Taymiyyan model of design-based theistic belief, I argue that this model can resist some of the problems associated with Paleyan approaches. Specifically, it avoids concerns over the soundness or (...) cogency of the Paleyan inference amid Darwinian objections. I argue that this is because on the Taymiyyan model, design-based theistic beliefs are noninferential and concern the ultimate or metaphysical cause of the design in nature, such that they do not rival naturalistic scientific explanations of biological phenomena. Despite three noteworthy objections to the model, I suggest that it offers a plausible way to defend design-based theistic belief. (shrink)

This article investigates the conceptual foundations of technological innovation and development projects that aim to bring ethical and social issues into the design stage. Focusing on the ethics and social impact of technological innovation and development has been somewhat of a trend lately, for instance in ELSA research and in such initiatives as the Dutch Responsible Innovation programme. I argue that in order to succeed in doing social responsible and ethical sound design, a proper understanding of the relation between (...) technology and society is required. I propose to move away from an externalist framework, in which technology and society are depicted as being defined independently, towards an interdependent framework, where technology and society are regarded to be mutually defining. This move is necessary in order for such innovation projects not to reinforce outdated concepts about technology, which in the longer run will prove counterproductive to the actual aims of the projects themselves. (shrink)

Emotive speech is a social act in which a speaker displays emotional signals with a specific intention; in the case of third-party complaints, this intention is to elicit empathy in the listener. The present study assessed how the emotivity of complaints was perceived in various conditions. Participants listened to short statements describing painful or neutral situations, spoken with a complaining or neutral prosody, and evaluated how complaining the speaker sounded. In addition to manipulating features of the message, social-affiliative factors which (...) could influence complaint perception were varied by adopting a cross-cultural design: participants were either Québécois (French Canadian) or French and listened to utterances expressed by both cultural groups. The presence of a complaining tone of voice had the largest effect on participant evaluations, while the nature of statements had a significant, but smaller influence. Marginal effects of culture on explicit evaluation of complaints were found. A multiple mediation analysis suggested that mean fundamental frequency was the main prosodic signal that participants relied on to detect complaints, though most of the prosody effect could not be linearly explained by acoustic parameters. These results highlight a tacit agreement between speaker and listener: what characterizes a complaint is how it is said (i.e., the tone of voice), more than what it is about or who produces it. More generally, the study emphasizes the central importance of prosody in expressive speech acts such as complaints, which are designed to strengthen social bonds and supportive responses in interactive behavior. This intentional and interpersonal aspect in the communication of emotions needs to be further considered in research on affect and communication. (shrink)

This paper proposes different approaches to design, referring to gambiarra practices and artifacts and their relation to complexity theory, evoking critical theorists that take undecidability into account in order to link gambiarra to operations that breed complexity and responsibility. The word gambiarra comes from Brazilian slang and describes an intervention or artifact meant to provide a provisory solution to an unexpected event or crisis. This kind of alternative design differs radically from conventional design because it does not come from formally (...) trained, engineer-minded, projects. Instead, it lacks control, stability and durability. As it offers no permanent solution, it opens room for further accidents and is messy, especially if compared to a conservative model for creation that praises human predominance, soundness and efficiency. Therefore, gambiarra often has negative connotations that this analysis aims to challenge, by relating it to principles of complexity theory. Complexity theory is a transdisciplinary field for research aimed at the organization of living systems, with a vast understanding of networks and what life and govern are. It gathers insights from different disciplines to explore the interconnectivity between individuals, their systems and environment. It unveils how ambivalent information/noise relationships are fundamental for the increase of diversity in a system. It also displays the intelligent dynamics resulting from seemingly insignificant neighborhood relations that collectively make it possible to adapt and continuously change structures. With that in mind, the “deficient” aspect of gambiarra becomes more valuable, as it hints at a potential to generate new information and structures beyond entropic models that perpetuate the same logics across time. Michel Serres’s information theory presented in the book The Parasite is brought up in comparison to gambiarra, in order to explore the potential of interdependent ambiguous relationships that may not fit in dominant forms of discourse. Concomitantly, Vilém Flusser’s notion of responsibility reinforces the argument that a fabric of dynamic differences can emerge out of mutual engagement and indeterminacy. Underlying, this paper concerns with drafting ecological discourses and practices that can embrace contradictions and the plurality of worlds, noticing complex phenomena that have been pushed to the margins, while also decentralizing from hegemonic models. It questions the predominance of the prevailing design paradigm in the search for non-eurocentric and non-anthropocentric human-environment relationships and forms of provision of human needs. (shrink)

Although generally supportive of our overall position, both Zachar and Gala and Laughon raise questions about our research design. Herein, we respond to these questions by presenting counterarguments that support the soundness of this design.Subsequent to stating some broad agreement with our central thesis that mental disorder is best viewed as a disability concept and not a behavioral one, Dr. Zachar expresses a number of reservations about our work. We focus on the following discussion on what seem to be (...) the most significant of these.Dr. Zachar states the following : “In 8 of their 12 conditions, the dependent variable is evaluation of problematic behavior and the independent variable is disability... (shrink)

Data sonification is a practice for conducting scientific analysis through the use of sound to represent data. It is now transitioning to a practice for communicating and reaching wider publics by expanding the range of languages and senses for understanding complexity in data-intensive societies. Communicating to wider publics, though, requires that authors intentionally shape sonification in ways that consider the goals and contexts in which publics relate. It requires a specific set of knowledge and skills that design as a (...) discipline could provide. In this article, we interpret five recent sonification projects and locate them on a scale of intentionality in how authors communicate socially relevant issues to publics. (shrink)

Background: In order to improve ontology quality, tool- and language-related tutorials are not sufficient. Care must be taken to provide optimized curricula for teaching the representational language in the context of a semantically rich upper level ontology. The constraints provided by rigid top and upper level models assure that the ontologies built are not only logically consistent but also adequately represent the domain of discourse and align to explicitly outlined ontological principles. Finally such a curriculum must take into account the (...) pre-existing skills and knowledge of the target audience. -/- Objective: To develop a well-structured curriculum aligned to the particular requirements of life science professionals, in order to enable them to create logically sound, domain adequate and predicable ontologies using the Web Ontology Language (OWL) in Protégè. -/- Methods: Content selection for the curriculum was based on the literature, pre-existing tutorials, and a guideline for good ontology development (i.e ontology design enhancing domain adequacy, sustainability and interoperability) that drew on the authors previous experiences with large ontology development projects. Learning objectives were formulated according to a needs assessment of the targeted learners, who were students trained in life sciences with basic knowledge and practical skills in computer science. As instructional format we choose an approach with a high amount of practical exercises. The curriculum was first implemented with 24 Students and 7 lecturers/ tutors over 5 full days. The curriculum was evaluated by gathering the participants feedback via a questionnaire. -/- Results: Curricular development produced 16 modules of approximately 2 hours each, which covered basic principles of Applied Ontology, description logic syntax and semantics, as well as best design practices outlined in ontology design patterns and variants of the BioTop upper ontology. An opinion survey based on questionnaires indicated that the participants took advantage from the teaching strategies applied, as they indicated good knowledge gain and acknowledged the relevance of the modules. The difficulty was rated slightly lower. -/- Conclusion: The development of teaching material for principled ontology design and best practices is of crucial importance in order to enhance the quality of biomedical ontologies. Here, we present a curriculum for a week long workshop, leveraging on current educational principles, focusing on interactive hands-on exercises, group interactions, and problem-oriented learning. Whereas evaluation clearly showed the success of this approach, in particular regarding student’s satisfaction, the objective measurement of traceable effects on the quality of the generated ontology, although of much higher interest, has just started. (shrink)

There are inconsistencies in the treatment and attitudes of human beings to animals and much confusion in thinking about what are appropriate conditions for using and keeping animals. This article outlines some of these considerations and then proposes guidelines for designing animal management systems. In the first place, the global and local ecological effects of all animal management systems must be considered and an environment designed that will not rock the biospherical boat. The main points to consider are the interrelatedness (...) of living things with each other and the environment, the self-sustaining nature of ecosystems, and the importance of diversity in the stability and maintenance of ecosystems. These can and should be taken into account when assessing animal management. They are illustrated by examples of companion/urban dogs, as well as farm, zoo, and circus animals. The environment must also be considered from the point of view of the ethological needs of the animals. There are two possible approaches to this: (1) the reductionist approach, illustrated by the choice experimental tests; and (2) a holistic, evolutionist approach that concentrates on the degree of behavioral restriction and the identification of distress. The assessment of an animal's ethological needs, and thus the ethological soundness of an environment, must take into account the species needs (communication system, species-specific characteristics of the brain receptors and cognition) and the individual's needs (his past experience). The behavioral effects of domestication and how distress can be assessed are discussed. Different ethical positions toward animals and their treatment are briefly outlined, and it is argued that, provided animals are in ecologically and ethologically sound environments, their use by human beings is ethically acceptable. The animal-human association should be characterized by symbiosis—mutual benefit—rather than a parasitic or exploitative relationship—employer to employee, rather than master to slave. (shrink)

In this paper we review some problems with traditional approaches for acquiring and representing knowledge in the context of developing user interfaces. Methodological implications for knowledge engineering and for human-computer interaction are studied. It turns out that in order to achieve the goal of developing human-oriented (in contrast to technology-oriented) human-computer interfaces developers have to develop sound knowledge of the structure and the representational dynamics of the cognitive system which is interacting with the computer.We show that in a first (...) step it is necessary to study and investigate the different levels and forms of representation that are involved in the interaction processes between computers and human cognitive systems. Only if designers have achieved some understanding about these representational mechanisms, user interfaces enabling individual experiences and skill development can be designed. In this paper we review mechanisms and processes for knowledge representation on a conceptual, epistemological, and methodologieal level, and sketch some ways out of the identified dilemmas for cognitive modeling in the domain of human-computer interaction. (shrink)

There is growing interest in the effect of sound on visual motion perception. One model involves the illusion created when two identical objects moving towards each other on a two-dimensional visual display can be seen to either bounce off or stream through each other. Previous studies show that the large bias normally seen toward the streaming percept can be modulated by the presentation of an auditory event at the moment of coincidence. However, no reports to date provide sufficient evidence (...) to indicate whether the sound bounce-inducing effect is due to a perceptual binding process or merely to an explicit inference resulting from the transient auditory stimulus resembling a physical collision of two objects. In the present study, we used a novel experimental design in which a subliminal sound was presented either 150 ms before, at, or 150 ms after the moment of coincidence of two disks moving towards each other. The results showed that there was an increased perception of bouncing when the subliminal sound was presented at or 150 ms after the moment of coincidence compared to when no sound was presented. These findings provide the first empirical demonstration that activation of the human auditory system without reaching consciousness affects the perception of an ambiguous visual motion display. (shrink)

Our cultural climate is increasingly dependent upon visual space. Media and communication for the most part are exemplified through television and the Internet. Aural space has, for the moment, become an ambient presence. The aim of this article is to develop a phenomenological approach to interpreting our sonic environment by drawing upon a range of sound-scape theorists. I will, in some cases, provide a counter-argument to established theses, and in doing so endeavour to open up fresh debate for future (...) sonic enterprises. (shrink)

Richard Dawkins has a dilemma when it comes to design arguments. On the one hand, he maintains that it was Darwin who killed off design and so implies that his rejection of design depends upon the findings of modern science. On the other hand, he follows Hume when he claims that appealing to a designer does not explain anything and so implies that rejection of design need not be based on the findings of modern science. These contrasting approaches lead to (...) the following dilemma: if he claims that Darwinism is necessary for rejecting design, he has no satisfactory response to design arguments based on the order in the laws of physics or the fine-tuning of the physical constants; alternatively, if Humean arguments are doing most of the work, this would undermine one of his main contentions, that atheism is justified by science and especially by evolution. In any case, his Humean arguments do not provide a more secure basis for his atheism because they are seriously flawed. A particular problem is that his argument for the improbability of theism rests on a highly questionable application of probability theory since, even if it were sound, it would only establish that the prior probability of God’s existence is low, a conclusion which is compatible with the posterior probability of God’s existence being high. (shrink)

Rowland’s message in Morality by Design mirrors Kant’s ‘moral argument’ for God. As such, he is part of a global trend in philosophy towards a ‘religious renaissance’, also reflected in the work of orthodox critical realists, especially those who are drawn to (Kantian-inspired) Jurgen Habermas and/or (Pragmatist) John Dewey in addition to Roy Bhaskar. Many orthodox critical realists may not realize that their approach – which assumes the existence of an absolute, innate, embedded morality – ultimately requires the idea of (...) God to be consistent. By conflating faith with reason, this religious renaissance offers a progressive-sounding discourse that can be used to legitimise activism to achieve socially conservative, yet politically left wing, policy outcomes, norm formation and judicial interpretations. It therefore threatens the hard-won rights of women and members of the LGBTQ community. This review essay offers Bhaskar's original critical realism as an antidote to the religious renaissance in philosophy. (shrink)

In an earlier defense of the view that the fundamental logical properties of logical truth and logical consequence obtain or fail to obtain only relative to contexts, I focused on a variation of Kaplan’s own modal logic of indexicals. In this paper, I state a semantics and sketch a system of proof for a first-order logic of demonstratives, and sketch proofs of soundness and completeness. (I omit details for readability.) That these results obtain for the first-order logic of demonstratives shows (...) that the significance of demonstratives for logic exceeds their behavior as rigid designators in counterfactual reasoning, or reasoning about alternative possibilities. Furthermore, the results in this paper help address one common objection to the view that logical truth and consequence obtain only relative to contexts. According to this objection, the view entails that logical consequence is not formal. (shrink)

Randomization is a generally accepted principle of sound experimental design and common practice among working scientists. But Bayesian statisticians reject it, most often because of decision theoretic argument against randomization. I trace it back to Abraham Wald's Theory of Inductive Behavior and argue that Bayesians should concur with Ronald Fisher 's criticism of Wald's analysis of randomization. The paper ends with a Bayesian argument in favor of randomization: randomization can lead to an increase in expected utility.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:134 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it —­Genesis 3:6 Abstract Aesthetics has emerged as an important battleground in the moral quest for a lower carbon society. Especially in the case of proposed wind farms (an environmentally benign technology in terms of low carbon emissions), (...) opponents frequently refer to the unsightly machines creating negative landscape impacts and ruining the view. This essay seeks to reflect on the particular ways in which visual aesthetics are framed and mobilized in this moral debate. Exploring the dividing lines between pictoral and more-­ than-­ representational approaches I ask if the moral dilemmas in our landscape decisions (e.g. individual rights to beauty or collective duties toward future generations) are obscured by physical or visual realms. The largely invisible nature of wind, electricity and climate change, set within the physical and tangible nature of landscapes and turbines, challenges us to experience the aesthetics of landscapes-­ with-­ machines through more creative and engaging means that are not limited to visibility, nor deaf to morality. SIN, DUTY, AND THE AESTHETICS OF NATURE As the first act of sin in the bible, Eve’s consumption of a visually aesthetic fruit led to humans being banned from the Garden of Eden. Looking at the above sentence more closely, we could even argue that “good for food” is not a positive condition (e.g. tasty, nourishing), but Justice in the Eye of the Beholder? ‘Looking’ Beyond the Visual Aesthetics of Wind Machines in a Post-­Productivist Landscape DAN VAN DER HORST Dan van der Horst / Justice in the Eye of the Beholder? 135 rather the absence of a negative (e.g. inedible), whilst “also desirable” may sound like the hunger for wisdom was only a secondary, additional attraction. The sentence thus draws attention to the key role of aesthetics in the making of a moral decision; would Eve have eaten the forbidden fruit if it was not “pleasing for the eye”? Aesthetic judgments may be informed by a range of factors, but as this bible quote illustrates, morality is key among them. Associations between right and wrong on the one side and beauty or ugliness on the other, are not exactly rare in written history, be they religious, literary or scholastic works. As a marked contribution to the latter, Immanuel Kant has paid particularly close attention to the links between aesthetics and morality, arguing amongst others that any universal agreement in judgments of the sublime must rest on an appeal to moral feelings.1 But universality is not the only logical link between aesthetic judgementandmorality.Peoplecanfeelasenseof‘duty’tofindcertainthings beautiful e.g. because that is the aesthetic judgment of the group they aspire to belong to.2 Whilst this sense of duty can refer to social conditioning and group belonging, it also has resonance for landscape aesthetics at a time of anthropogenic climate change (a universal threat) when we must “learn to love the low carbon landscape.”3 This presents a point of departure from the debate on the moral obligation of preserving aesthetically pleasing landscapes (as we tend to do through legal designations, e.g. national parks), an ethical logic which leads, to use the words of Holmes Rolston, “from beauty to duty.”4 Moreover a posi­ tive aesthetical appreciation of a landscape because it accommodates low carbon technologies, would potentially require an inverse ethical logic, i.e. from duty to beauty.5 Notwithstanding the clear conceptual links between moral and aesthetic judgment, in everyday life it may be far less clear what kind of moral issues may underpin particular expressions of aesthetic sensibility. This can be particularly problematic for the deployment of environmental technologies (i.e. technologies pursued to reduce pollution ) that have significant landscape footprints. That is where we can find universal moral claims demanding environmental action for the common good rubbing up against aesthetic landscape judgments in places where such developments are proposed. This produces an unsatisfactory situation in which the deployment of clean technologies ENVIRONMENT, SPACE, PLACE / VOLUME 10 / ISSUE 1 / 2018 136 is delayed, tensions within local communities may increase... (shrink)

The Qurʾān was taught in the letter method for many years. After the names of the letters in the Arabic alphabet are memorized in this method, the teaching of origins and signs begins. The syllabic method was developed over time as an alternative to this method, and the letters were taught directly with their superior vowel signs without memorizing their names. Unlike these two methods, the sound-based alif ba method has begun to be used in recent years. This method (...) coincides with the primary literacy teaching method based on the sounds thatwere adopted in Turkish teaching since 2005. Basic principles such as teaching the letters one-by-one, following the sound learning stages in teaching each sound, conducting the lessons in class, reading the syllables and words formed with the learned letters from the first day are adopted in both teaching methods. The purpose of the present study was to find out how the Qurʾān can be taught by applying the sound-based alif ba method and to draw attention to the original aspects of this method for learning the Qurʾān with the right sounds. Since the correct teaching of the Qurʾān is closely related to the teacher’s content knowledge and teaching skills, the alif ba that will be used and the method to be applied are important in reaching the target more systematically and faster. The case study design was used in the study in which the qualitative method was employed. The primary data of the study were Sound-Based Alif ba, for which I was the project assistant of, and the book with the title A New Approach in Teaching the Qurʾān: Sound based Alif baand Tajwīd Method, which was an editorial book of which I was one of the authors, and the thirty-episode series We Are Children and We Are Reading the Qurʾān, published on Diyanet TV, for which I was the production coordinator. Also, to see the applicability of the method, interviews were conducted with eight instructors who used Sound-Based Alif ba in their lessons. The study received ethical approval from Ankara Social Sciences University Rectorate Social and Human Sciences Research and Scientific Publication Ethics Committee on 8 July 2021 with the decision no 12450. The main thing in the sound-based alif ba method is the correct vocalization of the Qurʾān. The letters in alif ba are arranged differently from the classical alphabet order and are divided into six groups considering the frequency of occurrence in the Qurʾān and the degree of difficulty of origins. Each letter is taught in a separate lesson with the support of the ḥarakas and the sukūn (such as اَلْ, اِلْ, اُلْ). During the teaching, attention is paid to the sound learning steps, and the student is expected to feel the sound of the letter to be learned, distinguish it from other letter sounds, and then pronounce it from the correct origin as much as possible. In the sound-based alif ba method, the teaching of the shape of the letter is done after the sound of the letter is pronounced. During the teaching of the shapes of the letters, the part of the letter that does not change when written within a word is emphasized, and the writing is used so that the shape of the letter can be placed in the mind of the student. In the sound-based alif ba teaching, reading from the Qurʾān is done in every lesson, starting from the teaching of the first letter. During the teaching of alif ba, educational games, question-answer, and narration methods are used, primarily with the taʿlīm method. In this way, the teaching of Sound-Based Alif ba is spread over a period of 40 lessons. The study findings showed that the sound-based alif ba method has similar characteristics with the sound-based primary literacy teaching method; however, Arabic has its own unique aspects with its language structure. Among these originalities, which is adopted in the teaching of letters, firstly teaching the letter with the sukūn and with the support of movable ا and then showing the shape of the letter is carried out. As a matter of fact, the teachers have the opinion that this vocalization method, which is adopted, facilitates the learning of the correct sounds, and that teaching the letters in line with the sound learning steps increases the efficiency of the lesson. Although most of the instructors pointed out to the positive aspects of teaching tajwīd sounds in alif ba, one of the instructors did not find it necessary. The opinions of the teachers showed that the sound-based alif ba method can be applied efficiently in online lessons, but the teacher-student relation is affected negatively when compared to the classroom setting. All of the instructors said that the materials used in the lessons and demonstration and educational game methods increased the quality of the course, and that the We Are Children We Are Reading the Qurʾān program is an important resource for them. (shrink)

The suspension system is referred to as the set of springs, shock absorbers, and linkages that connect the car to the wheel system. The main purpose of the suspension system is to provide comfort for the passengers, which is created by reducing the effects of road bumpiness. It is worth noting that reducing the effects of such vibrations also diminishes the noise and undesirable sound as well as the effects of fatigue on mechanical parts of the vehicle. Due to (...) the importance of the abovementioned issues, the objective of this article is to reduce such vibrations on the car by implementing an active control method on the suspension system. For this purpose, a conventional first-order sliding mode controller has been designed for stochastic control of the quarter-car model. It is noteworthy that this controller has a significant ability to overcome the stochastic effects, uncertainty, and deal with nonlinear factors. To design a controller, the governing dynamical equation of the quarter-car system has been presented by considering the nonlinear terms in the springs and shock absorber, as well as taking into account the uncertainty factors in the system and the actuator. The design process of the sliding mode controller has been presented and its stability has been investigated in terms of the Lyapunov stability. In the current research, road surface variations are considered as Gaussian white noise. The dynamical system behavior for controlled and uncontrolled situations has been simulated and the extracted results have been presented. Besides, the effects of existing uncertainty in the suspension system and actuator have been evaluated and controller robustness has been checked. Also, the obtained quantitative and qualitative compressions have been presented. Moreover, the effect of controller parameters on the basin of attraction set and its extensiveness has been assessed. The achieved results have indicated the good performance and significant robustness of the designed controller to stabilize the suspension system and mitigate the effects of road bumpiness in the presence of uncertainty and noise factors. (shrink)

As development of the speech recognition system entirely depends upon the spoken language used for its development, and the very fact that speech technology is highly language dependent and reverse engineering is not possible, there is an utmost need to develop such systems for Indian languages. In this paper we present the implementation of a time delay neural network system (TDNN) in a modular fashion by exploiting the hidden structure of previously phonetic subcategory network for recognition of Hindi consonants. For (...) the present study we have selected all the Hindi phonemes for srecognition. A vocabulary of 207 Hindi words was designed for the task-specific environment and used as a database. For the recognition of phoneme, a three-layered network was constructed and the network was trained using the back propagation learning algorithm. Experiments were conducted to categorize the Hindi voiced, unvoiced stops, semi vowels, vowels, nasals and fricatives. A close observation of confusion matrix of Hindi stops revealed maximum confusion of retroflex stops with their non-retroflex counterparts. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease 2019 lockdown meant a greatly reduced social and economic activity. Sound is of major importance to people’s perception of the environment, and some remarked that the soundscape was changing for the better. But are these anecdotal reports based in truth? Has traffic noise from cars and airplanes really gone down, so that more birdsong can be heard? Have socially distanced people quietened down? This article presents a case study of the human perception of environmental sounds in (...) an urban neighborhood in the Basque Country between 15 March and 25 May 2020. The social restrictions imposed through national legislation divided the 69-day period into three phases. We collected observations, field audio recordings, photography, and diary notes on 50 days. Experts in soundscape and architecture were presented with the recordings, in randomized order, and made two separate perceptual analyses. One group rated the recordings for pleasantness and eventfulness using an adapted version of the Swedish Soundscape Quality Protocol, and a partly overlapping group annotated perceived sound events with free-form semantic labels. The labels were systematically classified into a four-level Taxonomy of Sound Sources, allowing an estimation of the relative amounts of Natural, Human, and Technological sounds. Loudness and three descriptors developed for bioacoustics were extracted computationally. Analysis showed that Eventfulness, Acoustic Complexity, and Acoustic Richness increased significantly over the time period, while the amount of Technological sounds decreased. These observations were interpreted as reflecting changes in people’s outdoor activities and behavior over the whole 69-day period, evidenced in an increased presence of Human sounds of voices and walking, and a significant shift from motorized vehicles toward personal mobility devices, again evidenced by perceived sounds. Quantitative results provided a backdrop against which qualitative analyses of diary notes and observations were interpreted in relation to the restrictions and the architectural specifics of the site. An integrated analysis of all sources pointed at the temporary suspension of human outdoor activity as the main reason for such a change. In the third phase, the progressive return of street life and the usage of personal mobility vehicles seemed to be responsible for a clear increase in Eventfulness and Loudness even in the context of an overall decrease of Technological sounds. Indoor human activity shared through open windows and an increased presence of birdsong emerge as a novel characteristic element of the local urban soundscape. We discuss how such changes in the acoustic environment of the site, in acoustic measurements and as perceived by humans, point toward the soundscape being a crucial component of a comprehensive urban design strategy that aims to improve health and quality of life for increasingly large and dense populations in the future. (shrink)

Arguments do not occur against silent backdrops. From the drone of televisions to the music in a retail space to the symphony of combustion engines on the street, we are perpetually immersed in sound. We live in a noisy world. The combined sounds of these environments, or soundscapes, provide the very conditions of social interaction. Charles Hirschkind remarked that soundscapes are as necessary "to politics and public reason as are markets, associations, formal institutions, and information networks". These soundscapes are (...) far from neutral and can be designed to promote desired outcomes: soothing tones as you board an airplane to alleviate fear, a blaring voice over the loudspeaker to compel... (shrink)

The debate around the notions of a priori knowledge and a posteriori knowledge has proven crucial for the development of many fields in philosophy, such as metaphysics, epistemology, metametaphysics etc. We advocate that the recent debate on the two notions is also fruitful for man-made distributed computing systems and for the epistemic analysis thereof. Following a recently proposed modal and fallibilistic account of a priori knowledge, we elaborate the corresponding concept of a priori belief: We propose a rich taxonomy of (...) types of a priori beliefs and their role for the different agents that participate in the system engineering process, which match the existing view exceedingly well and are particularly promising for explaining and dealing with unexpected behaviors in fault-tolerant distributed systems. Developing such a philosophical foundation will provide a sound basis for eventually implementing our ideas in a suitable epistemic reasoning and analysis framework and, hence, constitutes a mandatory first step for developing methods and tools to cope with the various challenges that emerge in such systems. (shrink)