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How do we develop musical creativity? How is musical creativity nurtured in collaborative improvisation? How is it used as a…
communicative tool in music therapy? This comprehensive volume offers new research on these questions by an international team of experts from the fields of music education, music psychology and music therapy. The book celebrates the rich diversity of ways in which learners of all ages develop and use musical creativity. Contributions focus broadly on the composition/improvisation process, considering its conceptualization and practices in a number of contexts. The authors examine how musical creativity can be fostered in formal settings, drawing examples from primary and secondary schools, studio, conservatoire and university settings, as well as specialist music schools and music therapy sessions. These essays will inspire readers to think deeply about musical creativity and its development. The book will be of crucial interest to music educators, policy makers, researchers and students, as it draws on applied research from across the globe, promoting coherent and symbiotic links between education, music and psychology research.Musical Theatre, Realism and Entertainment (Ashgate Interdisciplinary Studies in Opera)
By Millie Taylor. 2012
What is it about musical theatre that audiences find entertaining? What are the features that lead to its ability to…
stimulate emotional attachment, to move and to give pleasure? Beginning from the passion musical theatre performances arouse and their ubiquity in London's West End and on Broadway this book explores the ways in which musical theatre reaches out to and involves its audiences. It investigates how pleasure is stimulated by vocal, musical and spectacular performances. Early discussions centre on the construction of the composed text, but then attention is given to performance and audience response. Musical theatre contains disruptions and dissonances in its multiple texts, it allows gaps for audiences to read playfully. This combines with the voluptuous sensations of embodied emotion, contagiously and viscerally shared between audience and stage, and augmented through the presence of voice and music. A number of features are discovered in the construction of musical theatre performance texts that allow them to engage the intense emotional attachment of their audiences and so achieve enormous popularity. In doing this, the book challenges the conception of musical theatre as 'only entertainment'. Entertainment instead becomes a desirable, ephemeral and playful concept.Opera, Theatrical Culture and Society in Late Eighteenth-Century Naples (Ashgate Interdisciplinary Studies in Opera)
By Anthony R. DelDonna. 2012
The operatic culture of late eighteenth-century Naples represents the fullest expression of a matrix of creators, practitioners, theorists, patrons, and…
entrepreneurs linking aristocratic, public and religious spheres of contemporary society. The considerable resonance of 'Neapolitan' opera in Europe was verified early in the eighteenth century not only through voluminous reports offered by locals and visitors in gazettes, newspapers, correspondence or diaries, but also, and more importantly, through the rich and tangible artistic patrimony produced for local audiences and then exported to the Italian peninsula and abroad. Naples was not simply a city of entertainment, but rather a cultural epicenter and paradigm producing highly innovative and successful genres of stage drama reflecting every facet of contemporary society. Anthony R. DelDonna provides a rich study of operatic culture from 1775-1800. The book demonstrates how contemporary stage traditions, stimulated by the Enlightenment, engaged with and responded to the changing social, political, and artistic contexts of the late eighteenth century in Naples. It focuses on select yet representative compositions from different genres of opera that illuminate the diverse contemporary cultural forces shaping these works and underlining the continued innovation and European recognition of operatic culture in Naples. It also defines how the cultural milieu of Naples - aristocratic and sacred, private and public - exercises a profound yet idiosyncratic influence on the repertory studied, the creation of which could not have occurred elsewhere on the Continent.Focussing particularly on urban fringe and rural areas, this book addresses the parallel phenomena of growth and decline. In doing…
so, it not only broadens a debate which generally concentrates on urban municipalities, especially inner city areas, but also covers new ground by starting to build a new theoretical framework for the spatial planning related assessment of these phenomena. Bringing together contributions from internationally renowned authors, such as Sir Peter Hall, Steve Ward and Johann Jessen, the book compares international case studies and highlights their relationships with one another. It concludes by emphasizing common themes that are addressed, as well as showing applicability to other urban and rural regions. Overall, the book provides a timely and comprehensive analysis of the spatial consequences and related spatial planning concepts in theory and practice which aim to further sustainable development of city regions, urban fringe and rural areas experiencing growth and decline.Advances in Natural Hazards and Hydrological Risks: Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Natural Hazards (NATHAZ'19), Pico Island—Azores 2019 (Advances in Science, Technology & Innovation)
By Helder I. Chaminé, Francisco Fernandes, Ana Malheiro. 2020
This book gathers the proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Natural Hazards (NATHAZ'19), held in Lajes do Pico, Pico…
Island, Azores in 2019. Natural hazards constitute the threat of a naturally occurring event having a negative effect on human beings. These effects are often called natural disasters. Among the natural hazards and potential disasters to be considered are: earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, subsidence, floods, droughts and coastal erosion. In addition, there are anthropogenic hazards that occur as a result of human interactions with the environment. They include technological hazards, which occur due to exposure to hazardous substances in the environment. Grasping the behaviour of natural systems requires a comprehensive understanding of climatology, geology and hydrology data and dynamics. Thus, it is important to conduct hazard and risk assessment studies for meaningful hazard mitigation. Further, the book demonstrates that an accurate understanding of natural systems and interactions between engineering and natural resources is of vital significance to the entire socio-economic sector. This volume offers an overview of natural hazards in model regions in Europe, America, and Atlantic islands. Providing new insights on the characterisation, assessment, protection and modelling of geological hazards, water systems, urban areas and coastal zones, it represents a valuable resource for all researchers and practitioners in the fields of Geosciences, Hydrology, Water Resources, Natural Hazards, Environments and Engineering. Main topics include:1. Natural Hazards and Disasters2. Sustainable Water Systems and Climate Change3. Technological Hazards and Engineering DesignMapping Tokyo in Fiction and Film (Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies)
By Barbara E. Thornbury. 2020
Mapping Tokyo in Fiction and Film explores ways that late 20th- and early 21st- century fiction and film from Japan…
literally and figuratively map Tokyo. The four dozen novels, stories, and films discussed here describe, define, and reflect on Tokyo urban space. They are part of the flow of Japanese-language texts being translated (or, in the case of film, subtitled) into English. Circulation in professionally translated and subtitled English-language versions helps ensure accessibility to the primarily anglophone readers of this study—and helps validate inclusion in lists of world literature and film. Tokyo’s well-established culture of mapping signifies much more than a profound attachment to place or an affinity for maps as artifacts. It is, importantly, a counter-response to feelings of insecurity and disconnection—insofar as the mapping process helps impart a sense of predictability, stability, and placeness in the real and imagined city.Seeing Education on Film: A Conceptual Aesthetics
By Alexis Gibbs. 2019
This book argues that certain films have more to offer by way of conceptualising education than textual scholarship. Drawing on…
the work of the later Wittgenstein, it suggests that a shift in our philosophical focus from knowing to seeing can allow for ordinary educational phenomena (teachers, schools, children) to be appreciated anew. The book argues that cinema is the medium best placed to draw attention to this revaluation of the everyday, and particular films are presented as offering unique insights into the aesthetic nature of education as a concept. The book will be of primary interest to educators and educationalists alike, but its interdisciplinary nature should also appeal to those in the fields of film study, philosophy, and aesthetics.Screening Scarlett Johansson: Gender, Genre, Stardom
By Whitney Monaghan, Kirsten Stevens, Janice Loreck. 2019
Screening Scarlett Johansson: Gender, Genre, Stardom provides an account of Johansson’s persona, work and stardom, extending from her breakout roles in…
independent cinema, to contemporary blockbusters, to her self-parodying work in science-fiction. Screening Scarlett Johansson is more than an account of Johansson’s career; it positions Johansson as a point of reference for interrogating how femininity, sexuality, identity and genre play out through a contemporary woman star and the textual manipulations of her image. The chapters in this collection cast a critical eye over the characters Johansson has portrayed, the personas she has inhabited, and how the two intersect and influence one another. They draw out the multitude of meanings generated through and inherent to her performances, specifically looking at processes of transformation, metamorphosis and self-deconstruction depicted in her work.Elizabeth Bishop and the Music of Literature (Palgrave Studies in Music and Literature)
By Angus Cleghorn. 2019
Elizabeth Bishop and the Music of Literature brings together the latest understandings of how central music was to Bishop’s writing. This…
collection considers Bishop’s reworking of metrical and rhythmic forms of poetry; the increasing presence of prosaic utterances into speech-soundscapes; how musical poetry intones new modes of thinking through aural vision; how Bishop transforms traditionally distasteful tones of violence, banality, and commerce into innovative poetry; how her diverse, lifelong musical education (North American, European, Brazilian) affects her work; and also how her diverse musical settings have inspired global contemporary composers. The essays flesh out the missing elements of music, sound, and voice in previous research that are crucial to understanding how Bishop’s writing continues to dazzle readers and inspire artists in surprising ways.The Affects, Cognition, and Politics of Samuel Beckett’s Postwar Drama and Fiction: Revolutionary and Evolutionary Paradoxes theorizes the revolutionary and…
evolutionary import of Beckett’s works in a global context defined by increasingly ubiquitous and insidious mechanisms of capture, exploitation, and repression, alongside unprecedented demands for high-volume information-processing and connectivity. Part I shows that, in generating consistent flows of solidarity-based angry laughter, Beckett’s works sabotage coercive couplings of the subject to social machines by translating subordination and repression into processes rather than data of experience. Through an examination of Beckett’s attack on gender/ class-related normative injunctions, the book shows that Beckett’s works can generate solidarity and action-oriented affects in readers/ spectators regardless of their training in textual analysis. Part II proposes that Beckett’s works can weaken the cognitive dominance of constrictive “frames” in readers/ audiences, so that toxic ideological formations such as the association of safety and comfort with simplicity and “sameness” are rejected and more complex cognitive operations are welcomed instead—a process that bolsters the mind’s ability to operate at ease with increasingly complex, malleable, extensible, and inclusive frames, as well as with increasing volumes of information.This book gathers high-quality research papers presented at the 2nd AUE international research conference, AUEIRC 2018, which was organized by…
the American University in the Emirates, Dubai, and held on November 13th-15th, 2018. The book is broadly divided into two main sections: Sustainability and Smart Business, and Sustainability and Creative Industries. The broad range of topics covered under these sections includes: risk assessment in agriculture, corporate social responsibility and the role of intermediaries, the impact of privatizing health insurance, political events and their effect on foreign currency exchange, the effect of sustainable HR practices on financial performance, sustainability integration in the supply chain and logistics, gender inequality in the MENA economies, the panel data model, the model of sustainable marketing in the era of Industry 4.0, micro-enterprises as a tool for combating unemployment, the impact of financial education and control on financial behavior, measuring financial and asset performance in agricultural firms, a comprehensive strategic approach to sustainability in the UAE, sustainability and project finance, HR analytics, FaD or fashion for organizational sustainability, a conceptual framework of sustainable competitive advantages, psychology of organizational sustainability, Blockchain technology and sustainability, veganism and sustainability, institution building from an emotional intelligence perspective, sustainable concrete production using CWP, occupants’ behavior and energy usage in Emirati houses, the effect of shop lighting on consumer behavior, multimedia applications in digital transformation art, integrating biomimicry principles in sustainable architecture, experimental sustainable practices in fashion education, technology-assisted student-centered learning for civil engineering, and a 10-step design process for architectural design studios. All contributions present high-quality original research work, findings and lessons learned in practical development.Solar Energy Conversion Systems in the Built Environment (Green Energy and Technology)
By Ion Visa, Anca Duta, Macedon Moldovan, Bogdan Burduhos, Mircea Neagoe. 2020
This book focuses on solar energy conversion systems that can be implemented in the built environment, at building or at…
community level. The quest for developing a sustainable built environment asks for specific solutions to provide clean energy based on renewable sources, and solar energy is considered one of the cleanest available energy on Earth. The specific issues raised by the implementation location are discussed, including the climatic profile distorted by the buildings, the available surface on the buildings for implementation, etc. This book also discusses the seasonal and diurnal variability of the solar energy resource in parallel with the variability of the electrical and thermal energy demand in the built environment (particularly focusing on the residential buildings). Solutions are proposed to match these variabilities, including the development of energy mixes with other renewables (e.g. geothermal or biomass, for thermal energy production). Specific solutions, including case studies of systems implemented on buildings all over the world, are presented and analyzed for electrical and for thermal energy production and the main differences in the systems design are outlined. The conversion efficiency (thus the output) and the main causes of energy losses are considered in both cases. The architectural constraints are additionally considered and novel solar energy convertors with different shapes and colors are presented and discussed. The durability of the solar energy conversion systems is analyzed considering the specific issues that occur when these systems are implemented in the built environment; based on practical examples, general conclusions are formulated and specific aspects are discussed in relation to experimental results and literature data. With renewables implemented in the built environment likely to expand in the near future, this book represents welcome and timely material for all professionals and researchers that are aiming to provide efficient and feasible solutions for the sustainable built environment.Performing Southeast Asia: Performance, Politics and the Contemporary (Contemporary Performance InterActions)
By Marcus Cheng Chye Tan, Charlene Rajendran. 2020
"Performing Southeast Asia: Performance, Politics and the Contemporary is an important reconsideration of the histories and practices of theatre and…
performance in a fluid and dynamic region that is also experiencing an overarching politics of complexity, precarity and populist authoritarian tendencies. In a substantial introductory essay and essays by leading scholars, activists and practitioners working inside the region, the book explores fundamental questions for the arts. The book asks how theatre contributes to and/or addresses the political condition in the contemporary moment, how does it represent the complexity of experiences in peoples’ daily lives and how does theatre engage in forms of political activism and enable a diversity of voices to flourish. The book shows how, in an age of increasingly violent politics, political institutions become sites for bad actors and propaganda. Forces of biopolitics, neo-liberalism and religious and ethnic nationalism intersect in unpredictable ways with decolonial practices – all of which the book argues are forces that define the contemporary moment. Indeed, by putting the focus on contemporary politics in the region alongside the diversity of practices in contemporary theatre, we see a substantial reformation of the idea of the contemporary moment, not as a cosmopolitan and elite artistic practice but as a multivalent agent of change in both aesthetic and political terms. With its focus on community activism and the creative possibilities of the performing arts the region, Performing Southeast Asia, is a timely intervention that brings us to a new understanding of how contemporary Southeast Asia has become a site of contest, struggle and reinvention of the relations between the arts and society." - Peter Eckersall, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA "Performing Southeast Asia – with chapters concerned with how regional theatres seek contextually-grounded, yet post-national(istic) forms; how history and tradition shape but do not hold down contemporary theatre; and how, in the editors’ words, such artistic encounters could result in theatres ‘that do not merely attend to matters of cultural heritage, tradition or history, but instead engage overtly with theatre and performance in the contemporary’ – contributes to the possibility of understanding what options for an artistically transubstantiated now-ness may be: to the possibility, that is, of what might be called a ‘Present-Tense Theatre’." - C. J. W.-L. Wee, Professor of English, Nanyang Technological University, SingaporeThis book examines contemporary performance practices and politics in Southeast Asia. It analyses performances created and performed in Southeast Asia, with specific focus on particular nation states, as these engage the volatile or shifting cultures and politics that inform contemporary life, particularly in urban Southeast Asia. In a region haunted historically by political divergence, authoritarianism and militarism, religious diversity and ethnic strife, the chapters reveal how contemporary performance, and performances today reflect yet challenge dominant socio-political discourses. The authors centre their discussion on the efficacies of performance as political intervention in Southeast Asia in a time of seismic socio-political change. They consider issues of state hegemonies, censorship, the resurgence of authoritarianism, the persistence of history and tradition, the impact of finance and sponsorship, social liberalism and conservatism and globalisation and cultural practice.This book introduces a new form of documentary film: the Geo-Doc, designed to maximize the influential power of the documentary…
film as an agent of social change. By combining the proven methods and approaches as evidenced through historical, theoretical, digital, and ecocritical investigations with the unique affordances of Geographic Information System technology, a dynamic new documentary form emerges, one tested in the field with the United Nations. This book begins with an overview of the history of the documentary film with attention given to how it evolved as an instrument of social change. It examines theories surrounding mobilizing the documentary film as a communication tool between filmmakers and policymakers. Ecocinema and its semiotic storytelling techniques are also explored for their unique approaches in audience engagement. The proven methods identified throughout the book are combined with the spatial and temporal affordances provided by GIS technology to create the Geo-Doc, a new tool for the activist documentarian.These proceedings present fourteen peer-reviewed papers from the 10th International Conference on Improving Energy Efficiency in Commercial Buildings and Smart Communities,…
which was held March 21-22, 2018 in Frankfurt, Germany. This biannual conference aims to promote and diffuse the concept of energy efficiency in new and existing commercial buildings and to enlarge the market for low consumption and sustainable non-residential buildings. It also covers smart and sustainable districts, communities and cities, since energy systems efficiency and renewable energies are often optimized at the district or municipal level. The 2018 conference focused on advanced and innovative technologies to improve the energy efficiency of commercial buildings, communities and cities as well as the policies and measures by governments at various levels to improve energy efficiency. A particular focus was on Energy Service Companies (ESCOs). The conference addresses energy policy makers at international, national, and local level; academics, researchers and energy efficiency experts; ESCOs, utilities, buildings energy and environmental managers; buildings engineers and architects; and equipment manufacturers and commercial property investors.Actor-Network Theory at the Movies: Reassembling the Contemporary American Teen Film With Latour
By Björn Sonnenberg-Schrank. 2020
This book is one of the first to apply the theoretical tools proposed by French philosopher Bruno Latour to film…
studies. Through the example of the Hollywood Teen Film and with a particular focus on Actor-Network Theory (ANT), the book delineates how Teen Film has established itself as one of Hollywood’s most consistent and dynamic genres. While many productions may recycle formulaic patterns, there is also a proliferation of cinematic coming-of-age narratives that are aesthetically and politically progressive, experimental, and complex. The case studies develop a Latourian film semiotics as a flexible analytical approach which raises new questions, not only about the history, types and tropes of teen films, but also about their aesthetics, mediality, and composition. Through an exploration of a wide and diverse range of examples from the past decade, including films by female and African-American directors, urban and rural perspectives, and non-heteronormative sexualities, Actor-Network Theory at the Movies demonstrates how the classic Teen Film canon has been regurgitated, expanded, and renewed.Acting Queer: Gender Dissidence and the Subversion of Realism
By Conrad Alexandrowicz. 2020
This book is situated at the intersection of queer/gender studies and theories of acting pedagogy and performance. It explores the…
social and cultural matrix in which matters of gender are negotiated, including that of post-secondary theatre and drama education. It identifies the predicament of gender dissident actors who must contend with the widespread enforcement of realist paradigms within the academy, and proposes a re-imagining of the way drama/theatre/performance are practised in order to serve more fairly and effectively the needs of queer actors in training. This is located within a larger project of critique in reference to the art form as a whole. The book stimulates discussion among practitioners and scholars on matters concerning various kinds of diversity: of gender expression, of approaches to the teaching of acting, and to the way the art form may be imagined and executed in the early years of the 21st Century, in particular in the face of the climate crisis. But it is also an aid to practitioners who are seeking new theoretical and practical approaches to dealing with gender diversity in acting pedagogy.The Photographic Uncanny: Photography, Homelessness, and Homesickness
By Claire Raymond. 2019
This book argues for a renewed understanding of the fundamentally uncanny quality of the medium of photography. It especially makes…
the case for the capacity of certain photographs—precisely through their uncanniness—to contest structures of political and social dominance. The uncanny as a quality that unsettles the perception of home emerges as a symptom of modern and contemporary society and also as an aesthetic apparatus by which some key photographs critique the hegemony of capitalist and industrialist domains. The book’s historical scope is large, beginning with William Henry Fox Talbot and closing with contemporary indigenous photographer Bear Allison and contemporary African American photographer Devin Allen. Through close readings, exegesis, of individual photographs and careful deployment of contemporary political and aesthetic theory, The Photographic Uncanny argues for a re-envisioning of the political capacity of photography to expose the haunted, homeless, condition of modernity.The Object of Comedy: Philosophies and Performances (Performance Philosophy)
By Jamila M. H. Mascat, Gregor Moder. 2019
What is the object of comedy? What makes us laugh and why? Is comedy subversive, restorative or reparative? What is…
at stake politically, socially and metaphysically when it comes to comedic performances? This book investigates not only the object of comedy but also its objectives – both its deliberate goals and its unintended side effects.In researching the object of comedy, the contributions gathered here encounter comedy as a philosophical object: instead of approaching comedy as a genre, the book engages with it as a language, a medium, an artifice, a weapon, a puzzle or a trouble, a vocation and a repetition. Thus philosophy meets comedy at the intersection of various fields (e.g. psychoanalysis, film studies, cultural studies, and performance studies) –regions that comical practices and theories in fact already traverse.Jonathan Burrows: Towards a Minor Dance (New World Choreographies)
By Daniela Perazzo Domm. 2019
The first monograph on the work of British choreographer Jonathan Burrows, this book examines his artistic practice and poetics as…
articulated through his choreographic works, his writings and his contributions to current performance debates. It considers the contexts, principles and modalities of his choreography, from his early pieces in the 1980s to his latest collaborative projects, providing detailed analyses of his dances and reflecting on his unique choreomusical partnership with composer Matteo Fargion.Known for its emphasis on gesture and humour, and characterised by compositional clarity and rhythmical patterns, Burrows’ artistic work takes the language of choreography to its limits and engages in a paradoxical, and hence transformative, relationship with dance’s historical and normative structures. Exploring the ways in which Burrows and Fargion’s poetics articulates movement, performative presence and the collaborative process in a ‘minor’ register, this study conceptualises the work as a politically compelling practice that destabilises major traditions from a minoritarian position.