Browsing by Subject "Sound"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Baltimore's urban fix: sounds of excess and exclusion in Station north
    (2013-03) Kotting, Jennifer
    This research seeks to tell a different kind of story about urban development, attentive to the details of everyday life that are often ignored by both supporters and critics of such projects. The case study of Station north is an immediately relevant project meant to improve the city as a whole by attracting capital investment. However, the social and political contradictions involved show the devastating consequences of a spatial fix for an urban neighborhood. Mapping neighborhood change is common, but using sound and digital mapping to evoke under-explored parts of everyday life is less typical in the field of urban studies.
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    Centering the Sonic: Sound Mediation in Holocaust Memory, Memorials, and Museums
    (2021-06) Huether, Kathryn
    While a great deal of scholarship has critically assessed Holocaust texts, films, and photographs for decades, scholars have largely overlooked music and sound. Musicologists and historians have made substantial contributions to understanding music during the Holocaust and how it functioned within the social makeup of the camps, yet on the role of sound and music within Holocaust memorial forms remains underexamined. In this dissertation, I examine the processes by which sound, music, and vocal affect are employed and ascribed to modes of Holocaust memory and how these applications in turn shape how that memory is received. A connecting thread throughout all my case studies is that these sonic elements are not necessarily considered the primary mode of mediation—at least by their curators—and that the sonic component is secondary to the overarching mode of memory. Overall, my findings demonstrate that despite largely being overlooked in scholarly discussions regarding Holocaust memorial representation, sound mediation is very present and drastically shapes a visitor’s engagement with each experience.
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    Directional Rumble Strips for Reducing Wrong-Way-Driving Freeway Entries
    (Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2019-07) Luo, Albert C; Guo, Chuan; Xing, Siyuan; Xu, Yeyin; Guo, Siyu; Liu, Chuanping
    This report presents evaluation results of directional rumble strips (DRS) designed to deter wrong-way (WW) freeway entries. Mathematical models have been built to identify high-risk locations of WWD. Based on the model, one off-ramp, exit 41 northbound on I-70 was found to have a WW entry probability of 55%. 96 hours of video data were recorded at the chosen off-ramp. Then one pattern of DRS (D3) was implemented on the chosen location with the help of the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT). Sound and vibration data were recorded and compared between RW and WW directions for speed ranging from 15 mph to 30 mph. Another 96 hours of video data were recorded after the implementation. The analysis of before and after implementation data showed that the DRS cannot reduce the probability of WWD, but it can warn WW drivers and reduce their speed, which will significantly reduce WWD accidents.
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    Directional Rumble Strips for Reducing Wrong-Way-Driving Freeway Entries
    (Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2018-02) Zhou, Huaguo; Xue, Chennan; Yang, Lingling; Luo, Albert
    This report presents the evaluation results of five types of directional rumble strips (DRS) based on extensive field tests conducted at the National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT) in Auburn, Alabama. The ultimate goal of this study is to develop a low-cost safety countermeasure by capturing a driver’s attention through elevated invehicle sound and vibration for wrong-way (WW) driving while providing normal sound and vibration levels for right-way (RW) driving. Tests of sound and vibration generated by different DRS were performed with full-size passenger vehicles for six categories of speed: 10, 15, 20, 25, 35, and 45 mph. For each type of DRS concept design, three initial tests were performed with vehicles traveling on normal pavement (ambient condition), followed by three to five tests on the DRS in both WW and RW directions. The study identified three final design patterns (C, D Configuration 3, and E.1) that can generate elevated sound and vibration for WW drivers. The field test results also showed that speed had a significant impact on sound and vibration. Considering that travelling speed will be different on DRS by WW and RW drivers, additional speed studies were conducted to estimate the WW and RW driving speeds at the proposed DRS implementation spots on off-ramps. Based on the results, recommendations were developed to implement the final three DRS designs on off-ramps that can achieve the maximum safety benefits by alerting WW drivers through in-vehicle elevated sound and vibration.
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    Sound Moves: displacement and modernity in French and Senegalese cinemas
    (2010-07) Dima, Vlad
    My dissertation, "Sound Moves: Displacement and Modernity in French and Senegalese Cinemas," explores the relation between film, film sound, modernity, and the cultural politics of gender. Analyzing specific works by French and Senegalese directors, I demonstrate how Senegalese cinema constitutes an original artistic movement unto itself, which can be compared to an established school of expression such as the French New Wave. Both cinemas challenge the primacy of the visual by foregrounding how aural planes affect and alter the economy of visual planes. As a result, I determine that new (aural) narrative plateaus surface from the plurality and plasticity of sound, which displaces and complicates filmic images. These planes reshape the current paradigm of the relationship between spectator and film. In other words, the diverse sound manipulation techniques encountered in these cinemas generate a space continuum in which the audience becomes intimately involved with the projection on screen. I have identified and explored in depth two such prevalent techniques, the sonic jump-cut and the sonic rack-focus, which unfold aural planes in a way that suspends the visual-focused narration. Furthermore, I expose how sound displacement generates the displacement of the film subjects, who, in French and Senegalese films, constantly shift their identity because of their unique position as both products and counterpoints of modernity. I demonstrate that the re-appropriation of the discourse of female identity takes place through voice and sounds, disrupting the gendered relation that classical cinema established primarily through the scopic regime.
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    Vocalities of Violence: Acousmatic Sound and Trauma in Latin American Cinema (1999-2016)
    (2022-08) Jasnoch, Emma
    “Acousmatic” describes a sound that occurs without an identifiable visual origin.Similarly, trauma is built upon gaps between source, cause, and effect, where an event of violence is not entirely psychologically assimilable. Through examples in contemporary Latin American cinema depicting forms of social, political, and economic violence, I show that trauma and acousmatic sound are mutual operations whose displaced articulation serves as a new cinematic narrative strategy. I argue that this mode of storytelling through sonic incongruence in soundscape, voiceovers, and embodied voices emerges uniquely within the New Cinema movement since the late 1990s and a transnational context of collective trauma.