Erfahrene Künstler an einem Instrument, oder in diesem Fall an elektronischen Instrumenten, haben laut Folkestadt, Lindström & Hargreaves (1997, S. 7) deutlich andere Herangehensweisen an das Schaffen eines Stückes. Dies hängt nach ihnen hauptsächlich damit zusammen, dass sie das Instrument unterschiedlich nutzen. Nach Folkestadt et al. (1997) scheint die Erfahrung der musikalischen Ausbildung zu festeren Ideen über die Schaffung von Musik zu führen, was darauf hindeutet, dass die Instrumentalausbildung zwar ein Gewinn bei der Verwirklichung musikalischer Ideen sein kann, aber auch zu einem Hindernis bei der Erforschung der Möglichkeiten des Materials wird. Demnach sind Künstler ohne diese Ausbildung zwar nicht so sehr an die etablierten Schaffensprozesse gebunden und können freier neue Möglichkeiten austesten, befinden sich jedoch in einem gewissen Rahmen und sind auf das technische Wissen angewiesen, um überhaupt mit dem Schaffen oder Auftreten zu beginnen (Folkestadt et al., 1997, S. 7). Dieses Ergebnis entspricht auch den Erkenntnissen von Scripp, Meyaard und Davidson (1988), die eine Studie durchführten, in der Kinder und Erwachsene mit Hilfe ihrer Computer Musik komponierten. Ihre Ergebnisse zeigten, dass, je mehr der Computerkomponist musikalisch ausgebildet war, desto weniger nutzte er die Möglichkeiten des Computers im Kompositionsprozess (Scripp et al. (1988). in: Folkestadt et al. (1997) S. 8). Folkestadt et al. (1997) vermuten außerdem, dass beim Hören von Musik, auch elektronischer, ein Bild oder eine Assoziation im Kopf entsteht, wie diese Musik erzeugt wurde. Das könnte dem Ergebnis Folkestadt’s et al. (1997) Studie nach bedeuten, dass auch Menschen ohne musikalisches Training durch diese Eigenschaft eine Vorstellung haben, wie die elektronische Musik zu klingen hat und hergestellt wird, und dadurch in der Lage sind, sich auch selbst zu verwirklichen. Dies eliminiert demnach die Erfahrung, die sonst für das Spielen eines Instrumentes benötigt wurde, für das Produzieren, da jeder sich nun zum Ausdruck bringen kann. Nach Folkestadt et al. (1997, S. 9) seien Anfänger eher am Ausprobieren und Versuchen gekennzeichnet, als an dem geordneten Denken und Reflektieren.
Quellen:
Folkestadt, G.; Lindström, B. & Hargreaves, D. (1997). Young people’s Music in Digital Age.
Scripp, L., Meyaard, J., & Davidson, L. (1988). Discerning musical development. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 22(1))
The internet has changed since the birth of TikTok- it has never been so easy to go viral. If the content is genuinely good/funny, it organically blows up without any promotion. The COVID pandemic has made the app even more popular, as people in quarantine and countries in lockdown can’t go out, hence technology is their main source of fun. Hence, now is the best time to become viral.
There is another just as interesting feature on TikTok- their licensed music library. There’s 2 sides to this feature- first off, artists earn royalties every time their music is used in someone’s video. And secondly, if someone famous uses a certain song in their video (e.g. making it into a meme) the song blows up. This is why we suddenly have many new popular artists on the market. TikTok has lowered the threshold for entering the music scene.
The website trapital.co made this graphic to demonstrate what is going on with musicians who go viral on TikTok. They emphasise that even those categorised as “everyone else” have a huge potential to become Superstars with a little bit of support.
Let’s get into some stats- TikTok has over a billion monthly users, and the most popular genre on the app is hip-hop. Even though hip-hop still reigns supreme, tons of musicians from other genres can be found too. 90 of the Billboard top 100 songs last year came from TikTok. This proves much of an impact the app has on the development of the music scene. Songs like “Say So” by Doja Cat were used in 22 million videos- that is a huge number. Based on different statistics found online, one can conclude that the most popular songs on TikTok are the ones that are “memeable”- meaning they are funny in a way and can be used to enhance humorous videos (either funny lyrics or sounds). One example of this is the song Conkarah – Banana, which has been used in about 30 million TikTok videos.
There are different so-called “subcultures” on the app. In this article, I will list the ones related to music. The most significant I’ve seen are producer challenges, vocal covers and SynthTok. There are 2 ways to skyrocket as a musician on TikTok – through royalties (as i already mentioned before) and also through becoming a viral TikToker. Many small artists are experimenting with their videos, in hopes they will hit it big.
According to Fader, TikTok released its “Year In Music” report, and the summary claims that over 70 artists who found success on the platform in 2020 all secured deals with major record labels.
Here are some examples of the different types of videos from music producers. As seen from the example, the range of videos topics is quite wide (from synthesis, to covers and live performances):
Um der Verrostung entgegenzuwirken habe ich entschlossen im Sound&Visual Seminar mit Generativem Design (Processing) zu arbeiten.
Die Sound-Designerin, Isabel Witting hat im Rahmen einer Übung 5 Klänge bzw. Klangfolgen vorgegeben.
Mein Ziel war es, ein immersives, audio-visuelles Erlebnis zu generieren, da die gegeben Audio-Files sehr intensiv gestaltet sind.
Im ersten Schritt habe ich eine simple Vektorgrafik erstellt, welche wenige Kanten besitzen sollte und von einem Kreis umgegeben ist. Mein Ziel war es eine Form zu generieren, welche ich in schöne Schwinungen versetzen kann.
Visual Adams | Unförmige simple “Startform”
Im zweiten Schritt habe ich diese Vektorgrafik in Processing eingelesen und im Code zusätzliche Ankerpunkte gesetzt. Diese Ankerpunkte habe ich mit Ellipsen bestückt.
Visual Adams Jan, Sound Witting Isabel
Zu allerletzt habe ich die Audiodatei von Isabel eingelesen und mittels Sound-Library ausgelesen. Je nach Pegelwert werden die Kreise in Schwingung versetzt.
Durch den Einsatz von leichten Transparenzen auf schwarzem Hintergrund und verschiedenen Größen wird das Visual sehr dynamisch.
Some of the types of therapies are the same or very similar to those used for people with AP (acquired Prosopagnosia). This is a listing of a few of the most common types of therapies:
Comparison of photos of unknown and known faces
Schematic faces, meaning faces reduced to lines
Learning face-name associations
Benton Face Recognition Task in where the participant should identify which face of a selection of faces best matches the target face
Comparison of photos of unknown and known faces with and without hair
Faces that look similar or the same should be matched into pairs
Recognize and distinguish between distorted faces and normal ones
Mooney Faces Task where the face consists only of black and white areas and must be recognized whether it is a face or not
Participants’ attention is drawn to prominent facial features
Two faces are shown and participants should determine age and gender
Faces must be judged by emotions or expressions
Jane Task with detection of spacing, feature, and contour changes
Example of three therapy methods
To give a little more insight into a few of the many types of therapies, here a little more informationen about these methods and what goal should be achieved: One type of compensatory therapy is to learn how to recognize a person’s face based on 5 characteristic features. In this case, the persons are known to the patient. These can be features such as the shape of the face, the width of the nostrils, shape of the eyebrows, freckles or wrinkles. In this way it can be achieved that certain features can be remembered better and therefore it is easier to recognize a person. This kind of therapy brings improvements especially in children. An example of remedial treatment approaches is to divide the face into two areas – distance between eye and eyebrows and mouth and nose – and then categorize them. The goal, after some attempts, should be that people with DP can focus on several features at the same time, allowing them to process rather unfamiliar faces holistically in the brain. Completely different therapeutic approaches have also been tried. For example, it has been found that intranasal inhalation of oxytocin can improve the processing of faces. Oxytocin is a hormone produced in the brain that can influence the processing strategy in the brain. It was also discovered that much more time is spent looking at the eye region. It is believed that the eye region provides important information about who the other person is. This is therefore associated with prosopagnosics, as they spend little time looking at the eye area from the opposite. After giving this hormone and doing various tasks, better performance was observed in some people with DP.
Types of therapies that are most likely to be successful are those where familiar faces are to be learned and recognized using additional information. The goal of these therapies is to eventually be able to better perceive and distinguish facial features, to reduce dependence on certain characteristics or accessories, and to be able to recognize familiar people more likely. However, because these therapies bring little or at least no long-term improvement, it is still advised to use alternative strategies, such as learning how the important people around them talk, walk, or what style of clothing they have. Probably the most important thing is that programs are adapted to the person’s problem, otherwise therapies have little to no success.
Sources
Face Processing Improvements in Prosopagnosia: Successes and Failures over the last 50 years, Joe DeGutis, Christopher Chiu, Mallory E Grosso, Sarah Cohan (8.2014), https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264940858_Face_Processing_Improvements_in_Prosopagnosia_Successes_and_Failures_over_the_last_50_years
Developmental prosopagnosia: A case analysis and treatment study, Lyndsey Nickels, Pamela Joy (09.2006) http://www.researchgate.net/publication/47677051_Developmental_prosopagnosia_A_case_analysis_and_treatment_study
Training of familiar face recognition and visual scan paths for faces in a child with congenital prosopagnosia, Laura Schmalzl, Romina Palermo, Melissa Jayne Green, Ruth Brunsdon (08.2008), https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23187083_Training_of_familiar_face_recognition_and_visual_scan_paths_for_faces_in_a_child_with_congenital_prosopagnosia
Some of the following design cases focus on individuals, others on groups. Some help us to rediscover our talents, some support us in forming meaningful relationships, and others enable us to invest in the happiness of ourselves and of the people we care about.
Little Proba [1]
Little Proba is an initiative created to empower children’s creativity and help kids in need. The project emerged from Studio Probas first creative workshop for Portland and NYC kids, in which kids were guided through the process of making colorful, cut-out paper collages.
“The results were so inspiring, that we transformed them into rugs with all proceeds going to Save the Children and the Young Center for Children’s Immigrant Rights. This first collaboration is just one in a long-term series of philanthropic initiatives we’ve planned to foster creativity in children and, in turn, help those in need across the globe—a process we like to refer to as #kidsdesigningforkids.” —Studio Proba
Goedzak [2]
Goedzag is a way to do good and offer products a second chance—sharing and re-use as easy as taking out the trash. The concept is currently used as a pilot-project in Amsterdam and Eindhoven.
How much do we actually use of the stuff that we own and how much do we really actually need? We all hold on to many material things we no longer use. But what is even worse is, that we sometimes throw away things that are still in perfect and working condition. From a sustainability point of view unwanted goods should be re-used as much as possible. From a social point of view, these items offer an enormous potential for positive social behaviour; sharing.
Designer Simon Akkaya dealt in the development process with questions such as: Is it possible to design a product that brings out and stimulates a positive human behaviour? And to make things a bit more complex; is this possible when this particular behaviour does not serve the user’s direct needs. In this case; altruism. Understanding the principles and mechanics of a specific human trait is essential when translating these abstract values into tangible form. This specific project was deliberately pushing the envelope by setting a very abstract goal, without setting a defined domain for the product at the start.
How it works:
Basically, Goedzak is a carrier of a sustainable message: It offers a visual stage to social deeds by “lightening up” the streets with bright yellow bags. Goedzak should encourage individuals to take their time and make an effort to fill up a bag with things which otherwise would be simply thrown away.
Goedzakken (the bags) are distributed in a specific area. With the bag people also receive information and an explanation on how to use Goedzak. People can then fill up the bag and place it outside on the pavement, no different from taking out the trash. The bright yellow colour will attract attention, while the transparent side of the bag will reveal the content without the need for rummaging through the bag. Passers-by can then take from the bag anything to their liking. The remainder of the goods are at the end of the day collected by the second hand store (or service from the city) to be either sold or recycled. Goedzak creates a new waste-stream that precedes recycling and eventually discarding, keeping the integrity of the products in tact an maximising the lifecycle. Goedzak allows you to fill up a bag and place it in a designated spot; this can be anywhere from a local mall, to the pavement in front of your house. Others (neighbours, passers-by) can take whatever they find valuable from the Goedzak.
Hospital Facilities [3]
According to latest research music, humor, light, and scent have the power to decrease pain or influence medical outcomes—especially nature has a huge impact on healing. A finding that dates back to Roger Ulrich’s seminal study of post-surgical gall bladder patients. The research found that people who had a green view out their window were able to leave the hospital sooner and required less pain medication than those facing a brick wall. According to latest research even natural sounds (birds, etc.) may have an influence on pain.
Inspired by that latest findings the university of Oslo hospital, designed by Snøhetta, built an exclusive Outdoor Care Retreat, which can be booked by patients. The retreat has been designed to mimic a tree house and allows to full open windows for fresh air and a “being on holiday” experience.
Another issue in hospitals is a downbeat color scheme—which has especially a bad influence on children’s wellbeing. Children’s bedrooms at home are usually bright and colorful and by considering that fact in design of hospital facilities, a patients room can feel more “normal” and support wellbeing and therefore an individuals healing process.
Im letzten Blogeintrag habe ich einen kleinen Einblick gewährt in die Geschichte des sogenannten Loudness Wars. Dieser basiert aus technischer Sicht auf der dynamischen Einschränkung von Musikstücken mithilfe extremer Kompression, womit hohe Lautsheitswerte erzielt werden können. Klassischerweise werden für diese Aufgabe Kompressoren und vor allem Limiter verwendet. Es gibt allerdings auch noch eine weitere Möglichkeit, um den Dynamikumfang eines Musikstücks einzuschränken – das Clipping. Bei jedem Toningenieur läuten jetzt die Alarmglocken, weil normalerweise gilt, jegliche Form von Clipping im Signalweg zu vermeiden, indem der Pegel in der digitalen Domäne unter der 0 dBFS-Grenze gehalten wird [1]. Das ist auch korrekt und sollte in der Regel so eingehalten werden. Allerdings werden bei Musikrichtungen, wie Metal, Hip-Hop und diversen elektronischen Genres, die für den Club produziert werden, extreme Lautheitswerte erwartet, die klanglich transparenter durch den Einsatz von bewusstem Clipping statt Limiting erzielt werden. Während Limiter Pegelspitzen absenken, indem sie, idealerweise vorausschauend, das Signal analysieren und dann mit den vom Ingenieur eingestellten Attack und Release-Zeiten arbeiten, werden beim Clipping ganz einfach Pegelspitzen ohne Attack- und Release-Wartezeiten abgeschnitten. Dadurch entstehen innerhalb des Zeitraums, in welchem der Pegel die 0 dBFS-Grenze übersteigt Verzerrungen. [2]
Während beim starken Limiting oft Transienten ihre Präsenz verlieren oder ungewolltes Pumpen (anheben und absenken des Gesamtpegels auf Basis der Attack- und Release-Zeiten) entsteht, klingt Clipping oft natürlicher bzw. transparenter und kann sogar Transienten mithilfe der entstehenden Verzerrungen hervorheben.
Bei einer Untersuchung wurde die Hörbarkeit von digitalen Clipping-Verzerrungen ermittelt und man ist zu dem Ergebnis gekommen, dass die Hörbarkeit stark vom Audiomaterial und auch individuell vom Hörer abhängig ist. Daraus kann man schließen, dass für die Anwendung von Clipping ein geschultes Ohr voraussetzend ist und auch das Ausgangsmaterial ausschlaggebend ist, ob und wie schnell Artefakte hörbar werden. [3]
In den 2000er-Jahren kamen für das Clipping hochwertige A/D-Wandler zum Einsatz. Diese wurden mit einem Signal angesteuert, bei welchem die analogen Pegelspitzen bei der Wandlung ins digitale theoretisch 0 dbFS überschreiten würden und deshalb an dieser Stelle geclipped wurden. Die daraus resultierenden Verzerrungen waren entweder kaum hörbar, was auch zu keinen klanglichen Einbußen der Audioqualität geführt hat, oder haben im besten Fall den Klang sogar aufgewertet. [4, 5, 6, 7]
Auf virtueller Ebene gibt es für das Clipping spezielle Plugins, die mit Oversampling-Funktionen ausgestattet sind, um Aliasing-Artefakte so gering wie möglich zu halten. Außerdem bieten viele Clipper verschiedene Steigungskurven an, die aus einem Hard-Clipper einen Soft-Clipper machen, bei welchem leichte Verzerrungungen bereits unterhalb des eingestellten Thresholds auftreten und das Ausmaß der Verzerrung graduell bis zum Threshold ansteigt. [8, 9, 10, 11]
Wie man sieht, sollte Clipping per se nicht als „Fehler“ abgestempelt, sondern vielmehr als Werkzeug des Toningenieurs gesehen werden, das eine Alternative zum klassischen Limiting darstellt. Wenn Clipping bewusst und mit Vorsicht in einer Produktion genutzt wird, kann es sogar in gewissen Musikgenres als stilistisches Element dienen, welches den Klang sogar aufwerten kann. Letzten Endes sollte das Ohr entscheiden, ob der Einsatz eines Clippers sinnvoll ist und besser klingt als ein Limiter.
Still life photography is a complex genre in which one can often create meaningful work with few materials. However, if you simply depict your inanimate objects without ulterior motives or the right know-how, this can result in a rather uninteresting picture. It is also always important to learn from contemporary artists and to see what messages they convey through their still lifes. The following photographers have created particularly interesting still lifes, although some are more or less well known:
Henry Hargreaves
Henry is a contemporary photographer currently based in Brooklyn, originally from New Zealand. He is best known for his still life and food photographs. His connection to photography came about when he worked as a professional model and got to know many photographers and their techniques. His still life photographs focus on depicting food and often contain humorous or critical messages. His photographs have been shown at the Venice Biennale, MAXXI in Rome and the Lunch Box Gallery in Miami.
Mat Collishaw
Mat is a contemporary artist who also does still life photography. He attends Goldsmiths College and has had various solo and group shows over the past three years. His works are exhibited in many famous art institutions such as the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Tate Museum in London. His work is often provocative, but you have to take a second look to see it.
Evelyn Bencicova
Evelyn is a visual creative from Bratislava. She specializes in photography and art direction. Evelyn studies at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. It uses a visual language that is full of symbolic elements. In this way, the viewer looks at her still life photography for a long time, trying to understand its different depths. Evelyn’s pictures are always more than you think. She works with Gucci, Cartier and Nehera. She has also won several awards and her work has appeared in Vogue Portugal, Vogue Spain and Elle magazines.
Jonathan Knowles
He is a well-known commercial photographer who specializes in still life photography. He has a unique style and lighting technique. He mainly works commercially with drinks and liquids, as he has had a weakness for these representations since childhood. His work earned him multiple awards and Jonathan worked with clients such as Coca Cola, Smirnoff, Nescafe and Guiness. Here you can see a still life series of his, which is completely in the spirit of dark subjects with the name “Derelichte”. The other series shows a combination of organic objects with plastic.
Suzanne Saroff
Suzanne is a photographer based in New York, who is known for elegant and modern product photography. She perfectly represents recent trends which are based on visual weight and balance. As well as a specific vibe created through a thoughtful color scheme. In this series, she plays with the transparency and effects of glass materials.
UI and graphic designers were designing according to their usage habits because of the lacking UX training.
Designers build the website depending on their own age trends.
Firms prefers to consider who has the money and who spends it online
To learn something new is becoming hard for senior people
They are trying to learn the digital world. Although they have learnt social media such as facebook, they do not prefer to use e-commerce websites.
They prefer to use social media to keep pace with the changing world that they see on younger family members’ life.
Seniors prefer interfaces which do not have shortcuts, in contrast younger user of e-commerce websites prefer more convenient interfaces.
The firm’s target group is younger people according to marketing research that is why it does not have any approach for elderly
There are many middle-aged people who are using interfaces like elderly
One of the reasons why there are no approach for elderly is that the firm chose as a target group people who have the disposable income.
The reason behind the indirect and direct prejudice is that seniors lose trust to outwards because of various reasons. First of all a number of seniors think that there is no trustworthy medium when it comes to services in Turkey. Herein, the former UX chief of an e-commerce website states that the e-commerce based services providers does not have the intention or attempt to build a trust between seniors and Internet-based services. Seniors are not the target consumer for these e-commerce websites and they usually do not use these services, hence service providers do not work on this issue. On the other hand, to protect themselves from possible frauds who can trick seniors easily because of their lack of knowledge seniors choose to not trust and stay away from this digital world. The security of the Internet medium is another barrier for them. Tatnall and Lepa states that the older non-users thinks that the Internet is threatening, so they have concerns about security. 21% of over 65’s have concerns about security compared to 35% all adults (2003) So, this distrut is caused by the outward effects. The people that are not Internet users have the tendency to define this environment as very insecure and not private at all (Olphert & Damond & May, 2005). According to three division of adoption (see Figure 6), late-adopters are the likely to define the meaning of digital incompletely or incorrectly, because of the low usage rates this defining issue ads up to the “unknown threshold”. For seniors who have direct prejudice this unknown threshold is much difficult to overcome when compared to the seniors that wish to learn but have indirect prejudice. Lack of knowledge is the prime reason behind this situation. Those who actively reject use of the internet report a complete lack of interest, therefore it is one of the reasons that accounts for many older adults not using the internet. (Olphert, Damodaran & May, p.3, 2005)
Sources
Interview with a UI/UX lead
Tatnall, A., & Lepa, J. (2003, 02). The Internet, e-commerce and older people: An actor-network approach to researching reasons for adoption and use. Logistics Information Management, 16(1), 56-63. doi:10.1108/09576050310453741
Olphert, C. W., Damodaran, L., & May, A. J. (2005). Towards digital inclusion – engaging older people in the ‘digital world’.
