Start Over

491. Staying human in medicine: the danger of isolation and the power of good connection (1:01:32)

Date:
2021-03-24
Main contributors:
University of Virginia. School of Medicine
Summary:
Physician-writer Samuel Shem's iconic black humor-laced novel, The House of God (1978), written while he was a resident, was an exposé of medicine's often-heartless training culture at the time. The book became unofficial required reading for generations of persons going into medicine. His most recent novel, Man's 4th Best Hospital (2020), appeared when clinician morale was low, burnout rampant, and physician suicide on the rise; if anything, the COVID pandemic has exacerbated these conditions. In this Hook Lecture, Shem discusses how his books arose out of perceived injustice to take the measure of medicine's culture, and how he has used fiction both to resist injustice and to call upon doctors, nurses, and others to reclaim their once-humane calling. Edward W. Hook Memorial Lecture in Medicine and the Arts Medicine Grand Rounds Co-presented with the Department of Medicine and with generous support from the School of Medicine's Anderson Lectures

492. Sugar! (1:02:48)

Date:
2019-03-06
Main contributors:
University of Virginia. School of Medicine
Summary:
Why do modern Americans eat so much sugar, and to what effect? This Medical Center Hour offers dual perspectives on the sweet stuff, what it does to/in us, and its many meanings in history and for health. UVA historian David Singerman and UVA physician Jennifer Kirby examine sugar’s impact on the body—past and present, historically, socially, physiologically, and nutritionally.

496. Taking a shot at HPV and cancer (58:23)

Date:
2018-10-17
Main contributors:
University of Virginia. School of Medicine
Summary:
What if there were a vaccine that could prevent cancer? The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, available since 2006, does this, guarding against cancers caused by this ubiquitous virus. This Medical Center Hour explores the sociopolitical context of HPV vaccination in Virginia and beyond. Using clips from a powerful documentary film, Someone You Love: The HPV Epidemic (2014), an expert panel of UVA researchers, clinicians, and oncologists discusses the crucial importance of HPV vaccination--for boys as well as girls--and the concerns that still limit its use. A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture Co-presented with the Cancer Center, UVA

497. Taking good care of our LGBT elders (1:01:03)

Date:
2014-02-12
Main contributors:
University of Virginia. School of Medicine
Summary:
At a time when lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals enjoy unprecedented social acceptance and legal protection, many LGBT elders face the daily challenges of aging isolated from family, detached from the larger LGBT community, and ignored by mainstream aging initiatives. These elders are more likely to be single, childless, financially insecure, fearful of encountering bias in health care settings, and socially isolated. And the continuing silence surrounding LGBT elders has left many of them underserved and at risk. This Medical Center Hour makes the case that increased cultural competency measures are necessary within medicine and society to help older LGBT persons overcome barriers to successful aging and to ensure that we are all taking good care of our LGBT elders. A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture co-presented with qMD A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture co-presented with qMD

498. Taking good care of our transgender teens (1:01:02)

Date:
2014-11-12
Main contributors:
University of Virginia. School of Medicine
Summary:
At a time when lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals enjoy ever greater social acceptance and legal protection, transgender teens and young adults still face challenges on many fronts. Simply negotiating adolescence isn't easy, and gender identity issues can complicate matters. Health care for transgender youth is in transition, as the population becomes better understood. In this Medical Center Hour, a panel of pediatricians makes the case for increased cultural competency in medicine and society alike to help give transgender teens a safe medical home and help them to lead satisfying, successful lives.

499. TechnoSonics XIX: Voices Concert 1 (1:36:10)

Date:
2018-09-21
Summary:
Phonē (1981) John Chowning The Precession of Simulacra Juan Carlos Vasquez Blue Cycle: Noise (2008) Ted Coffey Assessment Postponement Nexus No. 1 Luke Dahl Rotunda Judith Shatin INTERMISSION You Sink Into the Singing Snow Matthew Burtner Lisa Edwards-Burrs, voice Kevin Davis, cello I-Jen Fang, percussion Sk(etch) Leah Reid Maybe Metaphors Are Easier A.D. Carson / Ryan Maguire Warp Study Michele Zaccagnini Voices (2011) John & Maureen Chowning for Soprano and Interactive Computer v.3 Maureen Chowning, soprano Program Notes Phonē (1981) - John Chowning The sounds in Phonē (from the Greek, meaning “sound” or “voice”) were produced using a special configuration of the frequency modulation (FM) synthesis technique that allows the composer to simulate a wide range of timbres including the singing voice and other strongly resonant sounds. The synthesis programs are designed to permit exploration of and control over the ambiguities that can arise in the perception and identification of sound sources. The interpolation between timbres and extension of “real” vocal timbres into registers that could not exist in the real world — such as a basso “profondissimo” — and the micro-structural control of sound that determines the perceptual fusion and segregation of spectral components are important points in this composition. The composer developed this technique of FM synthesis of the singing voice at IRCAM, Paris in 1979 using a DEC PDP-10 and realized the piece at CCRMA in 1980–81, using the “Samson Box,” a real-time digital synthesizer designed by Peter Samson. The work was premiered at IRCAM in Paris in February 1981. The Precession of Simulacra - Juan Carlos Vasquez The Precession of Simulacra, for piano and electronics, applies in music the concept of “hyperreality” coined by the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard, where a simulated reality (in this case, computer sounds) is progressively indistinguishable from the actual reality (acoustic sounds). This piece was composed thanks to the support of Taiteen edistämiskeskus (Arts Promotion Center in Finland). Blue Cycle: Noise (2008) - Ted Coffey Blue Cycle: Noise (2008) belongs to a cycle of electroacoustic text-sound works dedicated to teachers and mentors. My texts address a related set of aesthetic and social topics including noise, production value, coherence, the open work, and transcendence. The project offers an excuse to soak in text-sound classics by Dodge, Lansky, Stockhausen, Westerkamp, and Wishart (to name a few). While FFT-based, wavelet and other “current” techniques of audio analysis and resynthesis are used to generate materials, I also explore the more venerable methods—vocoding, LPC, FOF, VOSIM, &c.—implementing idiosyncratic real-time instruments and improvising with them. The music plays with the wealth of meaning that spills out when [non-] sense, affect, and “quality-of-sound” are parameterized, and more generally develops syntaxes and structures appropriate to the texts. Often with wicked self-referentiality, Noise offers descriptions of randomness and pattern from human perspectives, and imagines how the matter might look differently from a divine one. Assessment Postponement Nexus No. 1 - Luke Dahl This piece utilizes a custom spatialized 8-channel feedback delay network (FDN) which is parameterized to afford morphing between discrete echos and more “washed out” reverberations. In this performance I use an SH-101 analog synthesizer as sound source, and explore various textural and gestural potentialities of this system. Rotunda - Judith Shatin While sitting in her office, facing the Rotunda and Lawn at the University of Virginia, composer Judith Shatin suddenly saw the scene spring to life as if in a movie that combined the majesty of the place with the daily hum of life. Filmmaker Robert Arnold, whose work often focuses on temporal elements, agreed to collaborate on the project. They re-purposed a computer/camera surveillance system, with the camera located for an entire year on the upper story of Old Cabell Hall, and collected over 300,000 images. During that period Shatin also collected a multitude of sounds, both in and around the Rotunda, and conducted unscripted interviews about its meaning to a wide variety of people. She created two sound tracks from these recordings, often using extensive processing. One includes interview extracts (heard this evening), and the other includes only sonic transformations and ambient sounds, such as rain, the stacking of chairs, the sound of lawn mowers and more. They structured the flow as one day unfolding over the course of a year, moving from dawn to dusk as the year moves through the seasons. The film is available on DVD, including both stereo and 5.1 audio of both ver- sions, available at judithshatin.com. You Sink Into the Singing Snow - Matthew Burtner “You Sink Into the Snow” (2012) is an electroacoustic song from the telemat- ic climate change opera, “Auksalaq,” co-created by Matthew Burtner (music/text) and Scott Deal (visual media) with imaging, video, animation and photography by Miho Aoki, Jordan Munson, Ryota Kadjita and Maya Salganek and data by Hajo Eicken. The song has been extracted from the opera as this independent vocal piece with video and electronics, and as an acapella choral work. The piece features snow as voiced sound and subject. Sk(etch) - Leah Reid Sk(etch) is an acousmatic work that explores sounds, gestures, textures, and timbres associated with the creative process of sketching, drawing, writing, and composing. Maybe Metaphors Are Easier - A.D. Carson / Ryan Maguire When violence is enacted against certain bodies, language breaks down. Perhaps language does not provide enough distance from such subjects to articulate them clearly. Maybe Metaphors Are Easier explores what it means to create distance, by way of metaphor and sound, to make some conversation, any articulation, possible. Voices (2011) - John & Maureen Chowning Voices is a play of imagination evoking the Pythia of Delphi and the mystifying effects of her oracular utterances. A soprano engages a computer- simulated illusory space with her voice, which allows us to project sounds at distances beyond the walls of the actual space in which we listen. Her utterances launch synthesized sounds within this space, sounds that conjure up bronze cauldrons, caverns, and their animate inhabitants, sounds of the world of the Pythia modulated by our fantasy and technology and but rooted in a past even more distant than her own - the Pythia’s voice becomes the voice of Apollo and Mother Earth, Gaea. Selected pitches of the soprano’s voice line are tracked by the computer running a program written by the composer in MaxMSP. The soprano’s voice is transmitted from a microphone to the computer where it is spatialized. At each captured “target pitch” the program synthesizes accompanying sounds using FM synthesis that is mixed with the voice and sent to the sound system in the auditorium. The spectra of the synthesized sounds are inharmonic derived from the Golden Ratio and ‘structured’ to function in the domains of pitch and harmony as well as timbre. The pitch scale is also based on divi- sion of powers of the Golden Ratio rather than powers of 2, as in the common tempered scale, an idea used in Stria (1977) and Phoné (1981).

500. TechnoSonics XIX: Voices Concert 2 (1:09:28)

Date:
2018-09-22
Summary:
Ouroboros Becky Brown mouthfeel Alex Christie weaving broken threads Heather Frasch Intermission Coluber sono Heather Mease & Ben Luca Robertson Códigos Obsesos v1.7 Omar Fraire Dulcimer Flight Dan Joseph Program Notes Ouroboros - Becky Brown walk circles round the morning and choke down again tomorrow, too I would like to introduce the days all crawling out of you yawn those teeth a little wide next year’s last week’s burnt anew yesterday’s stuck on your tongue you’ll try today, but then forget to mouthfeel - Alex Christie mouthfeel uses the performer’s human, fleshy mouth as a component in a greater circuit of noise. The mouth both actuates sound and acts as filter, moving the system through states of stability and chaos. weaving broken threads - Heather Frasch “How can secret rooms, rooms that have disappeared, become abodes for an unforgettable past?” Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, pg. xxxvi. weaving broken threads is the realization of an open text-score, Housed memories, that was inspired by the writings of Gaston Bachelard who uses the memory of “houses as a tool for analysis of the human soul” (The Poetics of Space, Bachelard pg. xxxvi). Both the score and the realization explore the memory of past spaces by using objects (sonic, text, physical) as source material. In the performance it weaves varied aspects of the distinctive places together (e.g. chronologically, most secretive, longest duration etc.). The digital instrument intentionally hides actions to emphasize the notion of interiority and how exterior physical places that no longer exist have become personalized inner notions of self. The digital boxes are a versatile digital instrument constructed from cigar boxes. With microphones, sensors and objects hidden inside, the instrument serves as a vessel for hiding/revealing material during the pieces that it interprets. Coluber sono - Heather Mease (video) & Ben Luca Robertson (sound) This collaboration between Heather and Ben has been realized through in- tense dedication to detailed processes and a love of snakes. Heather’s video combines the physical, time-intensive processes of scraping away at and applying India ink to a 16mm education film titled “Snake’s Alive.” Snakes make up both the content and the medium—as piles of colored film look quite serpentine! The aural component of the piece consists of sonorities generated through electro-magnetic actuation of six strings tuned in 7-limit just intonation. This instrument (‘Rosebud’)—designed and constructed by Ben—responds to electronic signals, whose frequencies correspond to the first seven harmonics of each string. Resultant resonances from the six strings comprise two overtone series’ (Otonalities) and a single undertone series (Utonality). A simple program analyses RGB data from the video, assigns a color value to each overtone/undertone series, and activates sym- pathetic string vibrations according to the average intensity of a given color. The resulting system combines movement, color, and physicality in sound. _Códigos Obsesos v1.7 - Omar Fraire Collaborative piece with the composer Jorge David, inspired by a Samuel Beckett poem. The material is generated by the composer and uploaded in score and audio fragments to be scrambled or manipulated by the collabora- tor: http://codigos-obsesos.hotglue.me Fin fond du néant au bout de quelle guette l’oeil crut entrevoir remuer faiblement la tête le calma disant ce ne fut que dans ta tête. Dulcimer Flight - Dan Joseph In his solo and collaborative works for electroacoustic hammer dulcimer, Dan constructs contemplative soundscapes that slowly unfold over the course of 30-minutes to one-hour. With roots in early minimalism, ambient music and acoustic ecology, these long-form “journeys” combine composed elements, often in the form of a fixed melodic pattern, with extensive improvisation and field recordings while exploring the dulcimer’s rich harmonic properties. Us- ing both traditional and experimental (extended) performance techniques in combination with his self-designed computer-based processing system, Dan gives this ancient instrument and entirely new and contemporary identity.