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Lisa Eorio, research scientist at the University of Virginia, discusses her experience as a person living with MS and the new grant that hopes to slow down the effects of MS in women through water aerobics fitness.
Lisa Eorio, research scientist at the University of Virginia, discusses the gender wage gaps and her dissertation focused on theory of Human Capital. Her research finds that women were obtaining less wage compensation, and concentrated in lower paying industries.
Lisa Lindquist Dorr, fellow at the Carter Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia, discusses her project concerning black on white rape in Virginia from 1900 to 1960s.
Author Luise White, discusses her book that focuses on the rumors of vampirism in Central Africa as well as the general phenomenon of rumors in our culture.
Dr. Margaret Mohrman, discusses the difference between herself and the male doctors in the ICU, and the importance of ethics in medicine in order to better serve the patients.
Martha Craven Nussbaum discusses her book "Love's Knowledge" and her work as an expert witness on Colorado's Amendment 2 dealing with sexual orientation and state laws.
Mary Gaston's has a great sensibility towards Jane Austen's literature. She discusses the morality and romanticism of Jane Austen's novels made into films (Emma, Sense and Sensibility).
Mary Hugues discusses her position as the Landscape Architect at the University of Virginia, and what landscape architecture entails. She focuses on the importance given to large scale public design projects in the work of landscape architects.
Mary Rorty, professor of philosophy and bioethics at the University of Virginia, discusses bio-medical ethics as a movement that began in the 1960s and its recent institutionalization.
Michelle Kisliuk, professor of Music at the University of Virginia, discusses the transgeneric culture process through music focusing on socio-aesthetic.
Miki Liszt, dancer and founder of the Miki Liszt Dance Company, discusses her latest modern dance performance based on the book Veils and Words as an avenue of self-exploration and the veil as an Iranian-born woman.
Ning de Coninck-Smith, Professor of Education at Odense University in Denmark, discusses the history of child laborers in the five Scandinavian countries and the concept of children as social agents.
Phillip Troutman, research fellow at the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia, discusses his dissertation focusing on family and market geography in the slave migration patterns in Antebellum Virginia.
Phyllis Lefller, director of the institute of public history at the University of Virginia, discusses the project of collecting the history of 9,500 women at the University of Virginia from 1920 to 1972.
Rae Blumberg, professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, continues her discussion of policy implications on gender in economic development during the African food crisis.
Rae Blumberg, professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, discusses policy implications on economic development research carried out in 31 different countries in all continents.
Rebecca Young, 1999-2000 Bayly McIntire Graduate Student Fellow, discusses her dissertation that focuses on the relationship of non-conformist communities to art production in San Francisco in 1950's- '60s and her latest curation "African American Graphic Work of Contemporary Women Artists."
Sandi Cooper, the Chair of the University Faculty Senate and professor of European History at CUNY, discusses her talk for the Curry School of Education regarding the endangered fate of public higher education. She focuses on New York City mayor's critique on the open-enrollment of public higher education.
Sharon Hays, professor at the University of Virginia, discusses her book The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood, and the idea of intensive mothering is an ideological construct.
Stephen Margulies, curator of works on paper at the Bayly Art Museum, discusses his new exhibit "The Power of Woe, the Power of Life: Images of Women in Prints from the Renaissance to the Present" and where his inspiration came from.
Stephen Margulies, curator of works on paper at the Bayly Art Museum, discusses his inspiration for the latest exhibit: Universes in Coalition- Men and Women in 19th Century Japanese Prints.
Susan Fraiman, associate professor of English at the University of Virginia, discusses "Crashing the Party: Women in the Academy Now" and feminist literary criticism.
Susan Fraiman, associate professor of English at the University of Virginia, discusses sex in the White House with a feminist lens, the issues over oral sex, and the public's perception of Monica Lewinski.
Virginia Himes, professor of Anthropology at the University of Virginia, discusses her course on Native American women using their published life histories.
Xiaolin Li was born in mainland China and obtained her PhD from the University of Maryland focusing on women in the military; in this episode she discusses Mulan and the history of women warriors in China.
In 1759, London’s British Museum opened its doors for the first time, the first free national public museum in the world. In this Phi Beta Kappa Lecture at Medical Center Hour, historian James Delbourgo explores the role of slavery and imperialism in making this now venerable institution possible by exploring the career of its founder, Anglo-Irish physician Sir Hans Sloane. Sloane worked in Jamaica as a plantation doctor, used money from sugar plantations in the caribbean and from the Atlantic slave trade to support his collecting, and created his own personal imperial network to assemble one of the greatest cabinets of curiosities in the world—and one of the key institutional legacies of the Enlightenment.
Co-presented with Phi Beta Kappa (Beta of Virginia), President's Commission on Slavery and the University, Department of History, and History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series, Historical Collections, Claude Moore Health Sciences Library
Part one. Footage of Clinton College and Friendship College in South Carolina. Part two. Footage of road in South Carolina. At 15:04 footage of South Carolina State Capitol in Columbia. Part three. Footage of South Carolina State Capitol in Columbia.
Program
5_aerify arid conduits | InlandOutlines - Omar Fraire
Triac - Ben Luca Robertson
Musings - Aaron Stepp
Convection - Juan Carlos Vasquez
Centrifuge - Alex Christie
in the event of my - Becky Brown
Night Music - Christopher Luna-Mega
About the Ensemble
Splinter Reeds is the West Coast’s first reed quintet, comprising five innovative musicians with a shared passion for new mu- sic. The ensemble is committed to presenting top tier performances of today’s best contemporary composition, showcasing the vast possibilities of the reed quintet, commissioning new works, and collaborating with fellow musicians and artists.
As a relatively new chamber music genre, the reed quintet is an evolutionary detour from the traditional woodwind quintet with the advantages of a more closely related instrument family. With approximately 20 professional reed quintets worldwide, Splinter Reeds is explicitly dedicated to cutting edge com- position and expanding the existing reed quintet repertoire through the development of new works by emerging and established composers.
Splinter Reeds formed in 2013 with the coming together of five col- leagues highly active in multiple facets of the Bay Area’s vibrant music scene: Kyle Bruckmann (oboe), Bill Kalinkos (clarinet), David Wegehaupt (saxophone), Jeff Anderle (bass clarinet), and Dana Jessen (bassoon). The sum of their wide ranges of experience – in settings including free jazz, improvisation, electronic music, pop, punk and metal as well as classical – has enabled them to rapidly zero in on a distinct aesthetic identity.
Recent concert engagements have included performances at Chicago’s Constellation, the Mondavi Performing Arts Center, Berkeley Art Museum, Switchboard Music Festival, FeNAM (Sacramento), April in San- ta Cruz Festival of Contemporary Music, Center for New Music (San Francisco), and the Presidio Sessions series. Additionally, they have held residencies at Stanford, Chapman, Northwestern, UC-Berkeley, UC- Davis and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. The ensemble has received grant awards from Chamber Music America, New Music USA, the Alice M. Ditson Fund at Columbia University, the Zellerbach Fam- ily Foundation, and the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music.
Splinter Reeds is fiscally sponsored through the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music.
www.splinterreeds.com
Program Notes 5_aerify arid conduits | InlandOutlines – Omar Fraire
“
It is truly no feat to blow a tube, and therefore no one would think to gather an audience for the purpose of entertaining them with tube blowing. But if he should do so, and if he should succeed in his aim, then it cannot be a matter of mere tube blowing. Or alternatively, it is a matter of tube blow- ing, but as it turns out we have overlooked the art of tube blowing because we were so proficient at it that it is this new tube blower who is the first to demonstrate what it actually entails, whereby it could be even more effective if he were less expert in tube blowing than the majority of us.
“
FDC
oegf. Human as an artist, inventor, magician, curator, teacher, performer. After having deserted from two universities in México, he specializes in Sonology (Koninklijk Conservatorium - Holland) and holds a Master’s de- gree in Contemporary Art as auditor (Aguascalientes).
His work is inserted into reality by transducing it and functions as an act of resistance. Enjoys collaborative work and his energies oscillate across fields of knowledges/arts. Creator of Punto Ciego Festival and artist of the Gug- genheim Aguascalientes, mostly self-taught although he holds an M.A. with Alvin Lucier at Wesleyan and studies Ph.D. at UVA.
Triac – Ben Luca Robertson
“Triac” investigates self-regulating sonorities and the intersection between tuning and timbre. Through a recursive process of real-time analysis, re- synthesis, and intuitive mapping, the combinatory spectral attributes of the wind quintet and accompanying electronics guide both the tuning and temporal structure of the piece. Applying a mathematical model developed by Pantelis Vassilakis, the composer defines cumulative roughness between harmonic partials—an important feature in how we perceive consonance/ dissonance—as a deterministic function for designing a microtonal tuning system that is sympathetic to the most indelible qualities of each instrument.
Guided by software programmed by the composer, the ensemble manipulates the intensity of individual partials, thereby minimizing or maximizing the listener’s perception of roughness as the piece unfolds. Akin to a “spectral thermostat,” this self-regulating system continually analyzes current conditions (e.g. cumulative spectral roughness), defines new roughness thresholds, calculates what conditions must change to match these thresholds, and directs performers to adjust pitch and dynamics accordingly.
Ben Luca Robertson is a composer, experimental luthier, and co-founder of the independent record label, Aphonia Recordings. His work addresses an interest in autonomous processes, landscape, and biological systems— often supplanting narrative structure with an emphasis on the physicality of sound, spectral tuning systems, and microtonality. Growing up in the inland Pacific Northwest, impressions of Ponderosa pine trees, channel scablands, basalt outcroppings, and relics of boomtown decay continue to haunt his work. Ben holds an M.A. in Music Composition from Eastern Washington University, a B.A. from the Evergreen State College, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Composition and Computer Technologies at the University of Virginia. In the Summer of 2015, he was appointed
to a guest research position at the Tampere Unit for Computer-Human Interactions (TAUCHI) in Finland and recently collaborated with biolo- gists from the University of Idaho to sonify migratory patterns of Chi- nook Salmon. Ben’s work has been featured at New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), Sound & Music Computing (SMC) Conference (Ireland), New York Re-embodied Sound Symposium, Third Practice, Magma, and Olympia Experimental Music Festival.
Musings – Aaron Stepp
“Musings” is an exploration of a piece of music that I love deeply, the Bach’s WTC, Book I, C Major prelude. It is an elegant, clean, and beautiful piece of music that I have a deep connection with. Witold Lutosławski describes listening to music as a composer being “schizophrenic,” listen- ing to and exploring the piece at the same time. I try to bring you along for that journey in my head (through the lovely performers on stage), and compose using the materials of the Bach. Think of the piece as a theme and variations, except the theme is a piece, and the variations occur as the piece unfolds.
Aaron Stepp is a composer from Kentucky. He has completed commissions for TrioArsenal, Orchestra Enigmatic, Merrilee Elliott, KMEA 7th District Honors Band, Eva Legene, the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts, Second/Cycle, and Duo Passionato. He has received performances at SEAMUS, the KMEA Conference, and in Berlin, New York City, Chicago, Riverside, Washington D.C., Quito, and at various universities across the country. He recently finished a significant song cycle for Soprano and Flute named Stone Walls, based on the poetry of Charlottes- ville native Rebecca Morgan Frank. Upcoming projects include a collaboration with poet Annie Kim, a piece for American Trombone Quartet,
a documentary score about women in India, and another collaboration with Rebecca Morgan Frank.
Convection - Juan Carlos Vasquez
“Convection” is a piece for ensemble and electronics that features a transference of spectral energy from one state of white noise into a final state featuring a single sustained pitch, in a way that resembles bulk displace- ment of sonic elements. This composition was written specially for the Splinter Reeds ensemble.
Juan Carlos Vasquez is an award-winning composer, sound artist, and researcher from Colombia. His electroacoustic music works are per- formed constantly around the world and have been premiered in 28 countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia. Vasquez has received creation grants and/or commissions by numerous institutions, including the Nokia Research Center, the Ministry of Culture of Colombia, AVEK (Promotion Center for Audiovisual Culture in Finland), the Finnish National Gallery, the University of Virginia, the Sibelius
Birth Town Foundation, Aalto University, the Arts Promotion Centre in Finland and the CW+ in partnership with the Royal College of Music in London, UK, among others. Vasquez received his education at the Sibel- ius Academy (FI), Aalto University (FI), the University of Virginia (USA), and has taken courses with Andy Farnell, Miller Puckette, Marco Stroppa, Steven Stucky and Jonty Harrison, among others.
As a researcher, Vasquez’ writings can be found at the Computer Music Journal and the proceedings of conferences such as the International Computer Music Conference, the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, the International Sound and Music Computing Conference, and the International Conference on New Inter- faces for Musical Expression.
Official website: www.jcvasquez.com
Centrifuge – Alex Christie
“Centrifuge” is about mass and gravity. The instruments exert force and pull on each other. Some exert more force than others, continually pulling the rest of the ensemble back to a center. This gravity creates an internal motion within the ensemble that in turn produces the slow, heavy motion of the full group. We simultaneously feel the weight of stasis and force of motion.
Alex Christie makes acoustic music, electronic music, and intermedia art in many forms. His work has been called “vibrant”, “interesting, I guess”, and responsible for “ruin[ing] my day”. He has collaborated with artists in a variety of fields and is particularly interested in the design of power structures, systems of interference, absurdist bureaucracy, and indeterminacy in composition. He is currently based in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Recently, Alex’s work has explored the ecology of performance in intermedia art and interactive electronic music. Through real-time audio processing, instrument building, light, video, and theater, Alex expands performance environments to offer multiple lenses through which the audience can experience the work. Alex has performed and presented at a variety of conferences and festivals whose acronyms combine to spell nicedinsaucesfeemmmmmogscabsplot.
Alex serves as faculty, Director of Electronic Music, Director of Composers Forums, and Academic Dean at the Walden School of Music Young Musicians Program. He holds degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory and Mills College and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Composition and Computer Technologies (CCT) at the University of Virginia. Other interests include baseball and geometric shapes.
in the event of my – Becky Brown
When I was in high school, there was a block near me that had a Chinese restaurant, a big craft store, and a shoddy movie theater. When the Chinese place shut down, I realized none of the kids in the area after us would share the memory of trying to bring too many people to sit at one table, ordering the wrong thing off the menu, and then stressing about getting to a movie on time. That’s when I realized what aging felt like. The craft store and the movie theater shut down not long after.
Becky Brown is a composer, harpist, artist, and web designer, interested in producing intensely personal works across the multimedia spectrum. She focuses on narrative, emotional exposure, and catharsis, with a vested interest in using technology and the voice to deeply connect with an audience, wherever they are. Depending on who you talk to, her music is “honest, direct and communicative,” “personal and raw,” or “took me to a place I didn’t want to go.” Brown has been the Technical Director of the Electroacoustic Barn Dance, and Assistant Technical Director for Third Practice and SPLICE Institute. Her music has been performed at SEAMUS, SCI National/Regional, Third Practice New Music Festival, Ball State New Music Festival, and in Beijing, China. Hold Still, her work for live art and electronics, was released on the New Focus Recordings label in 2017.
Night Music – Christopher Luna-Mega
All the musical materials performed by Splinter Reeds are derived from direct transcriptions and arrangements of recordings of the summer dusk and night sounds of insects and other creatures in a Virginia forest. Every movement in the piece is a fragment taken from the 40-minute original recording. The striking increase in density and loudness as dusk becomes night is the guiding formal principle of the piece. The recordings, featured in the electronics, were made with five simultaneous microphones in a pentagonal formation, at a distance of ~30 meters between each mic. Each of the five microphone analyses and transcriptions was assigned to an instrument (mic 1 to ob.; mic 2 to cl., etc.), rotating the pairings in each movement. The multi-channel recording sought an expanded listen- ing field resulting from the different microphone responses and placings. Among the various features of the night sounds, one particularly caught my ears: constantly microtonally morphing triads and their aggregates resulting from the superimposition of the multitude of crickets.
Christopher Luna-Mega is a composer and improviser from Mexico City. He studied Composition at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México –UNAM (B.M.) and Mills College (M.A.), as well as Film/Com- munication Theory at the Universidad Iberoamericana –UIA, Mexico City (B.A.). His work analyzes sounds from natural and urban environments and translates them into notated music for performers and electronics. His music has been performed by the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Montreal-Toronto Art Orchestra, New Thread Quartet, Arditti String Quartet and JACK Quartet, among others. His music has been featured in festivals such as the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Seoul International Computer Music Festival (Gwanju), AgelicA (Bologna), Tectonics (Reykjavik), Tectonics (Glasgow), L’Off (Montreal), Avant X (Toronto), Mills Music Now (Oakland, CA), and the International Forum for New Music “Manuel Enriquez” (Mexico City). Luna-Mega is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia.
Our society is aging, and, thanks partly to the science and success of advanced health care, the journey into one’s last years is often long and richly rewarding. But our medicalization of aging also means that older adults are longtime patients entangled in complex, costly, fragmented, and sometimes ad-libbed “systems” of individualized care that are challenging for them and their caregivers to navigate. When elders’ health and functional status changes, ways of managing their care may come undone, just when robust attention is most needed to effect transitions in their care—and the goals of care.
In this Medical Center Hour, distinguished gerontologist Mary Naylor offers her pioneering approach to the design, evaluation, and dissemination of health care innovations that has at once improved outcomes for chronically ill older adults and their caregivers and lowered health care costs. Her collaborative work with an interprofessional team has yielded the Transitional Care Model, a cost-effective model led by an advanced-practice nurse that improves the transitions of frail elders as they move through both their final years and our fractured health care system.
The Zula Mae Baber Bice Memorial Lecture, School of Nursing
The Koppaka Family Foundation Lecture in Medical Humanities, School of Medicine
Co-presented with the School of Nursing and the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Humanities, School of Medicine
Our bodies are malleable, changing with age and the demands we place on them. And throughout our life, how we stand—our posture—defines us as healthy or ill, able or disabled, beautiful or ugly, even human or not human. The history of posture is also the history of our reading of human anatomy. From the ancients to the moderns, how the body’s anatomy is understood has shaped understandings of what is human (did Neanderthal Man “stand up straight” or slouch?), what is beautiful (“Posture Queen” competitions in 20th century America), what is patriotic (no slouching in ranks!). What we ascribe to upright posture is very much being the perfect human, today and projected into the past. In this Medical Center Hour, distinguished scholar Sander Gilman reflects on how our understanding of posture figures in the history of anatomy and how the history of anatomy has helped craft our understanding of posture. What do shifting cultural perspectives on bodily uprightness tell us about the claims society makes with respect to who we are and what we are able to do?
Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series, Claude Moore Health Sciences Library; and the Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life.
This program is also offered in conjunction with UVA's second biennial disability studies symposium, "Disability Across the Disciplines," 19 February 2016.
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
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.
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
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
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.
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).
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.
WAI from New Zealand with the EcoSono Ensemble:
a collaboration across cultures, histories and ecosystems Toi tu te whenua, Ngaro atu te tangata
People come and go but the land remains
WAI features Mina Ripia, Maaka Phat, Uta Te Whanga and Tuari Dawson.
EcoSono Ensemble features Matthew Burtner, Glen Whitehead, Kevin Davis, Christopher Luna-Mega, and I-Jen Fang
Punga Shores WAI
Hine Te Iwaiwa WAI
Sands that Move Glen Whitehead
Ki A Korua WAI
Festival of Whispers Matthew Burtner
Ko Te Rerenga WAI
Windrose Matthew Burtner
Kāore Hoki WAI
Improvisation
Tirama WAI
The Speed of Sound in an Ice Rain Matthew Burtner
Mike Gassman, electric guitar
Hine Te Ihorangi WAI
This concert and the WAI residency are generously sponsored by the Gassmann Fund for Innovation In Music and the Coastal Futures Conservatory.
Concert III - Program Notes
WAI and EcoSono explore intercultural histories through the exchange of musical invention in collaboration with the environment. Combining the ancient “Punga” (anchor) and the “Poi” technologies with contemporary computer music and ecoacoustic approaches, WAI and EcoSono engage in interactive improvisations through sound, song, movement and ecology.
Punga Shores
The concert opens with Punga Shores, a field recording of the place where Maaka discovered the Punga anchor which became the basis and metaphor for our collaboration.
Hine Te Iwaiwa - WAI
Hine Te Iwaiwa was written by a family member Nuki Tākao and local weavers, when they were preparing to begin their craft. Hine Te Iwaiwa is the principal goddess of Te Whare Pora – The House of Weaving. Hine Te Iwaiwa represents the arts pursued by women. Along with this, she is a guardian over childbirth. For us this song is our connection to the Poi. Hine Te Iwaiwa is also the head of the Aho Tapairu, an aristocratic female line of descent. Sometimes this goddess is referred to as Hina, the female personification of the moon.
Sands That Move - Glen Whitehead
Sands That Move is based on the Great Sand Dunes National Monument highlighting the long history of this site and the people who, from age-to- age, have stood in awe and wonder of this geographical phenomenon at the northern edge of the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado. These constant shifting sands have gone by many names from the earliest people to the Navajo who called it Saa waap maa nache,“sand that moves,” and the Apaches who settled in New Mexico who called it Sei-anyedi, “it goes up and down.” This fixed media piece was created out of many interacting, free- flowing evolving actions including rapidly moving college students from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs taking great effort to conjure the dunes as a sonic membrane. The trumpet-based computer accompaniment emulates these efforts and starts gathering its own momentum much like a dune fueling its own energy once it is engaged.
Ki A Korua - WAI
“Mina’s father wrote this song for his parents (Mina’s grandparents) when they passed on. It speaks of the tears that flow for them; we remember the love and joy that they shared with us.”
Festival of Whispers - Matthew Burtner
Whispers from people and instruments past and present interact as the sea erodes the foundation of the building. The piece was commissioned by the Athenaeum Library in La Jolla, CA.
Ko Te Rerenga - WAI
“Mina is of Ngā Puhi and Ngāti Whātua decent on her father’s side and Ngāti Kahungunu decent on her mother’s side. This song is a history lesson that talks of the time when Māori of Ngā Puhi decent were populating the northern part of Aotearoa/NZ. Traditionally we have many songs like this that talk of history, passed down through the ages, so that we never forget people, places and experiences of the past. Gifts for the future generations.”
Windrose - Matthew Burtner
A windrose is a measure of the winds’ directions in a specific location across a period of time. The piece uses original software that allows the performer to play the windrose of the concert location.
Kāore Hoki - WAI
Kāore Hoki speaks of a passionate expression of grief and sorrow for ancestors whom have passed. Never ending is the love and never ending is the heartache.
Improvisation with the sounds of Australian birds, Tasmanian Devils and cedar trees.
Tirama - WAI
Tirama was written by Maaka’s first cousin Hēmi Te Peeti. Matariki is the Māori name given to the Pleiades star system. When it comes into view it is commonly agreed as the start of the Māori New Year, generally around May or June, and signals a time to prepare the land for the year ahead, to prepare and store food and to meet and discuss issues that affect the families and sub tribes. Tirama names some of the stars and also the actions taken at the time of the Māori New Year.
The Speed of Sound in an Ice Rain - Matthew Burtner
An ice rain crackles on the leaves of a magnolia tree. Musicians perform changing density, temperature and humidity, altering the speed of the sound.
Hine Te Ihorangi - WAI
Hine Te Ihorangi is the goddess and personification of rain. This was written by Keri Tākao and it talks of what happens when you are blessed with life. It speaks of the heavens, water and it’s life-giving properties. This connects us to what we as humans are mostly made up of, and what the world is mostly covered by, Water.
Toccata by Joo Won Park is a solo live electroacoustic piece for
found objects and the SuperCollider program. Joo Won performs
this piece by scratching, rubbing, tapping, and pushing the objects
in different ways on a board with a contact microphone. What you
hear is the sound of those objects being digitally processed. Every
time you see him clicking on a laptop, you hear different effect
combinations. In the pre-performance ritual, he mentally prepares
himself to create a wide range of sounds in a nervous and hectic
mood. The performance guide and the SuperCollider patch for
Toccata can be found at www.joowonpark.net/Toccata.pdf
smooth is piece written for the KYMA signal processing system and Wacom Tablet interface.
Limited Aggregation, by Max Tfirn and Seung-Hye Kim, is a collaborative piece for percussion and computer that explores sounds that are found by hitting different percussion instruments and modified by live processing. Each composer in the collaboration composes new material and edits each other’s material on the fly. This blends the composers’ compositional styles. Each sound from the percussion and computer interacts with every other, creating larger sounds and richer textures. There are also moments where the component sounds are zoomed in on that creates a contest between the larger built sounds and the microscopic natural sounds. These microscopic zoomed sounds are products of analyzing the spectrum and taking certain characteristics of the sound and filtering out others. The changing length of the processed sounds also reinforces the small/microscopic and zoomed aspects.
Within a Sand Dune, by Erik Deluca, scored for amplified percussion quartet with one player, involved a compositional system inspired by time listening to the breath of the Great Sand Dunes in Colorado. The percussion quartet transduces the sounds of the dunes, and the composer’s experience listening to them.
37720, by Rachel Trapp, is a construction of found sound shaped through a process of unfolding telematic communication. Acoustic and inductive recordings of the composers’ simultaneous transit rituals are transformed and positioned in the performance space according to the composers’ shared sensibilities, creating an audible landscape of movement across time, space, and subjectivity.
Look the Other Way, by Kristina Warren: “I explore what I call “found text.” First I compiled texts from several sources, including novels, poems, and newsreels. Then I digitally recorded myself singing- speaking them, and next used various means to obscure the words (e.g., recording to and from tape, intensive layering, etc). This serves to emphasize the sonic and de-emphasize the semantic qualities of the source texts. In performance, I modulate the resulting texture by way of live, semi-semantic vocal input. All this aims to re-consider both signification and authorship.”
Touching, by Eli Stine, is an exploration of surface: surface sounds of different objects and the surface layer of musical structure. Sonic materials come exclusively from recordings of touching, leading to friction, leading to striking of surfaces and objects and their resultant resonances. The sounds of these objects meet and interact, but no interaction is more than skin deep.
Hyperions, by Paul Turowski, is software that presents an interactive context for musical improvisation. While the performer is free to make specific choices about pitch, timing and activity level, their choices are recognized by the computer via microphone input and significantly affect the dynamic physics-based system. Chance- based factors, including the gradual advance of destructive agents, make the piece akin to a tower defense game and allow unique visual and sonic textures to emerge with each performance.
Trans, by Ryan Maguire, is a real-time sonification of a computer transcription of a transalpine scene. The original auditory moment, amidst a herd of cows along a Swiss mountain pass awaiting an approaching thunderstorm, is transformed via machine/human listening and digital transmission. Through repeated transmutation the transience of this particular “found sound” is transpired. In general, all signals are transmodified, and transparency is only relative. The transitory can never be truly transfixed because, first, we have only its trace and, second, communication necessitates transduction wherein its substance is transmuted. Nevertheless, might transpersonal knowledge of such ephemerality facilitate transcendent experience and/or esthesic trance?
Concert I
Friday, February 21, 2020 at 8:00 pm The Bridge PAI
featuring Ryoko Akama
David Tudor’s Rainforest IV Sound Art Students
Violinguistics Three Blind MICE
Dark Parts Becky Brown
Remembering with Objects Heather Frasch & Ted Coffey
Deep Map #1 Michele Zaccagnini
Interruptions in an Endless Expanse Max Tfirn
(shimatsu) Ryoko Akama
Rainforest IV — Sound Art Students
Installation by David Tudor 1973
Realized by students of Sound Art in Practice
Rainforest IV by David Tudor runs found sounds through found objects. By sending sounds through materials, the resonant nodes of the materials are released, creating a new kind of sound that blends the sounds and objects together. According to Tudor, the concept for the piece grew out of a “dream-vision of an orchestra of loudspeakers, each speaker being as unique as any musical instrument.” The students designed or chose their own objects, decided on which sounds and came to a consensus about placement.
Participants are encourage to move around the installation and explore the sounds close up. They can carefully touch the objects to feel the vibrations as well as listen more closely.
Violinguistics — Three Blind Mice
Violinguistics: Electro-acoustic phonetic reduplication through violin
morphologies of formant-shifting nonconcatenative morphemes
Dark Parts — Becky Brown
A liminal space is a liminal space is a lmnial spa ce i paace A limin s pa li mna space is space is space is a liimin lnaa spi liminal liminal spsp ANimal speci le scepim nillima ellaminis cesna alimin aces laces animal special alleminiam asp case is a kn i. A kn i. A kn i. A liminal spa is ce f. A kni. f. F. F>
Remembering with Objects — Ted Coffey & Heather Frasch
Duo Coffey and Frasch will realize this text score by Frasch which maps personal connections among memory, places, and self — and the objects that remind us of those things.
Deep Map #1 — Michele Zaccagnini
The piece is a recent development of a practice I am developing that I named “deep mapping”: deep mapping is an approach that allows the composer to store and render musical data into visuals by “catching” the data at its source, at a compositional stage. The advantages of this approach are: accuracy and discreteness in the representation of musical features; computational efficiency; and, more abstractly, the stimulation of a practice of audiovisual composition that encourages composers to envision their multimedia output from the early stages of their work. In particular, this piece explores ways of rendering synchronicity between same or similar patterns so that when synchronization actually happens, one can experience it not only aurally but visually.
Interruptions in an Endless Expanse — Max Tfirn
Interruptions in an Endless Expanse is a composition for interactive electronics, including various drone synths, guitar pedals, sequencers, and live coding. The composition takes shape through a series of long, drone sounds that slowly morph into one another. As the piece progresses, new sounds are introduced that break away from what was previously heard culminating in sonic disorder. Interruptions in an Endless Expanse takes its name from the idea of a made-up scenery being endless to the eye. Looking in any direction gives the viewer the same sight. While the environment changes, the endless expanse seems to go unchanged. It is only when the observer takes a deeper look around that the details start to change and the surroundings take a helter-skelter, eldritch turn.
(shimatsu) — Ryoko Akama
i.e. beginning + ending management
dealing
settlement
cleaning up
getting rid of
(usually bad) end result
This is the fifth of her solo performance series, shimatsu, with contraptions made out of found objects and simple electronic devices, creating a subtle, sometimes violently silent, listening situation.
Concert II
Saturday February 22, 2020 at 8:00 pm Old Cabell Hall
featuring Olivia Block
Zipper Music - Judith Shatin
Cameron Church and Nelly Zevitz, zippers Max Tfirn, controller
A Chinese Triptych - Juan Carlos Vasquez
Sonic Physiography of a Time-Stretched Glacier - Matthew Burtner
for percussion and computer, I-Jen Fang, percussion
palimpsest | erasedGavotte (Himno de los durmientes II or Los Olvidados) -Omar Fraire
Reverie - Leah Reid
Locked In - Michele Zaccagnini
I-Jen Fang, percussion
October, 1984 - Olivia Block
Concert II — Program Notes Zipper Music — Judith Shatin
Zipper Music is scored for 2 amplified zipper players with interactive electronics performed by either 1 or 2 MIDI controllists, each operating a Max patch. Composer/technologist Max Tfirn created the Max patch in consultation with me, a process with a great deal of delightful experimentation. Zipper Music forms part of my Quotidian Music series, embracing the musicality afforded by everyday objects, and creating accessible opportunities for performers who do not have traditional musical training.
The zipper score consists of icons on a time-line grid, with specific symbols for one to four pulls, as well as a variety of symbol groupings and movement indications. There are also theatrical directions for the players as they interact with one another. The controllist(s) score consists of a line on a time-grid, whose thickness LMH (low, medium or high) indicates levels of processing, with additional shapes designed to suggest degree of sharpness and suddenness of knob and slider change. A flat line indicates amplification without further processing. The piece is performable using a wide variety of controllers. Ideally, they should include multiple knobs for each of 4 – 7 sliders plus a master gain slider. However, it can easily be performed with fewer.
A Chinese Triptych — Juan Carlos Vasquez
A Chinese Triptych was composed with recordings from an extensive sound documentary made by the composer in the Chinese cities of Hangzhou, Suzhou, Shanghai, Wuxi, Harbin, and Beijing. The piece overlaps sonic events from the rural, the industrial, and the digital China in a single flowing musical discourse, attempting to represent the full range of highly contrasting ways of living in China. The piece lasts exactly 6 minutes, a number that is given in China the connotation of events “flowing smoothly.”
The form and proportion of the parts are inspired by the triptych, an art format comprised of three thematically-interrelated parts in which the middle panel is usually the largest.
Sonic Physiography of a Time-Stretched Glacier — Matthew Burtner
Sonic Physiography of a Time-Stretched Glacier (2014) was commissioned by Brandon Bell with support from the Presser Music Award. The music was created from a recording of Alaska’s Root Glacier. The unique and visceral presence of glaciers is disappearing across the planet because we live in a time of ice melting. Sonic Physiography of a Time-Stretched Glacier tries to stop the glacial melt through signal processing by freezing time, suspending the listener between droplets and a single droplet of melting ice.
palimpsest | erased Gavotte (Himno de los durmientes II or Los Olvidados) — Omar Fraire
As an exercise in the act of destruction as a creative input, I took Bach’s Gavotte en Rondo from the English Suite II and tried to play it as fast as possible, depressing the keys but trying not to hit the strings. This piece was the first one I learned on the piano; the exercise allowed me to realize how our compositional narratives read the tradition. The notion of removing what is supposed to be music, reveals a kind of unwanted sound activity that belongs more to the encounter of my body with the sound object. And of course, some notes appear but more like accidents.
Reverie — Leah Reid
Reverie is an acousmatic composition that leads the listener through an immersive fantasy centered around deconstructed music boxes. The work is comprised of eight sections that alternate between explorations of the music boxes’ gears and chimes. In the work, the music boxes’ sounds are pulled apart, exaggerated, expanded, and combined with other sounds whose timbres and textures are reminiscent of the original. As the piece unfolds, the timbres increase in spectral and textural density, and the associations become more and more fantastical. Gears are transformed into zippers, coins, chainsaws, motorcycles, and fireworks, and the chimes morph into rainstorms, all sizes of bells, pianos, and more.
Locked In — Michele Zaccagnini
This piece is written around the idea of rhythms oscillating around regular and irregular pulses. In particular, the different parts are generated by applying the idea of "non-linear sequencing," i.e., distorting the playback of a regular pattern by applying a non-linear time-line. There is no large structure in this piece, rather it is a collection of Etudes.
October, 1984 — Olivia Block
October, 1984 is a composition for found microcassette tape, electronically processed breath, organelle, field recordings, piano, and descending tones. Each emerging sound follows the envelope of the preceding sound, conveying a circular progression of aural cause and effect. In the logic of this sound world, breath causes a flood of water, piano causes descending tones. These processes accumulate over time into a roiling, unwieldily storm. Many of the lowest sounds are experienced in the body as vibrations. Through the course of sonic events, October, 1984 emphasizes themes related to time, loss, and memory.
Acclaimed physician-writer Christine Montross (Body of work, 2007; and Falling into the fire, 2013) discusses how diving deeply into her most challenging patient encounters has led her to the ancient concept of "abiding" as a lost tenet of patient care. A psychiatrist and medical educator, Dr. Montross speaks in defense of repugnance, and encourages physicians and doctors-in-training to acknowlege, rather than suppress the discomforts which naturally arise in the practice of medicine.
A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has brought transformational changes to the healthcare system, including, in some ACA programs, movement away from a pay-for-volume system to pay-for-performance or outcome. Three programs exemplify this approach: readmission penalties, no payment for selected hospital-acquired conditions (HACs), and value-based purchasing. To date, the HAC nonpayment program has targeted prevention of central-line-associated bloodstream infections, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, selected surgical site infections, and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) or Clostridium difficile infections. With better understanding, improved procedural practices, and closer monitoring, more of these infections are proving preventable; infection rates, including for MRSA, have dramatically decreased. In this Medical Center Hour, distinguished medical epidemiologist Dr. William Jarvis discusses these successes, including their financial implications, and how further collaboration between clinicians and infection control programs can prevent even more hospital-acquired conditions.
The Hayden-Farr Lecture in Epidemiology and Virology/Medical Grand Rounds
Co-presented with the Department of Medicine, UVA
Over the past decade, several leading U.S. medical schools have developed courses combining art appreciation and clinical observation skills. Medical students venture from the clinical setting to the art gallery, where they are challenged by gallery educators and medical professors to observe and to articulate what they see in the art before them. Such courses aim to cultivate and deepen students' visual literacy, verbal facility, and tolerance for ambiguity with the expectation that more finely tuned visual observation and communication skills will help them to be better doctors.
Working with a task force in the UVA School of Medicine, Fralin Museum of Art academic curator Jordan Love has created and piloted The Clinician's Eye, an interactive workshop that aims to refine apprentice clinicians' skills through training in visual analysis. This Medical Center Hour invites audience members to participate—hands-on—in a version of this workshop.
A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture
The history of eugenics is often characterized as a cautionary tale of life in the bad old days, when pseudoscientific assumptions about genetic determinism provided a respectable veneer that enabled barely submerged racism, xenophobia, and blatant discrimination against persons with disabilities to take root in American law. Some argue that, today, our science is sound, our attitudes enlightened; we need not be hobbled by fear of long-expired bad eugenic habits.
In this Medical Center Hour, Paul Lombardo, who has written extensively on eugenics and the law in America, challenges such assumptions, asserting that the same tendencies that led to a century of eugenic law and policy continue to inform our public debate over democratic values and the proper role of science as a tool for solving social problems.
The Joan Echtenkamp Klein Memorial Lecture in the History of the Health Sciences
Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series, Historical Collections, Claude Moore Health Sciences Library
We hear much these days about the widening gap in America between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots. Inequality is all around us, and it exacts a serious toll on health. The poor die sooner. Blacks die sooner. And poor urban blacks die sooner than almost all other Americans. Indeed, there is a 35-year difference in life expectancy between America's wealthiest (and healthiest) and poorest (and sickest) neighborhoods.
Internist David Ansell MD has worked for four decades in hospitals serving Chicago's poorest communities. While he's witnessed first-hand the structural violence—racism, economic exploitation, and discrimination—responsible for the "death gap," he argues that geography need not be destiny. In this Medical Center Hour, Dr. Ansell outlines how we can address this national health crisis and act to remedy the circumstances that rob many Americans of their dignity and their lives.
Co-presented with Alpha Omega Alpha National Medical Honor Society, UVA chapter
Nimura, Janice P., University of Virginia. School of Medicine
Summary:
The world recoiled at the idea of a woman doctor, yet Elizabeth Blackwell persisted, and in 1849 became the first woman in the U.S. to receive an MD. Her achievement made her an icon. Her younger sister Emily followed her, eternally eclipsed despite being the more brilliant physician of the pair. Together, they founded the first hospital staffed entirely by women, in New York City. While the Doctors Blackwell were visionary and tenacious—they prevailed against a resistant male medical establishment—they weren't always aligned with women's movements, or even with each other. In this Medical Center Hour, biographer Janice Nimura celebrates the Blackwells as pioneers, change agents, and, for women in medicine today, compelling yet somewhat equivocal role models.
Co-presented with Historical Collections, Claude Moore Health Sciences Library
A documentary film series and website about Virginia's history since the Civil War.
Episode 1– New Deal Virginia explores two significant changes in Virginia history: the creation of Shenandoah National Park and the electrification of rural Virginia. Both stories trace the effects of the federal government on the lives of everyday rural Virginians in the 1930s. Letters, maps, newspaper stories and teaching resources accompany this exploration and film (30 minutes).
Episode 3 – Massive Resistance became Virginia's policy to prevent school desegregation in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954. Many of Virginia's white leaders resisted integration with all of their considerable political and legal means. The story of massive resistance and of black Virginians' protests against segregation began in the early 1950s and continues today. This two-part film (one hour) traces the history of massive resistance in Virginia and considers some of its legacies. "Massive Resistance" was an Emmy Nominee in 2000 of the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and will be shown nationally on PBS in February 2002 for Black History Month.
Episode 4 – Virginia Fights World War II explores the transformative changes that Virginia experienced in World War II. Virginia mobilized hundreds of thousands of citizens during World War II and became the home base for a host of navy, army munitions, and defense industries. Virginia's soldiers fought in the Pacific and landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day. This two-part film (one hour) follows the stories of everyday Virginians, those who fought at D-Day and those who patrolled Virginia beaches, worked in the munition plants, flew missions in Europe, and fell in love during the war. This site contains the image archive for the film--over 1,600 images of Virginia or Virginians in World War II.