Leicester Media School

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    A long shot: Will disabled people ever be treated equitably by the film and TV industry?
    (Sociological Review Foundation, 2024-02-06) Lee, Jason
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    Culture, Madness and Wellbeing: Beyond the Sociology of Insanity
    (Springer, 2023-12-12) Lee, Jason
    This book is a unique study of the historical, theoretical, and cultural interpretations of ‘madness’ including interviews with those who have experiences of ‘madness’. It takes a transdisciplinary approach, employing historical, psychological, and sociological perspectives through an intersectional lens. This work explains how the prioritization of thinking over feeling in Western thought means the transrational imagination has frequently been negated in tackling mental health with detrimental results. This book, therefore, examines creative media, especially film, as a transrational form of human expression for healing and wellbeing, along with television, theatre, social media, music, and computer games. ‘Madness’ with regards to gender, sexuality, adolescence, and class in media and film is interrogated, as well as ‘madness’ and race through a focus on colonialism, post-colonialism, and psychiatry. It analyses group psychosis, including celebrity culture, and the ‘madness’ of leaders and gurus. This book challenges the lasting influence of the Age of Reason by furthering our understanding of the value of transrationality and the diverse ways of being human.
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    Rebellious Creations, Monstrous Animals and (Un)Natural Disasters: The Jurassic Park Franchise and Box Office Hit Patterns
    (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023) Krämer, Peter
    After outlining the overall success and impact of the whole Jurassic Park franchise, with a focus on the United States, this essay locates the Jurassic Park films within long-term trends by examining US box office charts with regards to stories about humanity’s creations turning against it and about humans encountering monstrous animals. This is followed by a discussion of the success of the Jurassic Park films, and of box office hit patterns, outside the US and globally, whereby particular attention is paid to those films which, since the 1970s, have dramatically exceeded existing records for non-US and global box office earnings: Jaws (1975), E.T. (1982), Jurassic Park (1993), Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009). The chapter highlights similarities between these five films, mainly to do with their focus on human hubris and humanity’s interaction with the natural environment.
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    [Interview with John Young]
    (Focal Press, 2023-12-20) Knight-Hill, Andrew; Margetson, Emma
    An interview with the composer John Young touching on aspects of the creative process with digital audio, the composer's relationship with sound and the embodiment of meaning in music and sound.
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    Filaments and Phases
    (Empreintes Digitales, 2023-06-03) Young, John; Perril, S. D.
    'Filaments and Phases' is a setting of a section of Simon Perril's poem 'Sun Deck Set Cogitation'. Perril's poem is derived from two texts by Claude Lévi-Strauss (description of a sunset written in 1935 while en route from Marseilles to Brazil and another written on the 1941 voyage on which he escaped occupied France) through a process of textual erasure in which new text is created by selective scanning of an initial one. Perril's recorded reading of 'Deck One' from 'Sun Deck Set Cogitation' is subject to a similar treatment in 'concrete' sonic form, perforated and reconstituted within an immersive framework of digitally synthesised and processed sound forms. 'Filaments and Phases' was first performed at the Electroacoustic Spring 2023 Festival in Rethymno, Crete.
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    Responding to the pandemic through enhancing embedded mental wellbeing activity
    (International Federation of National Teaching Fellows, 2023-06-27) Allman, Zoe
    As De Montfort University in Leicester (UK) was particularly impacted by pandemic lockdowns an interdisciplinary team recognised the need to re-scope a project to ensure that as many students as possible across the University had the opportunity to engage with mental wellbeing support and enhancement through curriculum and timetabled activity. The new project would be underpinned by five core strands that included the expansion of existing online support, the development of new welfare-based resources, enhanced online sessions for academic colleagues, a renewed academic development offer, and the sharing of best practice. Project delivery commenced within just four months, with activity piloted throughout 2020-21. Activities were reviewed and evaluated monthly, and developed for effective and impactful transition to ‘business as usual’ in 2021-22. The project enabled the University to support its staff to embed mental wellbeing approaches for the benefit of students during and beyond the pandemic.
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    What support students need to succeed in work placements
    (Times Higher Education, 2023-01-17) Begum, Saheda; Allman, Zoe
    Students in work-based learning placements need support before, through and when returning from their experience. Here is advice for universities and academic tutors to maximise the benefits of the opportunity for all.
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    Embedding mental wellbeing in the curriculum: a collaborative definition and suite of examples in practice
    (Frontiers, 2024-01-11) Lister, Kate; Allman, Zoe
    The sector-wide challenge of student mental wellbeing within higher education (HE) requires universities to systematically and holistically enhance their practice and approaches. This paper recounts how an interdisciplinary team of academics, senior leaders, professional services and Students’ Union representatives across seven institutions responded to this need by collaboratively identifying definitions, good-practice for replication, and benefits of activity to embed mental wellbeing in the curriculum. Considering and exploring definitions across HE, our study provides clarity and reference points for definitions, particularly around the nature of “embedding” in relation to mental wellbeing for students. Five core themes for mental wellbeing in HE were identified and defined through this study: flourishing or thriving, balance, community and belonging, dynamic, and inclusive. Furthermore, a five-point definition of embeddedness developed; it being modeled in practice, tailored to needs, inherent in values, ethos and culture, a holistic partnership approach, and represented in strategy supported by appropriate resource. These are represented as a Mental Wellbeing Embeddedness Framework. The study sought good-practice examples from across seven HE providers, presented as example resources for replication by others in the sector seeking to address similar challenges within their institutions. Twenty-seven examples were developed into an online open educational resource toolkit, providing clear examples for use in a range of settings and responding to different needs around student mental wellbeing. Each example sharing its original rationale for development and clear list of benefits to be seen from replicating the initiative. Sector feedback to date indicates referencing the definitions activity and expanding this for use in other contexts, replication of good-practice examples in different settings, and support for identification of the benefits that can be achieved from embedding mental wellbeing in the curriculum. This paper is a call to action, shaping the future direction of student mental wellbeing, supported by policy, practice, and constant innovation.
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    Feminist HCI and narratives of design semantics in DIY music hardware
    (Frontiers, 2024-01-09) Jawad, Karolina; Xambo, Anna
    Feminist Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) integrates gender, diversity, equity, and social justice into technology research and design, fostering a more inclusive and socially aware technology landscape. This article explores the design semantics of ten Do-it-Yourself (DIY) musical instruments created by women builders. Design semantics refers to the associations conveyed by designed objects so as to identity, emotions, performance or the environment and their sensory qualities such as shape, size, touch or vision. Together these associations and qualities can establish design narratives that influence the way meaning is ascribed. We conduct an analysis of these instruments to answer the question of how fabulations of design semantics, through the lens of feminist HCI principles, can reshape our understanding of gender bias in object design within the realm of DIY musical instruments constructed by women builders. Our investigation uncovers a feminist narrative taking shape as we found out that DIY instruments design contributes to the fabulation of alternative futures that challenge prevalent current gender expectations associated with commercial music hardware. DIY instruments provide a platform for questioning established gender norms, enabling the development of technologies that embrace diverse perspectives and maintain a technical identity.
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    Experiencing Organised Sounds: The listening experience across sound-based works
    (Routledge, 2023-12-21) Landy, Leigh
    Experiencing Organised Sounds investigates a wide horizon of sound-based works using a template consistently across its 16 studies. It has been written for both specialist and non-specialist readers aiming to address means of increasing appreciation and understanding related to the experience of sonic creativity (music involving any sounds, not just musical notes) across this repertoire as well as to launch a discussion about how the reception of sonic creativity can be influenced by the circumstances of listening, in particular, regarding the qualitative difference between the in-situ as opposed to mediated experience. Although listening is the volume’s focus, complementary information from the musicians is offered to facilitate holistic work overviews. As the first composition presented was composed by a 15-year-old, the intention is to demonstrate that what might be considered a niche area of the contemporary arts is one in which both increased appreciation and participation could and should easily be achieved. The book’s work discussions are divided over three central chapters focused on fixed-medium compositions, performed and sound art works. Experiencing Organised Sounds can be used as an undergraduate textbook, by experienced readers or those new to the area. All works discussed and related materials are available to readers online.
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    Schottky barrier formation on r.f.-plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposited hydrogenated amorphous carbon
    (Elsevier, 1998-12-09) Paul, Shashi; Clough, F. J.
    This paper reports the fabrication and electrical characterization of sub-micron metal contacts to thin films of hydrogenated amorphous carbon deposited by the r.f.-plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition technique. The I–V characteristics of “large” area (diameter 0.5 mm) top metal contacts to amorphous carbon are consistent with bulk limited conduction by the Poole–Frenkel mechanism. The I–V characteristics of sub-micron metal contacts, formed at different locations on the same amorphous carbon film, range from symmetrical to highly asymmetrical with forward-to-reverse rectification ratios up to three orders of magnitude. Asymmetrical I–V characteristics and a linear C−2–V response confirm, for the first time, Schottky barrier formation at the metal/amorphous carbon interface. Spatial non-uniformity in the composition of the hydrogenated amorphous carbon surface is indicated, which mirrors bulk inhomogeneity.
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    Editorial: Live Coding Sonic Creativities
    (Cambridge University Press, 2023-07-31) Xambo, Anna; Roma, Gerard; Magnusson, Thor
    Live coding has evolved considerably since its emergence in the early 2000s, as presented in the seminal 2003 Organised Sound (8/3) article ‘Live Coding in Laptop Performance’ by Collins, McLean, Rohrhuber and Ward. Differentiating itself from early laptop music and other computer music, it is a performance practice that promotes the sharing of the musical process with the audience, emphasising the code itself as a form of musical notation. Live coding has been adopted into various fields of art, but as musical algorithmic thinking, it has been explored and developed by many practitioners and collectives across the world up to the present and there is a broad range of divergent practices within the field. We are therefore thrilled to present the special issue ‘Live Coding Sonic Creativities’, which is the first special issue on live coding in Organised Sound. This has been a long journey of almost two years of work. The core research question of this special issue concerns the idiosyncratic sonic creativities that emerge from the practice of live coding and what new sonic material live coding has enabled. The collection of articles is genuinely diverse in terms of themes including new theories and philosophies on live coding, diversity and inclusion and contemporary sociocultural processes embodied by different communities of practice. The articles represent a breadth in musical genres, approaches to live coding, interdisciplinary practice related to sound-based creativity, innovative sound and music composition, and new paradigms and environments that enable new ways of thinking and working with sound, as well as speculative futures and new imaginaries of live coding.
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    Discovering Creative Commons Sounds in Live Coding
    (Cambridge University Press, 2023-08-14) Xambo, Anna
    This article reports on a study to identify the new sonic challenges and opportunities for live coders, computer musicians and sonic artists using MIRLCa, a live-coding environment powered by an artificial intelligence (AI) system. MIRLCa works as a customisable worldwide sampler, with sounds retrieved from the collective online Creative Commons (CC) database Freesound. The live-coding environment was developed in SuperCollider by the author in conversation with the live-coding community through a series of workshops and by observing its use by 16 live coders, including the author, in work-in-progress sessions, impromptu performances and concerts. This article presents a qualitative analysis of the workshops, work-in-progress sessions and performances. The findings identify (1) the advantages and disadvantages, and (2) the different compositional strategies that result from manipulating a digital sampler of online CC sounds in live coding. A prominent advantage of using sound samples in live coding is its low-entry access suitable for music improvisation. The article concludes by highlighting future directions relevant to performance, composition, musicology and education.
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    Cross-sector collaboration to enhance embedding mental wellbeing
    (Association of National Teaching Fellows, 2023-10-13) Allman, Zoe
    In the week recognising World Mental Health Day 2023, this article highlights an example of collaboration to enhance mental wellbeing, as presented at the ANTF Symposium 2023.
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    Embedding Mental Wellbeing - A Collaborative Approach
    (2023-10-10) Allman, Zoe
    De Montfort University’s Embedding Mental Wellbeing team harnesses the power of academics, professional services and the Students’ Union in collaborative partnership to embed mental wellbeing activity across the University. Responding to the University community and the impact of Covid-19, their project achieved cross-institutional transformation and cross-sector impact, and was recognised by Advance HE with a Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE, 2022). In this presentation Zoë explores the collaborative activities that empower De Montfort University’s ongoing approach to embedding mental wellbeing.
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    The Story of Woody & Diane: Stars and Hit Patterns in the New Hollywood
    (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023) Krämer, Peter
    This essay uses a range of metrics to establish Annie Hall as the (commercial and critical) high point in Woody Allen's career, and then explores the film's place in Diane Keaton's career, discussing how her performance in the title role relates to her earlier films. The subsequent analysis of the film's marketing, critical reception and general impact reveals her centrality to the film's success, which was however rarely acknowledged by reviewers at the time. Finally, the essay shows that the success of Annie Hall came at the beginning of a (short-lived) revival of the importance of female stars and female genre preferences in American cinema, after a decade of extreme marginalisation of women in Hollywood.
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    The Past, Present and Future in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
    (Springer VS, 2023-07-07) Krämer, Peter
    This essay takes personal as well as generational and transgenerational experiences as a point of departure for a series of reflections on Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). These concern the ‘archival turn’ in Film Studies, specifically in scholarly work on Kubrick, and also the role played by existential threats to humanity in the prehistory and development of Kubrick’s masterpiece and in its reception. Against this background, the essay offers both familiar and new perspectives on the meanings as well as the historical and contemporary resonances of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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    Peer mentoring in the Placement experience search: Enhancing learning journeys across discipline boundaries
    (2023-06-14) Allman, Zoe; Rughani, Deepa; Begum, Saheda; Hardaker, Pamela; Grierson, Phil; Toth, Regina
    Within the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Media at De Montfort University students seeking a year-long Placement participate in peer mentoring, enhancing the learning journey of individuals acting in the role of mentee and mentor, and operating across discipline boundaries. Supporting and empowering Placement searchers, mentoring presents an opportunity to learn from peers who have previously experienced the process, successfully securing an innovative Placement year. The scheme delivers benefits to the mentee and mentor (Hayman et al., 2022). Mentees are supported with practical tips and advice, guidance and encouragement, whilst mentors benefit through developing leadership, mentoring and communication skills, enhancing reflection to further articulate their Placement experience (Proctor, 2012). Echoing engagement with Placements across the Faculty's three schools, in 2022 the majority of mentors come from the School of Computer Science and Informatics (CSI) (55%), followed by Engineering and Sustainable Development (ESD) (36%), and then Leicester Media School (LMS) (9%). The 2022 mentees are also predominantly from CSI (76%), followed by LMS (18%), then ESD (6%). The mentor and mentee relationship crosses discipline boundaries, providing additional benefits to the learning experience by learning from the experiences and questions of those in different subject areas. Mentoring beyond discipline boundaries invites creative problem solving, active listening, and coaching. Placement returner mentors are self-selecting following a call for volunteers. Mentors support mentees to explore Placement options, develop contacts with employers, and identify suitable resources and industry links. Mentors give advice, respond to questions, share thoughts and reflections, help the mentee to develop their own aims and goals, and provide motivation, support and role-modelling. For mentees, developing an effective working relationship with a mentor enhances networking, communication and cooperation skills that will be valuable in the Placement experience and beyond. Mentees set goals around their Placement and career aspirations, regularly reviewing progress in search of a Placement. The mentoring relationship is set within a code of conduct framework based on confidentiality, valuing each member of the partnership, mutual trust and respect. Reflecting on the experience, mentees are positive about the useful advice, support and encouragement received. Mentees appreciate that mentors respond to queries and questions in a timely manner, and many pairs meet weekly to maintain regular engagement. Feedback recognises the positive impact on embracing the search for, and securing, a Placement. This presentation will introduce this approach, inspiring colleagues to extend peer mentoring applications across discipline boundaries for the benefit of all participants.
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    Peer mentoring in the Placement experience search: Enhancing learning journeys across discipline boundaries
    (2023-06-14) Allman, Zoe; Rughani, Deepa; Begum, Saheda; Hardaker, Pamela; Grierson, Phil; Toth, Regina
    Within the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Media at De Montfort University students seeking a year-long Placement participate in peer mentoring, enhancing the learning journey of individuals acting in the role of mentee and mentor, and operating across discipline boundaries. Supporting and empowering Placement searchers, mentoring presents an opportunity to learn from peers who have previously experienced the process, successfully securing an innovative Placement year. The scheme delivers benefits to the mentee and mentor (Hayman et al., 2022). Mentees are supported with practical tips and advice, guidance and encouragement, whilst mentors benefit through developing leadership, mentoring and communication skills, enhancing reflection to further articulate their Placement experience (Proctor, 2012). Echoing engagement with Placements across the Faculty's three schools, in 2022 the majority of mentors come from the School of Computer Science and Informatics (CSI) (55%), followed by Engineering and Sustainable Development (ESD) (36%), and then Leicester Media School (LMS) (9%). The 2022 mentees are also predominantly from CSI (76%), followed by LMS (18%), then ESD (6%). The mentor and mentee relationship crosses discipline boundaries, providing additional benefits to the learning experience by learning from the experiences and questions of those in different subject areas. Mentoring beyond discipline boundaries invites creative problem solving, active listening, and coaching. Placement returner mentors are self-selecting following a call for volunteers. Mentors support mentees to explore Placement options, develop contacts with employers, and identify suitable resources and industry links. Mentors give advice, respond to questions, share thoughts and reflections, help the mentee to develop their own aims and goals, and provide motivation, support and role-modelling. For mentees, developing an effective working relationship with a mentor enhances networking, communication and cooperation skills that will be valuable in the Placement experience and beyond. Mentees set goals around their Placement and career aspirations, regularly reviewing progress in search of a Placement. The mentoring relationship is set within a code of conduct framework based on confidentiality, valuing each member of the partnership, mutual trust and respect. Reflecting on the experience, mentees are positive about the useful advice, support and encouragement received. Mentees appreciate that mentors respond to queries and questions in a timely manner, and many pairs meet weekly to maintain regular engagement. Feedback recognises the positive impact on embracing the search for, and securing, a Placement. This presentation will introduce this approach, inspiring colleagues to extend peer mentoring applications across discipline boundaries for the benefit of all participants.
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    Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)
    (Routledge, 2023-05-01) Krämer, Peter
    This chapter discusses Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) - the last film he made at Buster Keaton Productions for release by United Artists before he moved to MGM as a contract actor - as the culmination and summary of his stage and film career up to this point. The distinctive features of Keaton's filmic and performance style are analysed in relation to the (changing) conventions of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1920s. The chapter also examines the filmmaker's contractual status at Buster Keaton Productions, his dependence, throughout his whole film career, on producer Joseph Schenck and on the major studios, and the (commercial) centrality of so-called independent production to the operations of the American film industry in the 1920s.