Divergent Tracks

By examining three case studies of award-winning soundtracks from cult films-Barton Fink (1991), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), and The English Patient (1996)-it becomes clear that major American film communities, when confronted with the initial technological changes of the 1990s, experienced similar challenges with the inelegant transition from analogue to digital. However, their cultural and structural labor differences governed different results. Vanessa Ament, author of The Foley Grail (2009), rather than defining the 1990s as an era of technological determinism-a superficial reading-it is best understood as one in which sound professionals became more viable as artists, collaborated in sound design authorship, and influenced this digital transition to better accommodate their needs and desires in their work.

In the late 1950s, scientists at General Electric -- among them the author -- discovered that when mica is exposed to energetic charged particles, the particles leave latent tracks in the material. It soon turned out that glass, plastics, or certain other materials can be similarly treated. This discovery paved the way not only for a new and useful method of measuring radioactivity, it has also found widespread applications in other fields, ranging from geology and materials science to archaeology and art history. Fleischer presents the history of these developments and discusses the applications of the technique in a way that will interest anyone even with only a minimal knowledge of physics.

A practical approach to estimating and tracking dynamicsystems in real-worl applications Much of the literature on performing estimation for non-Gaussiansystems is short on practical methodology, while Gaussian methodsoften lack a cohesive derivation. Bayesian Estimation andTracking addresses the gap in the field on both accounts,providing readers with a comprehensive overview of methods forestimating both linear and nonlinear dynamic systems driven byGaussian and non-Gaussian noices. Featuring a unified approach to Bayesian estimation andtracking, the book emphasizes the derivation of all trackingalgorithms within a Bayesian framework and describes effectivenumerical methods for evaluating density-weighted integrals,including linear and nonlinear Kalman filters for Gaussian-weightedintegrals and particle filters for non-Gaussian cases. The authorfirst emphasizes detailed derivations from first principles ofeeach estimation method and goes on to use illustrative anddetailed step-by-step instructions for each method that makescoding of the tracking filter simple and easy to understand. Case studies are employed to showcase applications of thediscussed topics. In addition, the book supplies block diagrams foreach algorithm, allowing readers to develop their own MATLAB®toolbox of estimation methods. Bayesian Estimation and Tracking is an excellent book forcourses on estimation and tracking methods at the graduate level.The book also serves as a valuable reference for researchscientists, mathematicians, and engineers seeking a deeperunderstanding of the topics.

The art of mashup music, its roots in parody, and its social and legal implications. Parody needn’t recognize copyright—but does an algorithm recognize parody? The ever-increasing popularity of remix culture and mashup music, where parody is invariably at play, presents a conundrum for internet platforms, with their extensive automatic, algorithmic policing of content. Taking a wide-ranging look at mashup music—the creative and technical considerations that go into making it; the experience of play, humor, enlightenment, and beauty it affords; and the social and legal issues it presents—Parody in the Age of Remix offers a pointed critique of how society balances the act of regulating art with the act of preserving it. In several jurisdictions, national and international, parody is exempted from copyright laws. Ragnhild Brøvig contends that mashups should be understood as a form of parody, and thus be protected from removal from hosting platforms. Nonetheless, current copyright-related content-moderation regimes, relying on algorithmic detection and automated decision making, frequently eliminate what might otherwise be deemed gray-area content—to the detriment of human listeners and, especially, artists. Given the inaccuracy of takedowns, Parody in the Age of Remix makes a persuasive argument in favor of greater protection for remix creativity in the future—but it also suggests that the content-moderation challenges facing mashup producers and other remixers are symptomatic of larger societal issues.