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My interest in the silences of the everyday, the ubiquitous sonic ecologies related to mechanical contraptions and human activity, is triggered by the human capacity to adapt, or not, to the elemental vibrations of our common existence. Often the sources of these sounds are invisible but act as sentinels of our inclusion into the physical realms of contemporary socio-cultural situations. My motive for developing a study examining these aspects of our lives in sound was to get a glimpse at two human processes: cultural habituation to silences and professional expression of their existences.
This study has been enlightening in this regard, but also went far beyond technical or industrial concerns, thanks to the altruistic participations of some Australian cinema professionals. Currently sound crews still operate in the shadow of the moving image. Cinema and theatre sound man Daniel Deshays assimilates (2004) "le sonore," the audible, as a clandestine entity that works without cinema-goers' awareness. The sound crew of a film production seems almost innocuous to some because of their public invisibility and, often discreet, professional indispensability. I find it logical to interact with the individuals producing sonic ubiquity for socio-cultural purposes, such as films, to get a better understanding of our elemental interactions with sonic environments and with each other.
So, what happens when members of a sound crew take centre-stage and modify at once their relationships to sound, to its narrative potential and to their own usual work patterns?
Rather than examining in detail the mechanisms linking cinema sound production and theoretical film studies, I chose to gain reflexive insights into the personal and creative practices of individual sound designers. Through the design of my study, I had the good fortune to gain a greater awareness than I expected in the practice and humanity of a profession operating behind and around the screen. The creative participation of eight Australian cinema sound designers and a scriptwriter allowed for a personification of cinema sound design as a phenomenological storyteller, demonstrating human inter-relations around the creation of sonic narrative. All study participants were living and working in or from Australia. That they were all males aged between 25 and 45 years old was circumstantial. All the film professionals involved in this study demonstrated the same qualities: unpretentiousness and generosity.(1) Several of the participants have won Australian professional awards from the Australian Film Institute (AFI), the Inside Film award (IF) or the Australian Screen Sound Guild (ASSG), and/or contributed to awarded movies (AFI, Emmy, American Oscars or Golden Reel).
A script specifically designed for this study was given to the participating cinema sound professionals. Being provided with written material to start their work rather than visual guidelines, such as edited footage, meant that the participants modified their creative patterns. The scripted scene called for the creation of "silences" and gave participants scope for personal experimentation without aesthetic constraints or commercial imperatives. Some of them found the concept and its realisation confronting. Subsequent interviews with all creative participants between 2010 and 2012 proved to be eye-openers for some individuals on their own professional practices. The content of these interviews and electronic correspondence highlighted the importance of human interactions and the influence of associated technology to the current phenomenological processes of cinema sound-making in commercial settings.(2)
In this article I canvass definitions of the term "sound designers" through examining the roles, experiences, and aspirations of individuals usually operating as members of a complex creative team. I consider the way current technologies and subsequent professional inter-relationships influence sound design practices. I reflect on the role of sound design in the elemental relationships between the self and others. Finally, I address the creative potential of a more widespread sharing of experiential situations within the cinema industry setting.
(1) All participants gave consent for their soundtracks, interviews and correspondence to be part of the study data. Their bibliography and credentials can be accessed here.
(2) For copyright reasons the soundtracks created by cinema sound professionals for this particular study cannot be accessed online. Their use is exclusively reserved for conference presentations and artistic exhibitions.
Filmmaking is a sensory practice reflecting the lives of all professionals involved in the production. A film soundtrack is the sum of an organic process and the product of a heartfelt assemblage of talents and ideas – and bodies. The sound department of a feature film has many different positions to fill on set and in post-production. Some terms used currently are: boom operator, sound recordist, sound engineer, sound editor, sound mixer, sound effects mixer, sound effects editor, mixer, re-recording mixer, Foley artist, Foley mixer, automated dialogue replacement Mixer (ADR), dialogue mixer, sound supervisor, sound designer and more. These various roles involve different ways to move in and around sound. The body's centre of gravity shifts according to the task performed, or limitations encountered: for example from a standing to a kneeling position for recording, specific kinetic movements for Foley, and sitting positions for post-production.
Film production constraints can be dominant creative agents, and the breakup of work within the process has the potential to affect many of a film's creative steps. In contemporary film production, edited visuals are commonly the blueprint for what is going to be heard. A movie sound crew might have been given a script early on and so have an idea of the story but, as most sound designers get involved in the production at a later stage, their first appreciation of a movie is a visual edit of the narrative or a storyboard. Most of the time sound designers' and sound mixers' experiments occur in post-production and are synched to moving images animating a planar screen.
The experiential and experimental methodology used for this study focused on an altering of the phenomenological processes of cinema sound production, therefore involving sound designers from pre-production. This process alteration changes the experience and intentions of its creators, the narrative itself and the audience's experiences of the story. A short script written for the study by professional screenwriter Roger Monk was sent to the eight Australian cinema sound designers.(3) The minimal script described a scene in which a single character, seated, smoking and confined to a small space, reflects on a professional and emotional situation. The premise of the study prohibited the researcher's participation in the creative process: the participant's only brief was that he had "carte blanche" to model his soundtrack from the script. In this context the role of "sound designer" was to produce a story without visual guidelines. Or was it?
(3) The script written by Roger Monk can be accessed online through the visioning of a short audio-visual piece that amalgamate some elements of the exhibition "Inaudible Visions, Oscillating Silences."
There is unease around the term "sound designer" and the specificity of the task at hand. This unease can be traced historically and has repercussions on the current phenomenological practice of cinema sound making. In the early 70s, most large Hollywood studios were dismantled partly because of trade union disputes (Whittington 2007: 113). These changes pushed people like directors Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and sound professionals like Walter Murch, Randy Thom, Alan Splet and others to move to San Francisco. They formed independent companies, such as American Zoetrope led by Coppola. Without large studio constraints, these creative individuals had the opportunity to freelance, experiment, and become film collaborators in their own right (Whittington 2007: 32). In the 1970s Coppola and Murch cemented their creative collaboration with The Conversation (1974) and Apocalypse Now (1979). The subtleties of sounds, other than vocal or musical, had already been established as powerful narrative and stylistic elements by Alfred Hitchcock in The Birds (1963) or by Jules Dassin in Du Rififi chez les Hommes (1955), for example. Nevertheless, the collaborations of Coppola and Murch gave impetus to incorporating atmospheric sound as an intrinsic narrative element seamlessly and effectively integrated into the film soundtrack. This inevitably gave creative status to the sound personnel.
However, the term sound designer is not always a fixture of a movie's credit list, and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences does not acknowledge this professional capacity. When Murch tried to describe his role(s) in the making of Apocalypse Now (Coppola 1979), his first stereo film, he coined the term "sound designer". In an interview, Michael Jarrett asked him the origin and meaning of the term:
It is a nebulous area. The origin of the term "sound designer" goes back to Apocalypse Now when I was trying to come up with what I had actually done on the film. ... I thought, well, if an interior designer can go into an architectural space and decorate it interestingly, that's sort of what I am doing in the theater. I'm taking the three-dimensional space of the theater and decorating it with sound. I had to come up with an approach, specifically for Apocalypse Now that would make that work coherently. In my case, that was where "sound designer," the word, came from. (Jarrett)
All along Murch also has been a talented visual film editor, and this point seems pivotal to him expanding the sensorial integration of creative components. Murch's view of his role and status brings a phenomenological reality to quasi-regulatory approaches of the creative industries' workplace. Psychologist Dean Simonton proposed four different clusters of creativity in cinema production: dramatic, visual, technical and musical (2004: 1494). Simonton defines the musical cluster as independent from all creative clusters, and he associates sound designers with the technical cluster. He also notes that during the 1960s the sound technicians' work was split into two different categories: special effects and sonic features (2004: 1507). In 2007, parts of a report on the state of the creative industries in Britain pointed out that a ranking of creative contribution based on two distinct categories, "pure creativity" and "applied creative skills," did not reflect "the tensions between creative labour and the conditions in which it is put to work" (O'Connor 2007: 47-48). Current definitions or opinions on the label and the role of sound designers seem to oscillate between these divisions of labour and creativity without being able to define them clearly. Defining the function of a sound designer based on the chronology of tasks at hand is left to individual sound mediator's experiences.
Study participant Michael Worthington (2013) prefers to use the term "Surround Design" to define the aim of his practice. He also describes his professional activity as being at once an audio engineer, a mixer, a sound designer and a digital audio sculptor. For Worthington everything is sound design: voice, music, sound effects and sound design elements can be employed musically. Worthington argued that mixing is part of sound design and a sound design is something that is '"thought through" (personal communication, December 21, 2010). Sound designer and participant to the study Tom Heuzenroeder explained that he considers the activity of a sound designer as someone "coming in with a plan" to direct the soundscape in ways that enhance the overall mood of the movie (personal communication, May 1, 2011). For sound designer Emma Bortignon, the role of a sound designer is to communicate with the director and then articulate her or his ideas to the sound team in order to find technical and creative solutions that will help to tell a story (Siemienowicz 2010). Australian sound editor Livia Ruzic does not call herself a sound designer unless she is the only person working in post-production on a non-feature film (Capp 2002).
To further blur the situation, "sound designer" and "sound supervisor" can equally have an administrative connotation, as both capacities relay the creative brief to an assemblage of people producing the audio-visual narrative. Cinema sound designer Mark Ward objects to the idea that the label "sound designer" suggests an administrative role rather than that of "a major aesthetic force in the film" (Hancock 2007: 162). A quarter of the twenty-four Australian respondents to the recruitment online questionnaire for the study did not provide any answer on the subject of the predominance of a sound designer's role in a film production. The other three-quarters of the cinema professionals contacted for this study were ambivalent: half suggested that sound design is a fully creative position, whereas the other half thought that the role encompasses both capacities. Every production being different, the question of a sound designer having a creative role rather an administrative one, or having an administrative role rather than focusing on a production's creative aspects, might be redundant.
Study participant sound designer Damian Candusso commented that a supervising sound editor is the person who has the overall view but who also concentrates on music and dialogue, and a sound designer "goes away, and creates new sound from scratch and specifically for the film." Candusso added that a sound designer is often considered as a designer of sound effects, "a creator of new and unknown sounds for specific use in the visual narrative" (personal communication, May 3, 2011). Randy Thom positions the sound designer as a person guiding the overall treatment of sound in movies while noting that this structure was still unusual in Hollywood, where a sound designer was often regarded as a "hired gun" effect maker (Thom 2003: 122). In his Churchill Fellow Report, study participant John Kassab wrote that supervising sound editors should co-ordinate the film soundtrack from inception to final mix. For him, these professionals can be more hands on or administrative according to their personal preferences but are often "the most accountable sound person to producers and directors" (Kassab 2010: 8).
There does not seem to be consensus as to an exact definition of what a sound designer does in a movie production. Although "sound design" is taught, some might find a certain resonance in Worthington's words: "Sound designer is not a job. It's something that becomes what people think is a job. Nobody is employed as a sound designer. They're employed to do a specific thing and from that they decide this is sound design" (personal communication, December 21, 2010). Sometimes, the often-nebulous tasks of sound designers calls for miracles. Writers and producers, for example, usually interact with the sound team, including sound designers, in post-production. At that stage, if pictures do not tell the story adequately or problems appear in a narrative, sound can help "fix" the story (R. Monk, personal communication, October 17, 2012).
Despite the vagueness of their role, it is quite clear that cinema sound designers closely communicate with colleagues and directors: their aim is to give a sonic texture, a sense of gravity, a mood and a feel to the story, its spaces and its characters. The multi-dimensional narrative that they create will consequently inhabit a place of projection, shared with directors and producers. Sound mixers are more focused on the experience of audiences in the designed space of a cinema. With the expression "cinema sound design," I refer to the modelling and spatial carving of the story itself by sound designers.
The emergence of digital audio workstations (aka DAW) as a primary mode of production allows a technological capability known as "mixing in the box". Experimenting with sound effects, editing, mixing and giving an overtone to a story can now be performed by an individual using one tool and in one place. This process also allows sound designers to flesh out a story by giving it an overall sonic feeling, a texture, before, during or after the production of any visuals. It facilitates experiential explorations of narrative and expands the possibility of sound designers, theoretically, to increase collaborations with writers, directors and producers.
Heuzenroeder agrees with sound designer Randy Thom's affirmation that movies could be devised around sound and sees this proposition as a "resistance to the conventional linearity of film construction" (personal communication, August 16, 2010). Heuzenroeder suggests that involving sound designers from pre-production onwards can also make some visuals redundant and cut lines of scripts, therefore adding to the creative potential of an audio-visual narrative (personal communication, August 16, 2010). This process can also save time and money for the directors and producers at a movie's shooting stage. Despite this economical incentive, the ideal of involving sound designers from pre-production rarely matches the financial constraints of most Australian productions. The concept remains utopian unless directors and producers have strong personal affinity with sound at large and want to experience the visceral intimacy that atmospheric sound can bring to a story.
Atmospheric sound, other than vocal or musical, is most of the time used as an indispensable filler. The common consensus is that the design of atmospheric sound should not distract the public unless its audible presence can be synchronised to a narrative. This component of sound designers' work is integrated in the final mixing of all sonic elements, a dedicated work that is often performed by a person who, most of the time, has had no role in the production of the different sounds, dialogue and music. This person, the mixer or re-recording mixer, is someone who is technically gifted and creative, and most importantly, someone who comes in "with fresh ears" as pointed out by most study participants. A particularity of this production step is that it happens in a large room, a space with the same type of speakers as those used in a movie theatre, allowing for all frequencies to be fully experienced.
The working spaces and personal studios of cinema sound designers have spatial limitations. Their work focuses on the narrative and on what protagonists hear and feel: they experience it first-hand from the "sweet spot" at the equilateral distance of all speakers and, therefore, in perfect stereophony. At that point in space, says participant to the study John Kassab: "It sounds fantastic!" (personal communication, July 29, 2011). Cinema sound design aims to relay to the skin of an audience a sensorial narrative experience through mechanical devices, and its live public does not include the cinema-goers. The publics of cinema sound designers are made up of themselves, other sound creators, directors and producers. In post-production the organisation of the working space implies that both performers and public are usually seated, surrounded by speakers positioned in a set manner, and most of the time both parties will gaze straight ahead at a screen.
Film theory and film sound semantics are usually absent from interactions between cinema sound designers, other sound creators, directors and producers. Practice is the leitmotiv, and when concepts and explanations are suggested, expressions such as "it feels like" or "it feels right" or "you know when" or "what about this?" are the norm. Some professional practitioners struggle with applied terminology. Sound designers participating in the study were able to generate individual views on their practice without needing to expand on semantics. Most of the study's participants had studied sound production and sound design in institutional settings. In commercial settings the precise cinematic nomenclature that film theoretician Michel Chion has elaborated since the mid-1980s (2009: 465-500) is not regarded as essential.
The use of the expressions "diegetic" and "nondiegetic" would be unusual in a mixing room operating in an English speaking country, for example. For some sound professionals, Chion's lexicon resembles name-giving to obvious and/or instinctive sound manoeuvres and physical interactions. Should terminology be important when "hands on," tuned ears, a receptive body, instinct and story telling are the traits of the trade and result in products that can, at times, relate to prescient knowledge? All the same, Chion's notion of rendering (1994: 109) embodies the emotional and physical atmospheric creations executed, thoughtfully or instinctively, by practitioners. Chion's comments "because sounds are neither experienced objectively nor named, and through a magnetism related to all the vagueness and uncertainty surrounding them, sounds 'attract' affects for which they are not especially responsible" (1994: 112) tells of the impossibility to clearly regulate the content of a sonic narrative and its viscerality.
Regardless of its elusive definition, the practice of cinema sound design is more often than not a transmission of embodied knowledge, as we listen with the whole body, and our ears are "at best the focal organs of hearing" (Ihde 2007: 44). A focus on Murch's reference to modelling sound for a three-dimensional space allows for an integration of a sound designer as a collaborator in the translating of fictional phenomenologies into experiential events. The instinctive awareness of affective reactions on bodies, starting with their own, can influence cinema sound designers' experimentations in the spatial narrative of the story. Their experiments can also provoke pre- and/or post-production awareness for other members of the creative team.
Study participant Roger Monk recalled the experience of watching a movie he wrote, Walking on Water (Ayres 2002), screened in Berlin (Germany) where, Monk says, screens and sound systems are "bigger" (personal communication, October 17, 2012). Monk did not have any contact with the sound team during production. None of the previous screenings of Walking on Water (Ayres 2002) allowed such a detailed exposure of the sound work's intricacies as in Berlin. In that particular setting, Monk felt the delicacy of sound making and its impact on his script and on himself. It is this element of surprise, of "what they have done with it", that sums up his view of films as organic matters that are the chronological sum of human involvement: the lived experiences of all collaborators have a creative cumulative effect (personal communication, October 17, 2012).
Gibson's writes that "imposed perceptions" are obtained through the interactions of traditional organs of perception with the environment. His definition of "imposed proprioception" involves movement of the head and stimulation of the vestibular organs and then "the whole individual is passively transported and the eyes are stimulated by motion perspective" without any muscle participation (1966: 44-45). This "passive transport" coincides with the notion of affect described as a state that is not linked to emotions but is the body's response to stimuli "at a precognitive and prelinguistic level" (Labanyi 2010: 224). Consciousness is not fast enough at registering the impulses absorbed by the body; they are quicker than can be perceived, therefore "the entire vibratory event is unconscious, out of mind" (Massumi 2002: 29).
Audible and inaudible sounds transform the body in its totality as an interface able to convey states preceding conscious responses and emotional involvement. Film theoretician Steven Shaviro notes the hegemony of consciousness as the knowledgeable judge for the reality of sensations but comments that the cognitive grows out of the visceral (2008: 53). Sound makers' craft relies on their own predisposed and acquired bodily relationship to audible and non-audible sounds. Their role is literally pivotal. John Kassab comments that to create the "right sound" directors have to tell him "what they want their audience to feel" (personal communication, July 29, 2011). A cinema sound experience starts in the flesh of its creators, sound designers and directors, in order to move audiences. The physicality of the practice might give us clues as to the potential of sound design and a better appreciation of the professional title itself. The stylisation and transformation of sonic elements create unique artistic expressions of phenomenological characterisations and emotions in movement: sound designers are artists in their own rights.
Gabor Csepregi notes that artists at large are able to experience a form of coenaesthesia, which he refers to as "deep sensibility stimuli" (2006: 37). Yuasa refers to coenaesthesia as "consciousness of self-apprehending sensation" (1993: 47, italics in text), a state that promotes an awareness of one's own body. Coenaesthesia, as a felt immediacy of the body's presence in itself and the world, is also described as "a vital sense," an undefined consciousness and product of all the vital processes (The Oxford English Dictionary 1989: 433). David Appelbaum, relaying philosopher Maine de Biran's eighteenth century idea, notes that kinaesthesia, the sense of moving through space, is a mode of body consciousness that is part of coenaesthetic perception, regardless of bodily stillness or activity (1993: 52).
Coenaesthesia and kinaesthesia are creative parameters that we can associate with the experiential and imaginative practice of cinema sound design. Humans have the ability to internally access different rotational planes, therefore applying kinaesthetic qualities to perceptual abstractions (Johnson 1987: 125). A person can actually imagine being in her or his own body and experiencing sensations expected in an actual situation (Mahoney and Avener 1977: 137). This process of internal imagery requires an approximation of real-life phenomenology to perform motor imagery and is a common faculty amongst athletes and other sports practitioners. Visual imagery is a mindful representation that triggers "the experience of 'seeing' in an absence of the appropriate visual stimulation from the eyes" (Kosslyn 1983: 29). Without vocal expression, the sounding of gestures, postures, materials, as well as environmental silences, echoes images of a coenaesthetic body performing within a specific space.
Each haptic element, such as the smoking of a cigarette, pushes the air a bit further so that protagonists expand their bodies and extend their physical imprint on audiences' imagination. There is no finality in the audio storytelling; instead there is a potential of visceral affect generated by mimetism, described as "the corporeally based form of imitation, both voluntary and involuntary" (Gibbs 2010: 186). Tom Heuzenroeder mentions that the artistry of sound design comes into focus when instinct and less conscious thoughts lead to a bolder approach and design takes on a character of its own (personal communication, August 16, 2010). As an experiential transfer of the coenaesthesia experienced by all individuals, sound can trigger a transmission of affect, "a process that is social in origin but biological and physical in effect" (Brennan 2004: 3). The nurturing of affect amongst a film production team that appreciates sound designers' experiences of the world could impact on the coenaesthesia of the story itself.
A scene of the film The Hurt Locker (Bigelow 2008) provides such a coenaesthetic sculpting of a narrative and its space modelling. In an emptied Baghdad street, American military bomb disarmer Sergent Matt Thomson, played by Guy Pearce, walks towards an explosive device wearing an armoured suit for bomb disposal, his head topped with a five-kilo helmet. The walk is slow and economical in gesture. Thomson's breath stops at the visor of his helmet, and travels back to his skin. We feel the thumping of his boots on the arid and rocky street and the armoured suit pulls us towards the ground, our shoulders feeling the weight. Through the two-way communication system Thomson's words and those of his colleagues circle around his head, our head. When Thomson kneels to pick up a piece of equipment and then stands up slowly with his arms stretched in front of him, we feel his instability and the material inside the suit brushing his limbs. There is no music but just space, skin, weight, rigidity and an impaired centre of gravity.
The sensory potential of sound reinforces both instinctive and intentional experiments of cinema sound designers to channel sonic worlds to influence the centre of gravity of their first public: themselves and directors/producers. These physical reactions are signs of oscillations, of the perturbation of emotional and physical balance that take us, primates, in and out of ourselves. This definition of the concept of affect adds a subtext that includes notions of movement and oscillating states:
Affect, at its most anthropomorphic, is the name we give to those forces - visceral forces beneath, alongside, or generally other than conscious knowing, vital forces insisting beyond emotion - that can serve to drive us towards movement, toward thought and extension, that can likewise suspend us (as if in neutral) across a barely registering accretion of force-relations, or that can even leave us overwhelmed by the world's apparent intractability. (Seigworth and Gregg 2010: 1)
The various suggestions and opinions on the roles of "sound designer" mentioned in this paper propose that environmental knowledge intrinsic to bodily activities is able to affect the embodiment of a story. Affect is a pre-emotional and a-subjective state that allows the body to be part of environments without a hierarchy of sensations and cognitive promotion. I consider cinema sound designers as "coenaesthetic sculptors" because of the different sensory imaginations and axial permutations that they apply, consciously or not, to visible or invisible matters and bodies, thus reflecting the oscillations of a scene and immersing us in its spatio-temporality. The notion of affect is applicable to sound designers' lives and work practices and to their interactions with a film production team when devising or assembling an audio-visual narrative.
The creation and use of "silences" is a demonstration of these primordial processes: affect and coenesthesia. Silences, in and outside cinemas, have become ubiquitous, noisy, invisible and indispensable. The silence of the everyday is a consensual silence made of frequencies that are part of the visual realm but absent from the visual field, like distant traffic. Silences are the vibrations we are immersed in and the perception of which can often be interrupted at will. An analogy with Paul Virilio's remark that silence implies consent (2003: 71) can be applied to human habituation and indifference to the soundscapes of modernity. For example, frequencies and vibrations emitted by air conditioning systems are often easily dismissed. We give to their presence at once a status of inevitability and consent to their indispensability: for some their constancy brings stability to their soundscapes. At the same time, the absence of these "silences" on a film soundtrack can have a destabilising effect on film-goers. The perceived ubiquity of locative silence provides a cinematic vocabulary that includes the expressions "room tone", "silence", "atmospheres", "backgrounds", and "ambiences". Creating the silences of the everyday links environmental sound, bodily absorption and creative practices.
Film director Mike Figgis directs his explanation of the fear of digital silence onto the reactions of audiences. In his career, Figgis always wanted to put some silence in a film and "have nothing on the soundtrack" (1998: 1, italics in text). He took that opportunity in a scene in his film Leaving Las Vegas (1995). Figgis did not attend the post-production stage, but watched the film with the crew in the big space cinema where the sound of silence sounded "gorgeous" (1998: 2). However, when he went and experienced the movie in a crowded movie theatre, Figgis noted that "suddenly, it's so quiet in the cinema that you can literally hear everything, and you don't have the protection of this sound blanket of mush, or just ambient noise, or whatever, which we come to expect of a soundtrack" (1998: 2).
Expectations and affective creativity can be tested by the impact of narrative embodiment. Kassab testifies to this potential when noting that "silence can make us lean forward in our seats to be absorbed by the visual drama, a sudden sound from silence can then throw us back in our seat" (personal communication, July 29, 2011). Cinema sound designers' first public are directors and producers, an audience that can be crudely described by W.A Darlington as one that follows "the dramatist's meaning like a pack of hounds on a scent" (cited in [White 2011: 199]). A number of producers of large budget films tend to be afraid to introduce relatively inaudible quietness, to "take this risk" as explained by soundman Tony Murtagh:
Something that can be frustrating for some one who is trying to create a sound design for a film is when changes are made to the locked picture cut. Often times quieter sections of the film, usually where actors aren't speaking, will be removed, as these sections appear to slow the pace of the film. We will often get locked picture cuts of films to work on, which will have lots of nice spaces to create interesting moments in the soundtrack. This can be done through the use of the real environment sounds experienced in the film as well combining other sound sources. Before a film reaches sound post production it has gone through a considerable number of screening. From the edit suite, to director, to producer, to production company and to investor screenings. At any of these screenings changes are likely to be made and one of the most likely changes is "Oh there is a dead space there, how about we take it out and tighten up the sequence." (personal communication, September 22, 2010)
Many sound makers and most directors would advocate the necessity to use ambient sound or "room tone." However, most study participants, when acting as sound designers, have a fascination and a great desire to use more subtle silences as spatio-narrative elements. Some of the participants also relish the use of "pure" silence, a total absence of information on the digital track.
The process of convincing directors or producers of the cultural validity of digital silence is a physical adventure in itself: one has to be in the studio or the mixing room to experience the potential of what is often thought of as a full sensorial disconnection. The experience of inserting digital silence entails the physical presence of all parties. Such collaborations are based on trust. Sound designer and study participant Carlos Choconta mentions his physical interaction and persistence at post-production stage while trying to insert digital silence instead of audible sound: "I was with the producer and that's when a lot of sounds were chopped away. So that's why it was a win for me, because I managed to convince him" (personal communication, May 5, 2011).
It would be presumptuous, and unnecessary, to generalise about Western professional practices because of the contextual particularities and the evolving identity of each project, as well as the galloping technological changes inherent in the industry. Each professional generation is associated with technologies that inevitably modify the phenomenology of human involvement in cinema sound creation. Nowadays, with the use of digital audio workstations allowing for fast sound manipulations and experiencing of sensations, the process of "mixing in the box" allows cinema sound professionals to pre-mix while watching footage, but also while reading script. The chronology of their sonic experiments and creative sensitivity can also then be conveyed, and approved, at an earlier stage by the director.
Technique and experiments reflect on a collaborative creativity emerging out of industry necessities, human physical interactivity and the sharing of life experiences. Chion writes that "Audiovisual relationships are largely cultural and historical but, in everyday life as well as in the audiovisual arts, they rely also on relatively 'little-known universal psycho-physiological phenomena'" (2000: 205). {Zielinski, 2010 #1025}Innate and immanent knowledge of the self in the world can depart from cognitive intentionality, and at times this phenomenon demands the sharing of the same place and atmospheres. Vibrations provide the flow that attests to "the permeability of individuals in their environment as they selectively transduce and amplify its energetic patterns – that is, propagate affect" (Henriques 2010: 84). Transmitting and sharing states of affect with creative collaborators is as important as invoking cultural or commercial assumptions. Could the physical collaboration of sound women and men, directors and producers, through sharing of common space and transmission of affect influence the overall narrative prior to any visuals being shot?
For the film The Hurt Locker (2008) director Kathryn Bigelow, writer Mark Boal and sound designer Paul N.J. Ottosson worked together, sometimes in the same space, from the pre-production stage. Ottosson mixed The Hurt Locker himself and "in the box," only getting into a mixing theatre to adjust tonal balance. He won two Oscars for his editing and mixing of this particular feature film. Ottosson, Boal and Bigelow re-iterated their successful collaboration with Zero Dark 30 (2012) and, yet again, Ottosson won an Oscar for best sound editing. Kassab says that Ottensson's work process, technological use and creative involvement from start to finish "sent shockwaves throughout the sound community" (2010: 13). The validation of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark 30 soundtracks suggests that successful sound design can be a phenomenological process between writer, director and sound designer as technology allows a blurring and intertwining of production roles.
The technical process and consequences of "mixing in the box" from pre-production on, independent of the signposting provided by moving images, suggests a re-mapping of the experiential and chronological process of sound creation. For writer-director Rolf de Heer, imagining sound is a physical part of writing. During an informal conversation with this article's author, de Heer made a gesture with his two hands near his head to indicate that, while writing, sound sits "next to him, just there" (personal communication, September 1, 2012). Writing with sound and for sound has also been central for Australian writer-director Matthew Saville. His collaboration with sound designer Emma Bortignon on Noise (2007) started from pre-production onwards, a long time before any visuals were shot. Their exchange of ideas and Bortignon's experiments resulted in a movie that literally and metaphorically resonates with the sounds and silences that suffuse the lives of the main characters.
This mode of feeling sound is the norm in contemporary animations, and in science fiction films, as their genesis relies heavily on sonic characterisation. John Kassab worked for 13 months on the short Australian animation The Lost Thing (Tan and Ruhemann 2010) that won the Oscar for short animation in 2010. Both sound and animated work were feeding on each other, a process that Kassab qualifies as "a complete technical and creative anomaly" leading to a "completely open beautiful collaboration" (personal communication, July 29, 2011). Regular meetings in the flesh allowed for experiential symbiosis, and online file transfers of drafts ensured constant communication. For a few years Rolf de Heer and sound designers James Currie and Tom Heuzenroeder were working in the same building in Adelaide (Australia). Known as an excellent sound team and long time collaborators, Heuzenroeder and Currie used to ask de Heer to "'come down and have a listen to this', and he'll come down and then we'll play him some things and he'll approve or make a comment" (personal communication, May 1, 2011).
Design can be a bold and spontaneous activity put into motion by affect and multi-sensory experiments offered to directors; mixing entails more moderation and seems prompted by the thought of the potential transmission of affect amongst crowds. There is a trans-situational aspect to these creative events and their affective continuity as they establish a "connecting thread of experience" (Massumi 2002: 217). Environmental and atmospheric sound personifies such an affective thread of experience for all immersed in its presence in post-production or inside cinema theatres. De Heer's long-term collaboration with James Currie starts at location recording, as both privilege the atmospheric truth of the location and understand "an audience's conscious and sub-conscious acceptance of the reality of their movie" (Zielinski 2010: 158). In parallel, the inclusion of Westerkamp's existing acousmatic composition in the soundtrack of Last Days (Van Sant 2005) is perfectly described as "housed within the spaces we see on screen, while continually offering a ladder out of the frame to lands that lie beyond" (Jordan 2007). Although Westerkamp's piece had no physical relation to the movie's location, it is the sonic habituation and coenaesthesia of audiences that validate its ubiquitous presence.
Sound designers and mixers work towards communicating psycho-physiological experiences with directors or producers in order to ultimately gain audiences' acceptance. Tom Heuzenroeder mentioned that because sound has the potential to steer a movie towards different shores, a film sound person needs direction from the director, and their working relationship needs to be "solid" (personal communication, August 16, 2010). In the context of the study I was neither a client nor a director and therefore did not act as "a sounding board." Perhaps if I had been physically in the studio with participants our social interaction would have affected us biologically and physically. A transmission of affect could have influenced the coenaesthesia of both sound makers and myself, and subsequently that the story itself, thus becoming a determinant factor in the production of study participants' sound creations. Instead, the solitary process demanded by the experiment triggered some unexpected reactions from some sound designers.
As a response to my non-sensorial participation and absence of direction, one study participant gave me two different audio versions of the script. The assumption was that the one that I (the "client") would prefer could be different to the one that the creator liked himself. Another consequence seems in direct line with the notion of affect and the creation of silences. At the end of our face-to-face interview, Heuzenroeder said "All along you were after silence, and I didn't provide you with any!" (personal communication, May 1, 2011). Heuzenroeder sounded almost surprised and maybe a bit disappointed, as if he had missed an opportunity, giving me the impression that he might have "silenced himself." Maybe digital silences would have inhabited the soundtrack if I had been physically in the studio to experience the coenaesthetic sculpting of the script and its story.
A phenomenological approach to film theory provides a "mutually constitutive relationship" between non-filmic factors and filmic experiences as they influence each other inside and outside cinemas (Stadler 1990: 41). The sensory dynamics that manifest in the way human bodies perform in their environments are essential to the genesis of modes of inter-communication with the cellular self and others. The manner in which this sort of communication is acknowledged varies because, although it is not a metaphysical proposition, it is not a definite scientific hypothesis. These phenomenological modes of interaction and their creative aspects are sometimes dismissed in order to fence in communication methods and production models. Nevertheless, cinema sound-making is an osmotic process able to permeate all aspects of film production.
Budget constraints limit the number of sound crew involved in different stages of the film production and therefore expand the roles of the persons involved. One person can fit many production roles and can be involved at different stages of the creative process. With many production variables at play, the term "sound designer" still appears vague: individual practitioners seem to apply different criteria to its functions, at the risk that the title of "sound designer" might become meaningless. However, an important point of the study was the insistence by all participants that, as individuals, they were foremost part of a team. To my ears this constancy in their perception of their function at once increases their role as talented leaders and confirms their unpretentiousness.
The physical aspects of sound making for cinema consolidate the role of sound designers functioning as sensorial mediators able to spatially embody a story and take us under its skin, as so well demonstrated in The Hurt Locker. Could "a nurturing of affect," lead by an experiential sharing of sounds and silences, contribute to enriching and solidifying collaborations between writers, directors, producers and the sound team? Kassab describes the communication between him and directors or producers when trying to "sell" them a moment of digital silence. The complexity and possibility of digital silence makes producers, and some directors, nervous, but at the same time it is a satisfying manoeuvre for "sound designers who like to push the limit" (Kassab, personal communication, July 29, 2011). Their interaction starts with the sound designer asking "'What do you think of this?' Answer from director/producer: 'hoo I don't feel good' followed by a question from the sound designer 'but isn't that what you want your audience to feel?' to which directors or producers often answer: 'haa ok, but only for a second, you know?'"(personal communication, July 29, 2011).
This anecdote shows the importance of affect as an essential part of a creative production mode. To some extent it confirms that the physical involvement of sound designers with other members of a movie production team should not be limited to post-production and the reliance of a visual narrative. However, in the contemporary movie industry, a lot of sound production work is now done online through exchanges of sound files and subsequent emails or video-conferencing allowing worldwide live feedback. Could the substitution of human sharing of spaces for virtual meetings have an impact on a transmission of affect between sensory makers, story devisors and film producers? Would listening only with the ears and communicating only through the voice influence an affective practice of cinema sound design?
Certainly the division of creative clusters opposing the concepts of "pure creativity" and "applied creative skills" seems irrelevant to the potential suggested by new work configurations. Rather, it is late involvement and creative input by "coenaesthetic sound sculptors" to a sensorial product, a movie, which deserves some attention. It limits the potential of storytelling by re-enforcing the assumption that movies are foremost visual experiences for many. That might be because our cognition is thought to interpret light faster than audible sound. Nevertheless, some theoreticians, producers and directors could all be guilty of the same sin: instead of talking about and feeling sound they "are actually thinking of the visual image of the sound's source" (Metz and Gurrieri 1980: 29). Sound designers-supervisors-mixers aim to move audiences to the edge of their seats but, ultimately, they are telling a story to entertain others by responding to the ideas, and sensations, of directors. The voluntary or involuntary dismissal by some directors, and producers, of the potential creativity of sound designers' practices diminishes the authorship of the human body itself and disallows us all an exploration of our own coenaesthetic beings.
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text:
Luke Bryan Can't Stay Clean for Date Night in New Jockey Underwear Commercial
Luke Bryan can't stay clean in his new commercial for Jockey underwear. The singer and wife Caroline Bryan are preparing for date night as a series of unfortunate events keep sending him back to to the washing machine.
This is the second of two commercials the couple has done for Jockey. In the first they chose their favorite style of underwear for Bryan. This time he's in a T-shirt, much to Caroline's approval — she even tells him to wear it for their date.
Turns out that's a problem, because the "One Margarita" singer is a bit of a slob. A coffee spill, a sandwich accident and some extra loving from his dog Choc all leave him stained and unfit for an evening of romance with his wife of nearly 14 years.
He recovers, only to find out that ... well, just watch:
This is the first time Bryan and his wife have appeared in a television commercial together, but not the first time a country artist has pitched for an underwear brand. In 2016 Blake Shelton did a few commercials for Gildan underwear, including one where an older woman seems impressed by the size of his underwear. "I'd like to see him model them," she says at the end.
Look for Bryan (fully clothed) at the 2020 ACM Awards in Nashville next Wednesday (Sept. 16). The CBS broadcast begins at 8PM ET and he is set to perform his latest No. 1, "One Margarita," from the Grand Ole Opry House. It's one of three venues chosen for the show, which will be hosted by Keith Urban.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
"Railway Stations: Go into ecstasies over them, and cite them as architectural wonders." ("Gares de chemin de fer: S'extasier devant elles et les donner comme mod�les d'architecture.") — Flaubert, Le dictionnaire des idées reçues [The dictionary of received ideas] — never completed and invariably published with Bouvard and Pécuchet, which was also unfinished. The dictionary is an assemblage of popular opinions — cited as examples of bourgeois crassness. But here we must agree with those who were the butts of Flaubert's humour.
[Click on thumbnails for larger images and more informaion.]
Euston Station, London (1837-49)
Philip Hardwick (1792-1870), architect and Robert Stephenson (1803-59), and Charles Fox (1810-74) engineers
Euston was the first of the great stations. With it began the era of competitive station building in capital cities. The London & Birmingham Railway started services between the two cities in 1837. The railway reduced the arduous twelve hour coach journey from London to Birmingham to less than half — the current journey time is an hour and thirty minutes. Such a transformation in society was celebrated with a new kind of architecture. The train sheds, however, were modest, economical, structures. They were designed by Robert Stephenson, the son of George Stephenson, and the Chief Engineer of the railway, and Charles Fox, the son of a prominent sugeon. Fox went on to have a distinguished career as a civil and mechanical engineer. Passengers arriving at Euston could step out from trains straight into carriages waiting immediately outside the train sheds. Departing passengers would pass through the grand Propylaeum, the entry to a temple complex — the affectionately remembered Euston Arch. Its stern Greek Doric columns were almost 13 metres tall. It was destroyed, in act of philistinism, or wilful vandalism, by British Railways in 1962.
Sir John Betjeman by Martin Jennings in St. Pancras.
The episode aroused violent controversy, and protests were led by John Betjeman. London County Council in which the Royal Fine Art Commission also joined in. Although the battle was lost conservation was to become an increasing part of architectural debate. The wrought iron gates to old Euston have been preserved and are to be found in the National Railway Museum at York.
Besides the noble arch there was a magnificent neo-classical departure hall — detailed with impeccable scholarship and believed by many to have been one of the finest public spaces in London. Philip Hardwick, the architect of Euston, was articled to his father, Thomas Hardwick (1752-1829). At the age of sixteen he started attending the Royal Academy Schools. He began a four year architectural grand tour of Italy and France when he was twenty-three. After his return Hardwick was appointed Surveyor to St Bartholemew's Hospital in succession to his father. He also designed Birmingham Curzon Street Station (1838). Hardwick was — a founder member of the Institute of British Architects, which became the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1837. He was also a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers. In 1854 he received the Royal Gold Medal for architecture. He was — with Charles Barry and Robert Smirke, one of the principal establishment architects of his era. Hardwick was a friend and defender of J M W Turner (1775-1851) and one of his executors. Betjeman was scathing about the current Euston Station, opened by the Queen in 1968:
The "great hall of glass looks like a miniature version of London Airport� On its expanse of floor and against its walls passengers lie and await trains, which they are not allowed to enter . . . without the permission of uniformed gendarmes at the barriers, who imprison the travellers� a constant stream of lengthy official verbiage pours over the waiting queues� the telephone boxes are open to the full blast of the Tannoy system . . . I have heard he excuse made for this disastrous and inhuman structure� that British Railways originally intended to make it pay by adding multi-storey blocks to the flat roof. This seems a lame excuse for so inhospitable a building. — John Betjeman and John Gay, London's historic railway stations, London, 1972
Lancaster Castle, Lancaster (1846) designed by Sir William Tite (1798-1873)
Hardly a "great station", but nevertheless admirably representative of a class of sober nineteenth century British stations. It is somewhat reminiscent of Pugin's economical clergy houses, or his own house, The Grange, at Ramsgate (1843-4). Scott had some admiration for Tite's work while never once mentioning his name. In Gothic architecture, secular and domestic (1857) Scott declared:
There are some simple stations between Lancaster and Carlisle which have always struck me as the best stations of the smaller kind I have seen in England. They are perfectly plain and unpretending and in the style of the old cottages in stone districts. I do not know whether the great station at Carlisle was by the same hand: if so, it is a notable instance of a person who succeeds well in small things failing in larger ones. I must except . . . the refreshment-room which is like an old dining-hall on a small scale.
Tite was indeed the designer of Carlisle Station (completed in 1847) as he was of Carnforth, which was completed same year. (Carnforth is featured in David Lean's 1945 film Brief Encounter, with Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard.) Tite was an extremely versatile architect and was at one time President of the Royal Institute of British Architects. In his latter years he was a Liberal Member of Parliament.
King's Cross Station, London (1852), desigend by Lewis Cubitt (1799-1883)
The London terminus of the Great Northern Railway was completed when the GNR reached Doncaster. Services were later extended to Bradford, Cambridge, Halifax, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham, and Sheffield. All the important Yorkshire manufacturing towns were eventually served by the GNR. During the ascendancy of the Modern Movement, King's Cross was frequently cited as an example of proto-modernism and compared favourably with Euston's classicism — "display" as Nikolaus Pevsner described it — and the brilliant, though misguided, mediaevalism of St. Pancras. John Betjeman captured prevailing attitudes in architectural circles towards King's Cross in the 1930s: " . . . we were all told to admire King's Cross for its functional simplicity, an earnest of the new dawn. We were told to despise St Pancras for its fussiness though we were allowed to admire the engineer's roof. All the same I have an idea that St Pancras is the more practical station." (London's Historic Railway Stations, 1972)
In his account of London in his Buildings of England, 1952, Pevsner wrote "
Cubitt, perhaps because he came from a family of builders and engineers, looked at his job with equal pride but no romanticism. [He was comparing King's Cross with Hardwick's Euston.] The two arched roofs . . . are frankly displayed as the predominant motif of the fa�ade . . . The roof of the clock tower heralds the coming of the new Italian villa ideals. Otherwise one does not look for �motifs' at King's Cross. The architect was satisfied to depend, as The Builder put it in 1851, 'on the largeness of some of the features, the fitness of the structure for its purpose, and a characteristic expression of that purpose'
It is worth pointing out that the Italianate features of King's Cross — notably the tower as cited by Pevsner — could well reflected Prince Albert's enthusiasm for Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Italianate designs for the Prussian royal family — notably his work at Charlottenhof. Albert, incidentally, had chosen Lewis' alder brother Thomas as his architect for Osborne House (1845-48), the summer home of the royal family on the Isle of Wight. Thomas Cubitt (1788-1855), who had begun his career as a carpenter, was the greatest London speculative builder and developer of the 1820s. Belgravia, Bloomsbury, Pimlico and Tyburn were largely built by him and he made an immense fortune. Lewis Cubitt also built the Great Northern Hotel (1854) — the oldest hotel in central London — which adjoins King's Cross. Unlike the station, it is of no remarkable architectural distinction, though the passing years have given it a charming patina. It is recommended for those wishing to spend a night in London before going on to Luton Airport. When King's Cross is restored the space between King's Cross and St Pancras International will form a magnificent piazza. The two stations will supply a vivid lesson in the polarities of nineteenth-century architecture. (Lewis Cubitt was a very successful bridge designer — much of his work was overseas. He deserves more attention than he has received from historians.)
Paddington Station, London (1854), designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-59) Matthew Digby Wyatt (1820-77) and Owen Jones (1809-74)
Christopher Wren's son inscribed upon his father's tomb in St Paul's "Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice," ["Reader, if you seek his monument, look about you"]. The Great Western Railway is Brunel's monument. A railway is infinitely complex — calling for prowess in both civil and mechanical engineering, to say nothing of artistry. And Brunel had the imagination of an artist. He was responsible for building over a thousand miles of track. The gauge of his track was 7-foot-and-a-quarter inch. As trains could be more stable than with a narrower gauge, high speeds could be attained — speeds of 60 mph were commonplace, locomotives were more powerful,; since they had bigger boilers, railway carriages could accommodate more passengers in greater comfort, freight trains could carry more . . . For all its advantages, the broad gauge was not adopted nationally. The last broad gauge train ran on May 22nd 1892. The proudly independent Great Western had finally to conform to the standard gauge used by the other railways — 4-feet 8-and-a-half inches.
The designer of Brunel's locomotives was Daniel Gooch (1816-89), who is, for many, the greatest locomotive designer of the century. Then there were Brunel's ships — the SS Great Western (1837), the SS Great Britain (1843) — the first screw propelled ship to cross the Atlantic — and the Great Eastern, it had a length of just over 207 metres and a breadth of just over 25 metres. The Great Eastern could reach a speed of almost 20 miles an hour. Here is Brunel writing to Matthew Digby Wyatt on Paddington — months before the completion of Paxton's Crystal Palace , which housed the Great Exhibition of 1851.
I am going to design, in a great hurry, a station after my own fancy . . . with engineering roofs etc., etc.. It is at Paddington, in a cutting, and admitting of no exterior, all interior and all roofed in . . . Now such a thing will be entirely metal as to all the general forms, arrangements and design; it almost of necessity becomes an Engineering Work, but, to be honest, even if it were not, it is a branch of architecture of which I am fond, and, of course, believe myself to be fully competent for, but for detail of ornamentation I neither have time nor knowledge, and with all my confidence in my own ability I have never any objection to advice and assistance even in the department which I keep to myself, namely the general design. Now, in this building which, entre nous, will be one of the largest of its class, I want to carry out, strictly and fully, all those correct notions of the use of metal which I believe you and I share (except that I should carry them sill farther than you) . . . I want to show the public that colour can be used . . . " (quoted also by L T C Rolt, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, London, 1957.)
The colour scheme of Paddington — long since vanished — was by the architect, historian and theoretician, Owen Jones, who was responsible for the colouring of Paxton's Crystal Palace. Jones, whose stature has yet to be fully recognised, was as progressive as Brunel. He moved in advanced intellectual circles and was a close friend of the novelist George Eliot (Marian Evans, 1819-80) and her consort George Henry Lewes (1817-78), the writer and biographer of Goethe. Matthew Digby Wyatt was a successful architect — Secretary of the Great Exhibition and Surveyor of the East India Company. He was also, in an era when art history was an emerging discipline, the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge. Like Owen Jones he was an accomplished designer and, indeed closely associated with Jones. It is not difficult to detect the influence of Jones in the Moorish cast-iron capitals at Paddington. Jones' first great publication — the monumental two volume Alhambra, London, 1836-45, being the inspiration.
The Railway Station, by William Powell Frith (1819-1909)
Brunel had a copy of the book — the early plates are the first to be printed in colour in Britain. The Railway Station, by William Powell Frith (1819-1909) depicts a crowded arrival platform at Paddington in 1862 — the painting is justly famous for depicting the many layers of Victorian society. Frith's depiction of the station and one of Gooch's splendid 4-2-2 locomotives is commendably accurate. (In 1953 Sergei Kadleigh (d.1972) put forward detailed proposals for a high rise scheme — a "town of eight thousand people" to be built over the goods yard adjoining Paddington Station. "High Paddington" was a megalomaniac scheme, inspired no doubt by Le Corbusier's Ville radieuse. It would have dominated West London.)
New Street Station, Birmingham (1854) designed by Edward Alfred Cowper (1819-93)
New Street has always been the busiest of provincial British stations. Cowper's station was entirely re-built by British Railways in the mid 1960s when the West Coast Main Line was electrified. It is a bland, efficient station of no substantial architectural interest. At 211 feet (64.31m.) Cowper's original wrought iron and glass roof had the largest single span anywhere — until it was surpassed by Barlow's and Ordish's St Pancras train shed at 243 feet (74.07m.) completed in 1867. New Street was constructed by Messrs. Fox, Henderson & Co. for whom Cowper had worked — he had been responsible for the company's contract drawings for Joseph Paxton's 1851 Crystal Palace. George Gilbert Scott praised New Street in Secular and Domestic Architecture (1857): "An iron roof in its most normal condition is too spider-like a structure to be handsome, but with a very little attention this defect is obviated. The most wonderful specimen, probably, is that at the great Birmingham Station . . . " Cowper was among the leading figures from what L T C Rolt described as a "brief heroic age of engineering". He was the son of a professor of engineering at King's College, London. At fourteen he began a seven-year apprenticeship with John Braithwaite (1797-1870) — a successful civil engineer. While still an apprentice he devised a system of railway signalling by means of small detonators — which made a load bang when a train passed over them. These were widely used in fog to alert engine drivers of hazards — when conventional signals could not be seen. Cowper set up on his own account as a consulting engineer in 1851. He contributed much to the development of steam technology. In 1870 he invented a device by which hand-written messages could be transmitted by telegraph without the need for the use of Morse code. Cowper was consulting engineer to the Post Office.
St Pancras, London (1865-68)
Designed by William Barlow (1812-1902) and Rowland Mason Ordish (1824-86) — Midland Hotel by George Gilbert Scott (1811-78)
For the last ninety years almost, Sir Gilbert Scott has had a bad press. He is condemned as facile. Smart, aggressive, complacent and commercial. When at the top of his form Scott was as good as the best of his Gothic contemporaries. He was so firm a believer in the Gothic style as the only true 'Christian' style — Scott was a moderate High Churchman — that he was determined to adapt it for domestic purposes. St Pancras Station hotel was his greatest chance in London and well he rose to the occasion. I used to think that Scott was a rather dull architect, but the more I have looked at his work the more I have seen his merits. — John Betjeman and John Gay, London's historic railway stations, London, 1972
With its castellated fringes, scores of dormer windows (each with its finial), its myriad pointed-arch windows below the cornice . . . the Midland Grand Hotel was one of the finest and largest examples of Victorian secular Gothic. From the elaborate porte coch�re at the west-end, at the west end, the 565 ft frontage curved back and round to parallel the Euston Road, terminating in a 270 ft spire-capped clock tower which was a worthy rival to that of Barry and Pugin at Westminster. — Alan A Jackson, London's termini, Newton Abbot, 1969
Liverpool Street, London (1871-75) designed by Edward Wilson — Chief Engineer of the Great Eastern Railway
The first London terminus of the Great Eastern Railway was at Shoreditch. Liverpool Street was created in order to bring the railway closer into the City. A substantial part of the station's traffic consisted of working-class commuters who came from London's northern suburbs. In addition, Liverpool Street served East Anglia — and Harwich which was growing steadily in importance as a port. The site had been once occupied by Bethlem Hospital, where people once paid to enjoy gawping at and teasing the insane. Liverpool Street takes its name after Lord Liverpool (1770-1828), the longest serving British Prime Minister. The cost of the site was considered to have been excessive at the time. And there are still the steep gradients — always to be avoided in railway construction — leading up to the station. Liverpool Street perhaps lacked the architectural charisma of the old Euston, St Pancras, or Brunel's Paddington. For all that, its ironwork, with its filigree cast iron brackets and sturdy capitals — now painted in very congenial colours — is a delight. The 1994 metamorphosis of the station by Nick Derbyshire and his team — which involved the replicating of Victorian wrought and cast iron — has given new energy to the once dowdy station. Circulation in the station which was once notoriously difficult to navigate has also been vastly improved. The present Liverpool Street station affirms the value of refurbishing a perfectly serviceable nineteenth structure. The Great Eastern Hotel, by Charles Barry, junior (1823-1900), the son of the architect of the Houses of Parliament, has been transformed into a boutique hotel by Conran & Partners.
The Victoria Terminus (now Mumbai Chhatrapati Sivaji Terminus, 1888)
Designed by Frederick William Stevens (1847-1900)
The station was named the Victoria Terminus on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1887. In 1996 it was renamed the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus in honour of Chhatrapati Shivaji (1627-80), scourge of the Mughals and founder of the Mahratta empire, which was finally extinguished by the British in the early nineteenth century. Mumbai is the capital of Maharashtra and Shivaji is the state hero. The station — the original terminus of the Central Railways — was designed by Frederick William Stevens, born in Bath, who joined the Indian Public Works Department at the age of twenty. It is said to have been influenced by George Gilbert Scott's Gothic Midland Hotel, although it incorporates fine Indian carving and decorative features. John Lockwood Kipling (1837-1911), father of Rudyard Kipling, was Director of the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy School of Art in Bombay — the first modern art school in India. The institution promulgated the idea of amalgamating Indian and Western traditions, which was part of government policy. The Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus was put on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2004 — the first building of its kind.
Waterloo, London (1922) , designed by James Robb Scott
The busiest British station. The first London and South Western Railway's London terminus was at Nine Elms and opened on 21st May 1838. It was a modest neo-classical structure designed by Sir William Tite (1798-1873). It was his first station. He had no inhibitions about style and Gilbert Scott admired some of his bold vernacular stations in the North. Steam riverboats took passengers from Nine Elms to London Bridge and other points on the North bank of the Thames. This arrangement caused fairly considerable inconvenience to passengers. Waterloo Station was opened in 1848 — with two train sheds of 100 feet (30.48 meter) spans. The LSWR's traffic passenger traffic increased exponentially as Waterloo served Portsmouth — and latterly Devonport (1876) — the great naval bases as well as Aldershot, the principal army base. There was also the huge increase in commuter traffic from Kingston, Surbiton and Richmond. By 1892, Waterloo was handling 50000 passengers a day. The LSWR had, incidentally, extended its services to Exeter in 1860 and, by 1899, Padstow in Cornwall.
The station became noted for the difficulties passengers experienced in finding their correct departure platforms. There is a story — no doubt apocryphal — of a Devon farmer who declared to his wife "no wonder the French were defeated at Waterloo". At the turn of the century the LSWR Board decided that Waterloo needed to be rebuilt and J W Jacomb-Hood, LSWR's Chief Engineer, was sent to the United States to study contemporary station design. He was to be responsible for the structure and planning of the present station — although certain bays from the earlier station were retained. After the death of Jacomb-Hood in 1914, A W Szlumper took over. James Robb Scott, "Chief Architectural Assistant of the LSWR" was to be responsible for the architecture of the station. Nikolaus Pevsner in his Buildings of England. London, first published in 1952, had little time for Waterloo. Its steelwork was "sadly timid" and Robb Scott's fa�ade was "spoiled by a hopeless position". Indeed, the location of Waterloo has always been to its disadvantage — and, furthermore, it is the only great London station south of the river. Scott's architecture is, for the most part innocuously late Edwardian. However, his triumphal arch is a splendid example of the style that has been described as "Imperial Baroque".
Sir Aston Webb (1849-1930) — designer of the Admiralty Arch of 1911, which commemorated the life of Queen Victoria, was the supreme exponent of the style. Pathetically ill-sited — but where else could it have been placed? — Scott's arch commemorates the victory of the First World War. The names of LSWR employees killed in the war are recorded on plaques on the side of the steps, as are those of the Southern Railway killed in the Second World War. There are monumental statues of Bellona, the Goddess of War, and Peace flanking the steps. The arch is surmounted by a triumphant Britannia. Attached to the station — and sharing the concourse — is Waterloo International Terminal by Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners, which was opened in 1993. The design has been much admired. It has been said that it owes a little to Dutert's and Contamin's three-hinged Palais des Machines, at the Exposition Universelle, Paris 1889. The International Terminal will cease operation when the new St Pancras opens, although it will continue to be used for ordinary train services. Waterloo, despite its architectural failings — in particular its vainglorious attempt at monumentality — is a pleasant and efficient station. For all the lack of bravura of the scheme, the glazed roofs of Jacomb-Hood and Szlumper give Waterloo some of the best natural lighting of any station.
Last modified 3 July 2016


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Continued from yesterday. Pictures from our Spring Break in Hawaii last month
Vivian and Robert build a sand castle
Robert, Vivian and me on the beach
Day trip to Lahaina. Vivian did NOT want to get out of the car. She fussed at me, "I don't like 'Hawaina'!"
I finally coaxed Vivian out of the car. You can see she's still not particularly happy about it
Eventually we got Vivian into Cheeseburger in Paradise for lunch. She liked the view from her seat
Lunch at Cheeseburger in Paradise
Annual picture by the beautiful banyan tree in Lahaina. See this post for pictures from past years
Dots's collection of wristbands from the hotel
Dots relaxes on our lanai
Robert drove us out to where he runs in Hawaii. This is all volcanic rock - it looks a lot like a moonscape
We couldn't figure out what was cultural about this site!
This view almost makes me want to take up running - ha ha
The girls sleep well after a day in the sun
Vivian by the koi pond. I put this shirt on her today and reminded her that we bought it in Hawaii. She said, "Thank you, Hawaii!"
2 years ago


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Dramatic Magnet DR-05 Dramatic Ocean / 10ml Bottle
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The Dramatic Magnet Collection creates ultra-fine magnetic particles that produce multiple layers of brilliant and translucent tones.
Use a magnet stick to inspire your own designs with activated magnetic particles! Recommend using our High Power Magnet *sold separately.
Magnet Gel
Color: Light Blue/Sapphire
Curing Time: LED : 30s / UV: 60s
Size of Bottle: 10ml


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Are you about to take one of the most important steps of a lifetime, the selection and purchase of some kind of real estate? If you are like thousands of others, you are seeking something in the country or in a small town. You see, more and more Americans are moving to small towns or in the country to establish a lifestyle away from the big city or suburbs.
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Use this calculator to determine how much house you can afford. By entering details about your income, down payment, and monthly debts, you can estimate the mortgage amount that works with your budget.
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UV-Set PURION® 14 W DUAL
...stands out for its extraordinary disinfection performance, compact construction design and low energy consumption. It is manufactured in accordance with currently valid laws, standards and rules.
The UV Set DUAL consists of two quartz-made protective tube which are closed at one end while the other one is placed into stainless steel flanges, two UV radiators, one switching box with electronic cut-in unit and the connecting cables.
The stainless steel flanges have three boreholes by which they may be tightly screwed down (like for instance to the housing's walls). The function of the UV radiators being placed into the quartz-made protective tubes can be safely controlled through the stainless steel-made flanges transparent hood.
A control lamp will for instance be signalling lamp failure or cable breaking. A potential-free contact being connected therewith may be used for external signalling or connecting purposes. Optionally the UV-Set PURION 14 W DUAL can be equipped with an operating time counter or splinter protection.
UV radiators as used stand out for their long service life, high disinfection performance and low energy consumption.
Power supply is done with 110-240 V 50/60 Hz.
Its compact construction allows for an easy replacement of lamps Or lamp exchange like for instance at the end of the radiator's service life. The quartz-made immersion tubes may be easily disassembled or respectively assembled for cleaning purposes.
UV radiation is dangerous for your skin and eyes! Both your eyes and skin are to be appropriately protected. The user will be responsible for his own safety, as well as for the safety of people who are staying in areas where these radiators are being used.
Please bear in mind that materials which are not UVC-resistant may be damaged.
Technical data
manufacturer | PURION GmbH |
type | UV-Set PURION 14 W DUAL |
flow rate and disinfection performance | according to the medium and the vessel's geometrical structure, a calculation will be needed |
radiation length | 2x 220 mm |
flange's sealing area up to end of the quartz made tube | 312 mm |
quartz-made tube's diameter | Ø 23 mm |
flange's outer diameter | Ø 60 mm |
hole circles Diameter flange | Ø 48, 3x 120°, Ø5,5 |
sealing | VITON / FPM |
weight | 1,8 kg |
life time of lamps | 10.000 h |
number of lamps | 2 |
temperature max. | 40° C |
max. operating pressure | 10 bar |
housing's type of protection | IP 65 |
electrical connection (optionally) | 110-240 V 50/60 Hz |
total power | 2x 14 W |
over current protection | 10 A |
For cleaning of the immersion tube system the PURION Service KIT is recommended.
> PURION Service-KIT
This UV set may be used for:
- Air disinfection
- Tank disinfection
- Conveyor-band disinfection
- Surface disinfection
- Installation in air channeling systems
- no chemicals added to the medium being disinfected
- no bad taste or smell
- low-maintenance operation
- low operational costs
- data sheet UV-Set 14 W DUAL.pdf(253 Kb)


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Dealing with Workplace Stress
Coping with Increased Demands in the Workplace
In yesterday's first of two blogs on workplace issues I addressed what to do if you believe you are a victim of sexual harassment. You can access that blog at: http://bit.ly/gkhIzS. Today I discuss dealing with the increased demands placed by employers on employees to work quicker, produce more, and get along with less resource support. It's a problem because of the declining economy that has led to cutbacks and a reluctance to hire or rehire workers even when things turnaround. My concern is that some employers have gotten used to increased expectations for worker performance in the down economy and may be trying to capitalize on it by making permanent cuts in employment. One result is increased job stress as workers struggle to meet expectations, not lose their jobs, provide for their families and cope with unsympathetic bosses. It is a timely issue since April 28 is Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work day. We want to inspire our kids to live up to the theme of the day, "Invent the Future." To be successful in that endeavor, we must value our workplace environment and pass along that feeling to our kids. Now, the vast majority of employers are good, understanding people. But for those of us who feel the other way, I provide some coping tips later on.
Some say the reluctance of employers to rehire or expand their employment base is in part due to rising health care premiums and uncertainty over the ultimate fate of the recently passed health care reform bill. The problem is we are already into the election cycle and little meaningful change is likely to occur for about two years thereby creating a lot of uncertainty and employer angst about the future. Meanwhile, employees feel more stress and find little support for their concerns in the workplace.
Here's my advice if you face these workplace challenges. First, discuss your concerns with a friend or trusted advisor even before you confront your boss. You may receive helpful advice that influences how you should approach your boss. Perhaps your friend has been there, done that, and he or she can provide insightful thoughts about pitfalls to avoid. Next, ask your boss in a polite, respectful manner, to discuss your concerns. Most bosses will be willing to listen unless they are complete jerks in which case you may want to consider changing your job. I know that's easier said than done especially in today's tough economy, but stubbornness is not a virtue and can lead to other workplace demands down the road that challenge your ethics. For example, your boss may expect you to cover up some wrongdoing on his part or financial fraud. A good boss, one who is committed to ethics in the workplace, should provide a proper tone of openness, caring, and respect for all workers in order to engender loyalty from employees.
If your boss is receptive to your concerns but doesn't change the workplace environment, then you must decide whether it is too much to handle while maintaining a happy and rewarding personal life, or learn better coping skills. If you decide to stick it out and meet the workplace demands, then I suggest taking frequent breaks even if it means reducing a one-hour lunch to one-half hour. Even five minute breaks can be refreshing. Learn to meditate or at least close your eyes and try to put the stress out of your mind. Create a vision of peace and harmony such as lying on the beach without a care in the world. If you can do this three or four times a day, you will feel refreshed and better able to try it again. Most important of all, don't eat at your desk. Get out of the office. A change of scenery will do you good.
Everyone is different with respect to how we react to stress. The Type A person is typically high-strung and may even lose his cool when faced with an overbearing or uncompassionate boss. If that's you, please remember it doesn't pay to be incalcitrant. Your boss is your boss with character traits that dictate the workplace environment. A Type B person is easy-going and may be more accepting of excessive workplace demands although what's hidden beneath the surface can be resentment. Of course, many people have traits of both personality types.
My final word of advice is to carefully monitor your health while learning to cope with workplace stress. See a doctor and get baseline data -- blood pressure readings and maybe a stress test. You can repeat those procedures periodically to assess whether you are jeopardizing your health. No job is worth risking serious health problems or worse. The quotist Carrie Latet offers a helpful perspective: "Is everything as urgent as your stress would imply?"
Blog by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, April 19, 2011
Cartoon reproduced with permission


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Leather Cherry – Large Sample (20cm x 20cm)
£4.80 (inc Vat)
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Prosimy o wypełnienie poniższego formularza.Sample Product. Order a sample to see how the floor looks in your home.
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