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- Creators: Arizona State University
Description
American Primitive is a composition written for wind ensemble with an instrumentation of flute, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones, trumpet, horn, trombone, euphonium, tuba, piano, and percussion. The piece is approximately twelve minutes in duration and was written September - December 2013. American Primitive is absolute music (i.e. it does not follow a specific narrative) comprising blocks of distinct, contrasting gestures which bookend a central region of delicate textural layering and minimal gestural contrast. Though three gestures (a descending interval followed by a smaller ascending interval, a dynamic swell, and a chordal "chop") were consciously employed throughout, it is the first gesture of the three that creates a sense of unification and overall coherence to the work. Additionally, the work challenges listeners' expectations of traditional wind ensemble music by featuring the trumpet as a quasi-soloist whose material is predominately inspired by transcriptions of jazz solos. This jazz-inspired material is at times mimicked and further developed by the ensemble, also often in a soloistic manner while the trumpet maintains its role throughout. This interplay of dialogue between the "soloists" and the "ensemble" further skews listeners' conceptions of traditional wind ensemble music by featuring almost every instrument in the ensemble. Though the term "American Primitive" is usually associated with the "naïve art" movement, it bears no association to the music presented in this work. Instead, the term refers to the author's own compositional attitudes, education, and aesthetic interests.
ContributorsJandreau, Joshua (Composer) / Rockmaker, Jody D (Thesis advisor) / Rogers, Rodney I (Committee member) / Demars, James R (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
ABSTRACT
This dissertation examines contemporary U.S. women writing about war, with primarily women subjects and protagonists, from 1991-2013, in fiction, memoir, and media. The writers situate women at the center of war texts and privilege their voices as authoritative speakers in war, whether as civilians and soldiers trying to survive or indigenous women preparing for the possibility of war. I argue that these authors are rewriting scripts of war to reflect gendered experiences and opening new ways of thinking about war. Women Rewriting Scripts of War argues that Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Almanac of the Dead juxtaposes an indigenous Story concept against a white industrialized national “Truth,” and indigenous women characters will resort to war if needed to oppose it. Silko’s and the other texts here challenge readers to unseat assumptions about the sovereignty of the U.S. and other countries, about the fixedness of gender, of capitalism, and of how humans relate to each other‒and how we should. I argue in Essay 3 that the script of “the body” or “the soldier” in military service can be expanded by moving toward language and concepts from feminist and queer theory and spectrums of gender and sexuality. This can contribute to positive change for all military members. In each of the texts, there are some similarities in connections with others. Connections enable solidarity for change, possibilities for healing, and survival; indeed, without connections with others to work together, survival is not possible. Changes to established economic structures become necessary for women in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible; I argue that women engaging in alternative modes of economy subvert the dominant economic constraints, gender hierarchies, and social isolation during and after war in the Congo. In Essay 5, I explore two fictional texts about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Helen Benedict's novel Sand Queen and Katey Schultz’s short story collection Flashes of War. The connections in these women’s texts about war are not idealized, and they function as the antithesis to the fragmentation and isolation of postmodern texts.
This dissertation examines contemporary U.S. women writing about war, with primarily women subjects and protagonists, from 1991-2013, in fiction, memoir, and media. The writers situate women at the center of war texts and privilege their voices as authoritative speakers in war, whether as civilians and soldiers trying to survive or indigenous women preparing for the possibility of war. I argue that these authors are rewriting scripts of war to reflect gendered experiences and opening new ways of thinking about war. Women Rewriting Scripts of War argues that Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Almanac of the Dead juxtaposes an indigenous Story concept against a white industrialized national “Truth,” and indigenous women characters will resort to war if needed to oppose it. Silko’s and the other texts here challenge readers to unseat assumptions about the sovereignty of the U.S. and other countries, about the fixedness of gender, of capitalism, and of how humans relate to each other‒and how we should. I argue in Essay 3 that the script of “the body” or “the soldier” in military service can be expanded by moving toward language and concepts from feminist and queer theory and spectrums of gender and sexuality. This can contribute to positive change for all military members. In each of the texts, there are some similarities in connections with others. Connections enable solidarity for change, possibilities for healing, and survival; indeed, without connections with others to work together, survival is not possible. Changes to established economic structures become necessary for women in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible; I argue that women engaging in alternative modes of economy subvert the dominant economic constraints, gender hierarchies, and social isolation during and after war in the Congo. In Essay 5, I explore two fictional texts about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Helen Benedict's novel Sand Queen and Katey Schultz’s short story collection Flashes of War. The connections in these women’s texts about war are not idealized, and they function as the antithesis to the fragmentation and isolation of postmodern texts.
ContributorsStamper, Cambria A (Author) / Clarke, Deborah (Thesis advisor) / Hogue, Cynthia (Committee member) / Fonow, Mary Margaret (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Electro-acoustic compositions throughout the twentieth-century have flourished due to the modern advancements and improvements in technology, including image based interactive software. This project aims to reveal how three composers of different backgrounds utilize the use of euphonium in combination with live interactive electronics. To this date no known works have been composed for this instrumentation.
Advancements in the development of audio software and hardware have helped to improve and rapidly evolve the inclusion of live electronics including the use of performer-triggered events, audio processing, and live electronic decision-making. These technologies can be utilized and explored in various ways. Three composers have been commissioned to each compose a new work focusing on using the timbre of the euphonium in combination with explored electronic sounds, unplanned sounds of nature and the use of the human voice. Each work is performed and examined by the author in order to further explore the electro-acoustic properties of this genre, how they communicate and interact with one another, and how the electronics interact and meld with the sound of the euphonium. Compositional elements in this project include but are not limited to the use of pre-recorded natural and “un-natural” sounds, and the manipulations of both pre-recorded and live sounds through the use of performer triggered events using visual programming languages such as Max/MSP and looping pedals.
Advancements in the development of audio software and hardware have helped to improve and rapidly evolve the inclusion of live electronics including the use of performer-triggered events, audio processing, and live electronic decision-making. These technologies can be utilized and explored in various ways. Three composers have been commissioned to each compose a new work focusing on using the timbre of the euphonium in combination with explored electronic sounds, unplanned sounds of nature and the use of the human voice. Each work is performed and examined by the author in order to further explore the electro-acoustic properties of this genre, how they communicate and interact with one another, and how the electronics interact and meld with the sound of the euphonium. Compositional elements in this project include but are not limited to the use of pre-recorded natural and “un-natural” sounds, and the manipulations of both pre-recorded and live sounds through the use of performer triggered events using visual programming languages such as Max/MSP and looping pedals.
ContributorsDuron-VanTuinen, Danielle Rae (Author) / Swoboda, Deanna (Thesis advisor) / Ericson, John (Committee member) / Suzuki, Kotoka (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
Many contemporary artists have turned to the past in order to negotiate and make sense of their relationship with the present. Similarly, museums have begun to look back in order to push forward and through a revisionist lens they scrutinize their collections and reveal ignored object histories. A prominent method some museums implement is allowing contemporary artists to comb through the vaults and present new relationships between their objects to their visitors. Through a psychological analysis of memory, and theorists’ dissection of nostalgia, object agency, and contemporaneity, I argue that artists Spencer Finch, Do Ho Suh, Newsha Tavakolian, Solmaz Daryani, Malekeh Nayiny, Mitra Tabrizian, Mark Dion, Fred Wilson, and Gala Porras-Kim function as revivalists – or artists whose works use memory and nostalgia to bring the past back to life. By attempting to retrieve memories, create nostalgic experiences, and question histories, they make their works tools for remembrance, reconciliation, and renegotiation with the past and present. The concerns these artists bring to the surface through their works build an understanding of how memory and nostalgia function as devices for personal meaning-making, trauma processing, and human-object relationship building.
ContributorsZiesmann, Hannah Grace (Author) / Fahlman, Betsy (Thesis advisor) / Codell, Julie (Committee member) / Lineberry, Heather (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
After continuous transnational migrations to Spain in the last few decades, a second generation of migrants has begun to experience an identity struggle as a result of the tensions between their culture of origin and the prevailing local customs and values. As such, this places them in what is called a third space. Considering the concept of imagined communities as advanced by Benedict Anderson, this dissertation contextualizes the testimonies of women from three migrant origin communities –Morocco, Equatorial Guinea, and China– to understand their way of inclusion and belonging.The study explores the works of Najat El Hachmi, Laila Karrouch, Miriam Hatibi, Lucia Mbomio, Carolina Nve Díaz San Francisco, Desiree Bela-Lobedde and Quan Zhou Wu. It includes fictional narrative, documentary, graphic novel and journalism. The discourse by Moroccan origin authors relates the discrimination that they experience to the tension between the dominant culture and the intersectional feminism with which they identify. Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory enriches the understanding and helps to define the ongoing generational trauma, afropessimism, of women of Equatoguinean origin as a result of their experiences of colonialism and racism. Finally, Chinese-Spanish women write of discrimination in their close circles as a result of being heritage speakers, and also by being subjugated to their male counterparties in the family hierarchy.
ContributorsBeltran de Heredia Carmona, Edurne (Author) / Garcia Fernandez, Carlos Javier CJGF (Thesis advisor) / Hernandez, Manuel de Jesus MH (Committee member) / Horan, Elizabeth EH (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
The Past in Front of Us: Imagining Black Diasporas in the 21st Century seeks aesthetic connections between Black artists working around the world today. This project prioritizes aesthetic perception and affect in relation to Black Diasporic studies and reimagines the canon of work by Black artists. This project does not relegate aesthetics to surface or formal analyses, but understands aesthetic motifs as intelligent entities which communicate the experience of existence. This project affirms Black Diaspora as a dynamic imaginary. I extend traditional analyses of Black Diaspora from the continental edges of the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. I look horizontally and create juxtapositions between artists working in Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and the Pacific Rim. I use transdisciplinary terms from art history, psychoanalysis, semiotics, philosophy, rhetoric, trauma theory, and critical race studies. Analyses build on multiple discourses because Black Diaspora is a mutable concept that shifts and evolves. This project is one of the first investigations of twenty-first century artistic production by Black artists globally. Until now, these artists’ work has been covered primarily in magazines, exhibition catalogues, and art reviews in the popular press. Chapters, organized by themes rather than regions, focus on emerging artists Dannielle Bowman, Sandra Brewster, Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo, Kambui Olijimi, and Frida Orupabo. In addition, this thesis contributes a new theoretical frame to existing scholarship on artists Sammy Baloji, Sanford Biggers, Mark Bradford, Glenn Ligon, and Cauleen Smith. As a speculative work, this thesis articulates a vocabulary and uncovers a multitude of aesthetic connections between art practices globally. A significant component of this work is to foreground Black artists’ historically sidelined insights about being in the world.
ContributorsLawson, Dhyandra (Author) / Hoy, Meredith (Thesis advisor) / Afanador-Pujol, Angélica (Committee member) / Grabski, Joanna (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021