Re: AUDITORY Digest - 3 Nov 2015 to 4 Nov 2015 (#2015-266)

On Nov 5, 2015, at 12:00 AM, AUDITORY automatic digest system <LISTSERV@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

From: AUDITORY automatic digest system <LISTSERV@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: November 5, 2015 at 12:00:05 AM EST
To: AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: AUDITORY Digest - 3 Nov 2015 to 4 Nov 2015 (#2015-266)

There are 3 messages totalling 951 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

1. ICAD 2016 1st CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
2. Job Opportunity - 6 month Internship at Samsung UK.
3. Thompson's "On Binaural Audition"

From: WOR <david.worrall@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: November 3, 2015 at 7:22:16 PM EST
Subject: ICAD 2016 1st CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

(apologies for doubles, please feel free to distribute)

:::::::::::::::: ICAD 2016 :::::::::::::::::

The 22nd International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD 2016)
Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, July 2 - July 8 2016.

CALL FOR PAPERS, POSTERS, SONIFICATIONS, COMPOSITIONS, INSTALLATIONS, WORKSHOPS, PANELS, AND DEMONSTRATIONS.

Co-chairs:    Dr David Worrall, Australian National University and Dr Stephen Barrass, University of Canberra.

Please check the conference website for updates: http://icad.org/icad2016/

ICAD is a highly interdisciplinary academic conference with relevance to researchers, practitioners, musicians, and students interested in the design of sounds to support tasks, improve performance, guide decisions, augment awareness, and enhance experiences. It is unique in its singular focus on auditory displays and the array of perception, technology, and application areas that this encompasses. Like its predecessors, ICAD 2016 will be a single-track conference, open to all, with no membership or affiliation requirements.

ICAD 2016—the 22nd International Conference on Auditory Display—will be held at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, from July 2 to 8, 2016. The conference venue is the ANU School of Music, in the downtown centre of Canberra. Workshops and the graduate student ThinkTank (doctoral consortium) will be on the weekend of July 2 and 3, before the main conference.

Note that ICAD is back-to-back with the conference on New Interfaces for Musical _expression_ (NIME) which will be held in Brisbane the following week, so international attendees can attend two international conferences for the one trip to Australia!

:::::::::::::::: THEME: SONIC INFORMATION DESIGN :::::::::::::::::

The designed world is rapidly replacing the natural world. Design has been called the “third culture” and has been distinguished from the Sciences and Arts by Nigel Cross in terms of
* “things to know” : the natural world in science, human experience in art, and the artificial world in design.
* “ways of knowing”: rationality and objectivity in science, reflection and subjectivity in art, and imagination and practicality in design.
* “ways of finding out” : experiment and analysis in science, criticism and evaluation in art, and modelling and synthesis in design.

This year’s theme – Sonic Information Design - has the aspiration that artificial sounds may be designed to make the world a better place. Like other design disciplines, Sonic Information Design takes a synergetic user-centred view of the relationship between artefacts, those that are affected by them, and the social contexts in which they occur. A Design orientation pays particular attention to the phenomenology of user experience —including physical, cognitive, emotional, and aesthetic issues; the relationship between form, function, and content; and emerging concepts such as fun, playfulness and design futures. Practice-based research is considered as a generative process of exploration, speculation and discovery, with outcomes that can be provisional, contingent and aspirational, while aiming for richer, more situated understandings that lead to the advancement of knowledge and the proliferation of new realities.

Sonic Information Design draws on theoretical approaches from multiple disciplines to guide hypothesis testing at multiple points during an iterative process—what Bill Gaver calls “humble theory”. Sonic Information Design recognises usefulness as critical for evaluating artefacts, and the perceptual alignment with data characteristics as critical for effective designs.

ICAD 2016 invites contributions that take a design approach, introduce design theory and apply design methods to Auditory Display and Data Sonification, with a view to building a conceptually robust foundation for Sonic Information Design.

::::::::::::::::: TOPICS :::::::::::::::::
Topics for ICAD2016 include new and emerging themes, as well as more traditional ICAD ones.
Themes include but are not limited to:
* Sonic Information Design
* Stream-based Sonification and Auditory Scene Design
* Acoustic Sonification * Small Data (personal, intimate) sonification and the quantised self. * Sonification, soundscape and screensound
* Sonification in Health and Environmental Data (soniHED) * Musification - sonifications and music
* Sonification, personal fabrication and maker culture
* Sonification in the Internet of Things
* Auditory Data Mining
* Big Data sonification * 3D and Spatial Audio
* Aesthetics, Philosophy, and Culture of Auditory Displays
* Accessibility
* Applications
* Design Theory and Methods
* Evaluation and Usability
* Human Factors and Interaction
* Mappings from Data to Sound
* Psychology, Cognition, Perception, and Psychoacoustics
* Sonification and Exploration of Data through Sound
* Sound as Art
* Technologies and Tools

Presentations will be organised according to four major themes:
* Auditory Data Mining
* Interactive Sonication, including for sports and health.
* Musification and Aesthetics
* Auditory Perception, including spatialisation and inter/poly-modality.

.::::::::::::::::: KEY DATES (2016) :::::::::::::::::

15 February    : Submission Deadline for Full Papers, Posters and Extended Abstracts
14 March        : Submission Deadline for Workshop proposals
28 March        : Acceptance Notification of Papers, Posters and Extended Abstracts
04 April         : Submission Deadline for Sonifications / Installations / Compositions
11 April         : Acceptance Notification of Workshop proposals
02 May        : Submissions Deadline for Camera-Ready materials
16 May         : Acceptance Notification of Sonifications / Installations / Compositions

2-3 July        : ICAD2016 Conference ThinkTank and Workshops
4-8 July        : ICAD1016 Conference Proper (Programme details TBA)

::::::::::::::::: PUBLICATION :::::::::::::::::
We are aiming to select papers for a special issue of a leading journal. Details to follow.

::::::::::::::::: WORKSHOPS :::::::::::::::::
Proposals for half- and full-day workshops are called for.
Deadline for Submission of Workshop proposals: 14 March 2016

::::::::::::::::: INSTALLATIONS :::::::::::::::::
Installations at ICAD 2016 will be afforded their own individual space and, depending on the number of submissions, will likely be featured for an entire day. Spaces available include
A public but relatively quiet space
An entrance foyer space
A public but relatively quiet space
A pub and a café space (with table-top Bluetooth speakers if applicable)

Deadline for submission of Installation proposals: 4 April 2016

::::::::::::::::: EXTRA-CURRICULA :::::::::::::::::
We have organised a rich array of natural and cultural activities to ensure your trip down under is not all work and no play!

::::::::::::::::: MORE INFORMATION ::::::::::::
Visit the conference website (currently in development) for updates and other information:
http://icad.org/icad2016/

::::::::::::::::: CORRESPONDENCE ::::::::::::
Please address correspondence to:
icad2016chair@xxxxxxxx

We look forward to you joining us in making a wonderful conference!

(First Call, November 2, 2015)
————————————————————————————— FIN ——————————————————————————————



______________________________________
Prof. Dr. David Worrall
International Audio Laboratories Erlangen
Fraunhofer-Institut für Integrierte Schaltungen IIS
Am Wolfsmantel 33
91058 Erlangen
Email: david.worrall@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

- audiolabs-erlangen.de/research/emerging-audio-researc
- NetSon: www.iis.fraunhofer.de/de/muv/2015/netson.html
---
Adjunct Senior Research Fellow
School of Music, Australian National University
david.worrall@xxxxxxxxxx
—
personal website: avatar.com.au

From: Holly Francois <h.francois@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: November 3, 2015 at 6:01:11 AM EST
Subject: Job Opportunity - 6 month Internship at Samsung UK.

There is currently have a vacancy for a 6 month internship based at Samsung in Staines, the job description is attached.

The project will involve research into algorithms and objective measures for speech enhancement for mobile phones in different levels of background noise. I am looking for someone with experience in speech/audio processing and good C and or Matlab skills, who has either completed a PhD, or is currently studying for one.

The salary is £25k per year, pro-rata for 6 months – i.e. £12.5k for the 6 month contract. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to apply for a work permit, due to the short term nature of the contract, so any candidates must either be eligible to work in the UK, or be undertaking the internship as an integral part of their course.

If you are interested in applying for the position please see the Samsung job web site for more details and how to apply https://careers.eu.samsung.com/careers/svc/app/viewSearchJob (the job ID is 256083)

Thank you very much, Holly

Dr Holly Francois,
Principal Engineer
Samsung Research UK.

From: "Richard F. Lyon" <dicklyon@xxxxxxx>
Date: November 3, 2015 at 2:10:59 PM EST
Subject: Re: Thompson's "On Binaural Audition"

It turns out these papers are free online in Google Book search, which is where HathiTrust got their copy that a reader kindly sent me.

1877: On Binaural Audition: https://books.google.com/books?id=DVUEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA274#v=onepage&q&f=false
1878 Part II: https://books.google.com/books?id=_ZpJAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA383#v=onepage&q&f=false
1881 Part III: https://books.google.com/books?id=-hlKAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA351#v=onepage&q&f=false

There are so many references to them that it's hard to find them in Google Book Search. Also OCR errors don't help (like Sylvantis).
Restricting the search date range sometimes helps, but it's still sporadic whether they get found or not. Very odd.

Dick

On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 1:59 PM, Richard F. Lyon <dicklyon@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Three people sent me copies and I've sent copies to 4 people who requested them.
These are definitely in the public domain in the US at least (or so the cover page states),
so if anyone else wants a copy, just ask me.

I was particularly interested because of what Wilson and Myers said in 1908 about the "unwelcome hypothosesis" that phase could be compared centrally:
"... Thompson concluded that under the conditions of binaural hearing above described, the tone-stimulus is transmitted along each auditory nerve to some common cerebral centre and that at this centre the beats arise. But this and the following interesting fact, also observed by Thompson, can be explained without recourse to such an unwelcome hypothesis, if we suppose that each tone is transmitted by bone conduction to the opposite ear and that the beats heard are due to the play of the two series of vibrations of different frequency on one and the same sense organ"

I wondered if Thompson really proposed such an "unwelcome hypothesis", a central comparison of waveforms from the two sides. What I find it that he rather carefully danced around the idea, suggesting it but not saying it, and trying to rule out bone conduction, in 1877:

"5. It is not easy to explain why interference-beats should thus occur in the simultaneous individual action of the two ears, while combinational tones (difference-tones) are inaudible. There is in the case of the auditory nerves, or portio mollis, no decussation like that of the optic nerves; the former do not intersect after leaving the fourth ventricle, in which they have their common origin, and from which they diverge ri ht and left. _ There is in health a possible communication between the ears across the pharynx, through the Eustachian tubes. Moreover the bone of the skull itself is capable of conveying sonorous tremors, which might account for both ears hearing a sound entering by one only. In either of these latter cases, however, there would be no reason why combinational tones should not be equally audible in binaural as in monaural audition; so that we are driven to the hypothesis that any means of comparison which may exist in the nerve systems of the ears exists deep-seated in the actual structure of the brain. This may be the reason why dissonances are in binaural audition so excessively dis agreeable, and why even ordinary consonant intervals become harsh. They evoke a discontinuous sensation when there is no opportunity of their blending previously to acting upon the sensitive mechanism of the nerve-structures. The discontinuity of the sensation produces an intensity of effect exceeding that of a continuous one. Hence sounds all but in audible themselves may yield, as noted in No. 2, very well marked beats, enabling the ear thus to detect the most delicate differences of tone.

and again in 1878:
    "There is no decussation of the auditory nerves, like that of the optic nerves, to account for a blending of the sensations. The portio mollis of the right does not intersect or have any commissure with the portio mollis of the left after leaving the fourth ventricle of the brain, from which they originate. This point deserves the attention of anatomists and physiologists."

He seems to neglect the possibility that the signals could be compared in the brainstem (where we now know the olivary complex does just that).

On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 9:10 AM, Richard F. Lyon <dicklyon@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Thanks, got them!

Dick

On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 4:03 PM, Richard F. Lyon <dicklyon@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Does anyone have copies of Sylvanus P. Thompson's articles "On Binaural Audition" and its follow-on "Phenomena of binaural audition—Part II" in Philosophical Magazine?

These would seem to be in the public domain, but the only copies I can find online are for sale at an exorbitant rate:
1877: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14786447708639338?journalCode=tphm16
1878: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14786447808639528?journalCode=tphm16

Dick