Journal articles on the topic 'Iranian musicians'

Abstract In this article I assess the convoluted relationship between Iranian popular musicians and the Western media. Iranian music is generally discussed within a framework of resistance and Iranian musicians are often presented as political ‘revolutionaries’. In this process, many contradictions emerge; musicians crave publicity and recognition, yet resist it in an attempt to present an image of themselves as part of a subversive Iranian ‘underground’, a highly-laden term which in itself is much contested among Iranian musicians. By examining specific media representations, interviewing musicians, and portraying them in an Iranian film marketed toward Western audiences, Bahman Ghobadi’s No One Knows About Persian Cats (2009) illustrates how Iranian musicians exist in a multi-faceted world, beyond protest and defiance. Musicians actively participate in their representation in the media by simultaneously perpetuating certain collective images and attempting to portray a unique sense of self-identity.

Traditional iranian dastgāh music, as fostered in the courts and the homes of the aristocracy, draws from many sources, including regional music styles, religious genres of melody and chant and popular songs that have been reworked by master musicians and their students. In different regional capitals, musicians acquired their repertoire from their master teacher through a process of listening and repetition and also drew from local sources of music, incorporating these into their own unique version of this repertoire of traditional melodies and melodic fragments.

Within the realm of Iranian studies, music remains mostly outside the purview of larger social and political discussions of the region. At first glance this may seem appropriate, since even musicians often consider their work beyond the reach of sociological discussions. But the behavior of Iranians suggests that music has a broader social and political role beyond narrowly defined musical contexts. Music is a common part of everyday life in Iran. In traditional contexts such as weddings and other family gatherings as well as in modern settings such as the car, the computer, or the concert hall, most Iranians experience music on a daily basis. Music's influential role in Iranian society has made it the target of constant government scrutiny both before and after the Islamic Revolution. The current Islamic government's need to control and approve of every aspect of music making demonstrates a keen understanding of music's influence in the country. Hence whether Iranians are listening to it, dancing to it, performing it, or banning it, the message is the same: music is a powerful force that affects key aspects of Iranian society. For this reason music can offer a unique perspective on a variety of topics relevant to students and scholars of modern Iran.

AbstractThis article introduces Julius Heise’s Marche Triomphale which reveals a history that was eliminated during the nineteenth century race theory publications. Beginning with an account of Iranians’ encounters with European military music, this article provides a brief history of Iranian military bands in European style, or the bands of muzikānchiān. It then addresses racial motivations behind a short account on Iranian music in 1885 by Victor Advielle, a French administrator. Arthur de Gobineau’s race theories were fashionable in nineteenth century Europe, and Victor Advielle used his fellow Artesian, Alfred Lemaire, to prove their racial superiority. Through Advielle’s account, Lemaire became the main figure of European music in Iran in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The article proceeds with biographical information on two European musicians, Marco Brambilla (d.1867 in Tehran) and Julius Heise (d.1870 in Tehran), and uncovers the earliest known piece published for the bands of muzikānchiān: Marche Triomphale, À Sa Majesté Impériale Nassir-Ed-Din Shah Kadjar de Perse.

Musicians as an occupational group are exposed to various ergonomic exposures which may lead to musculoskeletal problems. In this study we assessed the frequency of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) among Iranian instrumentalists (using traditional Iranian and western instruments). Methods: In a cross-sectional study we assessed the frequency of MSDs in 356 Iranian instrumentalists by standardized Nordic musculoskeletal questionnaire according to age group, type of instrument, duration of playing, and playing/sitting position. Data were analyzed using chi-squared, t-test and ANOVA. Results: Overall, 158 of 356 subjects (44.4%) experienced MSDs, mostly with mild or moderate symptoms. Frequency of MSDs was significantly higher in females but it was not significantly related to body mass index, duration of employment, and duration of playing or teaching. Conclusion: Our study showed a high frequency of MSDs among Iranian instrumentalists, so paying attention to the ergonomic exposures of instrumentalists as an occupational group is important. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study on players of different Iranian instruments to have considered ergonomic risk factors.

So far, more than forty Sasanian bas-reliefs have been discovered in numerous archaeological sites. Among them, eleven bas-reliefs in seven archaeological sites represent women on them. In this article, the eleven bas-reliefs and the women’s images and their characteristics in different scenes have been analyzed and studied. It can be concluded that women on these bas-reliefs have been represented in the social-cultural fields, such as in the royal family or as goddesses, musicians, etc. Most of the female characters on the bas-reliefs belong to the upper classes of the Iranian society.

Tansen was a great musician. Abul Fazl describes the eminence of various musicians under the benevolent patronage of Emperor Akbar, the first place in which music is given to Emperor Tansen. Tansen was the best talented musician of that era. Praising Tansen, Abul Fazal wrote, "A singer like him in India has not been born for a thousand years". Tansen was born in 1531-32 in a Gaud Brahmins family in Behat village, about 43 km from Gwalior. His initial name was Trilochan Pandey, he had a special interest in music since childhood. Naresh Mansingh Tomar of Gwalior had established a music school in Gwalior which continued for many years even after the Mughals had taken over Gwalior. Tansen received his early education in this music school. He received music education from the famous saint singer Baba Haridas of Guru Vrindavan of his Tau Baba Ramdas, in addition to this he also learned singing from Mohammad Gaus and also learned Iranian music. तानसेन एक महान संगीतज्ञ थे। अबुल फजल बादशाह अकबर के उदार संरक्षण में विभिन्न संगीतज्ञों के होने का वर्णन करता है, उनमें वह पहला स्थान संगीत सम्राट तानसेन को प्रदान करता है।। तानसेन उस युग के सर्वश्रेष्ठ प्रतिभावान संगीतज्ञ थे। तानसेन की प्रशंसा करते हुए अबुल फजल ने लिखा है ’’ भारत में उसके समान गायक एक सहस्त्र वर्षो से नहीं हुआ’’ तानसेन का जन्म 1531-32 में ग्वालियर से लगभग 43 किलोमीटर दूर बेहट ग्राम में एक गौड़ ब्राम्हण परिवार में हुआ था। इनका प्रारंभिक नाम त्रिलोचन पांडे था, बाल्यकाल से ही उन्हें संगीत में विशेष अभिरूचि थी। ग्वालियर के नरेश मानसिंह तोमर ने ग्वालियर में एक संगीत शाला स्थापित की थी जो मुगलों द्वारा ग्वालियर पर अधिकार कर लेने के बाद भी कई वर्षो तक विद्यमान रही। तानसेन ने इसी संगीत शाला में संगीत की प्रारंभिक षिक्षा प्राप्त की थी। इन्होंने अपने ताउ बाबा रामदास के गुरू वृन्दावन के तत्कालिन प्रसिद्ध संत गायक बाबा हरिदास से संगीत की शिक्षा प्राप्त की थी इसके अतिरिक्त उन्होंने मोहम्मद गौस से भी गायन विद्या सीखी तथा ईरानी संगीत का भी ज्ञान प्राप्त किया।

Arts journalism and reflective practice intersect in a new field of ‘journalism as research’ (Bacon 2006). This article takes an innovative approach informed by the multimodal, musical and psychogenic fugue to discuss a case study of arts journalism reflexive practice. The journalistic research topic is the impact of the traumatic journey of exiled writers on their creative writing, the empathetic effects of trauma and courage on their advocates and the impacts of researching trauma on the researcher. The journalistic, interview-based articles discussed in the case study are on exiled writers in Australia, Iranian poet-musician Mohsen Soltany Zand and Ivory Coast political journalist Cheikh Kone. In reflecting on processes of writing of the stories, the author begins to outline the foundations of an innovative, critical fugal methodology of reflexive practice for modes and pieces of arts journalism. Image: Exiled Iranian poet-musician Mohsen Soltany Zand giving a reading at Bar Me, Kings Cross, Sydney, September 2007. Photo: Ruth Skilbeck

Iran’s social and cultural climates seem to have undergone a relativerelaxation in recent years. The end of the Iran-Iraq war (1988), the deathof Ayatollah Khomeini (1989), and the emergence of Ali Akbar HashemiRafsanjani as president are some of the factors affecting this development.A cursory analysis of the level of literate intellectual culture-print media, film industry, literature, and music-reveals the range andnature of some cultural activities in post-1979 Iran. For example, between1981-91, the number of book titles published annually increased from3,500 to 8,600, periodicals from 100 to 501, and public libraries from 415to 550 units, while the number of people using libraries rose from 4 million(1981) to 14 million (1991). In the film industry, despite a vigilantcensor, Iranian cinema matured and acquired a new character, a developmentdescribed as “the most stimulating event in arts” over the lastdecade. More films were made by the local film industry and screened ininternational film festivals in 1990-91 than during any single year prior tothe 1979 revolution.A paradoxical linkage between constraints on cultural activities andthe flowering of creative potential also applies to music. DespiteKhomeini’s fatwa banishing music from the national radio and TV for atime,’ it is now claimed that the creative range of modem Persian musicis unmatched in the sixty years of its recorded history. In literature, theemergence of new writers, new experiments in form and technique, aswell as a phenomenal growth in the readership, sale, and publication ofworks by contemporary Iranian authors have enriched the cultural sceneconsiderably? With sales of each best-selling title running between15,000 to 35,000, together with the impressive quality of the works produced,the literary arena appears to be more buoyant than at any otherperiod of recent Iranian history.” ...

Even though scholars have pointedly embraced ethical matters in music education within the global context, there has been relatively little attention paid to the concept of cosmopolitanism. While keeping in mind that the concept of cosmopolitanism is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that can be read and implemented in many ways, the aim of the current narrative inquiry is to highlight the significance of the human connection—a notable feature of moral cosmopolitanism, and by extension, cosmopolitanism from below—inherent in, and possibly the most prominent aspect of music education practices, regardless of their position in the formal–informal spectrum of such practices. In this context, music education becomes a lifestyle—whose participants cultivate their ethical sensitivities toward human connection—that has the capacity to alleviate the human sufferings occurring globally. By telling the life stories of Behzad Khiavchi, the lead musician of a trans-Iranian band, this article aims to highlight the cosmopolitan collective imperative, a fundamental characteristic of music education, as the harbinger of a more caring world.

The purpose of this scientific article is to study the facts of the biography of the world-famous, celebrated contemporary (the turn of the XX – XXI centuries) Iranian-American composer Reza Vali. The aim for this represented investigative item is learning of the periodization concerning the Reza Valiʼs creativeness, his artistically musical compositions, setting the boundaries and names of periods of his creativity. In addition, the goal concerning submitted scientific article is considering the aspect of the influence of Western European and Iranian traditional music on the academic professional masterpieces were written by composer Reza Vali, revealing the composer's attitude to the ancient modal system Dástgâh / Mághâm. Methods. There are historical, genre-style, systemic as well as structural-analytical methods in the represented scientific article. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that the article for the first time in world musicology presents biographical material about Reza Vali, also developed the periodization of his work, the boundaries and names of the periods of the composer's creative heritage have been established. Conclusions. Based on the study, the following conclusions were made: the periods of creativity of Reza Vali and their boundaries were established, a two-stage periodization of the composer's work was proposed and developed; the date of the beginning of the first and second periods in creativity has been clarified; the names of two periods of Reza Vali's creativity are proposed and substantiated; the stylistic features typical for the first and second periods of Reza Valiʼs creativity are revealed, a namely, the first Pittsburgh period of the composer's creativeness (from the 1978 to the 2000) and the second Pittsburgh period of the musician's creativity (from 2000 to the present).

This essay explores new forms of improvisational practice being developed by Iranian musicians in a tradition where the canonic radif repertoire has been central to improvisational practice for more than a century. I focus on the work of two musicians, Amir Eslami (nei) and Hooshyar Khayam (piano), and discuss pieces from their 2010 album All of You (Hermes Records, Iran). This music takes inspiration from the radif but lies outside the radif tradition and differs in important respects from “traditional” forms of improvisation, not least in the discussions that precede performance and in the discursive foregrounding of compositional thinking by the musicians themselves. I ask what the work of these musicians might tell us about the future direction of creative practice in Iranian classical music.

AbstractSince the revolution in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has imprisoned musicians, especially punk, hip-hop, and hard rock bands, as well as those playing heavy metal subgenres. Extreme heavy metal artists and fans emerged in the 1990s. The government soon targeted them as Satanists and began a systematic crackdown on metalheads. The metalcore band Confess is the most well-known case. The band was arrested in 2015 on counts of blasphemy, disturbing public opinion through the production of music, participating in interviews with the opposition media and propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran, among other charges. The majority of secular countries today do not consider extreme heavy metal to be transgressive. This is not the case in contexts where religious traditions have a significant influence on society. By analysing the narrative of the band Confess, the purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of how Iranian extreme metal musicians resist religious oppression, challenge their government, religious precepts, and social values through their music.

In this article, the ideas and activities of the Helikon Association in Turkey and the Khorus Jangi Association in Iran, which had a strong impact on the modern art of the neighboring countries Iran and Turkey, will be compared and their impact on the tendency of Turkish and Iranian artists to avant-garde art will be discussed. These two art associations were established in the 1950s by like-minded friends from various branches of art and literature. Specialists from the plastic arts, poetry and literature, music, cinema, and theater came together in these associations to share and discuss the new movements and ideas emerging in these branches around the world. Since most of the members of the Helikon Association are musicians, this association is mostly known for music, whereas painting and poetry predominate in the Khorus Jangi Association. The aims of these associations are presented by their founders as introducing the art of the day to the public and to increase their knowledge on this subject. They were short-lived, and both were closed down by the state because of the political conditions of that time due to false reports and conflicts.

When the tale of Francis Knorr, the baby farming murderess, went to air on ABC Radio National’s Soundproof as an experimental radio drama, it was a literal attempt to parallel an historical story with the lived present by playing two scenes at once. This was done by actors performing Knorr’s story and by going to the gallows with an Iranian musician and recording her music in the exact spot where the baby farming murderess was hanged. These two sound elements were then woven together to make the broadcast. The actors’ words came from an edited version of eyewitness newspaper accounts of Knorr’s execution on 15 January 1894. This article is a reflection on the successes and failures of the endeavour. It serves as a wider examination of factors that take historical biofictions into realms beyond prose and highlights the impacts of such interventions. Further, in keeping with the radio form, this investigation draws on sonic geography as a useful parallel methodology.

ISTANBUL INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Turkey's most prestigious film event, the Istanbul International Film festival (5-20 April 2014) raised the curtain this year with the presentations of Honorary Awards to several Turkish artists: scriptwriter Umur Bugay, actors Sevda Ferdağ and Eref Kolçak, producer Abdurrahman Keskiner, musician Attila Özdemiroğlu and director, screenwriter, and producer İrfan Tözüm. The opening film was Stephen Frears' Philomena (2013), starring Judi Dench in the main role. The international competition jury presided over by the celebrated Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi included Turkish theatre actor, Defne Halman; French writer-director Philippe Le Guay; former director of Edinburgh Film Festival, Lynda Myles and screenwriter-director from Rumania, Rāzvan Rādulescu. Twelve films on art and the artist competed in the Golden Tulip International Competition. One of Iceland's most stimulating filmmakers Ragnar Bragason, who is known for successfully blending comedy with tragedy, participated with his latest film Málmhaus (Metalhead, 2013). A sentimental comedy,...

Alfred Hermida recently posited ‘ambient journalism’ as a new framework for para- and professional journalists, who use social networks like Twitter for story sources, and as a news delivery platform. Beginning with this framework, this article explores the following questions: How does Hermida define ‘ambient journalism’ and what is its significance? Are there alternative definitions? What lessons do current platforms provide for the design of future, real-time platforms that ‘ambient journalists’ might use? What lessons does the work of Brian Eno provide–the musician and producer who coined the term ‘ambient music’ over three decades ago? My aim here is to formulate an alternative definition of ambient journalism that emphasises craft, skills acquisition, and the mental models of professional journalists, which are the foundations more generally for journalism practices. Rather than Hermida’s participatory media context I emphasise ‘institutional adaptiveness’: how journalists and newsrooms in media institutions rely on craft and skills, and how emerging platforms can augment these foundations, rather than replace them. Hermida’s Ambient Journalism and the Role of Journalists Hermida describes ambient journalism as: “broad, asynchronous, lightweight and always-on communication systems [that] are creating new kinds of interactions around the news, and are enabling citizens to maintain a mental model of news and events around them” (Hermida 2). His ideas appear to have two related aspects. He conceives ambient journalism as an “awareness system” between individuals that functions as a collective intelligence or kind of ‘distributed cognition’ at a group level (Hermida 2, 4-6). Facebook, Twitter and other online social networks are examples. Hermida also suggests that such networks enable non-professionals to engage in ‘communication’ and ‘conversation’ about news and media events (Hermida 2, 7). In a helpful clarification, Hermida observes that ‘para-journalists’ are like the paralegals or non-lawyers who provide administrative support in the legal profession and, in academic debates about journalism, are more commonly known as ‘citizen journalists’. Thus, Hermida’s ambient journalism appears to be: (1) an information systems model of new platforms and networks, and (2) a normative argument that these tools empower ‘para-journalists’ to engage in journalism and real-time commentary. Hermida’s thesis is intriguing and worthy of further discussion and debate. As currently formulated however it risks sharing the blind-spots and contradictions of the academic literature that Hermida cites, which suffers from poor theory-building (Burns). A major reason is that the participatory media context on which Hermida often builds his work has different mental models and normative theories than the journalists or media institutions that are the target of critique. Ambient journalism would be a stronger and more convincing framework if these incorrect assumptions were jettisoned. Others may also potentially misunderstand what Hermida proposes, because the academic debate is often polarised between para-journalists and professional journalists, due to different views about institutions, the politics of knowledge, decision heuristics, journalist training, and normative theoretical traditions (Christians et al. 126; Cole and Harcup 166-176). In the academic debate, para-journalists or ‘citizen journalists’ may be said to have a communitarian ethic and desire more autonomous solutions to journalists who are framed as uncritical and reliant on official sources, and to media institutions who are portrayed as surveillance-like ‘monitors’ of society (Christians et al. 124-127). This is however only one of a range of possible relationships. Sole reliance on para-journalists could be a premature solution to a more complex media ecology. Journalism craft, which does not rely just on official sources, also has a range of practices that already provides the “more complex ways of understanding and reporting on the subtleties of public communication” sought (Hermida 2). Citizen- and para-journalist accounts may overlook micro-studies in how newsrooms adopt technological innovations and integrate them into newsgathering routines (Hemmingway 196). Thus, an examination of the realities of professional journalism will help to cast a better light on how ambient journalism can shape the mental models of para-journalists, and provide more rigorous analysis of news and similar events. Professional journalism has several core dimensions that para-journalists may overlook. Journalism’s foundation as an experiential craft includes guidance and norms that orient the journalist to information, and that includes practitioner ethics. This craft is experiential; the basis for journalism’s claim to “social expertise” as a discipline; and more like the original Linux and Open Source movements which evolved through creative conflict (Sennett 9, 25-27, 125-127, 249-251). There are learnable, transmissible skills to contextually evaluate, filter, select and distil the essential insights. This craft-based foundation and skills informs and structures the journalist’s cognitive witnessing of an event, either directly or via reconstructed, cultivated sources. The journalist publishes through a recognised media institution or online platform, which provides communal validation and verification. There is far more here than the academic portrayal of journalists as ‘gate-watchers’ for a ‘corporatist’ media elite. Craft and skills distinguish the professional journalist from Hermida’s para-journalist. Increasingly, media institutions hire journalists who are trained in other craft-based research methods (Burns and Saunders). Bethany McLean who ‘broke’ the Enron scandal was an investment banker; documentary filmmaker Errol Morris first interviewed serial killers for an early project; and Neil Chenoweth used ‘forensic accounting’ techniques to investigate Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer. Such expertise allows the journalist to filter information, and to mediate any influences in the external environment, in order to develop an individualised, ‘embodied’ perspective (Hofstadter 234; Thompson; Garfinkel and Rawls). Para-journalists and social network platforms cannot replace this expertise, which is often unique to individual journalists and their research teams. Ambient Journalism and Twitter Current academic debates about how citizen- and para-journalists may augment or even replace professional journalists can often turn into legitimation battles whether the ‘de facto’ solution is a social media network rather than a media institution. For example, Hermida discusses Twitter, a micro-blogging platform that allows users to post 140-character messages that are small, discrete information chunks, for short-term and episodic memory. Twitter enables users to monitor other users, to group other messages, and to search for terms specified by a hashtag. Twitter thus illustrates how social media platforms can make data more transparent and explicit to non-specialists like para-journalists. In fact, Twitter is suitable for five different categories of real-time information: news, pre-news, rumours, the formation of social media and subject-based networks, and “molecular search” using granular data-mining tools (Leinweber 204-205). In this model, the para-journalist acts as a navigator and “way-finder” to new information (Morville, Findability). Jaron Lanier, an early designer of ‘virtual reality’ systems, is perhaps the most vocal critic of relying on groups of non-experts and tools like Twitter, instead of individuals who have professional expertise. For Lanier, what underlies debates about citizen- and para-journalists is a philosophy of “cybernetic totalism” and “digital Maoism” which exalts the Internet collective at the expense of truly individual views. He is deeply critical of Hermida’s chosen platform, Twitter: “A design that shares Twitter’s feature of providing ambient continuous contact between people could perhaps drop Twitter’s adoration of fragments. We don’t really know, because it is an unexplored design space” [emphasis added] (Lanier 24). In part, Lanier’s objection is traceable back to an unresolved debate on human factors and design in information science. Influenced by the post-war research into cybernetics, J.C.R. Licklider proposed a cyborg-like model of “man-machine symbiosis” between computers and humans (Licklider). In turn, Licklider’s framework influenced Douglas Engelbart, who shaped the growth of human-computer interaction, and the design of computer interfaces, the mouse, and other tools (Engelbart). In taking a system-level view of platforms Hermida builds on the strength of Licklider and Engelbart’s work. Yet because he focuses on para-journalists, and does not appear to include the craft and skills-based expertise of professional journalists, it is unclear how he would answer Lanier’s fears about how reliance on groups for news and other information is superior to individual expertise and judgment. Hermida’s two case studies point to this unresolved problem. Both cases appear to show how Twitter provides quicker and better forms of news and information, thereby increasing the effectiveness of para-journalists to engage in journalism and real-time commentary. However, alternative explanations may exist that raise questions about Twitter as a new platform, and thus these cases might actually reveal circumstances in which ambient journalism may fail. Hermida alludes to how para-journalists now fulfil the earlier role of ‘first responders’ and stringers, in providing the “immediate dissemination” of non-official information about disasters and emergencies (Hermida 1-2; Haddow and Haddow 117-118). Whilst important, this is really a specific role. In fact, disaster and emergency reporting occurs within well-established practices, professional ethics, and institutional routines that may involve journalists, government officials, and professional communication experts (Moeller). Officials and emergency management planners are concerned that citizen- or para-journalism is equated with the craft and skills of professional journalism. The experience of these officials and planners in 2005’s Hurricane Katrina in the United States, and in 2009’s Black Saturday bushfires in Australia, suggests that whilst para-journalists might be ‘first responders’ in a decentralised, complex crisis, they are perceived to spread rumours and potential social unrest when people need reliable information (Haddow and Haddow 39). These terms of engagement between officials, planners and para-journalists are still to be resolved. Hermida readily acknowledges that Twitter and other social network platforms are vulnerable to rumours (Hermida 3-4; Sunstein). However, his other case study, Iran’s 2009 election crisis, further complicates the vision of ambient journalism, and always-on communication systems in particular. Hermida discusses several events during the crisis: the US State Department request to halt a server upgrade, how the Basij’s shooting of bystander Neda Soltan was captured on a mobile phone camera, the spread across social network platforms, and the high-velocity number of ‘tweets’ or messages during the first two weeks of Iran’s electoral uncertainty (Hermida 1). The US State Department was interested in how Twitter could be used for non-official sources, and to inform people who were monitoring the election events. Twitter’s perceived ‘success’ during Iran’s 2009 election now looks rather different when other factors are considered such as: the dynamics and patterns of Tehran street protests; Iran’s clerics who used Soltan’s death as propaganda; claims that Iran’s intelligence services used Twitter to track down and to kill protestors; the ‘black box’ case of what the US State Department and others actually did during the crisis; the history of neo-conservative interest in a Twitter-like platform for strategic information operations; and the Iranian diaspora’s incitement of Tehran student protests via satellite broadcasts. Iran’s 2009 election crisis has important lessons for ambient journalism: always-on communication systems may create noise and spread rumours; ‘mirror-imaging’ of mental models may occur, when other participants have very different worldviews and ‘contexts of use’ for social network platforms; and the new kinds of interaction may not lead to effective intervention in crisis events. Hermida’s combination of news and non-news fragments is the perfect environment for psychological operations and strategic information warfare (Burns and Eltham). Lessons of Current Platforms for Ambient Journalism We have discussed some unresolved problems for ambient journalism as a framework for journalists, and as mental models for news and similar events. Hermida’s goal of an “awareness system” faces a further challenge: the phenomenological limitations of human consciousness to deal with information complexity and ambiguous situations, whether by becoming ‘entangled’ in abstract information or by developing new, unexpected uses for emergent technologies (Thackara; Thompson; Hofstadter 101-102, 186; Morville, Findability, 55, 57, 158). The recursive and reflective capacities of human consciousness imposes its own epistemological frames. It’s still unclear how Licklider’s human-computer interaction will shape consciousness, but Douglas Hofstadter’s experiments with art and video-based group experiments may be suggestive. Hofstadter observes: “the interpenetration of our worlds becomes so great that our worldviews start to fuse” (266). Current research into user experience and information design provides some validation of Hofstadter’s experience, such as how Google is now the ‘default’ search engine, and how its interface design shapes the user’s subjective experience of online search (Morville, Findability; Morville, Search Patterns). Several models of Hermida’s awareness system already exist that build on Hofstadter’s insight. Within the information systems field, on-going research into artificial intelligence–‘expert systems’ that can model expertise as algorithms and decision rules, genetic algorithms, and evolutionary computation–has attempted to achieve Hermida’s goal. What these systems share are mental models of cognition, learning and adaptiveness to new information, often with forecasting and prediction capabilities. Such systems work in journalism areas such as finance and sports that involve analytics, data-mining and statistics, and in related fields such as health informatics where there are clear, explicit guidelines on information and international standards. After a mid-1980s investment bubble (Leinweber 183-184) these systems now underpin the technology platforms of global finance and news intermediaries. Bloomberg LP’s ubiquitous dual-screen computers, proprietary network and data analytics (www.bloomberg.com), and its competitors such as Thomson Reuters (www.thomsonreuters.com and www.reuters.com), illustrate how financial analysts and traders rely on an “awareness system” to navigate global stock-markets (Clifford and Creswell). For example, a Bloomberg subscriber can access real-time analytics from exchanges, markets, and from data vendors such as Dow Jones, NYSE Euronext and Thomson Reuters. They can use portfolio management tools to evaluate market information, to make allocation and trading decisions, to monitor ‘breaking’ news, and to integrate this information. Twitter is perhaps the para-journalist equivalent to how professional journalists and finance analysts rely on Bloomberg’s platform for real-time market and business information. Already, hedge funds like PhaseCapital are data-mining Twitter’s ‘tweets’ or messages for rumours, shifts in stock-market sentiment, and to analyse potential trading patterns (Pritchett and Palmer). The US-based Securities and Exchange Commission, and researchers like David Gelernter and Paul Tetlock, have also shown the benefits of applied data-mining for regulatory market supervision, in particular to uncover analysts who provide ‘whisper numbers’ to online message boards, and who have access to material, non-public information (Leinweber 60, 136, 144-145, 208, 219, 241-246). Hermida’s framework might be developed further for such regulatory supervision. Hermida’s awareness system may also benefit from the algorithms found in high-frequency trading (HFT) systems that Citadel Group, Goldman Sachs, Renaissance Technologies, and other quantitative financial institutions use. Rather than human traders, HFT uses co-located servers and complex algorithms, to make high-volume trades on stock-markets that take advantage of microsecond changes in prices (Duhigg). HFT capabilities are shrouded in secrecy, and became the focus of regulatory attention after several high-profile investigations of traders alleged to have stolen the software code (Bray and Bunge). One public example is Streambase (www.streambase.com), a ‘complex event processing’ (CEP) platform that can be used in HFT, and commercialised from the Project Aurora research collaboration between Brandeis University, Brown University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. CEP and HFT may be the ‘killer apps’ of Hermida’s awareness system. Alternatively, they may confirm Jaron Lanier’s worst fears: your data-stream and user-generated content can be harvested by others–for their gain, and your loss! Conclusion: Brian Eno and Redefining ‘Ambient Journalism’ On the basis of the above discussion, I suggest a modified definition of Hermida’s thesis: ‘Ambient journalism’ is an emerging analytical framework for journalists, informed by cognitive, cybernetic, and information systems research. It ‘sensitises’ the individual journalist, whether professional or ‘para-professional’, to observe and to evaluate their immediate context. In doing so, ‘ambient journalism’, like journalism generally, emphasises ‘novel’ information. It can also inform the design of real-time platforms for journalistic sources and news delivery. Individual ‘ambient journalists’ can learn much from the career of musician and producer Brian Eno. His personal definition of ‘ambient’ is “an atmosphere, or a surrounding influence: a tint,” that relies on the co-evolution of the musician, creative horizons, and studio technology as a tool, just as para-journalists use Twitter as a platform (Sheppard 278; Eno 293-297). Like para-journalists, Eno claims to be a “self-educated but largely untrained” musician and yet also a craft-based producer (McFadzean; Tamm 177; 44-50). Perhaps Eno would frame the distinction between para-journalist and professional journalist as “axis thinking” (Eno 298, 302) which is needlessly polarised due to different normative theories, stances, and practices. Furthermore, I would argue that Eno’s worldview was shaped by similar influences to Licklider and Engelbart, who appear to have informed Hermida’s assumptions. These influences include the mathematician and game theorist John von Neumann and biologist Richard Dawkins (Eno 162); musicians Eric Satie, John Cage and his book Silence (Eno 19-22, 162; Sheppard 22, 36, 378-379); and the field of self-organising systems, in particular cyberneticist Stafford Beer (Eno 245; Tamm 86; Sheppard 224). Eno summed up the central lesson of this theoretical corpus during his collaborations with New York’s ‘No Wave’ scene in 1978, of “people experimenting with their lives” (Eno 253; Reynolds 146-147; Sheppard 290-295). Importantly, he developed a personal view of normative theories through practice-based research, on a range of projects, and with different creative and collaborative teams. Rather than a technological solution, Eno settled on a way to encode his craft and skills into a quasi-experimental, transmittable method—an aim of practitioner development in professional journalism. Even if only a “founding myth,” the story of Eno’s 1975 street accident with a taxi, and how he conceived ‘ambient music’ during his hospital stay, illustrates how ambient journalists might perceive something new in specific circumstances (Tamm 131; Sheppard 186-188). More tellingly, this background informed his collaboration with the late painter Peter Schmidt, to co-create the Oblique Strategies deck of aphorisms: aleatory, oracular messages that appeared dependent on chance, luck, and randomness, but that in fact were based on Eno and Schmidt’s creative philosophy and work guidelines (Tamm 77-78; Sheppard 178-179; Reynolds 170). In short, Eno was engaging with the kind of reflective practices that underpin exemplary professional journalism. He was able to encode this craft and skills into a quasi-experimental method, rather than a technological solution. Journalists and practitioners who adopt Hermida’s framework could learn much from the published accounts of Eno’s practice-based research, in the context of creative projects and collaborative teams. In particular, these detail the contexts and choices of Eno’s early ambient music recordings (Sheppard 199-200); Eno’s duels with David Bowie during ‘Sense of Doubt’ for the Heroes album (Tamm 158; Sheppard 254-255); troubled collaborations with Talking Heads and David Byrne (Reynolds 165-170; Sheppard; 338-347, 353); a curatorial, mentor role on U2’s The Unforgettable Fire (Sheppard 368-369); the ‘grand, stadium scale’ experiments of U2’s 1991-93 ZooTV tour (Sheppard 404); the Zorn-like games of Bowie’s Outside album (Eno 382-389); and the ‘generative’ artwork 77 Million Paintings (Eno 330-332; Tamm 133-135; Sheppard 278-279; Eno 435). Eno is clearly a highly flexible maker and producer. Developing such flexibility would ensure ambient journalism remains open to novelty as an analytical framework that may enhance the practitioner development and work of professional journalists and para-journalists alike.Acknowledgments The author thanks editor Luke Jaaniste, Alfred Hermida, and the two blind peer reviewers for their constructive feedback and reflective insights. References Bray, Chad, and Jacob Bunge. “Ex-Goldman Programmer Indicted for Trade Secrets Theft.” The Wall Street Journal 12 Feb. 2010. 17 March 2010 ‹http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703382904575059660427173510.html›. Burns, Alex. “Select Issues with New Media Theories of Citizen Journalism.” M/C Journal 11.1 (2008). 17 March 2010 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/30›.———, and Barry Saunders. “Journalists as Investigators and ‘Quality Media’ Reputation.” Record of the Communications Policy and Research Forum 2009. Eds. Franco Papandrea and Mark Armstrong. Sydney: Network Insight Institute, 281-297. 17 March 2010 ‹http://eprints.vu.edu.au/15229/1/CPRF09BurnsSaunders.pdf›.———, and Ben Eltham. “Twitter Free Iran: An Evaluation of Twitter’s Role in Public Diplomacy and Information Operations in Iran’s 2009 Election Crisis.” Record of the Communications Policy and Research Forum 2009. Eds. Franco Papandrea and Mark Armstrong. Sydney: Network Insight Institute, 298-310. 17 March 2010 ‹http://eprints.vu.edu.au/15230/1/CPRF09BurnsEltham.pdf›. Christians, Clifford G., Theodore Glasser, Denis McQuail, Kaarle Nordenstreng, and Robert A. White. Normative Theories of the Media: Journalism in Democratic Societies. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Clifford, Stephanie, and Julie Creswell. “At Bloomberg, Modest Strategy to Rule the World.” The New York Times 14 Nov. 2009. 17 March 2010 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/business/media/15bloom.html?ref=businessandpagewanted=all›.Cole, Peter, and Tony Harcup. Newspaper Journalism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2010. Duhigg, Charles. “Stock Traders Find Speed Pays, in Milliseconds.” The New York Times 23 July 2009. 17 March 2010 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html?_r=2andref=business›. Engelbart, Douglas. “Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, 1962.” Ed. Neil Spiller. Cyber Reader: Critical Writings for the Digital Era. London: Phaidon Press, 2002. 60-67. Eno, Brian. A Year with Swollen Appendices. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. Garfinkel, Harold, and Anne Warfield Rawls. Toward a Sociological Theory of Information. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2008. Hadlow, George D., and Kim S. Haddow. Disaster Communications in a Changing Media World, Butterworth-Heinemann, Burlington MA, 2009. Hemmingway, Emma. Into the Newsroom: Exploring the Digital Production of Regional Television News. Milton Park: Routledge, 2008. 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Autumn is not only a gloriously colourful time of the year, it is a time when a plethora of children’s book related events and awards take place. Just see what is happening in the next few months:IBBY: “Silent Books: Final Destination Lampedusa” travelling exhibit In response to the international refugee crisis that began last year, the Italian arm of the International Board on Books for Young People has launched a travelling picture-book exhibit to support the first children’s library on the island of Lampedusa, Italy where many African and Middle Eastern refugees are landing. After stops in Italy, Mexico, and Austria, the exhibit is currently touring Canada. It premiered in Edmonton at the Stanley A. Milner Library in August. Next are three Vancouver locations: UBC Irving Barber Learning Centre (Oct. 1 to 23), Vancouver Public Library central branch (Oct. 8 to 18), and the Italian Cultural Centre (Oct. 10 to 22). Then the North York Central Library in Toronto from Nov. 2 to Dec 11. Recognizing Lampedusa island’s cultural diversity, the exhibit comprises exclusively wordless picture books from 23 countries, including three from Canada:“Hocus Pocus” by Sylvie Desrosiers & Rémy Simard’s (Kids Can Press), “Ben’s Big Dig” by Daniel Wakeman and Dirk van Stralen’s(Orca Book Publishers)“Ben’s Bunny Trouble” also by Wakeman and van Stralen (Orca Book Publishers). Other books are drawn from an honour list selected by a jury of experts from the 2015 Bologna Children’s Book Fair including Ajubel’s “Robinson Crusoe” (Spain), Ara Jo’s “The Rocket Boy”(Korea), and Madalena Matoso’s “Todos Fazemos Tudo” (Switzerland), among others. The full catalogue can be viewed online.TD Canadian Children’s Book Week.Next year’s TD Canadian Children’s Book Week will take place from May 7-14, 2016. Thirty Canadian children’s authors, illustrators and storytellers will be touring across Canada visiting schools, libraries, bookstores and community centres. Visit the TD Book Week site (www.bookweek.ca) to find out who will be touring in your area and the types of readings and workshops they will be giving. If your school or library is interested in hosting a Book Week visitor, you can apply online starting in mid-October.Shakespeare Selfie CBC Books will once again be running the Shakespeare Selfie writing challenge in April 2016. Shakespeare took selfies all the time but instead of a camera, he used a quill. And instead of calling them "selfies," they were called "soliloquies."The challenge: Write a modern-day soliloquy or monologue by a Shakespearean character based on a prominent news, pop culture or current affairs event from the last year (April 2015-April 2016). It can be in iambic pentameter or modern syntax with a word count from 200 to 400 words. There are two age categories: Grades 7-9 and 10-12. Details at: http://www.cbc.ca/books/2015/10/the-2016-shakespeare-selfie-writing-challenge-for-students.html Awards:The winners of this year’s Canadian Jewish Literary Awards, celebrating Jewish literature and culture in Canada, have been announced. Amongst the nine awards is one for Youth Literature which was awarded to Suri Rosen for “Playing with Matches” (ECW Press). See all the award winners here: http://www.cjlawards.ca/.The Canadian Children's Book Centre administers several awards including the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award, the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award, the Monica Hughes Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy and the Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s Non-Fiction. This year’s winners will be announced on November 18, 2015. http://www.bookcentre.ca/awardThe Fitzhenry Family Foundation has revealed the winners of its Lane Anderson Awards for the best Canadian science books published in the previous year. Selections are made based on a title’s pertinence to science in today’s world and the author’s ability to relate scientific issues to everyday life. Prolific Halifax kids’ science writer L.E. Carmichael was awarded the YA prize for “Fuzzy Forensics: DNA Fingerprinting Gets Wild” (Ashby-BP Publishing), about using forensic science to fight crimes against animals. Uxbridge, Ontario–based environmental journalist Stephen Leahy received the adult prize for “Your Water Footprint” (Firefly Books), which examines human usage of the valuable natural resource. http://laneandersonaward.ca/The Edmonton Public Library has named Sigmund Brouwer (author and Rock & Roll Literacy Show host) as the winner (by public vote) of Alberta Reader’s Choice Award. Sigmund’s “Thief of Glory” (WaterBrook Press) is about a young boy trying to take care of his family in the aftermath of the 1942 Japanese Imperialist invasion of the Southeast Pacific. The prize awards $10,000 to an Alberta-based author of a work of excellent fiction or narrative non-fiction. http://www.epl.ca/alberta-readers-choiceHarperCollins Canada, the Cooke Agency, and the University of British Columbia have announced the shortlist of the annual HarperCollins Publishers/UBC Prize for Best New Fiction awarded to students and alumni of UBC’s creative writing program, and offers the winner literary representation by the Cooke Agency and a publishing contract with HarperCollins Canada.“Between the Wind and Us” by Iranian-Canadian writer Nazanine Hozar, the story of a young abandoned girl set during the political unrest of 1953–1979 Iran.“Learning to Breathe” by B.C.-based Janice Lynn Mather, a young adult novel about a Caribbean teenager’s struggle to establish herself in a new city and home life.“At The Top of the Wall, Alight” by Sudbury, Ontario, author Natalie Morrill, which follows a Viennese Jew separated from his family during the Second World War. An early version of this novel was previously nominated for the award.Novelist and University of Guelph writing professor, Thomas King, and L.A.-based author, graphic novelist, and musician, Cecil Castellucci, have been named winners of this year’s Sunburst Awards for excellence in Canadian literature of the fantastic. Castellucci won in the YA category for “Tin Star” (Roaring Brook/Raincoast), the first novel in a planned series about a teenager who struggles to survive parent-less in a space station where she is the only human, and which played scene to a brutal assault that haunts her memory. King won in the adult category for his novel “The Back of the Turtle” (HarperCollins Canada), for which he also received a Copper Cylinder Award from the Sunburst Society last week. The book follows a First Nations scientist who finds himself torn after he’s sent to clean up the ecological mess his company has left on the reserve his family grew up on.Be sure to save October 28th on your calendar for the GG book awards announcement. Of course, “GG” stands for Governor-General. The short lists can be viewed here:http://ggbooks.ca/books/. There are categories in both English and French for both children’s text and illustration books.Online ResourcesPodcast: Yegs and Bacon: Episode 22: the full audio from our recent Indigenous Representation in Popular Culture panel. In the audio, you’ll be hearing from (in order of first vocal appearance) Brandon, who introduces the panelists, James Leask, Richard Van Camp, Kelly Mellings, and Patti Laboucane-Benson. Recorded on Monday, September 28th, 2015. http://variantedmonton.com/category/yegs-and-bacon/European Picture Book Collection: The EPBC was designed to help pupils to find out more about their European neighbours through reading the visual narratives of carefully chosen picture books. Here you can find out about how the project began, the theoretical papers that have been presented on European children's literature, and how the materials were initially used in schools. http://www.ncrcl.ac.uk/epbc/EN/index.aspMore next time around,Yours in stories, Gail de VosGail de Vos is an adjunct professor who teaches courses on Canadian children's literature, young adult literature, and comic books & graphic novels at the School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS) at the University of Alberta. She is the author of nine books on storytelling and folklore. Gail is also a professional storyteller who has taught the storytelling course at SLIS for over two decades.