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The Purity Instinct Joanne Diaz (bio) Keywords poetry, Joanne Diaz Near the end, Ceausescu would only drink juice through a straw.Twice, he was convinced that his hearing had improved: oncewhen he heard the sound of a distant train of his youth;another time when his long-dead mother sang a little-known songin his ear. Other times—orange was especially good for this—he felt his bones straighten, and once, after a tall glassof grapefruit, his arms acquired the strong sinews of his timeas the village shepherd and shoemaker. With prune,his skin became impervious to cold. At a foreign banquetheld in his honor, he went to the balcony, stood in the rainlike a dog, and did not shiver once. On the road, his assistantkept all the straws in a satchel; at home, every drawer was full.On the first of each month, a crate went directly to the kitchenbuilt with the blood of traitors and money from the West.After a childhood of pig fat and sheep's milk, the purity instinctwas strong for Ceausescu. In those final moments, as he sang"The Internationale," his hands cuffed to his wife's, he must have admiredhow clean bullet in its chamber, the singular force of its straight line. Note: This poem is inspired by the Dinner Party podcast "Studying the Food of History's Most Infamous." [End Page 677] Joanne Diaz joanne diaz received fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. She is the author of My Favorite Tyrants and The Lessons, and with Ian Morris, she is the coeditor of The Little Magazine in Contemporary America. She is an associate professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University. Copyright © 2017 The Massachusetts Review, Inc.

Domain Specific and Functional languages provide an excellent linguistic context for exploring new forms of music notation -- not just for formalising compositions but also for live interaction workflows. This experience report describes two novel live coding systems that employ code execution to modify live sounds and music. The first of these systems, Sonic Pi, aims at teaching core computing notions to school students using live-coded music as a means of stimulating and maintaining student engagement. We describe how an emphasis on a functional style improves the ease in which core computer science concepts can be communicated to students. Secondly we describe Overtone, a functional language and live coding environment aimed towards mprofessional electronic musicians. We describe how Overtone's abstractions and architecture strongly benefit from a functional-oriented implementation. Both Sonic Pi and Overtone are freely available open-source platforms.

University of Helsinki Electronic Music Studio – Founding and Early Development

This chapter aims to provide sound designers with theoretical principles and practical skills to understand and develop new musical instruments featuring intelligent sensing and Internet connectivity, the so-called smart musical instruments (SMIs). After reviewing related works on augmented instruments and networked music performance systems, we describe the key concepts related to smart musical instruments which combine (i) sensing/actuating, (ii) artificial intelligence enabling proactivity and context awareness properties, (iii) network connectivity, and (iv) interoperability. By appropriate use of sensor technology and embedded systems, it is possible to turn a traditional musical instrument into a smart musical instrument or design a new interface for musical expression from scratch that can react and adapt to performers’ gestures and context in programmable ways.