listening

Intelligences

Silence: Divergent Listening in the Anthropocene

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Photo of EPIC2022 attendees participating in "Silence"
GRANT CUTLER Independent Artist DOWNLOAD PDF Divergent listening describes a listening practice which seeks to raise consciousness or expand on our understanding of reality through the perception of sound. The multichannel sound installation, ‘Silence’, offers a space of quiet reflection, a place to ask questions, share, or rest. It is a room to imagine a more inclusive future, a world of resilience, energized by the clamorous singing of countless life forms. The installation invites participants to immerse themselves in the soundscapes of dozens of endangered natural environments and reflect on the change that an enhanced listening practice might bring to their own lives, work, and environments. The extremely rapid loss of biodiversity as a consequence of industrialization and climate change represents a reality-bending catastrophe. How will we return from such a departure from sustainable living? What voices will we choose to guide us? Divergent listening describes any listening practice which seeks to raise consciousness...

Intelligences

When Resilience Becomes Resistance: Recultivating Intimacy through Relational Mindfulness

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Photo of EPIC2022 attendees watching a presentation by Chelsea Coe and Jonathan DeFaveri
CHELSEA COE Headspace JONATHAN DEFAVERI Headspace What forms of our pandemic adaptation have also become barriers to connection? In this wildcard session, around 40 EPIC attendees collectively examined the aspects of resilience that support—and sometimes hold us back from—the intimacy and safety we seek to create as ethnographers. Researchers have faced many barriers to building connection and compassion remotely as the stress in our communities piles up from the COVID-19 pandemic. When people share their pain, how do we protect the integrity of our work while also showing care? What are we doing to ensure our own resilience? How do we show care and connection again in person after time spent adapting to screens? In this session, the presenters began by sharing and deconstructing their own personal experiences of navigating this tension as researchers working in mental health through three lenses: connection, protection, and comfort/discomfort.  Working with Headspace meditation teacher Samantha Snowden, they then led...

Intelligences

Beyond User Needs: A Meaning-Oriented Approach to Recommender Systems

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IVETA HAJDAKOVA Stripe Partners DEB MCDONALD Spotify SOHIT KAROL Spotify This contribution is a case study of Spotify, a popular music streaming app, which uses automated recommendations to provide a better user experience to its listeners. Automated recommender systems have mostly been built around understanding user needs and user goals. Our case study presents a meaning-oriented approach aimed at understanding what users regard as meaningful and how an automated recommender system can forge meaning and offer experiences that help develop existing connections to music and generate new ones. Following the meaning-oriented approach inspired by Lucien Karpik (2010), we were able to better understand how different audience segments engage with music and experience music as meaningful. We identified 2 cultural engagement models that listeners use to relate to music: (1) musical engagement during which music is the focus of the experience; and (2) non-musical engagement, during which the listener is the focus of the experience....