Dr Fiona Keenan
Lecturer in Sound Production

Profile

Biography

I am a Lecturer in Sound Production and programme leader of the MA/MSc in Film and Television Production with Sound. I teach sound design, audio programming and sound production/postproduction on our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in Film and Television Production.

My research explores the experience of performative soundmaking with objects and materials, whether acoustic or digital. My PhD thesis, completed in 2019, focuses on historical methods of sound effects design and performance in late nineteenth and early twentieth century theatres, framing these as a sonic interaction design practice that could inform the design of new present-day encounters with digital sound.

My creative practice in sound design and music focuses on systems for live performance, including hand-built audio electronics, mechanical sound producers, augmented instruments, theatrical sound props and software-based systems. I am interested in the origins and contexts of the creative technologies we use, including how we use and learn to use them.

Research

Overview

My research explores the experience of performative soundmaking with objects and materials, whether acoustic or digital. My PhD thesis, completed in 2019, focuses on historical methods of sound effects design and performance in late nineteenth and early twentieth century theatres, framing these as part of a sonic interaction design practice that could inform the design of new encounters with digital sound.

I am interested in inter- and transdisciplinary approaches to knowledge creation. My PhD research methodology combined historical research, practical design work, autoethnography and perceptual evaluation. I am particularly interested in reconstructing historical sound effects as a method of exploring the skills of the practitioners who designed them, as well as using autoethnographic methods to explore the experience of learning to perform with them.

Publications

Selected publications

Articles

Keenan, Fiona and Pauletto, Sandra ''Listening Back': Exploring the Sonic Interactions at the Heart of Historical Sound Effects Performance,' The New Soundtrack, Volume 7 Issue 1, Page 15-30, ISSN 2042-8855, February 2017.

Conference Proceedings

Keenan, Fiona and Pauletto, Sandra, ‘Evaluating a continuous sonic interaction: Comparing a Performable Acoustic and Digital Everyday Sound,’ International Conference on Sound and Music Computing (SMC 2019), Málaga, Spain, May 28 - 31, 2019.

Keenan, Fiona and Pauletto, Sandra, 'A Mechanical Mapping Model for Real-Time Control of a Complex Physical Modelling Synthesis Engine with a Simple Gesture,' International Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx-17), Edinburgh, UK, September 5–9, 2017.

Keenan, Fiona and Pauletto, Sandra, 'Design and Evaluation of a Digital Theatre Wind Machine,' International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME17), Aalborg University Copenhagen, Denmark, May 15-19, 2017.

Keenan, Fiona and Pauletto, Sandra, 'An Acoustic Wind Machine and its Digital Counterpart: Initial Audio Analysis and Comparison,' Interactive Audio Systems Symposium, University of York, September 23rd 2016.

Keenan, Fiona 'A Theatre Wind Machine as Interactive Sounding Object,' International Conference on Live Interfaces (ICLI) Doctoral Colloquium, University of Sussex, June 2016.

PhD Thesis

Enactive sound machines: theatrical strategies for sonic interaction design, 2019. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/24057/