Jenni Ajderian

     Far be it from me to blog about language or music, but while trying to trawl through reading for an essay about a spectrogram, I came across a remix by Rizzle Kicks where they do something pretty interesting with their sample track. In this case, Lily Allen's The Fear is cut so that the phrase "I don't care about clever, I don't care about funny" loses its last syllable.      The effect of the loss of the final '-nny', makes a non-word which the rappers employ in place of the word 'fuck'. By taking away this, they've essentially just taken away the release of the [n] stop, which we interpret as being a voiceless stop. Rizzle Kicks - Fuck Loadsa Dubstep (Lily Allen Mix)      Let me explain      What is said and what we hear are two different things. Advertisers (notably that awful Irn Bru ad) have used this to their advantage, which, in a lot of cases, involves us filling in the blanks for ourselves. In the case of...

(originally published by The Student )      Watch any western, any black-and-white adventure film, any rags-to-riches adaptation, and you'll realise we've seen this all before. The guy gets the girl, the evil tyrant falls and the True King rises, be it Middle Earth or the Mid-West. We've seen these scenes repeated across time and space, and we know how it goes. Without the speech, the scene still goes the same way. New film The Artist proves this, without saying a word. Aside from the picture-perfect cast and a dog which will reach cult celebrity status any day now, the film addresses the transition between '20s movies and '30s talkies, and a sparse use of sound which offers a challenge to the film-makers.      In one scene, uncharacteristically static, a pair of old friends meet and greet, swap stories, laugh- the details, irrelevant, are replaced by an emotive score and some close camera-work, all of which makes us feel no less connected to the...

(originally published by The Student )      Say it with me now: Vluh-DEEM-ear Nuh-BOK-off. It's oddly fitting that a man who used fifteen different pseudonyms over his lifetime, fled various governments, and filled his autobiography with fiction has had his name mispronounced so often (not least by me and others unfamiliar with Russian), upholding, both posthumously and unintentionally, the facade of fiction behind which he hid during most of his working life.      Shown to us by PhD student Michael Rodgers of Strathclyde Unviersity, this mask was finely sculpted and covered every public appearance the writer made. The talk in the Scotland-Russia Forum last Friday filled the intimate space with lively discussion from those both familiar and unfamiliar with the writer. Absorbed but still sceptical, Rodgers took us through Nabokov's early, privileged upbringing to an adulthood spent all over the globe.      Raised in a wealthy trili...

          Lining one corridor inside the National Library are hundreds of books which censors did not want you to see. From the Song of Songs to the Satanic Verses , Lord of the Flies to Lady Chatterly's Lover , these books appalled, challenged and enticed the society of their times, and were all deemed unfit to be seen by the public. The exhibition aims primarily to spark debate- to make us question these books, the legislation under which they were banned, and the societies which banned them.      Perhaps predictably, books which display any kind of anti-clerical leanings make up a large part of the library's collection, and indeed were the first kind of literature to be cautioned at all. From David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, these books were seen as indecent due to a glorification of paganism, misrepresentation of biblical verse or simple questioning of common belief. ...

(originally published by The Student )      Art's capacity for sparking debate can be found everywhere, from the Uni's comfiest lecture theatres to the bar at the Hive. Whether it's the beauty of a painting, a poem or a person we're talking about, one thing's for sure- everyone has their own tastes, and very rarely are these in perfect agreement with those of the next thirsty clubber.      The Talbot Rice Gallery has taken one of David Hume's great thoughts on the nature of beauty- that it is in the eye of the Beholder- and given local galleries, artists and organisations the opportunity to nominate a work of art which, to them, is beautiful. The result is an exhibition as varied in taste as that crowd at the bar, from the purist oil-and-canvas lovers to the multimedia fettishists, via the big names of Yoko Ono and Canterbury Cathedral.      As well as more classical choices of oils or pencil on canvas, we see representations of other f...

(originally published by The Student )      Dovecot’s grand hall is lined with over three hundred works, and the wide space tempts the eye not only across, but also down to the floor below. With a working tapestry studio just over the handrails, the usual whitewash hush of conventional galleries is chased away, and we’re left at ease to appreciate the work of over one hundred artists, from pen-and-ink to still-life to lively textile and oils. Each piece has been donated to the charity MacMillan Cancer Support for their ninth annual Edinburgh Art Sale, and proceeds will be split evenly between the organisation and the local artists themselves.      Since this is a sale and not an exhibition, we have a lot packed into a small space, providing a sharp test for the curators, who have pulled off the execution of the exhibition wonderfully. Whether placing oils of Princes Street as a Winter Wonderland (Kate Green) next to pastels of su...

(originally published by  The Student )      When you step between the vivacious colours and three-dimensional art of Anton Henning’s Interieur No. 493 and the Ragamala collection at the Talbot Rice Gallery, it’s natural to feel a little surprised.      The bright white walls of the main space, and Henning’s multi-format works, some of which are indistinguishable from furniture, create an environment far more domestic than your average gallery, and one in which abstract paintings, confused sculpture and a simple white sofa seem utterly disconnected from one another. The artist’s free reign over the gallery space means that he has manipulated it well, controlling as he does the lights, sounds and setup of the art we observe to distort the normal museum hush of such a space.      However it is hard to find a common factor in terms of style: even within his collection of paintings, some pieces show Henning’s ...