Frank Zappa | EPFL Graph Search

Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American musician, composer, and bandleader. His work is characterized by nonconformity, free-form improvisation, sound experimentation, musical virtuosity and satire of American culture. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, pop, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and musique concrète works; he also produced almost all of the 60-plus albums that he released with his band the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. Zappa also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. He is considered one of the most innovative and stylistically diverse musicians of his generation. As a self-taught composer and performer, Zappa had diverse musical influences that led him to create music that was sometimes difficult to categorize. While in his teens, he acquired a taste for 20th-century classical modernism, African-American rhythm and blues, and doo-wop music. He began writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands, later switching to electric guitar. His debut studio album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out! (1966), combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. He continued this eclectic and experimental approach whether the fundamental format was rock, jazz, or classical. Zappa's output is unified by a conceptual continuity he termed "Project/Object", with numerous musical phrases, ideas, and characters reappearing across his albums. His lyrics reflected his iconoclastic views of established social and political processes, structures and movements, often humorously so, and he has been described as the "godfather" of comedy rock. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship.

Distributed snow and rock temperature modelling in steep rock walls using Alpine3D

Michael Lehning, Nander Wever, Mathias Thierry Pierre Bavay

In this study we modelled the influence of the spatially and temporally heterogeneous snow cover on the surface energy balance and thus on rock temperatures in two rugged, steep rock walls on the Gemsstock ridge in the central Swiss Alps. The heterogeneous ...

Copernicus GmbH2017

Typologie de production maraîchère locale. La décroissance choisie comme essence d'un projet d'architecture au Pays d'Enhaut

Franck André Dal-Zotto

En plaçant au centre de ses préoccupations la croissance constante du produit intérieur brut, la société humaine occidentale est devenue dépendante d'une exploitation effrénée des ressources naturelles et ce, dans tous les domaines. Accusant en 1972 cette haute entropie, le rapport Meadows, The Limits To Growth, dénonce une humanité menacée par l'épuisement de ses ressources et propose comme remède une modification systémique globale: la recherche de la résilience. Substituer la résilience à la croissance est l'angle d'attaque du mouvement apolitique de la décroissance, véritable fil conducteur du présent projet. Préalablement analysé sous le spectre de la décroissance, le Pays d'Enhaut présente les symptômes classiques de la société consumériste. Ces symptômes sont également perceptibles dans le secteur primaire de la production alimentaire où une dépendance claire aux énergies fossiles tranche définitivement avec la vision traditionnelle et pastorale, véhiculée comme identité intrinsèque de la région. Ce projet propose une recherche typologique pour une planification territoriale à l'échelle du local d'une production maraîchère basée sur la permaculture. La permaculture, véritable branche de l'agroécologie, repose sur l'accroissement de la biodiversité afin d'augmenter progressivement et naturellement la richesse organique des sols. Afin de garantir toute l'année une production d'abondance frugale, les serres agricoles sont couplées à des centrales de cogénération biomasse utilisant les déchets de la filière sylvicole présente sur le site.

2013