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(2020)ThesisIn a rich and growing field of writing around socially engaged curatorial projects, the role and impact of these projects in rural and regional Australian communities remains under-examined. Australian research on creative activity in general has been characterised as susceptible to an “urban bias”, in which scholarship is dominated by a focus on work taking place in metropolitan contexts. This reflects the international discourse on socially engaged practice since the 1990s, which has highlighted its relationship to new genre public art and its ability to engage with urgent social issues or conditions, with attention primarily paid to urban contexts and communities. Curating socially engaged projects in regional or rural Australia necessitates a different kind of engagement, which offers rich possibilities for curatorial research. In this project, I have applied a model of ‘conversational curating’ to the decisions and processes of curatorial practice-based research in a regional Australian context. Conversational curating characterises the engagement between artist and curator, along with a spectrum of potential relationships, that include a network of locally embedded creative agents, which is crucial to curating in regional locations. My case study of Cementa 17 has helped illuminate the conditions for curating in rural and regional Australian contexts and inform key understandings brought into the practice component of my research. The practice component of my research consisted of a residency and exhibition, titled Sentient, at Murray Art Museum Albury; this project was realised with the Sydney- based artist James Nguyen and local communities living along the Murray River in the twin border cities of Albury- Wodonga. This project concerned people’s personal accounts of origins and migration, intertwined with the environmental and social complexities of the Murray River’s usage over time. Research in the process of curating Sentient has explored duration as a key part of the conditions of making; this allows for a cumulative and dynamic engagement with place and communities—a specific requirement of rural and regional curating. My research uncovers some of the specific challenges and opportunities of working in rural and regional settings and demonstrates an effective curatorial approach that prioritises collaboration and relationship building through dialogue.
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(2021)ThesisCan a visual arts-Gurindji-specific culturally based, creative-led framework comprising collaborative exhibition and performative thesis, develop and present a Gurindji-specific storying of dispossession, cultural reclamation, transmission and exchange through dislocated kinship connections; and if so, how? What does a Gurindji-specific framework look like conceptually, creatively, critically? What does it do to and for history, to theory, to cultural analysis? Is this framework relevant and if so, for whom? This exegesis is a practice-led analysis drawing upon key cultural events and sites, and the involvement and displacement associated with singular and shared Gurindji ‘experience, location and visuality’. As a critical exploration, it radically inverts the limited recognition of what it is to be, do and enact as a Gurindji community member.My research takes shape from the diverse standpoints of descendants living on/in traditional homelands, and from members of the significant Gurindji displaced community. It is conducted through methodologies of critical First Nations Performative Autoethnography, First Nations Storying/Storywork (creative narratives), and what I call “cultural archaeology”. My mode of analysis engages with experimental, intra- and intercultural First Nations aesthetics and embodied action.
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(2022)ThesisThis thesis develops the concept of Critical Disability Aesthetics. Critical Disability Aesthetics extends upon the current conceptualisation of Disability Aesthetics developed by Tobin Siebers. I argue that Disability Aesthetics adheres to a restrictive definition of the term aesthetics anchored in the judgement of beauty, whilst Critical Disability Aesthetics explores the broader sense of aesthetics as a sensory-affective process. This framework provides a conceptual grounding for a practice-based exploration of the embodied dimensions of lived experience. As an artist with achondroplasia dwarfism, I explore the experience of corporeal difference from a subjective position. My practice examines the framing of disability but also the embodied social interactions of a female dwarf. In my art practice I deploy different media to elaborate various dimensions of this experience, beginning with a series of photographs, “Take a Look at THAT!”, documenting the micro aggressions that confront a person with dwarfism in the act of walking down the street. Then a sculptural work, Little Big Woman: Condescension, that considers the dynamics of an objectifying gaze. From these works, I move into practice that embodies unfolding psychosocial dynamics in a public environment. In Awkward Conversations I offer members of the public the opportunity to walk with me in public. In the Virtual Reality experience, Being Debra, I construct a first-person narrative whereby the story unfolds from my embodied perspective – both in the present and in a series of flashbacks. The thesis demonstrates via this body of artwork, how Critical Disability Aesthetics can advance understanding of the subjective and intersubjective experience of ‘disability’, which is not a quality of the subject but rather, arises within a social nexus.
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(2021)ThesisContemporary Muslim feminist artists, such as Cigdem Aydemir, Sarah Maple and Shirin Neshat, tackle the representation and misrepresentation of Muslim women, within both patriarchal Muslim cultures and the Islamophobic Global North. As this thesis shows, such artists often use the veil to perform Muslim womanhood and their unveiled bodies to claim agency both in and outside of Islamic countries. This practice-led research MFA, developed by Amber Hammad, positions itself in the field of veiling and unveiling Muslim woman’s bodies, building on the work of the aforementioned artists. Drawing on Hammad’s experiences of living in Pakistan and Australia, it analyses the politics of performing Muslim womanhood from a feminist standpoint, utilising strategies of the performance lecture and video art in particular. In the video work The Nude Dupatta — A Performance Lecture (2021) Hammad draws on the work of Hito Steyerl on the politics of images and Andrea Fraser’s work on gendered institutional critique to galvanise her agency as a Muslim female artist. In particular, the work examines the female nude in Islamic art history. In Lower the Gaze: Manuscript Page from خاتون نامه Khatoon Nama #1 (2021) Hammad builds on Shahzia Sikander’s techniques of animation and appropriation and Sara Ahmed’s intersectional feminist theories to connect ideas of visibility and invisibility with the sounds of the Quranic phrase “lower your gaze.” Through these works Hammad expands understandings of Muslim female artists’ engagements with hypervisibility and the politics of veiling.
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(2021)ThesisThis thesis argues that in order to understand contemporary media artworks that use and address data, we need to develop what I term a ‘relational understanding’ of data. This can be achieved by challenging common assumptions of data as somehow being ‘pure’, ‘raw’, or taken as a given. For this thesis, data is not considered as a pre-existing instantiated object (as is the case in object-oriented programming for instance). Instead, I consider the complex and relational nature of data—both as it emerges from human systems, and as it produces those systems. Through a creative-practice-as-research approach, this thesis moves beyond the idea that there is such a thing as “raw” data, and advances the novel idea of “data as ecology”. This thesis articulates the complex network of relations that make, shape and create media artworks. At its core, this involves exploring the materiality of data. In order to better understand this, I analyse the processes that bring data into existence, and conduct an investigation into the more precise nature of the interconnections that the world of data both creates and puts into action. In this thesis, ecologies of both practice and media are explored in order to propose a working model of “data ecologies”. This is established by means of a number of original interactive, reactive, and generative new-media works that have been made and exhibited during the course of this investigation. I consider this original creative practice within the broader field of investigation and against the backdrop of a wider body of creative works that have been made by artists over the past decade. To advance this analysis of how data ecologies perform across these clearly delineated fields, I review and assess a number of key media artworks (including my own original creative practice components made during the course of this research, specifically, Laika’s Dérive and Hothouse). The data ecologies that this thesis outlines and analyses enable a new productive approach for media art practices to attend to the processual quality of data in a novel ecological framework that can be used to communicate complex poetic knowledge systems.
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(2021)ThesisTwentieth-century Australia saw a multiplicity of expressions of modernity and fashionability in interior design, yet narrowly defined historical views of the aesthetics of the modern interior have left the majority of practices during the post-war boom undocumented. The study investigates the work of Noel Coulson and Decor Associates, two Australian interior designers working in the post-war period. This thesis, drawing on the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and developing concepts derived from British design historian Penny Sparke, analyses these practices and six client case studies through its two key themes of hybridity and modern not modernist. The two designers, it is argued, are exemplars of hybrid practitioners who acted as both producers and mediators. The client case studies expand the theme of modern not modernist – interiors whose modernity is defined by lifestyle and expression of identity. This thesis concludes that recognition of the role of the client is fundamental to exposing the hybridity of the designers’ practices and the diversity of the aesthetics of the modern interior. The findings support the validity of the two concepts in understanding the significance of previously overlooked design styles, contesting their historical relegation and re-evaluating their capacity for expansion of the historical field. This thesis proposes that the two key themes offer a new framework to re-examine the work of interior designers currently omitted from design history.
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(2022)Thesis3D computer generated biomedical animations can help audiences understand and contextualise scientific information that can be challenging to communicate due to resolution and complexity. Biomedical animators bring together multiple sources of authentic scientific data, to translate abstract information into a visual form through storytelling and visualisation. The field of biomedical animation has emerged from a long history of science visualisation and science-art endeavours, and despite there being rich discourse in the fields of data visualisation and science communication, the academic literature in the field of biomedical animation is limited, and focussed on the technical methods for visualisation, or the role these animations play in scientific research, rather than the processes through which they are created. However, as the field matures, there is a need for a deeper understanding of the creative process, and the field is now poised to expose and characterise these aspects, particularly from the perspective of the practitioner. This practice-based research project aims to expose and characterise both the visible and invisible factors that influence my personal process of creating a biomedical animation, and the tacit dimensions that influence orchestrated design choices. This research project employs a multi-method and reflective practice approach with disciplined capture and documentation of critical moments of self-reflection, that ultimately comprise the data for analysis. Thematic analysis was then used to analyse the data, and to identify themes that could contribute to frameworks that represent my personal process(es) in creating 3D biomedical animations. This has allowed me to identify and contextualise my creative process both in terms of my personal and professional position as well as within the field more broadly. I am now able to better advocate for the intangible and often undervalued aspects of my creative practice, and can articulate how a hierarchical decision matrix that considers multiple inputs contributes to my creative process. These insights will also be relevant to others in the field of biomedical animation and in the field of design more broadly, who may gain a deeper insight into their own processes of working and ways of exploring creative practice.
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(2020)ThesisMy research concerns Queer Spectrality - a term that encapsulates the erasure and absence of queer people throughout history, culture, and society. Queer spectrality is derived from Jacques Derrida’s theory of hauntology first introduced in Spectres of Marx (1993). It looks at history through the figure of the ghost - an entity that challenges ontological notions of being and exists in a liminal space, traversing categorical distinctions. The ghost parallels the marginalisation experienced by queer people as well as the way queerness blurs rigid boundaries created by Western, colonial, patriarchal systems. Queer spectrality challenges the histories created by such systems and invites a reimagining of lost histories and voices in order to create alternative futures. Queer spectral disruptions challenge the perception that time is inherently “straight”, suggesting instead that it is non-linear, and multiple rather than fixed. Using experimental paranormal methodologies my practice is an attempt to resurrect one specific queer ghost whose trace I followed throughout Paris in 2019. Her name is Qiu Miaojin and she is a queer Taiwanese writer who lived in Paris during the early 90s. In 1995 Qiu committed suicide at the age of 26 leaving behind her final novel Last Words from Montmartre. The book is written as a series of letters and diary entries dated between April to June followed by her death on June 25th. During my residency in Paris at the Cité Internationale des Arts I recreated a response to Qiu Miaojin’s novel through temporal, geographic, psychical and embodied practices. In 2019 I was also 26 and the residency took place at the same time as Qiu’s novel between April to June. In Paris I retraced her steps, reading and embodying her novel on the exact dates she wrote them. From this intensive three-month immersive performance I created video diaries relating to each letter by Qiu; the footage is taken from the specific places she visited or themes she wrote about on each day. Through this work I have attempted to place myself in her shoes and to act as a human mirror. My project involves a process of becoming a medium who has opened themself up to being haunted, allowing Qiu’s words to come alive again through my physical embodiment. These works explore the intermingling of our lives, the cyclical nature of history, and synchronicity. It is an attempt to reach back through time and through death to make connections with queer kin.
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(2020)ThesisWearable Assistive Technologies (WATs) have the capability to improve the quality of life of older adults. However, to realise their full potential, WATs must be designed properly for reliability, usability, and suitability for everyday use. To date, existing design strategies are not sufficiently comprehensive to ensure that WATs will be usable by older adults. In this regard, I propose 25 generally applicable interaction design guidelines for WATs. These guidelines are consolidated from more than 150 design recommendations from multiple sources and refined through a series of participatory design workshops with older participants. To illustrate their utility, I present a case study on the development of a WAT that enables older adults to utilise Mixed Reality (MR) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. The proposed interaction design guidelines can serve as a resource to practitioners working to make WATs more accessible, and to researchers interested in the further development of interaction design guidelines for older adults.
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(2020)ThesisThis practice based PhD develops processes of embodied listening and experimental drawing as multi-sensory, emplaced methodologies to articulate new approaches to the contemporary practice of drawing. Through creative interactions with the historically significant and visually iconic sites of Golden Gully in Hill End, New South Wales, Australia; and the village of Langshi in Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China, this project examines how drawing and listening can generate an awareness of perceptual, cultural and social emplacement. My practice initiates a dialogue with visual paradigms evident in painted and poetic responses to these places from the Australian 20th century landscape and Chinese 12th to 13th century shanshui traditions. From these departure points, the practice responds to the material reality of Golden Gully and Langshi in the present. My engagement with these places is inflected by my context as a migrant, female artist of Chinese heritage practicing between cultures in Australia and internationally. The contextual specificity of this position in the practical research reinforces an approach to these places as constituted of many possible relations. Through experimental process-based interactions with these places, I develop four embodied listening methodologies of Touch, Space, Durations and Sounding. These methodologies address the specific perceptual conditions generated by my engagements with these places. They facilitate the analysis of drawing with sound feedback and malleable paper ‘mediators,’ which act as conduits shaping my perceptual and physical interactions with these places. The drawing properties of surface, gesture and line, are extended through the intersubjective experiences of listening and innovated by the spatial and temporal fluidity of sound. Sound feedback compositions, paper mediators and video works from creative interactions with Golden Gully and Langshi, are used to mediate further experimental interactions with the exhibition space. Through drawing and listening as methods of exploring ongoing relationships with places, contemporary drawing is extended as an enactive process that can generate manifold senses of perceptual emplacement.