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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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(2022)ThesisThe Kitsch Glitch is a personal investigation of the impact of cultural shame and stigmatisation on the lived experience of breast cancer. My point of departure was the apparent inability of my inherited (Russian-Jewish) culture to admit any discursive practices that would do justice to such a lived experience. Influenced by family history, kitsch aesthetics, and glitch theory, I sought to combine these components in order to produce a set of works that open a space in which the received cultural perceptions of cancer could be challenged. I refer to various aspects of “Soviet Kitsch” and Russian history to demonstrate that a restrictive and self-suppressing Stalinist mentality continues to pervade my culture, and even overdetermined my family’s perception of disability and illness. Utilizing a punk-luxe aesthetic, my artistic practice takes an experimental approach in presenting cancer as a bodily glitch, while critiquing what I have discovered about my Russian cultural heritage. This paper presents an empathetic perspective and eclectic iterations of medical and cultural aesthetics. This is articulated through a series of experimental digital and physical outputs. As a result, I argue that my work could be considered as a positive rendition of “cancerous propaganda”.
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(2022)ThesisIntroduction: The fashion industry is now the second largest polluter in the world. Extensive research has quantified those damages, yet little progress has been made to prevent this calamity. This thesis profiled the global value chain (GVC) and producer narratives of hemp fashion goods produced by various micro-social ventures in Nepal, with a particular focus on the producers and their role in sustainable production. The goal was to address the call of fashion consumers for more transparency in the apparel industry through an investigation of the manifestations of sustainable development (SD), and environmental and social justice. The study examines if these goals were achievable by ethical and sustainable (E&S) practices based on the promises of grow-ing awareness towards a new movement of fashion eco-awareness. Methods: This thesis applied a human-centred GVC investigation framework based on a multi-methods approach which combined fieldwork, semi-structured and struc-tured interviews, and questionnaires. Fourteen workers, producers, and consumers answered a range of approximately twenty questions subdivided into four categories: 1. epistemology (to understand their ecological awareness), 2. people (to understand ethical values), 3. planet (to understand sustainable practices) and 4. profit (to under-stand their financial status). The trajectory of hemp in its various stages of economic ‘value-adding’ from cultivation until the final product reached the end-consumer in Australia was investigated. A literature review examined the historical underpin-nings of the E&S fashion movement; environmental and humanitarian issues related to the GVC of the fashion industry; and the socioeconomic and cultural aspects of the hemp crop in Nepal’s local communities. Results: The findings confirmed that E&S fashion guidelines of the hemp trade in Nepal had a positive influence on consumers' behaviour, cultural preservation and exchange, sustainable development, fair trade and environmental practices. Remark-ably, workers and producers from Nepal expressed greater concern with the ecology of hemp production than with their personal finances. Conclusion: Firstly, the results show that workers and business owners from Nepal are aware of the environmental damage caused by the fashion industry and are engag-ing with E&S labels to create more environmentally conscious products. Secondly, this thesis confirms that although consumer behaviour research indicates that fashion consumers want to make more E&S choices (BWA-AU, 2020), they cannot do so due to their inability to access vital information about the products they buy. This is because a globalised economy comes with many unknowns for the consumers, who remain sceptical and despite their efforts find it difficult to practice conscious consumerism. Finally, this investigation also served to demystify the often misunderstood crop (hemp) as a commodity and underline its benevolence and capacity to foster benefit-sharing activities.
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(2022)ThesisAddressing the climate crisis requires practices for recognising the ecological condition of the body and its enmeshment with the more-than-human world. Significant humanities and social sciences scholarship argues that embodiment is key to dismantling dominant anthropocentric structures that understand humans as separate from or superior to the environment. From my position as a contemporary dance artist, I unpack how the methodical processes of contemporary dance exemplify a practice-based approach to embodied knowledge that engenders greater understanding of the ecological condition of the body’s interconnection with the more-than- human world. Highlighting transdisciplinary correspondences between dance practice methods and theoretical insights from feminist, ecocultural, First Nations, and environmental philosophy scholars, I identify four key frameworks through which dance practices affect embodied awareness of an ecological condition. These are: Knowing Multiplicity, Attending to an In-Motion Condition, Indivisibility at the Body-World Threshold, and Multisensory Ways of Knowing. With these correspondences, I formulate the new theoretical framework of embodied ecological awareness to describe the particular knowledge dance practices cultivate and can contribute to broader ecological discourses. To demonstrate how dance practices develop this knowledge, I engage a body-centred autoethnographic methodology to analyse key experiences of dance practice exercises and the embodied understandings they promote. In finding that these exercises develop corporeal understandings of the interconnected, in-motion multiplicities constituting and interweaving the body’s internal and external environments — understandings identified as explicitly ecological — I propose that dance practices develop a form of knowledge that is imminently relevant to recuperating human-environment relations in the face of climate crisis: that is, embodied ecological awareness.
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(2022)ThesisIn the Critique of Judgement, Kant introduces the idea of an aesthetic common sense as the “precondition” of the judgement of taste. I argue that he leaves this thought unfinished, and that the scope of the third Critique cannot elaborate the implications of aesthetic common sense, which suggests, I assert, a necessarily social context to aesthetic judgements. I propose that we can elaborate on Kant’s suggestive but underdeveloped notion of aesthetic common sense by turning to Iris Murdoch’s characterisation of attention as the fundamental mode of moral activity. I show that we can establish a symmetry between Murdoch’s notion of attention and Kant’s characterisation of the disinterestedness of the judgement of taste. I assert, however, that Kant cannot help us to adjudicate questions around our actual, lived, particular experiences of art. I argue that art objects are unique among aesthetic objects in that they are (a) defined as art objects by virtue of the fact they are not something else, and (b) thus provoke and require a distinct mode of attention from us, because their primary telos is to be merely contemplated. I borrow from Murdoch’s argument about the role of concepts in facilitating our attention, in order to advance an interpretation of aesthetic common sense which understands it to be a mode of mutual attention which elaborates shared conceptual schemes. Per Murdoch, I see these conceptual schemes as both facilitating proper aesthetic experience and being a product of it. I claim that we can understand this ongoing, social process as a form of aesthetic common sense.
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(2022)ThesisThe year 2020 started with more than 100 fires burning across Australia. Bushfire is a phenomenon that cannot be mitigated completely by human intervention; however, better management practices can help counter the increasing severity of fires. Hazard Reduction (HR) burning has become one of the resolute applications in the management of fire-prone ecosystems worldwide, where certain vegetation is deliberately burned under controlled circumstances to thin the fuel to reduce the severity of the bushfires. As the climate changes drastically, the severity of fires is predicted to increase in the coming years. Therefore, it becomes increasingly important to investigate automatic approaches to prevent, reduce and monitor the cause and movement of bushfires. Methods of assessing FL levels in Australia are commonly based on visual assessment guidelines, such as those described in the Overall Fuel Hazard Assessment Guide (OFHAG). The overall aim of this research is to investigate the use of LiDAR to estimate the volume of fuel load to assist in the planning of HR burning, an approach that could quantify the accumulation of elevated and near-surface FL with less time and cost. This research focuses on an innovative approach based on a voxel representation. A voxel is a volumetric pixel, a quantum unit of volume, and a numeric value of x, y and z to signify a value on a regular grid in a three-dimensional space. Voxels are beneficial for processing large pointcloud data and, specifically, computing volumes. Pointcloud data provides valuable three-dimensional information by capturing forest structural characteristics. The output of this research is to create a digitised map of the accumulation of fuel (vegetation) points at elevated fuel and near-surface fuel stratum based on the point density of the pointcloud dataset for Vermont Place Park, Newcastle, Australia. The output of this information is relayed through a digital map of fuel accumulation at elevated and near-surface fuel stratum. The result of this research provides a rough idea of where the highest amount of fuel is accumulated to assist in planning of an HR burn. This will help the fire practitioners/land managers determine at which location in the forest profile should be prioritised for HR burning. There is a short window to conduct HR burning that is why it is prevalent that a tool that can provide information on fuel at a fast pace could help the fire practitioner/land managers.
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(2022)ThesisLong sentence translation from English to Chinese is a common challenge in the translation classroom. While typological differences between the language pair in clause connections – as commonly seen in long sentences – mean that translation shifts are often needed, students tend to imitate the source text structure, producing translations that are awkward in the target text. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the usefulness of a linguistic-based pedagogical approach in tackling this challenge. Adopting Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) as both an analytical and pedagogical framework, this thesis examines how the SFL concept of logical meaning helped translation students to approach the challenge of rendering long sentences from English into Chinese by targeting the translation of clause connections. This study investigated the problem by applying SFL theory from two perspectives. The first was in comparing the overall translation choices of two groups of postgraduate English-Chinese translation students: one group from the 2018 unfamiliar with the SFL approach, and another from 2020 who had been informed by the SFL approach. These students’ translation choices were classified and compared under four categories: effective shift, effective literal translation, ineffective shift, and ineffective translation. The other perspective explored the specific translation strategies adopted by the SFL-informed students – the 2020 group – under the category of effective shift. Three strategies were identified from least to most common: shift in taxis, shift in logico-semantic relations, and shift in rank. The identification of these strategies was then complemented by the analysis of supplementary data of classroom discussions and written reflections by the students, in order to reveal some of the motivations behind their shifts. The thesis contributes to existing knowledge in three ways. Theoretically, it reveals areas in which SFL can throw light on SFL-informed students’ translation choices in terms of metafunctional shifts, thus assisting students in tackling a frequent translation challenge. Pedagogically, it informs classroom practice by offering a practical approach based on solid linguistic theory which reveals systematic patterns in the students’ effective translation shifts that can then be fed back into classroom practice. Methodologically, it combines prescriptive with descriptive approaches to translation studies by both describing the specific translation strategies involved and evaluating the effectiveness of translation choices.
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(2022)ThesisThis thesis investigates three solo double bass works composed and performed by John Patitucci on his 2019 album Soul of the Bass. The purpose of this study is threefold: an analysis of the three pieces for the purpose of identifying the influences that make up Patitucci’s musical style as composer and improvisor; an examination of the techniques used by Patitucci to create arrangements for solo double bass performances; and an inquiry into the role of composition in Patitucci’s self-directed learning. Whilst the double bass in jazz is becoming an increasingly popular topic for academic research, little has been investigated in scholarly writing regarding solo double bass recordings and particularly the solo double bass works of John Patitucci. John Patitucci is a significant figure in the world of jazz, recognized for his contribution as a side musician as well as a soloist, bandleader and composer. Soul of the Bass features twelve works composed, improvised or arranged by Patitucci that showcase his wide-ranging musical influences. My research focuses upon three of these, namely ‘Soul of the Bass’, ‘Morning Train (Spiritual)’ and ‘Elvin’. The analysis undertaken consists of melodic transcription and identification of stylistic, melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic commonalities and differences within Patitucci’s practice and across stylistic boundaries. The results of this analysis reveal the influence of J.S. Bach; Mississippi Fred McDowell; and Elvin Jones and John Coltrane upon Patitucci’s compositional style, and the techniques that Patitucci has employed to arrange these works for the solo double bass. I also argue that a reason for Patitucci’s composition of these works is to further enhance his musical expertise through a process of self-directed learning.
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(2022)ThesisThis practice-based MPhil looks at circular economy innovation in athleisure garments, a hybrid of athletic and leisure clothing such as compression garments and yoga pants. The increasing uptake of athleisure garments as everyday clothing contributes to the environmental crisis at a scale that perpetuates the unsustainability of fast fashion due to their extensive use of blended plastic-based textiles. While there may be a current shift towards a circular economy in athleisure clothing, the industry’s approach is predominantly inclined towards recycling, which does not lessen consumer demand and, in fact, perpetuates increasingly rapid cycles of consumption and production. Design for disassembly is an underlying strategy for achieving a circular economy in which the potential for waste is designed out in the conceptual phases. It considers the lifecycle of each product building block and integrates an optimum resource recovery and reassembly plan (through recomposition, repair, reuse, recycling etc.). However, while the practical advantages of design for disassembly are known, the uptake of circular economy as a design strategy is embraced by the industry and consumers according to their differential definitions, understanding and adoption of sustainable practices. This research argues that achieving a ‘critical circular economy’ in athleisure clothing requires investigation into the socio-cultural functioning of the industry as well as the political aspects of consumption patterns of its’ consumers. Informed by Chantal Mouffe’s concept of agonism, Adversarial Design theory by Carl DiSalvo proposes that critical designers use their practice as a generative frame to expose inconsistencies and disagreements within the systems designed to build relationships between product, production, and consumers. For example, material design for disassembly, end of life, and post-use recycling might be popular industrial approaches for designing athleisure garments; however, adversarial design can provide other ways to navigate the concepts of labour, waste, the female body, time, movement and materiality of athleisure garments within a circular economy by confronting users with alternate versions of these concepts. DiSalvo’s concept for firstly revealing hegemony consists of identifying and documenting power structures and their influences in athleisure clothing design. Secondly, those insights can then be used to assess the excluded agendas in the design of athleisure clothing and reconfigure the remainder, thereby informing a third tactic of articulating an agonistic collective that includes designing participatory models in which alternative garments and material constructions are offered and experienced. Moving the circular economy value propositions away from recycling using adversarial design opens the potential for a collaborative model that enables education, research, industry, and craft to connect in achieving alternative approaches to the circular economy, that retain and make the female body and movement, material and waste and labour and time visible through the design and making of athleisure garments. Therefore, this research intervenes into the preconceived materiality of athleisure garments to achieve experimental stretch, fit and moisture management capabilities for exercise and daily task performance by using and manipulating natural/ undyed calico and linen as ubiquitous and relatively sustainable, but surprising, material substrates for athleisure garments. Although the research began with concerns about the predominant use of plastic-based fibre blends in athleisure garments, the explicit intention of the studio experiments is not to change the normative typology of athleisure garments but rather to elicit ‘adversarial’ questions through the material choice and the experience of experimental prototypes. The adversarial design prototyping experiments work towards the critical analyses of ‘disassembly’ systems, and thus the assumptions, myths and promises of sustainability within the athleisure clothing industry and its’ fashion systems that support the predominant use of synthetic textiles and their near impossibility for disassembly.
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(2022)ThesisAchieving whole life cycle net-zero carbon buildings requires decision-making on reducing building carbon emissions at each stage during the entire building lifecycle in an integrated way. However, most existing research has focused on embodied and operational carbon assessment separately, without considering carbon emissions occurred across all building stages. There is a lack of integration of the key decision variables throughout the whole lifecycle building process to support decision-making in achieving whole life cycle net-zero carbon buildings. Building information modelling (BIM) provides an object-based representation of a building which facilitates exchange and interoperability of building information across multiple disciplines. Most BIM applications are focused on design and construction stages. There is a lack of entities, properties, and relationships in the current Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) schema required to support whole life net-zero carbon buildings. Digital Twin (DT) is a virtual representation of building assets, processes, and systems. It can facilitate the construction and operation of buildings by simulating real-time building conditions. Integrating information acquired by DT with BIM has considerable potential to enable whole life cycle net-zero carbon assessment. Therefore, a framework integrating BIM and DT is needed to provide ontology-based computational representation to incorporate all key decision variables throughout the entire building process to support decision-making on net-zero carbon buildings. To fill the gap, this research develops a novel framework that integrates BIM and DT to tackle challenges in supporting net-zero carbon buildings over the whole building lifecycle. Firstly, through a systematic literature review, all key decision variables affecting net-zero carbon outcomes of buildings at each key building stage, throughout the whole building lifecycle, are identified. Then, a mapping process between identified variables and the existing IFC schema is conducted to define these variables using current IFC entities, properties, and relationships. Finally, through utilising the ontology-based representation method, the novel framework is developed by proposing an extension to the current IFC schema and integrating data from the DT to encourage well-informed decision-making on whole life cycle net-zero carbon buildings. The framework has the potential to pave the way for further research on an automated system to support well-informed decision-making on whole life cycle net-zero carbon buildings.