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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)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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(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.
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(2021)ThesisGeniza: An Annotated An/Archive of a Discarded Life is a research project which combines autoethnographic and narrative methods within a practice-based and archival methodological framework to investigate means of materialising and preserving memories of a life for future use when the traces of that life are discarded or dispersed. A geniza is a space in a synagogue used to temporarily store materials written in Hebrew (which, as a sacred language, cannot just be thrown out) until they can be buried or otherwise ritually discarded. It is a fundamentally anarchival space; that is, it is not an archive, does not use archival practices for storage, and is not intended to be retained for future uses. This research, through the creation of an anarchival art installation, and a personal archive, explores the tension between the desire to discard, and the desire to preserve. By materialising memories, narratives, and histories of objects intended for disposal, and collecting discarded materials not just in the installation, but also in the dissertation, this research has resulted in an autobiographical representation of the artist/researcher, as well as a biography of the archive and installation produced, and a biography of the research process itself. The methods explored through this research can be used to enhance the information retained in an archive, preserve memories that would otherwise be lost, transmit narratives of a life to future, unknown others, and prompt viewers of the installation to think about the material culture of their own lives, and how they will deal with the memories, and stories behind the items that they themselves will discard at some point.
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(2022)ThesisAs collaborative agents are implemented within everyday environments and the workforce, user trust in these agents becomes critical to consider. Trust affects user decision making, rendering it an essential component to consider when designing for successful Human-Agent Collaboration (HAC). The purpose of this work is to investigate the relationship between user trust and decision making with the overall aim of providing a trust calibration methodology to achieve the goals and optimise the outcomes of HAC. Recommender systems are used as a testbed for investigation, offering insight on human collaboration with dyadic decision domains. Four studies are conducted and include in-person, online, and simulation experiments. The first study provides evidence of a relationship between user perception of a collaborative agent and trust. Outcomes of the second study demonstrate that initial trust can be used to predict task outcome during HAC, with Signal Detection Theory (SDT) introduced as a method to interpret user decision making in-task. The third study provides evidence to suggest that the implementation of different features within a single agent's interface influences user perception and trust, subsequently impacting outcomes of HAC. Finally, a computational trust calibration methodology harnessing a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) model and SDT is presented and assessed, providing an improved understanding of the mechanisms governing user trust and its relationship with decision making and collaborative task performance during HAC. The contributions from this work address important gaps within the HAC literature. The implications of the proposed methodology and its application to alternative domains are identified and discussed.
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(2022)ThesisThis research proposes practice-based models for examining the perceptions of 3D printing as entrepreneurial, accessible and environmentally sustainable. The dissertation and practice-based research argue that these popular perceptions limit the potential of 3D printing, and maker culture more generally, because of their overemphasis of human agency in maker culture. The research contends that such perceptions have arisen because of misunderstandings about the agency of the materials and technologies engaged in 3D printing networks, the failure of maker culture to make 3D printing accessible to an audience beyond the typical readership of maker magazines, and the failure to account for the significant environmental dangers of the plastic filament that construct 3D printed objects. Tracing maker culture’s initial commitment to anti-consumerist principles that no longer prevail – DIY culture of the 1960s and 70s and hacker culture of the 1980s and 90s – the practice of 3D printing has instead become a black box. In this research, I define black boxes as objects, systems, or processes whose inner workings become hidden because of their own success and so, black boxes are typically understood by their inputs and outputs. To open up the black box of 3D printing, the research reflects on a series of material experiments with 3D printing that are informed by critical making, co-design and speculative critical design within an Actor-Network Theory (ANT) framework. Through the ANT concept of generalised symmetry the research argues for the importance of ascribing agency to the more-than human actants in the maker practice networks of 3D printing, and provides documentation of the critical making project titled Dissolvable Furniture as a model. An investigation of contemporary challenges to participating in maker culture, framed within the ANT concept of translation, was conducted through online co-design workshops on 3D printing and identified barriers to inclusive maker culture. Subsequent to the workshops further investigation of the agency of 3D printing materials, titled Co-created Ceramic Objects, provides a model for the disposal of PLA through incineration in a kiln. The final exploration of a model for un-black boxing 3D printing, specifically addressing claims that PLA is environmentally sustainable, demanded a provocation that unsettled complacency about the dangers of plastic. Based on extensive research on the waste management practices of plastics the research documents the practice-based model of the speculative critical design titled Biorecycling Machine. These projects address the long-term implications of entrepreneurial, accessible and environmentally sustainable practices of maker culture and interrupt the individualism at the core of much debate in maker movement groups by reframing maker practices as material–semiotic constellations of interactions of human and more-than-human actants that are constantly in flux. The research concludes with recommendations for areas requiring further study, including the need for better protection of the intellectual property of makers, the necessity of creating more accessible maker cultures, and the urgent need to address the environmental dangers of 3D printing materials.
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(2022)ThesisThis research explores the interconnectedness and professional identity formation of international alumni in art and design. The research is situated in pre-pandemic international education policy, practice and experience. The study analyses thirteen selected Australian policy documents to examine how policy acknowledges and fosters connectedness for international alumni, identifying that innovative mobile technology is underutilised as a means to professionally connect (Lomm, Snepvangers & Rourke, 2018; Snepvangers & Rourke, 2020) and enhance employability. With the view to identify representations of online best practices, relevant multi-stream literature contributions and eight case exemplars are initially investigated. Three contrasting case studies (Cochrane & Antonczak, 2015; Lemon, 2018a; Lien & Cao, 2014) are selected for deeper analytical investigation using the ‘Ecologies of Practice’ framework (Kemmis et al., 2014). Theoretical conceptions of connectedness (Bridgstock, 2016a; Bridgstock & Tippett, 2019a; Pegrum, 2010) are extended to include psychological and intercultural viewpoints, relational and identity capital and relational network behaviours in social media perspectives. Primary data (questionnaire and reflective email interviews) relating to professional employability journeys, identities, and online connectedness of a small number of alumni (n=31) from UNSW Art and Design is also collected and analysed. The research uncovers online creative practice traditions that facilitate connectedness and digital identities in social and professional online ecologies and suggests ways to address identified gaps in policy and practice. Strengthening a sense of belonging and visibility in informal and social creative settings may increase online networked relations and employability for art and design alumni.
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(2022)ThesisMy project articulates and examines the notion of a settler-colonial structure of feeling through visual analysis of landscape in Australian film, art and popular culture from post-World War II to the present day. The focus of such an investigation is not the overt intentions of representations of landscape, but rather the unrepresentable tensions they aim to conceal. The thesis theorises a relationship of interdependence between the physical occupation of territory and the production of images that represent those territories as landscape. It considers the role of landscape representation within the ongoing performance of possession that settler colonies rely upon for the (re)production of sovereignty. As Tuck and Yang argue, land is the main preoccupation of settler colonialism. Landscape representation, in turn, indexes the settler-colonial cultural perception of land. The very concept of an Australian landscape is rooted in the epistemology of colonialism: the settler-colonial nation relies on its subjects to continuously conceptualise its national landscape not as occupied territories belonging to Indigenous peoples but as an undisputed sovereign white nation called Australia. Settler-colonial landscape is one of the tools through which the settler colony circulates and enacts the denial mechanisms it depends on. My project brings together Wolfe’s articulation of settler-colonialism as structure with Williams’s notion of structures of feeling. It does so to theorise and analyse a settler-colonial structure of feeling—the inherently ambivalent network of unconscious drives that both uphold and disrupt the settler-colonial project. My project maps settler denial through various terrains. Chapters 1 and 2 examine the co-constitution of anxiety and pleasure in representations of the landscape within the settler imagination. Chapter 3 focuses on land as property and examines the settler home and garden to disentangle the complex relationship between care and violence that characterises everyday life in the contemporary settler state. Finally, chapter 4 moves to the coast and beach to examine the death-line of the border. Each chapter builds its argument through visual analysis of diverse media, ranging from tourism advertisements to feature films and artworks, all analysed from a perspective that brings together art history, settler-colonial studies and cultural studies.