Practice-led research in creative arts

This is the Performing Borders Study Room Guide curated by Alessandra Cianetti and published by the Live Art Development Agency (LADA). It explores physical and conceptual orders through live art. Artists working in this aspect talk about their practice.

The PDF is available on the LADA site http://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/resources/catalogue/performing-borders-a-study-room-guide-on-physical-and-conceptual-borders-wi

My section is on pages 92-108. It contains links to relevant resources too.

Summary of Issues in Responsible Conduct
in Research-Creation and Proposed Tools for Reflection
This Toolkit was produced as part of the research project Responsible Conduct in Research-Creation:
Providing Creative Tools to Meet the Challenges of an Emerging Field. It was funded by the Fonds de
recherche du Québec (FRQ) as part of the Concerted Action La conduite responsable en recherche : mieux
comprendre pour mieux agir (2016-2018) [Responsible Conduct of Research: A Better Understanding for
More Effective Action]. A brainstorming workshop held in November 2017 was funded by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and several institutional partners.
Project website: www.crr-rc-rcr.ca
REFERENCES

« Go to College! » clame le magazine Life en 1940.
Alors que l’Europe sombre dans le chaos, les États-
Unis s’évertuent à assurer la production internationale
des savoirs et à promouvoir un idéal alternatif de
démocratie éclairée. Au même titre que toute la
population, les artistes sont encouragés à converger
vers les universités pour participer à la fondation d’un
nouveau rêve américain, porté par la recherche.
Revenant sur ce projet politique méconnu, L’Artistechercheur
retrace l’émergence d’une figure de l’artiste
dont l’activité bascule soudainement dans le champ
universitaire.
Pour comprendre cette mutation, Sandra Delacourt
suit la trace de Donald Judd, artiste minimaliste, qui
dans la deuxième partie du XXe siècle fut désigné
ambassadeur d’un « art éduqué ». À travers lui,
l’auteure nous invite à suivre l’évolution, non linéaire,
d’un nouvel imaginaire pour l’art et pour la recherche,
et expose la manière dont différentes générations
d’artistes s’en sont emparées ou l’ont rejeté.
Alors que depuis quelques années la recherche
créative fait l’objet d’un nouvel engouement, cet
ouvrage propose d’explorer les désirs antagonistes qui
ont conduit l’art et le savoir à pointer un horizon
commun.

This thesis forms 60% of my practice-led doctoral submission and provides an in-depth account of a collaborative and inclusive approach in the professional design of heritage site interpretation. Reflecting on my practice as a professional heritage site interpretation designer, I wanted to understand whether the gaps in curator/designer/visitor communication I experienced was the same for other heritage site interpretation design practices. This initial reflection led to my thesis focus and research question. My design practice in crafting the 3D interactive, kiosk-based, heritage site interpretation for the Cistercian Abbey at Beaulieu in Hampshire is presented as 40% of my doctoral submission. This is portrayed through my ‘Talking Walls- Reflection on Practice’ website. A series of galleries, posts, including the kiosk interpretation, forms the online exhibition submission which can be explored through this link.

The new model for ‘Collaborative Heritage Site Interpretation Design’ developed through Action Research, Practice-led design and Design Thinking approaches, contributes to the field of heritage interpretation design for historic houses, as a business model as well as academic contribution. The model extends a user-centred design and participatory design process to include a consistent curatorial, design and visitors team for the design and development of heritage site interpretation, with the intention of enhancing visitors’ engagement and experiences at heritage sites. The literature review focused on analysing existing heritage site interpretation design practice definitions and theories across three themes: curation, designing for interpretation, and the
importance of visitors’ experiences in shaping heritage interpretation. A lack of heritage site interpretation design literature meant this needed to include literature for interpretation design at museums. Museums are generally more advanced than heritage sites in their participatory/co-design interpretation approaches, yet can be considerably different in the context of space, story-telling and interpretative portrayal of historic sites. This includes the use of digital technology, for which the kiosk interpretation was an early advocate in the use of 3D reconstructions and choice of content on mobile platforms at heritage sites.

Recommendations for future research include potential impact in the use of the Collaborative Heritage Site Interpretation Design model and design process for heritage site interpretation design. New technological developments for heritage sites and museums can build upon the collaborative and multi-disciplinary nature of the model. The thesis and model adds value to the field of heritage site interpretation design, providing a method and process for smaller heritage sites and academic research to follow. The growth in practice-led and practice-based design research PhDs is notable, for which this thesis may also be of value to future design students.

Working in the borderlands between art and document, a poetic approach to documentary disrupts commonsense understandings of what documentary can be. However, it is frequently viewed as marginal to the main body of documentary practice for its foregrounding of aesthetic choices around form and materiality. Pushing to the extremes of what is recognisable as documentary, a poetic approach to documentary highlights the rhetorical impact of aesthetic choices within the broader field of practice. Experiential ways of knowing are emphasised so that the work is conceived of as an experience in itself rather than a replication of reality. Moving beyond realist representations of evidence, a poetic approach can make use of techniques of defamiliarisation as a strategy to renew perception and enable a reimagining of preconceived connections. In diverging from established pathways unexpected combinations can occur, allowing complex and changeful conceptions to emerge. Utilising a methodology of practice based research to produce a 28 minute single channel documentary and the close examination of pertinent creative works, this thesis argues that a critically engaged poetic approach to documentary can work to encourage thoughtful contemplation as part of an ongoing conversation in the process of knowing.

Discourse on theatre theory and the importance or otherwise of the writing and presentation of drama has always occupied the consciousness of theory and practice in the theatre. In this chapter, I consider my playwriting work as research, with specific reference to recent practice. I approach examples from my own and others’ original theatre-making as a form of research and the importance of its relationship to social reality. The playwright then lives and speaks in the world and not in the theatre. By viewing the work in this way, it transforms what we are doing in the theatre when we make plays. The theatre becomes a location for social research and criticism, a forum for discussion, beyond the bounds of artifice.

ABSTRACT
This bricolage of writings is the result of a white privileged woman exploring her social conscience in a scholarly but creative way. It is a meander through the cultural abyss between black and white Australia, trying to see what I had never been shown, and unsee what I had been shown. I wonder how can I be complicit and complacent in a society that privileges me over others because of the colour of my skin?

I combine a creative practice of storytelling to question the status quo that is the dominant culture, the mercurial methodology of poetics, and the autoethnographic eye that guides a reflexive process of personal decolonisation. I bring to the research a burgeoning awareness of colonised minds, bodies, spirits and lenses and am confident my fresh eyes, curiosity and commitment to unlearn, unsee and unsettle can be deftly deployed to challenge and disrupt the prejudices and perceptions of my fellow white Australians.

This is not a problem-solving piece of research, although I am exploring the nature of a problem. The problem – which is often erroneously cast as the ‘Aboriginal Problem’ when it is a Whiteness Problem – is the core of my research. But I am not focusing just on First Nations peoples and their legacy of colonisation; rather, I examine our shared legacy, turning the gaze back on white Australia, holding up a mirror, to ask with all sincerity: Who is the problem? Where is the problem? What have we done? Why weren’t we told? Did you really just say that?

'The White Woman' is 1 of 6 chapbooks that comprise my creative practice creative writing PhD.

The Earth has entered a new epoch, dubbed the Anthropocene, in which the actions of human beings are changing the global ecosystem in dramatic and potentially catastrophic ways. With the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now over 400 parts per million, Earth’s ecosphere is sliding over the edge of irrevocable destabilisation. Australian writers are using speculative fiction and “climate fiction” (cli-fi) to explore possible ramifications for their island nation, and the world, in a future affected by man-made climate change.
This thesis employs practice-led research to add to this fictive exploration, comprised of a work of mosaic science fiction and exegesis. Both the creative work and exegesis use a bricolage approach, which has structural resonance with the mosaic and the wide-ranging, interconnected elements of climate change. Likewise, the iterative process of practice-led research shares a thematic parallel with the interrelated structures of the mosaic and climate change.
Two core subjects of inquiry underpin the creative work, “Watermarks”: the mosaic novel and science fiction. The mosaic’s interlinked short stories mirror the many interconnected facets that make up global climate change. This format, in tandem with the cognitive estrangement often produced by science fiction (SF), provides an ideal fictional vehicle for exploring possible consequences and responses to climate change. The works of three other Australian writers that use this approach are examined in the exegesis. Steven Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming (2009), Sue Isle’s Nightsiders (2011) and James Bradley’s Clade (2015) demonstrate the versatility and effectiveness of this frame. The examination of these works represents a rare comparative study of the mosaic’s value in addressing climate change.
Analysis of the three case studies contributed to the narrative direction of “Watermarks” and its balance of dystopian and utopian impulses. Important to this balance was the aim of fostering feelings of empathy and hope in the reader. Feelings such as these help raise understanding and potentially incite a preparedness to act. In this way, the “Watermarks” novel addresses the cognitive dissonance that climate change engenders due to its size in time and space, its problematic complexity and its challenge to capitalism and neoliberalism. Both novel and exegesis argue that combining science fiction and the mosaic novel is a valuable and effective method of creating climate fiction. They further argue that climate fiction presenting a utopian sensibility, such as through evoking plausible mitigation pathways, can encourage proactive responses to the challenges of man-made climate change.

Success in marketing classical music depends largely on three key factors: the size and status of the CD release label; the status and image of the performers and composers; and the repertoire. This paper reports from a project that involved a small, independent Australian label, performers little-known beyond their academic work, and newly written music by Australian composers. The researchers expected it to be difficult to get airplay, recognition and sales, and they responded by turning to the idea of the concept album. The project looked at the concept album as a way of offering classical composers and performers new ways of programming works, ordering CD tracks, and placing their music into the listening community. We begin with discussion of the concept album in popular music and similar shapes in classical music and then introduce four recent projects of newly composed classical music: Australia East and West – new music for viola and piano (forthcoming 2015); Childhood in Music – new music for solo piano (2011); Shadows and Silhouettes: New piano compositions celebrating a Chinese-Western confluence (2012); and Antarctica – new music for piano and/or toy piano (2014). We follow this with discussion of the similarities with, and differences from, recognised popular concept albums types. In doing so, we raise new concept album possibilities and argue for and against some of the points raised in Ryan Hibbett’s (2005) pairing of indie rock and classical music and how they might impact on marketing. Against this background, we end the paper with consideration of the relevance of creative marketing for performers and composers of contemporary classical music whether within or outside tertiary institutions.

As a culturally produced text, literature is seen as a lens with the potential to draw attention to the values, ideas, and beliefs that underlie a society.

In this paper three key themes in H.G. Wells' novel 'The Invisible Man' (1897), are discussed: firstly, the ways that the body may be fashioned through dress and individual practices; secondly, how wearable artefacts may socialize bodies and symbolically communicate; and thirdly, how the fashioned body may challenge personal and cultural boundaries. Collectively, these issues draw attention to the relational network of body, culture, and dress.

These relationships are highly relevant to design research in fashion, dress, and wearable artefacts, which all use the body as a site. This study is seen as being an example of how literature may be utilized as a speculative device to encourage experimental and creative design research practices.

The author's practice led doctoral research, which emphasizes the body and skin as sites for design, is used as an example of a cross-disciplinary approach that draws on the issues raised through an analysis of the novel.

Kathrin Bohm / Doina Petrescu/ Tom James  (eds)

For the last ten years, a network of locally-based projects
from across Europe have been visiting each other to learn,
teach, share and discover the knowledge held in their
communities. This network has involved projects, practices,
participants and ordinary people from six countries, nine
regions, four cities, two towns and six villages. This is the
Eco Nomadic School.
The book is titled Learn to Act, because that’s what we set
out to do. The title is a clear proclamation towards a form of
learning which is both an act of commoning and a moment
in which knowledge becomes relative, collective and applied.
Learn to Act is about the near future, how to act, and how to
support each other.

https://www.rhyzom.net/dissemination/learn-to-act-book-2017/

TEXT CONTRIBUTIONS:
Kathrin Böhm is an artist and founding
member of the artist group Myvillages and
the art and architecture collective Public
Works.

Mihaela Efrim is a science teacher, teaching
in Brezoi high school, Romania. Mihaela was co-founder
of FDCL in Brezoi.

Bianca Elzenbaumer is a co-founder (along
with Fabio Franz) of Brave New Alps, a
cultural association based in Rovereto,
Italy.  Bianca also works as an Associate Professor at Leeds
Arts University (UK).

Tom James is a writer and artist, based
in London. He creates projects and
publications to address the ambivalence he
feels about the world that’s coming our way.

Constantin Petcou is a Paris-based architect
and co-founder of atelier d’architecture
autogeree (aaa) whose work stresses the
intersection between architecture, urbanism
and semiotics.

Doina Petrescu is a founding member
of atelier d’architecture autogeree and
Professor of Architecture and Design
Activism, University of Sheffield School of
Architecture/ Co-Founder, aaa Paris.

Julia Schäfer is curator and art-educator at
the Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig.
Her work focuses on the possibilities of
art mediation in curatorial strategies.

Kim Trogal is a lecturer at the Canterbury
School of Architecture, University for the
Creative Arts, UK.

As a creative practice research project, this thesis sets out to write a screenplay about Suresh Biswas (1861-1905), a little-known Bengali adventurer who was a wild-life trainer and circus-performer in Europe and later became a Captain in the Brazilian army. The early biographies of Biswas, based on limited and unreliable evidence, pose a challenge to the screenwriter in terms of narrative reconstruction of his life as a biopic. While more information has become available recently, this project examines the creative and critical issues associated with researching this figure, overcoming the problem of scant evidence and positioning him within a presentist context. Drawing on Rosenstone’s conceptual model for understanding how historical knowledge manifests in fictional narratives, it investigates the nature and function of fictional inventions in biopics and the ways in which screenplays make creative use of evidence. In writing Biswas’ biopic, I use the microhistorical research method, knowledge about biopic script-drafting processes, and Bhabha’s notion of ‘vernacular cosmopolitanism’ to present Biswas as a non-Western, non-elite 19th century cosmopolitan, thereby constructing a counter- narrative to the dominant discourse of cosmopolitanism as a matter of exclusive Western, elite privilege. I argue that it is through a judicious mix of fictional invention and a diligent study of evidence that a screenwriter can get closer to the historical subject. The thesis thus initiates in practice, moves to biopic history and criticism, reverts to practice with knowledge about research and writing that not only enables me to overcome my screenwriting problem but also leaves behind a set of insights for other screenwriters working with scant biographical evidence.

The initial research question for this practice-based doctoral research project was to ask, “Is it possible to develop a more confident, self-conscious creative voice able to articulate one’s identity more clearly through the making of handmade artefacts?”; this thesis applies the methodologies of autoethnography and pedagogy to consider an answer. My original contribution to knowledge through this enquiry is the identification of the ways in which the exploration of identity through autoethnographic, creative and pedagogic methods encourages an expanded field of self-knowledge, self-confidence and sense of creative self.

This autoethnographic study focuses on the analysis of my experiences as a working class girl growing up in an upper middle class suburb of Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. Diagnosed with a spine deformity at the age of ten, I utilise autoethnographic theory, methods and analysis in this thesis to gain knowledge of myself and the culture I grew up in to understand the possible reasons for my sense of shame and rejection, and my subsequent development of a fragile identity. This thesis evidences that the study of one’s culture and its signifying practices develops knowledge of the self, that they are necessarily intertwined.

Central to this study has been my development of embodied, theoretical and material knowledge through learning the craft-based skill of hand bookbinding, and my emergent confidence to encase my visual practice in hand-bound artist’s books.  The visual element of this practice-based PhD is a series of handmade artist’s books which contain collaged digital photographs of walks I took in my home town. This thesis evidences that through learning these skills I have developed greater self-knowledge as an artist/designer/maker. This approach has been successfully translated to the teaching of bookbinding skills through workshops influenced by Wenger’s (1998) theory of ‘communities of practice’ in a collaborative learning setting. This thesis reports that participating students’ perceptions of themselves have changed through their development of the skills and knowledge involved in encasing their individual creative work into hand-bound artist’s books.

Through the critical analysis of empirical and practice-based methods engaged in during this study, I argue that the artist’s book, as performative autoethnographic practice, evidences embodied knowledge of one’s identity and creativity by encasing the self within the book.

'Research: Practitioner | Curator | Educator' is a co-authored book that identifies where we’re at and where we might be going vis-à-vis the idea of research in the art school, higher education, museums and galleries, and the creative and cultural industries more generally. By way of this book, the authors want to ask why and how specific modes of practice (artistic practice, curating, and practices of pedagogy) operate, and what particular kinds of knowledges artistic research, the curatorial, and the educator generate and disseminate.

Concerned for ‘practice’ in our knowledge-based polis, where knowledge – which includes practice as knowledge – is institutionalized and instrumentalized, at the same time we’re interested in the potentialities of how ‘[practice] might be comprehended and described as a specific mode of generating and disseminating knowledge’, and ‘the particular kind of knowledge that can be produced within the artistic realm by… practitioners… who operate in its various places and spaces’, as contributor Tom Holert puts it so eloquently.

Throughout 'Research: Practitioner | Curator | Educator' we foreground, celebrate, and question the idea of research, and especially as it relates to the figure of the practitioner, curator, and educator as researcher (as well as to practice, curating, and educating themselves as research and as praxis). As such, the book is hopefully useful for PhD students in art schools internationally, and those working across the Arts and Humanities in institutions of higher education, as well as additional publics engaged critically with the arts and culture.

Contributors: Dr Žygimantas Augustinas (artist and Associate Professor, Vilnius Academy of Arts); Professor Tom Corby (artist, and Associate Dean [Research], Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts, London); Dr Tom Holert (artist, critic, and co-founder of the Harun Farocki Institut, Berlin); Dr Lolita Jablonskienė (Senior Curator, National Gallery of Art, Lithuania); Dr Vytautas Michelkevičius (curator, and Associate Professor, Vilnius Academy of Arts); Dr Ieva Pleikienė (Pro-Rector of Studies, Vilnius Academy of Arts); Dr Emily Pringle (Head of Research, Tate); and Dr Marquard Smith (Professor of Artistic Research, Vilnius Academy of Arts, and Programme Leader, MA Museums & Galleries in Education, UCL, London).

This book is the third in a Series of collaborations between Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania, and the National Gallery of Art, Lithuania. The titles of the four books in the Series are (1) 'Research: Practitioner | Curator | Educator' (2) 'Decolonising: the Museum, the Curriculum, and the Mind' (3) 'Do The Right Thing', and (4) 'What If? The Future of History in Post-Truth Times'.

This paper draws on the results of research with artist academics – artists employed as academics within universities principally to teach artistic skills - over a period of almost four years. Through this research we have sought to understand the experience of working in academia within an artistic discipline, one of which has been music. Effective music education is shaped by a complex set of relationships, including those between the musician as educator, practitioner and researcher. Within the higher education environment, all three activities are increasingly required, and we argue that the link, or nexus, between practice, research and teaching cannot be denied. Specifically, we ask: How does the knowledge contained within the process and product of artistic practice construct and inform pedagogy within undergraduate and postgraduate university teaching programs? In responding to this question, the paper draws on a diverse literature including our own previous research.

The belief that practitioner knowledge is tacit and cannot be communicated through the traditional methods of academic writing and journal publication is a problem for the growing number of fashion researchers utilising practice-led methodologies. The main reason for this is that, until recently, the visibility of a discipline has been predominantly defined by academic publications in the field. One solution has been for researchers to adopt research methodology that utilises reflective practice to draw out practitioner knowledge and attempt to convert this knowledge to an explicit form. Alternatively, non-traditional research outputs are now considered equivalent to published research within areas such as art and design. However, a critical mapping of fashion research reveals that practice-led research in fashion is not yet adequately represented by either form of research outcome. This thesis proposes that continuing to focus on the differences between practice-led research and other fashion research, a dychotomic view of practitioner knowledge as either tacit or explicit, and an upward trend in process-driven methodology, are limiting the ability for practitioners to contribute to the continuing development of fashion as a discipline. The aim of this thesis is to develop a progressive approach to practice-led research methodology to enable practitioner knowledge of fashion to become more accessible, transferable and relevant to the emerging methodology of fashion as a material culture that connects two different ideas of the fashion system as either material or immaterial.

A quantitative and qualitative mapping of fashion research, based on journal publications, non-traditional research outputs and an analysis of practice-led research exegeses, determines the current state of fashion as an emerging discipline. The mapping reveals that dominant methodologies for existing practice-led research are design methodologies. The results from this mapping inform an exploration of the potential for object or artefacts to encapsulate fashion knowledge through the method of object analysis as an object-based methodology used within other areas of fashion research. The results of this analysis enable the development of two models for practice-led fashion research. The first is a model of practitioner knowledge and theorises tacit knowledge as a hybrid space existing as a relationship between the different types of knowledge that exist in fashion practice. The second is a model of practitioner fashion research that incorporates existing design methodology but also responds to emerging fashion theory and methodology. Both models extend current understanding of fashion practice and contribute to developing the most effective strategy for communicating practitioner knowledge of fashion within the university environment. 

Conspiracy thriller novels and popular conspiracy theories proliferate in response to a perceived threat to the national group, or to transnational groups such as 'the West'. The research question addressed by this PhD project is: Do social identity processes work similarly in the production and functioning of popular conspiracy

A fabulous collection of interviews with artists, designers, art critics, academics, and curators from the Netherlands, Norway, France, Lithuania, and the UK on the future of art schools, arts education, artistic research, research-as-praxis, and radical pedagogies. Published by Vilnius Academy of Arts Press to mark the 225th anniversary of the Academy, contributors include: André Klein, Dag Erik Elgin, Gunther Ludwig, Henrik Oxvig, Jean Baptiste Levée, Liam Gillick, Suhail Malik, Will Holder, Academy alumni, and yours truly.

It may be said that families dispersed for social or political reasons to different parts of the globe were like satellites or capsules of culture, who then became the main custodians of a cultural preservation, where time more or less stood still. Like other recently arrived migrants following WWII, settlers from regional Calabria immersed themselves in the familiar and clung to the traditions and customs of their homeland. The importance of maintaining cultural attributes was due to the belief that the same thing was happening back in their place of origin. Through the modes of narrative enquiry and autoethnography, my multidisciplinary arts practice-based research investigates, interprets and translates the experiences of Calabrian settlers to Victoria’s North West, in a contemporary visual art and sociological context. Notions of belief and religious practices, gender roles and stereotypes, family relationships, nostalgia, and cultural loss and preservation are also explored in my work. Tracciando fili del passato [Tracing threads of the past], is an ongoing series of live art performances, installations and video explorations, which incorporate the transformation of self into an imagined version of my Calabrian grandmothers. During these enactments, I make artefacts utilising traditional women’s modes of making – sewing, embroidery and crochet. These activities are chosen in order to highlight the significance of women’s handmade craft work, which were once an important aspect of family relationships, passed from mother to daughter. The work is a manifestation of their hopes and dreams and strives to honour the women migrants whose voices were not always heard on account of dominant gender roles within the Calabrian diaspora of 1950s, 60s and 70s Australia.

It may be said that families dispersed for social or political reasons to different parts of the globe were like satellites or capsules of culture, who then became the main custodians of a cultural preservation, where time more or less stood still. Like other recently arrived migrants following WWII, settlers from regional Calabria immersed themselves in the familiar and clung to the traditions and customs of their homeland. The importance of maintaining cultural attributes was due to the belief that the same thing was happening back in their place of origin.

Through the modes of narrative enquiry and
autoethnography, my multidisciplinary arts practice-based research investigates, interprets and translates the experiences of Calabrian settlers to Victoria’s North West, in a contemporary visual art and sociological context. Notions of belief and religious practices, gender roles and stereotypes, family relationships, nostalgia, and cultural loss and preservation are also explored in my work.

‘Tracciando fili del passato’ [Tracing Threads of the Past], is an ongoing series of live art performances, installations and video explorations, which incorporate the transformation of self into an imagined version of my Calabrian grandmothers. During these enactments, I make artefacts utilising traditional women’s modes of making – sewing, embroidery and crochet. These activities are chosen in order to highlight the significance of women’s handmade craft work, which were once an important aspect of family relationships, passed from mother to daughter. The work is a manifestation of their hopes and dreams and strives to honour the women migrants whose voices were not always heard on account of dominant gender roles within the Calabrian diaspora of 1950s, 60s and 70s Australia.

This paper was part of the 'Emotions of Cultures/ Cultures of Emotions: Comparative Perspectives' conference. 11–13 DECEMBER 2017, at THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA
The conference encouraged discussion across disciplines, cultures and historical periods, with a particular focus on broadening emotions history beyond its hitherto largely Western context.

huka can haka is an ongoing body of creative works used to frame the ideas expressed in this thesis. Spoken, ‘huka’ sounds like ‘hooker’, he is a performance persona developed to help heal from the bitter-sweet reality of being Māori, genderfluid, same-sex attracted and HIV positive in Aotearoa New Zealand. huka can haka refers to an inbetween gendered space of performance where ‘huka’ translates from Māori to English as the sea-foam that gathers between land and sea, white rain such as snow or hail, the dancing tags that are woven into cloaks, or as the transliteration of sugar. ‘Haka’ is predominantly perceived as a masculine form of traditional Māori dance and is akin to weaving with the entire body. Haka is highly sexualised and invigorates a sense of connection to Māori genealogies, family, community, language, land and cultural practices. huka can haka infers the agency enacted through the intentional performance of an identity between cultures and gender in Aotearoa New Zealand. ‘Taonga’ translates from Māori to English to represent things people value and treasure – they can be tangible or ephemeral and include shared and individual memories, people, words, actions, the things we make and beautify, as well as the natural environment that sustains us. ‘Tino rangatiratanga’ is a Māori assertion of the right to determine our lives without the disruptive controls enacted through the New Zealand government by the British Crown. Taonga performing tino rangatiratanga, infers the agency present in valuable things – because taonga exist we become aware of reasons to protect them, we create protective processes and we appreciate the value of ourselves as protectors. huka can haka: Taonga performing tino rangatiratanga explores how making art heals – it describes the transformations that manifest when creating through Māori knowledge.


Raranga is the framework used to organise and explain my research. Raranga is a traditional process of Māori weaving and through its use as a methodology, I am able to connect my explorations to the relational values that are part of Māori culture. I use raranga as a framework to interpret my own practice which is unique to me – there is no separation between my practice and the ways I live my life which differs from the approaches of other weavers. Within this project I utilise a range of research approaches that are qualitative, autobiographical, subjective, creative and practice-based.  Traditional Māori methods of story-telling, pūrākau, are used to communicate this research in digital image, digital video, writing and performance art. Through doing this I describe how contemporary media explorations can be interpreted as forms of raranga and haka, which can help mediate the sometimes oppressive use of text, image, moving image and performance in advancing colonial intents. The primary findings in this research are:

1. that creative practice research can help people to connect sexuality with creativity, to, re-story and re-generate narratives of empowerment;

2. that multimedia approaches to identity knowledge gathering, assists in embodying empowerment;

3. that Kaupapa Māori Theory can challenge dominant perceptions of gendered Māori bodies, and is inclusive of the ‘do it yourself’ strategies described through Transgender theory;

4. that a raranga methodology can be embodied through performance and performance artefacts, connecting research to the lived experiences of research subjects;

5. that raranga is a powerful tool to interpret sexual trauma, offering connective strategies to release damaging internalised behaviours;

6. that raranga can centre marginal identities as bodies full of hope;

7. that performance of historical trauma as ceremony can offer collective forms of healing, and;

8. that raranga heals, giving direction to multiple and conflicting strands of lived experience.


The thesis makes prominent the generative and progressive nature of raranga and is chronological in design. Theoretical explorations inspire creative works, which then in turn inform avenues for deeper theorisation, leading to new creative works and so on until the thesis conclusion. Through this creative practice research project I assert raranga as a powerful process to interpret the agency that grows between makers, the materials we use and the objects we create. Ultimately, this thesis outlines a way to weave experiences of sexualised and gendered trauma, and affirm the healing present at the intersection between oppositional relationships.

My Practice-­as-­Research MFA Thesis explores the intersection of the theatrical styles known as Clown and Melodrama through the collaborative creation of an original performative project entitled 'Visions of A Crying Girl', created and performed by Cleo DeOrio and myself, Jordan Rosin. The project capstones three years of intense practical training as an Actor­-Creator as part of the MFA in Ensemble-­Based Physical Theatre at Dell'Arte International. The investigation is situated at the nexus of acting & choreography, dance & theatre and draws techniques and inspiration also from my 26 years as a theatrical performer, as well as my undergraduate training in acting from Syracuse University.

The creative practice yielded substantial insights regarding how the articulation of research questions can predispose a practice-­as-­research process to succeed, fail, or change direction; how the styles of Clown and Melodrama intersect; as well as how Viewpoints and subtext can be used as tools to create theatrical work within an ensemble.

This MFA Thesis comprises two examinable outcomes; the live stage production, Visions of A Crying Girl, (an archival video of which can be found on YouTube) and this brief written report, which situates our project within a lineage of practice, articulates a conceptual theory for the project, provides a brief account of our process, and summarizes key insights and conclusions from the research as well as plans for future investigation.

The future of the arts in higher education--writ large--requires the examination, analysis, and synthesization of many central and peripheral issues if arts education is to be successfully sustained. Present-day and future leadership must not rely upon traditional and legacy-grounded knowledge in order to grow and improve our creative disciplines. This report is just the first of many that outlines certain issues in axiomatic and easily digestible form. Vol.1 focuses on the visual arts.

We offer a free-flowing, reflective, creative ecology of narratives on 'voicing waters'. It draws upon a group of research projects, and longer running interests, in the research/writing trajectories of Owain as a cultural geographer, delving into various aspects of nature-society relations, Luci's artistic explorations of hidden waterways in her home city of Bristol (UK) and Antony's eco-creative research practice situated largely in diverse water landscapes. These interests, attuned to sensory experiences of water, intersected in a project called Towards Hydrocitizenship and in tidal landscapes of the Severn Estuary (UK). We also draw upon a participatory research project with non-humans, including workshops with trees and water conducted with a small group of artists and scholars-'in conversation with water'.

We aim to experiment in this writing the potential of a certain idea of radical listening in the encounter with research-creation scenarios, which
we understand as the commitment to the creation of practices that put in the foreground how learning creates its own value. Radical listening, as the articulating principle of an ecology of practices, as we will see, seeks to care for the possible through what we have called an atmosphere of transauralities. This challenge of a radical pedagogy, in turn, happens as part of the indisciplinary project “Deep Blue” and as
a minor gesture and as an ethics of care in the framework of the propositions experienced at N’Me - Center for Art Research Methodologies Studies of the Art Institute of Arts of The State University of São Paulo (Unesp).

Narrative is intricately embedded in human experience and is a potent means of shaping self-identity, imbuing meaning, facilitating insight and transforming awareness. This article reflects on the creative findings of a three and a half year exploration of self. Through the researcher’s auto-ethnographic reflections, her experience as an artist and psychologist, the power of the humanities as a method of becoming whole are explored. This article discusses cultivating a state of awareness where it is possible to compassionately witness the narratives of many selves both our own and in the people we work with, and how such a practice can inform healing.

Drawing on a transdisciplinary arts practice and ethnomusicological methodology, this article explores the metaphor of 'mongrelity' as a potential salient characterization of musical hybridity. By focusing on an extended practice-based case study of Irish Traditional and North Indian classical music, this research explores ethnomusicological theory on 'world music' from a performer's perspective.

This began as a chapter called “Artereality: rethinking craft in a knowledge economy” in Art School: Propositions for the 21st Century, edited by Steven Henry Madoff, MIT 2009. It was a kind of
manifesto for the interdisciplinary projects, research and pedagogy we were supporting in Stanford Humanities Lab.

Since Jefrey (Schnapp) and I wrote the piece in 2007-8, I have worked with Stanford’s d.school (Hasso Plattner Institute of Design) and realize that what we were talking about, and what we
named “artereality”, is what also gets called design thinking. Typically explored in relation to business process and the pursuit of creative innovation, design thinking as artereality also ofers a
model for revitalized practice-based arts and humanities in the contemporary academy that sees fit to challenge isolated disciplinary silos.

This is a chapter from a book on artistic research, "SHARE: Handbook for Artistic Research Education," edited by Mick Wilson and Schelte van Ruiten (2013). My contribution is on "flavors" of the PhD for artists around the world -- i.e., different cultures, customs, or kinds of the PhD that I think are emerging as the degree spreads.

The full book is available online as a free pdf:
http://www.elia-artschools.org/images/products/120/share-handbook-for-artistic-research-education-high-definition.pdf

As a branch of geomorphology, geochronology determines the ages of sediment, fossils, and rocks, thereby assembling a geologic planetary history. As a geochronological dénouement, the proposed geological epoch of the Anthropocene may indicate the figural moment in geologic time when human activity inscribed itself into sediment across the planet. This dissertation offers an artist’s account of practice-as-research investigating how to perform geochronology in the Anthropocene along North Atlantic foreshores. As sites prone to the geologic acts of deposition, erosion, and intrusion, foreshores provide an impermanent surface on which to interrogate the deep time, hidden knowledges, and climate crisis affiliated with the Anthropocene’s inaugural narrative.
Geochronologists partly comprising a working group to give the Anthropocene its formal designation note that “[t]he expression of the Anthropocene in the environmentally sensitive coastal systems [including beaches, tidal flats, and deltas]… represents a diverse patchwork of deposits and lacunae that reflect local interplays of natural and anthropogenic forces” (Zalasiewicz, Williams, and Waters 2014). Climate change also places foreshores as central players impacted by storminess, glacial melt, rising sea levels, and ocean acidification. Produced as the book Sound of Mull, the artist’s performance scores were developed through artistic practice-as-research and offer strategies for experiential knowledge acquisition through direct or imagined engagement with the multiple temporalities and more-than-human co-constituents of North Atlantic foreshores. Participatory, experiential engagement may sensitize people to the hidden geochronologies of everyday life.
This dissertation is situated within an interdisciplinary practice-as-research methodology integral to geopoetics praxis, interweaving research from performance studies, geology, human geography, and archaeology. Detailing foreshore performances enacted in Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Scotland, and Sweden between 2015 and 2019, the dissertation argues for interdependence and circulation as necessary components defining geopoetics. The account expounds the importance of both interdisciplinary scholarship and artistic practice-as-research methodology in the exploration of geopoetics as transformative action.
Research was undertaken through PhD study at the University of Glasgow from 2015 to 2019, supported by the Lord Kelvin / Adam Smith Scholarship.

This special issue of DAT considers thinking in the South. It asks, ‘Where practice is constituted as inquiry, what might Southern voices look like in Art & Design research?’
In compiling this special issue of DAT, we asked 13 doctoral candidates in Brazil and New Zealand to consider these issues in relation to their current practice. The majority of the authors are currently pursuing research through two universities: Universidade Anhembi Morumbi in Sao Paulo, Brazil and AUT University in Auckland, New Zealand. In writing these articles, they adopted the position of first author and, supported by a supervisor/ mentor, they considered the question of practice-led inquiry in relation to a current research project.
All of these researchers push at parameters to activate distinctive ways that practice might resource knowledge. They draw on cultural, geographical and ideological positions shaped by their locations in the South. Thus, in offering these considerations of practice-led research, we propose that we might learn ‘from’ rather ‘about’ emerging scholarship that generates knowledge beyond the emphases of the Global North. The collection proposes both convergences and divergences with established thinking. It emanates from an acknowledgment that the “peculiar histories that generate social and artistic practices, form dialogic encounters with voices on the peripheries of authority and loop back and forth in an iterative process to generate theory from the ground.” In so doing, DAT offers a collection of distinctive voices that speak from, and into, a renegotiating world. These voices question through practice, Connell’s ideas of a traditionally pure and authoritative
Global North but, they also reassert the nature of practice-led research in Art & Design as something both culturally formed and self-responsible.

Summary
New Thinking & Emerging Thoughts: Practice As Research In Design, Art And Technology - Sérgio Nesteriuk, Welby Ings;

Navigating artistic inquiry in a creative-production thesis: the narrative and illustrative potentials of realismo maravilhoso - Tatiana Tavares, Welby Ings;

Interactive digital images: from simulacrum to immersion - Leonardo Lima, Gilbertto Prado;

Mourning Songs: signing practice-led research in everyday life - Emily O’Hara, Maria O’Connor;

Heuristics – A framework to clarify practice-led research - F. Derek Ventling;

The artist’s book as a space for discourse - Cristiane Alcântara, Monica Tavares;

Police, Criminal, Dog, Dentist: An Interactive Audiovisual Installation - Júlio Jackson Marinho, Suzete Venturelli;

SEE BEYOND: contributions to the project-based practice of sighted and visually impaired students in the context of higher education in Design - Geraldo Coelho Lima Júnior, Rachel Zuanon;

Undoing the Academic Self: Performing Critique and Uncertainty within Practice-led PhD - Rumen Rachev, Dr. Janine Randerson;

Pūrākau: He Mahi Rangahau - Robert Pouwhare, Hinematau McNeill;

Moana Nui Social Art Practices in Aotearoa - John Vea, Christopher Braddock;

Rehearsing Practice as Research - Olivia Webb, Christopher Braddock;

Challenges of Open Design: from theory to practice - Rodrigo Argenton Freire, Evandro Ziggiatti Monteiro, Claudio Lima Ferreira;

Practice-led doctoral research and the nature of immersive methods -
Marcos Steagall, Welby Ings.

In its simplest embodiment, the " Util-Lite " is a utility model, an exclusive design incorporating a flashlight on one end as well as a fire lighter on the tail end with a protection cap cover ending in a key fob for a keychain or lanyard. Designed as an outdoor camping, hiking fire lighter and for emergency use. The " Util-Lite " has many other embodiments such as the addition of a laser light/s, other light sources or even an electric plasma generated spark/arc that can also be used for self-defense. The electric current in this case is designed to be very small and pose no harm to a human body. In its simplest embodiment, the " Util-Lite " includes a housing (3), made of either a military grade anodized aluminum alloy casing, plastic or any other metal alloy that can resist rust and corrosion and is not limited to copper, brass, stainless steel, titanium, et cetera. On one end of the housing (3) there is a battery receiving region (7), an active electrical circuit (14), and a light source (13). The active electrical circuit (14) uses energy from a battery or batteries received in the battery receiving region of the flashlight (7) to power the light source (13). The electrical circuitry of the flashlight (14) is energy limited within to provide optimum light source life, energy saving performance as well making the flashlight intrinsically safe for use in hazardous locations. The other end of the " Util-Lite " housing (1) contains the fire lighter region (2) of the flashlight housing that contains a flint and wheel sparker (4), a wick (5) that is embedded within a spongy material (2) designed to absorb a standard liquid lighter fluid compound such as but not limited to a 30% Coleman white gas (Hydrotreated Light Naphtha) mixed with a 70% light Hydrotreated Petroleum Distillate or other kerosene alternative. Ideally the entire housing (3) of the " Util-Lite " would be IPX6 Ingress Protection-'Water resistant' grade, with the addition of gaskets (17, 18, 19 and 20) that form a mechanical seal filling up the space between two or more mating surfaces, generally to prevent leakage from or into the joined objects while under compression. The gasket can be made from rubber, silicone, neoprene, nitrile rubber, fiberglass, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE or Teflon) or a plastic polymer (such as polychlorotrifluoroethylene). These gaskets (17, 18, 19 and 20) are in between connecting thread sections and mechanically segregate the firelighter housing (2) from the flashlight housing (3) with gasket (18), so that there is no leakage of lighter fluid to the battery receiving region (7). Another gasket (17) on the cap end (1) of the firelighter section (2) prevents leakage to the external environment and allows the " Util-Lite " to be carried in your pants pocket or stored with camping equipment for a long period without the lighter fluid drying out. There is also an ingress protection gasket (19) between the flashlight housing (3) and the reflector/ light source housing

Recently, whilst rambling on Hampstead Heath in northwest London with my cousin and talking about the socio-cultural history of that great city, Lou took me to a memorial drinking fountain fed by a well-spring bubbling up from a hillside on the Heath (Chowdry). "This is all that remains of The Mighty Fleet", she said, "And the ponds, of course." The ponds she was referring to are a series of non-natural ponds that chain downwards along the Highgate east boundary of Hampstead Heath, fed by the Fleet River. These ponds were formed in the late 17 th century to provide at first a drinking water source for the nearby populated areas of Highgate and St Pancras, then later in the 18 th century, the ponds functioned as recreational areas for swimming and toy boating (London_geezer). Yet more ponds were formed in the 18 th century on the southwest boundary where one of the tributaries of the Fleet River, Hampstead Brook, was dammed to provide another water source for the water-hungry, growing London populace. I had swum in one of these ponds, "the Kenwood Ladies Bathing Pond", only a few days before my ramble with Lou when London was surprised by an unseasonal April heatwave. That public bath, for ladies only, is a picturesque large, deep pond surrounded by picket-fenced grassy areas, and patrolled by a fierce lifeguard who drilled me about my swimming ability. "I'm Australian. We all know

This paper introduces the Creative River Journey qualitative research study, conducted at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia as part of a PhD program. The study investigates the creative practice of artist-researchers conducting practice-led research in higher degrees. Central to the research is a data capture tool called the Creative River Journey, based on in-depth interviewing and visual mapping of an artist’s critical moments during their creative process. A diagram or ‘map’ of this creative process was co-constructed with the research participant as part of the interview process, using the metaphor of a river. PLEASE CLICK ON THE THE URL bibac.org BELOW THE TITLE . THIS WILL TAKE YOU TO A PAGE WHERE THE E-BOOK IN WHICH THIS CHAPTER WAS PUBLISHED CAN BE DOWNLOADED FOR FREE.

This is the first PhD with creative practice component to be completed within the Faculty of Education at The University of Auckland. This thesis forms the written body of work which integrates with and supports the hour long play I performed at the Musgrove Studio, Auckland, in July 2014. My research explores my loss of passion for drama education after many years teaching drama in secondary schools in England and New Zealand. This loss is described as ‘melancholy’, an aesthetic sense which propels me into a search to re-find my enthusiasm for drama education – an often marginalised pedagogy, art form and subject.
I asked six published international drama educators, who have inspired me, to share their stories about what sustains them in their practice. I developed a new research method ‘embodied reflections’ to generate data. This methodology and thesis is constructed like a ‘well-made play’ and uses a framing device to invite my participants to perform their stories and reflect on them through dramatic conventions. I became the ‘researcher-in-role’ as I facilitated each dyadic drama workshop. These stories were captured on video and subsequently mediated by me using theatrical processes resulting in the public performance of the research. I became a researcher, actor, director, designer and dramaturg. This research is informed by arts-based research and by my own immersion in theatre and the work of Bertolt Brecht and Constantin Stanislavski.
I come to embrace serendipity as I frequently made unplanned, unexpected and surprising discoveries – including the important role Motherhood plays in my experiences.  During the devising, rehearsing and performing of my play I begin to renew my passion for drama education. I re-engage with drama as art form and pedagogy. I re-discover how to play, to imagine and to perform. I suggest other drama educators could reignite their passion through playful engagement with their own artform. I finally celebrate my melancholia and accept that – in being a drama educator – I am an artist.
A DVD of the doctoral performance accompanies this thesis.