Minerva Elements Records
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ItemUNWRAPPING AUTHENTICITY: Skill development + perception / conception development( 2022)The music that has always meant the most to me has taught me something new about the world, about life, or about myself. It has a brilliance about it, a depth, an innate beauty. The music that has touched me the most has an inherent authenticity, and authenticity touches people. It does not have to be a serious or earnest work; it can be fun, whimsical, or curious. But there remains an underlying integrity, a truthfulness, and a musical communication that lies beyond superficiality, gimmick, or sterile intellectualism and I hope to believe that humans are hard-wired to know when communication is authentic. As a listener, I seek music where there is genuine coherence between the artist and that which they express in their work. As a music maker and practitioner, the continual extension of my technical skills, knowledge, and analysis is essential. However, so too is pondering, deep listening, and observation of oneself and the world, as well as the development of what I would like to say. Whilst technique and research assist a composer to present a work with clarity, poignancy, and potency, they are not the point in and of themselves. So, whilst I extend my technical and analytical music skills, I also seek to clarify and extend my ability to perceive and conceive an integral point of view. Authenticity requires interrogation of one’s perception, broad enquiry, and leaning on one’s own life experiences. I believe that perception is as important a skill to develop in music as it is in the visual arts. I create as I perceive. I am a witness to my life and to my times. Each creative has a chance to deliver a refracted vision of life as we experience it; as we share our version of reality, so too does the collective understanding of life broaden and flourish. This initiates an important feedback loop, where flourishing ideas nourish the community, which then, in turn, nourish new creative endeavours. For this composer, authenticity means witnessing and expressing the corner of reality I inhabit; my culture, my experiences, my observations, and history-in-the-making during my life and times. I locate my music with this compass.
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ItemCommunicable Knowledge: Medical Communication, Professionalisation, and Medical Reform in Colonial Victoria, 1855-66( 2020)This thesis examines the process of medical professionalisation in colonial Victoria from 1855-66. During this eleven-year period the medical profession of colonial Victoria were able to create Australia’s first long lasting medical societies and medical journal, found the first medical school, and receive legislative support of their claims to exclusive knowledge of medicine. The next time an Australian colony would have these institutions created would not be for another 20 years. This thesis examines these developments through a framework of communication, primarily from the medical community itself. Communication was central to the process that resulted in the creation of the above listed institutions. Here communication is examined as the driving force behind the two processes of professionalisation: the internal, community creating and boundary forming aspect; and the external process through which the community gains external recognition of their claims. For Victorian practitioners during the period of this study the internal process drives the creation of the societies, the journal, and the medical school, whereas the external process is typified by the campaign for ‘Medical Reform’ that sees the community engage in agitation for legislative backing of their conception of medicine as science over other alternate medicines. Communication was not isolated within the colony. As such the place of the Victorian medical community as a node within transnational networks of knowledge exchange is examined. As Victoria was better integrated into these networks than its colonial neighbours, an examination of the involvement of said flow of information in the creation of professional communities is considered an important part of this analysis. Behind these processes of community creation, I trace a thread of disunity sparked by professional differences. Highly publicised arguments over differences in medical opinion play out in the colonial press. This comes to a head at the end of the period of study. Despite their focus on communication the medical community ignores the role their public conduct plays in this process. The end result is that, while they were able to create these lasting institutions, their public conduct saw the public’s opinion of them stay low through to the end of the century.