Victorian College of the Arts - Research Publications
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ItemCultural precedents for the repatriation of legacy song records to communities of origin(Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 2016-01-01)Repatriation of song recordings from archives and private collections to communities of origin is both a common research method and the subject of critical discourse. In Australia it is a priority of many individual researchers and collecting institutions to enable families and cultural heritage communities to access recorded collections. Anecdotal and documented accounts describe benefits of this access. However, digital heritage items and the metadata that guide their discovery and use circulate in complex milieus of use and guardianship that evolve over time in relation to social, personal, economic and technological contexts. Ethnomusicologists, digital humanists and anthropologists have asked, what is the potential for digital items, and the content management systems through which they are often disseminated, to complicate the benefits of repatriation? How do the 'returns' from archives address or further complicate colonial assumptions about the value of research? This paper lays the groundwork for consideration of these questions in terms of cultural precedents for repatriation of song records in the Kimberley. Drawing primarily on dialogues between ethnomusicologist Sally Treloyn and senior Ngarinyin and Wunambal elder and singer Matthew Dembal Martin, the interplay of archival discovery, repatriation and dissemination, on the one hand, and song conception, song transmission, and the Law and ethos of Wurnan sharing, on the other, is examined. The paper provides a case for support for repatriation initiatives and for consideration of the critical perspectives of cultural heritage stakeholders on research transactions of the past and in the present.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableMishap(Unlikely, 2018)Mishap is a performative intervention that gently shifts routine activity in social space. Using a fictional 'mishap', the work highlights social relations in regulated, commercial precincts and provides an understanding of variations in human behaviour in public space. There are two audiences for this work. The first is a live audience in the streets of Shanghai and Tokyo and other sites that is unprepared for the impromptu encounter. The second is an art audience in a gallery in Eastern Bloc, Montreal that views video documentation of the performance. The live work questions how meaningful interaction can be created when a temporary artwork is shaped by the tensions of transience. The video work allows for more reflective responses.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableDoes motor expertise facilitate amplitude differentiation of lower limb-movements in an asymmetrical bipedal coordination task?(ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV, 2018-06)The motor system's natural tendency is to move the limbs over equal amplitudes, for example in walking. However, in many situations in which people must perform complex movements, a certain degree of amplitude differentiation of the limbs is required. Visual and haptic feedback have recently been shown to facilitate such independence of limb movements. However, it is unknown whether motor expertise moderates the extent to which individuals are able to differentiate the amplitudes of their limb-movements while being supported with visual and haptic feedback. To answer this question 14 pre-professional dancers were compared to 14 non-dancers on simultaneously generating a small displacement with one foot, and a larger one with the other foot, in four different feedback conditions. In two conditions, haptic guidance was offered, either in a passive or active mode. In the other two conditions, veridical and enhanced visual feedback were provided. Surprisingly, no group differences were found regarding the degree to which the visual or haptic feedback assisted the generation of the different target amplitudes of the feet (mean amplitude difference between the feet). The correlation between the displacements of the feet and the standard deviation of the continuous relative phase between the feet, reflecting the degree of independence of the feet movements, also failed to show between-group differences. Sample entropy measures, indicating the predictability of the foot movements, did show a group difference. In the haptically-assisted conditions, the dancers demonstrated more predictable coordination patterns than the non-dancers as reflected by lower sample entropy values whereas the reverse was true in the visual-feedback conditions. The results demonstrate that motor expertise does not moderate the extent to which haptic tracking facilitates the differentiation of the amplitudes of the lower limb movements in an asymmetrical bipedal coordination task.
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ItemWhose choice? Exploring multiple perspectives on music therapy access under the National Disability Insurance Scheme(Australian Music Therapy Association, 2018)The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is a new national funding system for people with disabilities in Australia, which has been tested in some trial sites since 2013 and is now instigated across the Nation. Whilst music therapy and other music services are included on the list of recognised providers, inclusion of these services within individual case plans has been questioned at times by those with authority within NDIS trial sites. This research project aimed to build a collaborative relationship between the University of Melbourne, Australian Music Therapy Association (AMTA), and the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) to better understand the needs and capacity for contribution of each organisation involved in the access of people to music therapy. To this end, interviews were conducted with three NDIA employees, five Registered Music Therapists (RMTs) who had experiences providing music therapy services as NDIS providers, and one parent of an eight-year old participant in the scheme who had accessed music therapy. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to identify gaps in knowledge and awareness between the different stakeholders. Fourteen emergent themes and three final themes revealed different perspectives on the matter, but all agreed that it is a significant time to promote music therapy and educate the NDIS planners, allied health professionals, the participants of the scheme and their families. In plain language:This research study investigates how different stakeholders perceived access to music therapy under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) in the trial sites between 2013 and 2015. Nine people who had the lived experience of the matter such as NDIS planners, Registered Music Therapists (RMTs) and a parent of a boy with a disability were individually interviewed. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis reveals that everyone believed that music therapy was not fully understood or received well by everyone, and RMTs need to take more active roles in educating and promoting music therapy to staff in the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), allied health professionals, as well as parents of people with disabilities.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableDy(e)ing is Not-Dying: Nova Paul’s experimental colour film polemic(Routledge - Taylor & Francis, 2017)Abstract Paul’s This is Not Dying (2010) is a twenty-minute film utilising three-colour separation to liberate hue from the form in which it inheres. With a soundtrack by the late Māori steel guitar legend Ben Tawhiti, Paul’s film celebrates a day in the life of her hapu or tribal sub-group in the North of the North Island of New Zealand. Under Whatitiri Mountain, near Whangarei, the cluster of houses that Māori would designate as a marae, is the site of simple communal living: card playing, swimming in the creek, fixing motorbikes and eating together.
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ItemFrom Underdog to Overview(Antennae, 2017)This paper examines four experimental short films by the multi-disciplinary artist Camille Henrot. Film Spatial (2007) is a textural exploration of haptic visuality and perspectivism from the p.o.v. of Balkis the dog. Attention to the singular Balkis becomes a concern with dogs in general in Cynopolis (2009), and snake symbolism in The Strife of Love in a Dream (2011). Finally Grosse Fatigue (2013) parodises both creationism and taxonomic organisation, in an anarchival gesture. The cinemal , like Derrida’s animot, becomes a disruptive force which re-animates the dying animal, breathing life back into the cinema, the archive, and human-animal relations. The full title of this essay is: 'Perspectivism, Symbolism and Taxonomies in the films of Camille Henrot'.
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ItemParticularity: Swarms, Storms, and other Matter(Art and Australia Pty Ltd, 2017)
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ItemNo Preview AvailableSonic Disturbance and Chromatic Dissolution: The Cantrills Remake Melbourne(Senses of Cinema Inc., 2017)This paper examines the work of Australian experimental film legends, Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, who, over a fifty-year period, perfected a range of avant garde cinematic techniques including experiments with colour separation, repetition, exposure, and layered soundtracks. This ‘making wild’ or ‘becoming animal’ of the filmic medium is here given the term cinemal, whereby, in rearranging the viewer’s sensorium, the Cantrills’ re-enchant everyday life. Three aspects of their diverse oeuvre will be examined, as their disruptive techniques call for a re-figuring of the way we conceive of the Australian landscape, as well as cityscapes, in particular, the city of Melbourne, and finally, of the domestic sphere.
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ItemExpertise in Evaluating Choreographic Creativity: An Online Variation of the Consensual Assessment Technique.(Frontiers Media SA, 2018)In contemporary dance, experts evaluate creativity in competitions, auditions, and performances, typically through ratings of choreography or improvisation. Audiences also implicitly evaluate choreographic creativity, so dancers' livelihoods also hinge upon the opinions of non-expert observers. However, some argue that the abstract and often pedestrian nature of contemporary dance confuses non-expert audiences. Therefore, agreement regarding creativity and appreciation amongst experts and non-experts may be low. Finding appropriate methodologies for reliable and real-world creativity evaluation remains the subject of considerable debate within the psychology creativity research field. Although considerably variant in methodological operationalisation, the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT) asks individuals to use an implicit definition to assess creativity in others' work. This study aimed to investigate the role of experience and expertise in the evaluation of choreographic creativity, with a secondary aim of testing the feasibility of an online snowballing methodology for large-scale dance-specific research, informed by the methodology of the CAT. We filmed 23 Contemporary Dance students each performing a 3-min peer-choreographed solo and then recruited 850 online evaluators with varying degrees of expertise and experience in dance and creativity. Evaluators viewed at least one randomly selected video and rated creativity, technical ability, appreciation and understanding of the work, each using a seven-point Likert scale. A one-way ANOVA showed a significant difference in creativity ratings across the 23 videos, and creativity correlated significantly with the other variables. We then categorized evaluators on nine aspects of their dance and creative experience and entered the data into a repeated-measures linear mixed model. Two of the fixed effects yielded differences in creativity evaluations: (i) contemporary choreographic experience and (ii) self-reported creative expertise, as did the random effect of the video. The results indicate that personal experience of the choreographic process impacts creativity assessment, above and beyond experience in dance class participation. Implications for creativity assessment within creativity research and practice are discussed.
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ItemFit to Perform: An Investigation of Higher Education Music Students' Perceptions, Attitudes, and Behaviors toward Health.(Frontiers Media SA, 2017)Making music at the highest international standards can be rewarding, but it is also challenging, with research highlighting pernicious ways in which practicing and performing can affect performers' health and wellbeing. Several studies indicate that music students' perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors toward health and healthy living are less than optimal, especially considering the multiple physical and psychological demands of their day-to-day work. This article presents the results of a comprehensive screening protocol that investigated lifestyle and health-related attitudes and behaviors among 483 undergraduate and postgraduate students (mean age = 21.29 years ± 3.64; 59% women) from ten conservatoires. The protocol included questionnaires measuring wellbeing, general health, health-promoting behaviors, perfectionism, coping, sleep quality, and fatigue. On each measure, the data were compared with existing published data from similar age groups. The results indicate that music students have higher levels of wellbeing and lower fatigue than comparable samples outside of music. However, they also reveal potentially harmful perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors toward health. Specifically, engagement in health responsibility and stress management was low, which along with high perfectionistic strivings, limited use of coping strategies, poor sleep quality, and low self-rated health, paints a troubling picture both for the music students and for those who support their training. The findings point to the need for more (and more effective) health education and promotion initiatives within music education; in particular, musicians should be better equipped with mental skills to cope with constant pressure to excel and high stress levels. In part, this calls for musicians themselves to engage in healthier lifestyles, take greater responsibility for their own health, and be aware of and act upon health information in order to achieve and sustain successful practice and performance. For that to happen, however, music educators, administrators, and policy makers must play an active role in providing supportive environments where health and wellbeing is considered integral to expert music training.