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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Item[Review of the book Yurntumu-wardingki Juju-ngaliya-kurlangu Yawulyu: Warlpiri Women’s Songs from Yuendumu recorded by Georgia Curran and Jeannie Nungarrayi Egan; produced by Georgia Curran](International Council for Traditional Music, 2019)
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ItemRapture: A Study in Pathos and Scenography(International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC), 2022)This article presents Aby Warburg’s art historical approach as a potential guide for scenographic creation and analysis, forwarding Rapture as an example: a song cycle presented by Sydney Festival 2021 to a live and livestreamed audience. The author designed the set and costumes for Rapture and here reflects upon the following questions: can Warburg’s appreciation for “emotive formulas” and “engrams” assist in the making of compelling scenography when conditions for live performance are so altered from the standard? How does a design methodology championing synoptics, analytics and empathy, as Warburg did, integrate within a broader collaboration? Reconstructing Rapture’s design evolution, this study looks to the Laocoön Group, Il Medico and geometries associated with hypnosis as three persuasive pathos carriers. It finds that scenographic focus, potency and expediency arise from the proposed methodology.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableCan't touch this(Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2019-05-10)Australia’s laid-back, sun-drenched beach lifestyle has been a celebrated and prominent part of its official popular culture for nigh on a century, and the images and motifs associated with this culture have become hallmarks of the country’s collective identity. Though these representations tend towards stereotype, for many Australians the idea of a summer holiday at the beach is one that is intensely personal and romanticised – its image is not at all urbanised. As Douglas Booth observed, for Australians the beach has become a ‘sanctuary at which to abandon cares – a place to let down one’s hair, remove one’s clothes […] a paradise where one could laze in peace, free from guilt, drifting between the hot sand and the warm sea, and seek romance’.1 Beach holidays became popular in the interwar years of the twentieth century, but the most intense burst of activity – both in touristic promotion and in the development of tourism infrastructure – accompanied the postwar economic boom, when family incomes were able to meet the cost of a car and, increasingly, a cheap block of land by the beach upon which a holiday home could be erected with thrift and haste. In subtropical southeast Queensland, the postwar beach holiday became the hallmark of the state’s burgeoning tourism industry; the state’s southeast coastline in particular benefiting from its warm climate and proximity to the capital, Brisbane. It was here – along the evocatively named Gold Coast (to Brisbane’s south) and Sunshine Coast (to its north) [1] – that many families experienced their first taste of what is now widely celebrated as the beach lifestyle.
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ItemPimp my Gauguin: Yuki Kihara's Paradise Camp (or Why Post Impressions Matter)(Artlink Australia, 2022-11-18)David Sequeira's Review of New Zealand Pavilion, 59th La Biennale di Venezia 23 April — 27 November 2022 published in Artlink 18 November 2022
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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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ItemEffects of Mirror and Metronome Use on Spontaneous Dance Movements(HUMAN KINETICS PUBL INC, 2021-01)This study investigated effects of mirror and metronome use on spontaneous upper body movements by 10 preprofessional dancers in a motor task in which maximally diverse upper body movement patterns were targeted. Hand and trunk accelerations were digitally recorded utilizing accelerometers and analyzed using polar frequency distributions of the realized acceleration directions and sample entropy of the acceleration time. Acceleration directions were more variably used by the arms than by the torso, particularly so when participants monitored their performance via a mirror. Metronome use hardly affected the predictability of the acceleration time series. The findings underscore the intrinsic limitations that people experience when being asked to move randomly and reveal moderate effects of visual and acoustic constraints on doing so in dance.
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ItemLoad and fatigue monitoring in musicians using an online app: A pilot study.(Frontiers Media SA, 2022)BACKGROUND/AIMS: High occupational injury rates are reported in musicians, with a career prevalence of up to 89%. Fatigue and playing (over)load are identified as key risk factors for musicians' injuries. Self-report fatigue management strategies in sport have demonstrated preventive effects. A self-report fatigue management tool for musicians was developed based on a Delphi survey of international experts and hosted in an online app. The aims of this study are to evaluate the content validity and uptake of this new tool, and explore associations between collected performance quality, physical/psychological stress, pain, injury and fatigue data. METHODS: University and professional musicians were asked to provide entries into the online app twice per week for 1-6 months. Entries into the app were designed to take 2-3 min to complete and consisted of the following: 6 questions regarding playing load over the previous 72 h; 5 questions regarding current levels in key physical/psychological stress domains (sleep, recovery, overplaying, pain, fitness); one question self-rating of performance quality over the previous day; one question regarding current musculoskeletal symptoms; a reaction time task to evaluate psychomotor fatigue. RESULTS: N = 96 participants provided an average of 2 app entries (range 0-43). Increased playing time, rating of perceived exertion (RPE), and feelings of having to "play too much" were consistently associated with increased self-rated performance quality (p ≤ 0.004; 6.7 <| t |< 2148.5). Increased ratings of feeling fit and recovering well were consistently associated with reduced pain severity (p < 0.001; 3.8 <| t |< 20.4). Pain severity was increased (6.5/10 vs. 2.5/10; p < 0.001) in participants reporting playing-related musculoskeletal disorders (PRMDs; symptoms affecting playing). CONCLUSION: The prospective value of regular individual self-report playing load, stress, and performance data collection in musicians is clear. However, limited uptake of the online fatigue management app piloted in this study indicates that new approaches to the collection of these data are needed to realize their potential impact.
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ItemExperiencing Kane: An affective analysis of Sarah Kane's 'experiential' theatre in performance(Australasian Drama Studies, 2005)