Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Research Publications

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    Phenomenology, Technology and Arts Education: Exploring the Pedagogical Possibilities of Two Multimedia Arts Inquiry Projects
    Schyff, DVD (Inference, 2016)
    The relevance of phenomenology for arts education is explored through two multimedia arts inquiry projects. I begin by offering a brief outline of what arts inquiry and phenomenology entail. Following this, I consider a phenomenological study relevant to creative multimedia studies, and develop the relationship between phenomenology, critical pedagogy, and creative praxis in the arts. Drawing on these ideas, I then discuss the processes involved in creating the multimedia projects and consider possibilities for similar projects in educational contexts. Most importantly, I attempt to show how such projects might open arts educators and students to more reflective, imaginative and participatory ways of being-in-the-world, while simultaneously developing deeper historical, cultural, technical, and aesthetic understandings of the art forms they are engaged with.
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    From Necker Cubes to Polyrhythms: Fostering a Phenomenological Attitude in Music Education
    van der Schyff, D (UNIV ALBERTA LIBRARIES, 2016-01-01)
    Phenomenology is explored as a way of helping students and educators open up to music as a creative and transformative experience. I begin by introducing a simple exercise in experimental phenomenology involving multi-stable visual phenomena that can be explored without the use of complex terminology. Here, I discuss how the “phenomenological attitude” may foster a deeper appreciation of the structure of consciousness, as well as the central role the body plays in how we experience and form understandings of the worlds we inhabit. I then explore how the phenomenological attitude may serve as a starting point for students and teachers as they begin to reflect on their involvement with music as co-investigators. Here I draw on my teaching practice as a percussion and drum kit instructor, with a special focus on multi-stable musical phenomena (e.g., African polyrhythm). To conclude, I briefly consider how the phenomenological approach might be developed beyond the practice room to examine music’s relationship to the experience of culture, imagination and “self.”
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    Emotion, Embodied Mind and the Therapeutic Aspects of Musical Experience in Everyday Life
    van der Schyff, D (Greek Association of Primary Music Education Teachers, 2013)
    The capacity for music to function as a force for bio-cognitive organisation is considered in clinical and everyday contexts. Given the deeply embodied nature of such therapeutic responses to music, it isargued that cognitivist approaches may be insufficient to fully explain music’s affective power. Following this, an embodied approach isconsidered, where the emotional-affective responseto music is discussed in terms of primary bodily systems and the innate cross-modal perceptivecapacities of the embodied human mind. It is suggested that such an approach may extend thelargely cognitivist view taken by much of contemporary music psychology and philosophy of music by pointing the way towards a conception of musical meaning that begins with our most primordial interactions with the world.
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    The Free Improvisation Game: Performing John Zorn’s Cobra
    Van Der Schyff, D (Virginia Tech Libraries, 2013)
    The use of improvisation is wide spread in musical practice around the world. Nevertheless, Western academic circles tend to ignore this ubiquitous activity and have maintained a focus on composition and interpretation. This is beginning to change, however, and the role of improvisation in performance and music education is receiving an increasing amount of attention. This paper contributes to this project by examining the practice of ‘free improvisation’ in a large ensemble context. A rehearsal and performance of John Zorn’s Cobra––a ‘game’ piece for improvisers––is analyzed from a first--‐person perspective; relevant research in music psychology is considered; and suggestions are made with regard to how we may better understand the nature of musical communication in improvised contexts. Pedagogical applications are also considered.
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    The Fragility of Nihilism: Virtue, Techné, and the Nature of Self Knowledge in Plato’s Gorgias and Protagoras
    van der Schyff, D (University of Limerick, 2011)
    Through interpretive readings of Plato’s Protagoras and Gorgias I demonstrate how the character of Socrates manages to reveal a deep concern for virtue in even his most apparently nihilistic interlocutors. I suggest that these dialogues ask us to consider the possibility of a universal human concern for goodness that transcends or collapses the nomos/phusis distinction––one that must be diligently, even courageously attended to if our lives are to be effectively applied towards a virtuous ideal of self and society. To conclude I contrast my readings with those that see Plato as the stern rationalist––the unwavering proponent of techné––and I open the question of what knowledge of virtue and goodness might entail: Are justice and goodness knowable to us purely by rational means? Might ethics be subject to some manner of measurement or counting, like the technical arts, in order to ensure its epistemic stability? Is a science of ethics possible? Or do virtue and self-knowledge entail a different kind of understanding in which reason and technical thinking play limited roles?
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    Cicatrices Intérieures
    van der Schyff, D ; Kaufmann, A ; Muller, T (Whirrboom! Records, 2015)
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    The Point of it All
    Holcomb, R ; Horvitz, W ; Samworth, R ; Lee, P ; Clark, B ; van der Schyff, D (Songlines Records, 2010)
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    Invitation
    Lee, P ; van der Schyff, D ; Turner, B ; Bentley, J ; Wilson, A ; Samworth, R ; Lachance, A (Drip Audio, 2011)
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    In the Grand Scheme of Things
    Blake, M ; Gestrin, C ; Carter, JP ; van der Schyff, D (Songlines, 2011)
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    The White Spot
    van der Schyff, D ; Butcher, J ; Muller, T (Realtive Pitch Records, 2011)