Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 3 of 3
-
ItemJohn Zorn’s dedicatee-oriented and cinematic file card works( 2020)This thesis examines the ‘file card’ works of contemporary American composer John Zorn (b. 1953). Zorn’s unique creative method for these works involves the transcribing of quotes, ideas, impressions, or instructions relevant to a chosen dedicatee (or multiple dedicatees) onto file cards (i.e. index cards). Zorn has produced 22 compositions using this process, though this thesis concentrates on a select group that includes the first two file card compositions, Godard (1986) and Spillane (1987), as well as three later, similarly executed and sounding works, Interzone (2010), Dictee (2010), and Liber Novus (2010). These five pieces I have dubbed Ur file card works, given that they include the original file card works plus those that maintain the majority of intrinsic compositional qualities that were established by the originals. In examining the Ur file card works, my thesis concentrates on two key questions. The first asks, ‘what are the relationships between Zorn’s file card works and the figures to whom they are dedicated?’. The second considers the ‘cinematic’ nature of file card compositions – as often declared by Zorn and previous scholars – asking, ‘how can Zorn’s file card works be apprehended in audio-visual, cinematic terms?’ Ur file card works are also exemplars of Zorn’s signature ‘sound block’ style. Consequently, significant consideration is given to an auxiliary question, ‘what aesthetic effects does the sound block style used in certain file card compositions have?’ The six chapters of this thesis each provide a different methodological viewpoint in order to answer these questions. The first chapter gives an overview of the file card compositional process and a history of its development, highlighting some of the distinct features of Ur file card works. This is followed by a hypertextual linking of these five compositions to the life and work of their dedicatees, as well as discourse around them. In the third and fourth chapters an idealised ‘implied’ listener is theorised who hears file card works in a hypertextual and ‘cinematic’ fashion. Zorn’s dedicatees are then used as hermeneutic windows to provide interpretations of Ur file card works. Finally, Zorn’s aesthetics, as discussed throughout the thesis, are compared to the similar aesthetic intentions of his dedicatees.
-
ItemBeing scripted( 2012)This thesis examines the role of materiality and site-specificity in generating performancebased film work. In focus, is how the body can be scripted, prompted, or instructed by thephysical characteristics of objects and spaces that it encounters. Historical and contemporaryvideo art and filmmaking practices are surveyed bringing into question the parameters of“object” and “performance” shaped through the medium of film. This paper and the creativework that has subsequently developed, considers the potential of film, to facilitate performancethrough its embodied sense of time and durational framing.This thesis is separated into three sections, which examine the foundations and outcomes of myproject with reference to creative practices that have influenced and shaped my understandingof the dynamic nature between performance and film. The first section identifies with myrelationship to sculptural practice, and works to unpack the elements of this discourse withreference to objects, space and the performing body. The second section revolves around“repetition” as a generative force within the context of performance. Practices and texts areexamined that illustrate the relationship between actions and futile outcomes. The final sectionof this paper focuses on the impact of specific cinematic practices, which have played a seminalrole in the development of my conceptual and technical relationship to performance and themoving image. This thesis is separated into three sections, which examine the foundations and outcomes of my project with reference to creative practices that have influenced and shaped my understanding of the dynamic nature between performance and film. The first section identifies with my relationship to sculptural practice, and works to unpack the elements of this discourse with reference to objects, space and the performing body. The second section revolves around “repetition” as a generative force within the context of performance. Practices and texts are examined that illustrate the relationship between actions and futile outcomes. The final section of this paper focuses on the impact of specific cinematic practices, which have played a seminal role in the development of my conceptual and technical relationship to performance and the moving image.
-
Item“Kill Bigfoot”: constructing a cinematic relationship between character, the city and nature( 2012)The purpose of my research is to explore the relationship between representations of cinematic space and character in dramatic fiction film. Specifically, my focus is on representations of city dystopias and natural landscapes in dramas that investigate human nature. This dissertation is an examination of the issues encountered in drawing from this research during the writing of Kill Bigfoot, a scenario whose narrative takes place across these two worlds: the urban dystopia of a future New York, and the natural word of the Australian wilderness. It includes the motivation, influences, interests and methodology that guided my writing process, and a discussion of the core ideas that underpin my work. The qualitative, practice-led research undertaken during my masters consisted of analysing films that have used representations of the natural world and cities to explore the human condition, as well as the study of texts on film, philosophy, religion and myth. Picnic at Hanging Rock, Blade Runner, Brazil, Children of Men and Taxi Driver were focal points for my research, as were the films of Terrence Malick and Werner Herzog. My research regarding representations of dystopias on screen inevitably included work on cities and urbanity on screen, from both internal (the experience of the inhabitants of these spaces) and external (the design of these spaces) perspectives. Thomas Hobbes on human nature, and then George Simmel, Henri Lefebvre and Marc Augé on cities, urbanity, modernity and post-modernity, were critical to my research and to the development of Part One of Kill Bigfoot. Turning to the natural world of Part Two, the ideas of Martin Lefebvre were most influential. Friedrich Nietzsche and the various Vienna Schools of psychoanalysis shaped my understanding of my protagonist Bill’s driving need, which was the substantive link between the two parts of Kill Bigfoot, his inner world that is at the heart of the drama, and our own world. My study ultimately considers the interrelationship between the dramatisation of character, cinematic space and ideas of human nature in film dystopias. The research indicates that not all filmmakers explore this relationship in the development of their scripts or the use of settings in their films. However, for those filmmakers who do so through the use of dystopic cities, it often expresses a point of view on the competing forces within us that shape the world, and how the same world shapes us. Understanding our urban point of view (or “gaze”) required Bill to enter the counterpoint of his dystopic city – the natural landscape of Australia. My study therefore also involves observations about the representation of the natural world in cinema and its relationship to our inner nature.