School of Art - Theses
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ItemPulse, chance, flux: the energetic image( 2015)Pulse, chance, flux: the energetic image is a practice-led research project which investigates the possibilities for extending analogue film and digital video projection beyond mere image reproduction, to become a transmission of embodied energy. The project is broken down into three key areas of investigation: pulse (vibration; frequency), chance (indeterminacy; synchronicity) and flux (the flow and transduction of energy). This project argues for the existence of a fundamental pulse to the world, or rather for millions of pulses, overlapping each other. From the addition of a multitude of pulses of information arises interference: the complexity of the world. Key works of vibration by Alvin Lucier, Tony Conrad and Bridget Riley are discussed. Artistic strategies of chance are investigated as a means to imbue works with the complex- ity of interference and to question how deeply relation really goes. Key time-based works by John Cage and David Tudor are compared for their strategic attempts to model the indeterminacy of the world in their very form. Flux is articulated as being the flow of energy. Douglas Kahn’s concept of the Aelectrosonic (the always-moving electromagnetic) is discussed and an argument is raised for its extension from sonic practices to include the luminous. In thinking about Kahn’s idea of transduction as the ‘locating moment’ of energy, a fundamental technical difficulty in working with light energy versus sound can be accounted for by abandoning literal transductions, instead turning to allusions. Three projection installation works, Modulations (2012–2015), Black Noise (2012) and Dark Matter (2015), were created, each comprising arrangements of projection devices, objects and images in relation. Flicker was used as a tactic to transmit an apparent embodied energy via the projection to the visitor. Decentralisation and dislocation were used strategically to continually shift attention from object to image to space to experience. The marriage of these theories and tactics is intended to create an energetic ‘noise’ in the space, in the projection machines and in the neurophysical of the viewer.
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ItemMatter & spirit: the syncretic drawing( 2015)Afloat comprises a series of drawings, installation and video that explore the correlative ideas of the body as the medium of incarnation and drawing as the medium to articulate existence. The research is a collection of poetic rules for the action of being in the studio. Afloat is constructed according to these rules which then investigates general principles for the poetics of the artwork. The poetics are thought of in this case articulated through what I have termed operational systems. The most significant operational system involves the individual Spirit-Body relationship and the way spirit and body operate syncretically. The research investigates the striving for a harmonious equilibrium within these operational systems when taken into the studio and therefore explores how the systems translate into the process of production and the art objects. A syncretic process of production explores and reflects the same kind of interdependent relationship that exists between matter and spirit. The language resulting from the impulse to equilibrium found in the interaction between the operational system spirit and matter raises the question of truth in art. What makes for creation of, what IS, a truthful artwork? The correlation that this research intends to establish between art and existence is translated by the metaphorical sensation of being afloat, which is also where the work finds its title. It is through this psychological and physical state that the parallel will be understood, using the specific studio scenario of the space of drawing and its extensions as it unfolds into other mediums in its syncretic ekstasis
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ItemObjects that generate performance and performance that generates objects( 2014)Unfolding from a series of succinct studio experiments that use objects as scores for action, this thesis addresses the use value of objects and the effects of brevity as an artistic strategy. The written component grounds this practice — which has a background in experimental music — in a field of practices that are directly and indirectly indebted to John Cage treating them as a shared body of knowledge between art and music. Cage’s written score for 4’33”, his silent work, is explored in the writing as a direct influence on the development of the Fluxus ‘event score’ – a short written instruction for creating artworks – and it is this type of score that is the starting point for my own studio experiments. The Works<30s is a diaristic series of short videos that explores simple, succinct actions allowing them to exist as discrete, singular events. As with the ‘event score’, the series imposes a simple constraint on its subject matter (a 30 second time limit) that rather than restricting the outcome results in a variety of effects on content, structure and narrative. The Works<30s series proved pivotal to the development of other works particularly through the evolution of my thinking on the object as score and the elaboration of strategies that hold coalescence at bay – two concepts shared by the works explored in this research thesis. The two other main works detailed in this thesis are Species of Spaces a five-channel audio/video work and Things That Fit Together a sculptural installation, developing from the Works<30s series they document small simple actions, but collate them into larger collections. These works attempt to allow their elements to remain discrete in order to emphasize the relationship between each object and the performance it generates. This written component reflects the concerns of the studio-based research in its form and structure and is comprised of observations that move back and forth between historical and material research.
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ItemA Vyrcanian story: materialising alternate histories and geographies( 2014)The works produced along with this dissertation and presented as the result of my MFA consist of a narrative video, set in a fictional land, tracing the downfall of a secret society. This is presented alongside a looped photorealistic moving image of genderless, angelic figures blinking, smiling, and intoning a hymn-like monotonous chorus. These two videos are projected on two large screens in a dark room in which there is bench seating which has been decorated in the style of the fictional land to which the work belongs. These video works and the furnishing exist as outcrops of a larger whole. As they function as punctual materialisations of a set of geographies and histories—the Vyrcanian Federation—that I had been devising occasionally and randomly since childhood in my head, on scribbled bits of paper and on my computer; but the bulk of which has been developed during this MFA as fully realised artworks. As the result of this research, I also will install “behind the scenes” videos, maps and images relating to the construction of the Vyrcanian Federation, located behind the projection screens. In the following dissertation I structure and expound the history of the Vyrcanian Federation, including the language in which the videos have been made; and I have composed this research following an encyclopaedic format. I include autobiographical details indicating the personal needs and proclivities that incited and guided to their creation, and discuss the cultural background inspiring them as well as the political questions they raise. For the latter I examine the works' roots in cartography, archaeology and the history of esotericism; and their relationship to the aesthetics of spirituality and of totalitarianism; and the films and artworks that have provided inspiration.
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ItemOh the humanity! Humour and performance in a contemporary art practice( 2013)This Masters project discusses humour and performance through the use and presentation of a number of video and photographic artworks. Humour can be derived from the ability to imaginatively juxtapose imagery and ideas to create unexpected relationships and outcomes. Art and creativity can function in a similar manner. This MFA seeks to examine and develop a contemporary art practice, through contrasting imagery and ideas in a performative and humourous way. The project draws parallels between the strategies and functions of humour and art, exploring the possible relationships between the two. The thesis explores questions arising from the artworks produced resulting from an investigation of specific historical and contemporary artworks and a discourse around performance. Through consideration of art historical examples, some linages and links to ways of conceiving, thinking and discussing performance and humour are made. The research acknowledges the problems of taste and subjectivity as it applies to humour, in concert with art. The project reflects upon the role of the artist, his motivations and takes excursions into formal and material concerns of photography and performance to clarify their relevance and significance to contemporary art practice and this project. Themes and ideas brought to the surface are used as foils, something to defend or push against and experiment with. They sometimes act as shadowy motivations that assist in the production of artwork. These themes include mans’ relationship to the landscape, personal histories, digital and analogue photography in the age of technological convergence, the image, self and representation, notions of personhood, contemporary performance and art. Through discussion and uncovering the toil of artwork and ideas engaged with, the humanity of the project is revealed.
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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.
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ItemNoumenal secrecy: transference of dislocated acts of possession( 2012)In this paper, associations with philosophical arguments, critical design theories, meta-fictional discourses, and experimental publishing houses are drawn into a platform where suspension of disbelief is required to systematise the recording of data, speculations, and psychical transference. So as to actively engage with discourses of Otherness and transmutate the boundaries between objective chance and chaos; validity and hoax are no longer in the equation, tricksters are for hire. Both, the conceptual and material research is focused on the shift from interference and noise dialectics onto transference of fictional speculations that create the corpus and the annunciation of noumenal performance presence. It originates within the invocation of the exogenic agencies and its consummation is offered through ensembles that involve electronics, sound, digital media and design elements. Does this methodological platform of exchange and praxis, solely work as fiction for believers, or does an act or event offer potentialities for further engagement?
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ItemI thought you were her sister...I thought you were your sister( 2010)'I thought you were her sister…I thought you were your sister' is an art-based research investigation into my biological identity as a twin. I undertook this method of examination to explore twin idiosyncrasies, shared thoughts and experiences, blurred memories and uncertainties relative to the twinned appearance of sameness that ultimately produces difference. Creative strategies of mechanical twinning and observations of biological twinning were applied as techniques of re-editing and manipulating found family footage, of my twin and I, to conceptualise twin identity as abstract visual forms that are then spatially installed to construct an environment relative to the viewer’s experience of twins.