This artistic practice based research explores the central hypothesis: consciousness is a technology in its infancy. I have employed this hypothesis as a provocation for art making and research, rather as a statement to be proven. I conducted five audiovisual electroencephalographic (EEG) improvised group performances, which engaged with qualia (essential phenomena of consciousness). In order to examine the performances and consider this research I devised a Tlonian (Borges and Hurley 1998) methodology which allows for multiple subjective viewpoints concurrently. A Tlonian perspective, I will argue, is necessary in order to incorporate the importance of qualia, rhizomia, and iteration within this project. The performance rig, all the associated software and hardware I made and assembled, and the performances were the main artistic outcomes of this practice based research project. Herein I present the videos and Pure Data (Pd) patches as the artworks of this project. Pd is an open source framework or development environment designed for building audio, visual, and interactive software programs, these programs are known within that community as patches. Pd can be downloaded freely, for a variety of operating systems from: http://puredata.info/downloads Chalmers’ The Hard Problem of Consciousness (Chalmers 1995) essentially states that science will not discover a mechanism of consciousness in the brain because this is an incorrect approach to the problem, and furthermore that qualia are essential phenomena of consciousness. The performances I produced engaged with qualia by sonifying and visualising the EEG data of the participant-performers and playing it back in real time in the performance space. In this way, the participant-performers and I, created a qualia feedback loops. Currently, there are many competing theories of consciousness among philosophers and scientists. According to Philip Goff (Goff 2019) we need a new post-materialist science to address consciousness as Galileo never intended hard science to address qualia, in fact he designed it not to. In this research I propose an approach which incorporates art & expression, and qualitative exploration as legitimate forms of research. My research highlights the need for alternative approaches which incorporate some agency on the part of the observer (participant). By considering consciousness as a technology in its infancy and attempting to embrace the unknown and explore it artistically. So we, as conscious beings, have numerous conceptions about ourselves as individuals. We also hold notions about group dynamics; the way we interrelate. I speculate that if we view consciousness as a technology it could be developed, like other technologies that have been refined over time. Thus, our notions of self and other may be more malleable than we currently think. Qualic explorations cannot follow a logical process in a traditional ‘academic’ sense. For this reason I have employed a bricolage approach, which I refer to as a tlonia. I settled upon a tlonian approach because the nature of the investigation brought together seemingly disparate elements; combining improvised performance, live biometric data, theories of mind, and theories of art. This research began with questions which led to more questions and more possibilities rather than a linear approach honed to a point. Thus, qualitative investigation suggests possibilities. I consider this practice based art research project successful because work lead to further work, rather than reaching an end point. An open edged, ever-growing jigsaw puzzle. The fragmented imagery of the pieces continued resolve as I found where each fit, and not before. I am primarily concerned with using consciousness as a medium for art making, And art making as a method of experimental investigation and exploration. How can the fruit of collaboration be articulated? The momentary spark of interaction. Through this investigation I employed various participant-performers, with different relationships to each other and their audiences. I used live data technologies and various sonification and visualisation techniques. I combined these elements together into a performance series, over a number of years, undergoing constant development via experimentation, intuition, and reiteration. There are certain aspects of human experience that cannot be held, maybe that cannot be named, but maybe they can be performed. In this research I set out to investigate some of these processes through audiovisual interactive improvised performances using live data.

This practice-led research, some aspects of which are informed by heuristic methods (Moustakas, 2001), adopts a phenomenological stance and seeks to understand, in Singapore’s contemporary dance pedagogy and practice, the phenomenon of presence in process and performance. According to Trenos (2014), definitions of presence can vary from the intangible or mystical quality possessed by the actor (or performer), to “the actor’s most important creation”; and to “the most significant interaction in theatre” (pp.64 – 65). Debates on the fundamental nature of a dancer’s presence have been at the heart of dance practice and theory since the late 1950s. As a significant area of inquiry within dance and performance studies, the metaphysics of presence has also been touched on by philosophers from Aristotle to Heidegger and Derrida. Is presence an ineffable and captivating quality, or a buzzword in the dance scene referring to a mysterious ‘something’ escaping words? This research hypothesises that presence is neither the exceptional dancer’s prerogative nor property, but rather, is a quality involving a vigilant, rigorous moment-to-moment attentional effort, an investment of disciplined attention and awareness. In other words, presence demands a focused application of self in the moment, in terms of the mind and body. This hypothesis is interrogated by asking what the Singapore contemporary dancer’s experience is when optimally immersed in dancing. By focusing on their embodied experience, being attuned to what and how of this experience: what they are attending to; how they feel; the processes or activities they engage in; and what they deem to be of potential significance, I attempt to also uncover factors that enhance or inhibit the dancer experience. While this research outlines a range of notions of presence, drawing attention to the ambiguous and often imprecise use of the term in the performance world, it does not, in the main, attempt to validate any particular theories of it. Rather, as a reflective practitioner deeply engaged in the creative process and research, my aim is to use the phenomenon or notion of presence as a springboard for interrogating and interpreting the experience of the dancers involved in this study. While not arriving at a universally accepted definition, this research can yield important insights into what presence means, or might mean, in the Singapore contemporary dance. My research findings can contribute to new knowledge in the field of Singapore’s dance research, currently in its nascent stage. They potentially have a specific, twofold impact. Firstly, they can yield meaningful insights into the complexities of contemporary dance performance as an artful, embodied practice. Secondly, they can usefully and strategically inform dance pedagogical approaches in Singaporean schools and dance companies. This thesis is complemented by films featuring choreographic works developed as an integral part of the research process. These films are interrelated and respectively illustrative of the creative process and areas under investigation. The weightage of the creative component of my submission is 50%, and the written component, 50%. The final choreographic work, 'For Reasons Undisclosed,' was to have been performed ‘live’ (with audience) at the Victorian College of the Arts as part of the examination. The global pandemic and air travel restrictions unfortunately necessitated a pivoting to the performance video approach instead. While there will be exposition in the thesis on 'For Reasons Undisclosed,' the focus of the thesis is on 'Insistence and Burn' created in 2019 during the formal 4-month research period, when data was first gathered and analysed.

Over the last few decades, the creative practice of costume designers, primarily responsible for conceptualising the costume design, has increasingly received welcome and deserved recognition. However, the creative practice of costume technicians responsible for planning, sourcing, and constructing the costumes are less recognised and valued. This position is predominantly due to historically determined prejudices around creativity and craft work, and the hierarchical structures of theatre-making. In response to this longstanding devaluing, this thesis asks, what does a close study of costume technicians’ work reveal about the costume workshop's creative practices and social dynamics? The thesis hypothesises that costume technicians’ work in design realisation has three main domains: technical, emotional, and creative. In this thesis, I argue the importance and contribution of technicians’ emotional intelligence and creative labour, alongside their technical skills, in their collaboration with designers. I evidence this through exploring these two domains’ deployment in the collaborative mechanisms of costume design development. Linguistic ethnography is used to investigate this topic. As a methodology, linguistic ethnography marries ethnographic fieldwork with linguistic analysis, which I supplement with interviews with industry practitioners and extensive design theory. Comprehensive ethnographic studies of three sizeable Australian theatre costume workshops enable a detailed examination of costume design realisation and the collaborative partnership of costume technicians and designers. This generative methodology is novel to the costume field and establishing its value for costume research is one of the new knowledge contributions this thesis makes. This thesis contributes to costume practice and research through its explication of costume realisation’s collaborative processes. Three key findings emerged from the study. Firstly, the importance of the costume community of practice in learning the values, behaviours and boundaries of creative decision making, secondly the creative contributions costume technicians make to the design development during the costume realisation process due to their interpretive role, and thirdly how the strict hierarchies of costume labour are negotiated by the people working within them. It further identifies several collaborative mechanisms consistently used in costume realisation to simultaneously align collaborator’s various interpretations of the intended design and the trust between them. Overall, this thesis enables an expanded understanding of the design realisation process, and the emotional intelligence and creative judgement required by costume work.

This practice-led research project comprises artworks produced for the Grant Street Theatre Exhibition titled Indeterminate Self, and the written dissertation. The research asks two key questions: ‘can an experimental approach to the video medium challenge a conventional way of seeing and knowing when what is seen and known cannot be determined?’ and, ‘can a video art practice provide a model for a way of living when the indeterminate way of seeing and knowing challenges and renews a sense of Self?’ The artistic practice responds to these research questions by grounding the exploration of the elusive onto-epistemological relation between indeterminacy and the Self in three series of video experiments: Time Experiments, Super(im)position and Hypnagogia, focusing on three primary aspects: time, space and light and how they provide the shifting perceptual condition to evoke the indeterminacy’s nature of in-process and coexisting through the viewing experience. The written dissertation provides a detailed investigation of the experimental outcomes and philosophical discoveries. This project identifies a predicament in the experimental video self-portrait: the equivocal relation between subjectivity and immediacy in the artist’s act of projecting and receiving perspectives of disruptive self-imagery through the video medium. It reveals an indeterminacy between to see what happens and seeing what is happening; between seeing with and without a Self, explored through artistic video experiments, using devices such as flickering light and rapid intercutting video editing method, this can induce the condition for the ‘Indeterminate Self.’ This research uses a metaphorical approach to theoretical language and definition to freely traverse between various fields of study without being determined and restricted by specific meaning attached to a particular context. These different fields of study include visual perception, theory of quantum physics, film and digital medium studies, psychoanalysis, metaphysics, and theology.

This thesis investigates how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge and cultural traditions are remembered and practiced within the framework of a colonial society. I develop an Indigenous methodology utilising a participatory mode of enquiry through yarning, sharing and deep listening, drawing on my own experience and standpoint to relate to and elicit knowledge from collaborators. The research brings together investigations centring on practices utilised in remembering heritage and culture. I draw on original research including reflections on my experiences, living and working as an Indigenous musician, Arts Strategy writer and festival organiser in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne. My research takes into account interviews and research with elders and cultural practitioners in Canada and New Zealand as well as secondary sources in order to understand the methodology of colonisation and the ensuing disruptions to the cultural practices and knowledges of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders within the colonisation continuum of Australia.

This practice-led creative research project tells the story of how the author went about producing a digital archive platform, to provide access to a large-scale and growing collection of student short films, belonging to the significant and historic VCA Film and Television department, situated within the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne, Australia. This dissertation is concerned with showing how the author as a professional staff member and later, an academic for the Film Department, focused on her practice of film producing using practice led, action research and reflexive inquiry to create a digital archive project. The topic of this thesis sits within the burgeoning field of screen production research and explores the discoveries the researcher made from and through researching her own practice. Through reflexive methods, such as journaling and narrative storytelling, the author constructed an embodied representation from the data, tracing her journey of practice as a screen producer and educator. Her concern was providing access to an archive of student short films that dated back to 1966, that were mostly inaccessible to students, staff and researchers. The process evolved into a large-scale digitisation, preservation and access project, whereby the author both developed and realised a ‘living’ digital archive. This has enabled widespread access to the student film audiovisual archive, that was otherwise inaccessible. The digital archive holds retrospective film works from VCA Film and Television and continues to grow each year with contemporary student works deposited into its system. In producing this project and examining the process, it extended the author’s professional knowledge as a screen practitioner and educator. It also resulted in the development of a ‘living’ theory; as the researcher embodied the actions of the project and research, new knowledge was created through insight into the researchers practice of screen producing. Thus, this project makes an important contribution to audio visual history in film schools and the field of moving image archives. The dissertation offers a firsthand, self reflexive account into the practice of film producing and how it can be applied to the development and realisation of a digital archive project to create new audiences and contexts across the nexus of teaching, learning, research and industry engagement and contribute to the development of practice. This deep insight into the practice of screen producing makes this a significant addition to the field of screen production research. The creative constituents of the research contain both an online digital archive portal, that stores and preserves over 2,000 student short films dating back to 1966, and an established workflow to enable all current and future born digital works to be digitised and preserved. The films have been carefully curated into genres and are accompanied with rich metadata, offering unprecedented access to staff, students, researchers and the public. The digital archive portal facilitates access and recognition into the discipline of tertiary screen filmmaking and production, by drawing attention to its contribution to the cultural fabric of Australian life and its potential for impact within a national and global context.

This research exemplifies the important role Indigenous art practices have within the development and maintenance of identity formation whilst practicing away from home and community. The artwork created within this research has come from experiences of carrying artistic and cultural practices from Canada to Australia. It was done as a response to the complex challenges which arise from establishing identity and cultural practices through instances of displacement. I discuss the value of working cross-culturally between various nations, and the influence it has had on my creative project. The artwork and research provide examples of how engagement with Indigenous arts practices can help foster and maintain cultural connections unaffected by geographical location or place of practice. My research culminated in six bodies of work: Ground in Stone, an installation of stones gathered across Melbourne and Canada, Spirit Threads, a hanging installation of threads embroidered with stones and seed beads, Flora, a series of seven beaded works, Bad Medicine, one-hundred hand sewn pouches, Blak Apothecary, an installation of living plants and antique apothecary bottles, and a series of photographic documentation of these works and their processes. These works have been presented as photographs in the thesis and exhibited throughout the course of the research. The creative works are related through a focus on materiality and Indigenous knowledge, particularly focusing on native plant knowledge and botanicals. Through these artworks I ask why Indigenous art is often defined as either contemporary or traditional. I reflect on these terms in relation to Western ideology and perceived notions surrounding Indigenous representation, cultural authenticity, validity, and values of Indigenous artistic practices. I contemplate ways in which I can rebuke these ideas through the use of art. I consider how other Indigenous artists and researchers are using artwork to foster identity and as a method of breaking down this possession of Indigeneity and representation. Done in calm gentleness, this work is ensnared within a duality that both challenges the violence of our colonial history which caused chaotic disruptions to be rooted throughout generations, and the celebration of the reactivation and assertion of Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing. (50% creative practice and 50% written dissertation).

Abstract The Master of Fine Arts project embodies a practice of journeying to identify the connection between my Lama Lama Ayapathu Gugu Yalanji identity and dance practice. This is realised in a rematriating learning paradigm that enables a distinct dance lexicon and pedagogy specific to my Aboriginality, while emphasising heterogeneity with Aboriginal Contemporary dance and Aboriginal peoples. The project employs a transdisciplinary method encompassing Aboriginal worldviews, protocols and values specific to my Lama Lama Ayapathu Gugu Yalanji identity to safely navigate and negotiate Pama|Bama ways of being, knowing and doing within the academic space. This is inclusive of practice-led learning, dance cycle, storying, life writings and old ways for new ceremonies. In the cycle I learn of the social structures and socio-cultural disruption of my cultural identity to establish a social, cultural and political standpoint in the project, together with the herstory of Indigenous contemporary dance in a chronological order, including its social and political foundation, to situate myself within the Indigenous (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) contemporary dance genealogy. With the knowledge I place my embodiment as an Aboriginal woman, mother and dancer central to the learning. In the project, I engage narrative, autoethnography and embodied writing techniques to create an immersive mapping of my embodiment of Country to contextualise Aboriginal contemporary dance within its artistic and cultural entirety. This is practiced through a body of creative work: four exhibits embodying my sense of belonging, and a written thesis in autoethnographic representation within a colonial ethos and practice. In this project, I learn my cultural knowledge comprises of both fluid and fixed consciousness, and Aboriginal contemporary dance is a means of expression for cultural revitalisation, healing and education. Therefore, in this practice Aboriginal contemporary dance performs as a medium for knowledge transmission within contemporary society. The connection between my Lama Lama Ayapathu Gugu Yalanji identity and Aboriginal contemporary dance is a manifestation of self-knowledge, elevating social, cultural and political perspectives of my Aboriginality.

Songs and song-writing are an integral part of society. Positively engaging youth in the medium of music and song-writing holds significant benefits for the whole community. Youth crime, recidivism, unemployment, and disengagement from education, and consequent alienation from mainstream society within this cohort exists. Increasing numbers of youth are becoming exposed to the Victorian justice system, with record numbers of secondary education ‘dropouts’, makes these problems exacerbate. The project intends to outline a possible arts-based process for ameliorating this. The broad aims of this project are to document a song-writing process with youth-at-risk based on my practical/personal experience, and to publish the outcome for similar facilitators. This outcome is intended for those with no formal training in Music Therapy. Song-writing is well documented as having beneficial effects with youth-at-risk, though there is currently little documentation on actual processes for collaborative song-writing with youth-at-risk. This is identified as a problem, as idiosyncratic processes are normally used by facilitators, and there is a lack of knowledge sharing. By developing and publishing actual processes, new approaches may be used and then interrogated further by practitioners. In over six years of song-writing with youth-at-risk in different contexts and settings, I have found that self- expression through song-writing can help achieve a better self-worth and lead to a healthier, happier, and more productive life for the individuals I have worked with. The approach to this study is to examine relevant literature, develop a process for collaborative song-writing with participating youth-at-risk, test this process through co-writing songs with youth-at-risk, and document the co-writing activity to further develop the process. The value of this process to the participants will be assessed using questionnaires before and after the song-writing activity. The participants are youth deemed ‘at-risk’ by the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services and were identified through Living Music Australia.

This artistic research considers the techniques and ethos of contemporary Internet art practice at a moment in which the Internet’s socio-technical discontents are coming into focus and our ability to imagine it as an equitable technology has faltered. By proposing a hypothetical mode of ‘contratechnical’ art, the research addresses practical and theoretical aspects of contemporary art when considered as an ‘aesthetic technology’ that is contra to its pre-emptive technological milieu. This project is constituted in the establishment of Darpa, an online press for artists’ publishing that has thus far produced six artists’ publications (four of which are online), alongside a reflective dissertation. The Darpa publications comprise elements of visual art, software, poetry, correspondence, documentation, and secrets. Considered together and separately, they seek to formally recollect ways that the Internet might have functioned otherwise. In the dissertation, I reflect on these works through an assembly of discursive concepts. These concepts include the untenability of contemporary art, the ethics of software development, the philosophy of technics, and the literary dialogues of documentation. The research recomposes the concerns of artists’ publishing and software development, proceeding episodically through each Darpa publication. I consider the processes of artists’ publishing in terms of a dynamic through which the aesthetic conditions of an artwork are interwoven within its technical production and circulation. I reread the archival histories of Internet protocols to draw out poetic and indeterminate dimensions which counter doctrines of good engineering. Taken as a whole, this artistic research attempts a contrary return to the ideal of internetworking as a radical mode of being together.

Abstract This practice-led study seeks to explore the interface between different perspectives of East and West in dance practice. It focuses on the ways in which imagery is used in Korean traditional dance and in Western somatic contemporary dance, in particular ideokinesis. Intrinsic to my Korean cultural philosophy are the beliefs that the world is a dynamic, constantly changing place, in which humans’ experience can be optimised by finding balance and harmony with the natural world. Aspects of my cultural heritage, including the concepts of yin and yang and the notion of energies of nature, are subject to exploration and discussion in this research. I examine the use of imagery as a source of movement within dance practice from a traditional Korean dance perspective, and extend this investigation to encompass perspectives that derive contemporaneously from Western somatic practices. A growing awareness of differences, congruities and potentials of the practical interaction between traditional Korean dance and contemporary concepts, philosophies and practices provokes deeper reflection and questioning, and offers to the field a methodology for the use of imagery drawn from nature, where the performer connects to elements of breath, proposing a framework for cross-cultural encounters with the imagination which is activated in the act of dancing. There are two major components to my exploration within movement-based practice in this research project, titled Mae Hwa. First, the inner state of being is conceptualised in terms of yin–yang energy flow, relating to the five elements, and reflects a more traditional Eastern philosophical approach. The other draws on anatomical understandings and reflects a phenomenological attitude derived from Western somatic practices and ideokinesis as a new approach to Korean traditional dance imagery.

The self plays a central role in artistic practice, as artists have long used their work to explore conceptions of the broader human condition. In film, the temporally reflexive nature of the medium has allowed filmmakers to create a positioning of characters, sharing emotional experiences with an audience. However, to position oneself in film is perhaps less clear and more complex than that of a protagonist. This dissertation draws upon the practices of filmmakers Jonas Mekas, Max Draper, Chantal Akerman, Michelangelo Antonioni and Moyra Davey, to discuss how key elements of film, including diarism, duration and place, can inform an exploration of the subjective condition. As an accompaniment to my own moving-image artwork, You, Me and Everyone Else., the dissertation draws parallels between each artist’s use of visual techniques and my experimentations in practice, to initiate an intimate unravelling of self. I find the acceptance of the banal and the everyday through diarism and durational techniques clarify a process for examining self. Likewise, the embeddedness of these filmic techniques within the deeply personal context of my own home, emphasises the importance of place in affirming; and reinforcing, undulating and shifting notions of self. I additionally note, however, that the forces of context and place uncover deep insecurities and strong negative internal emotions greatly impacting artistic voice. Here, the subjective self emerges through elements of my personal artistic condition, that appears to exist beyond the influence of conscious structure, technique and the influence of others. While the making of a singular artwork may demonstrate hints of the self to both audience and maker, the recurrent, self-reflexive making of artworks clarifies the unseen self only to the artist. Thus, I conclude that there is no firm understanding of self navigable through techniques alone.The artwork is merely the by-product of a process that recognises that the self is as whimsical and subject to change as the forces which surround it.