Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Discovering The Self: An Enquiry Into Spiritual Seekers Journeys Towards Self-Realisation, Marianne Batenburg

Theses : Honours

This thesis explores the notion that a spiritual search for meaning can lead to the discovery of one's true nature, known in the Eastern tradition as Realisation of the Self. The necessity of a teacher to assist the seeker on this spiritual journey is also investigated. Three questions in particular are raised that will facilitate the analysis of this journey of discovery: 1) Is the longing for a sense of completeness, Beingness, awakened by a particular experience or is it in fact inherent in each human being? 2) Do spiritual seekers need to go out into the world to find …

Application Of Binaural Recording In The Video Game Industry, Max Leong

Theses : Honours

The video game industry is one of entertainment technologies' largest growing industries. There are thousands of games in the market covering a variety of different genres. There is also a high level technical sophistication in current games along with the game console that runs it. Games are realistic with astonishingly life like graphics. The backing audio and music tracks are performed by leading orchestras and written by renowned composers. Great technological strides have been made in the areas of graphic and audio design. The end user expects the very best and the video game industry is constantly improving software and …

Finding The Watermark: A Filmic Response To Domestic Abuse Within Australian Film From 1970 - 2006, Erin Nichols

Theses : Honours

Due to various social, international and economic encumbrances, Australian film has made a limited foray into the representation of domestic abuse. A limited number of films have been made on this topic since the early 1970's, and even then, the depiction of this social issue has been watered down and sanitised for mainstream consumption. It is the author's belief that the filmmaker has an important and highly influential opportunity to present a social commentary on issues and must not shirk that responsibility. The film project supported by this exegesis responds to the above concerns and the priority has been to …

Ideas Of Landscape: Finding An Uneasy Peace, Iris Koornstra

Theses : Honours

Landscape, both the actual and the representational, "is a work of the mind" (Schama, 1995, p. 7) it encompasses ideas of difference, arcadia, commodification, nationalism and many others. How does one negotiate the physical and the representational when trying to reach beyond the traditions of the sublime? Anchoring my research in the physical landscape of Kings Park, Perth, Australia whilst looking at looking this paper explores the manifestation of ideas about land in both forms. Central to my research approach is W.J.T. Mitchell's theses on landscape number eight, which states: "landscape is an exhausted medium, no longer viable as a …

The Filmmaker, The Subject And The Audience : A Dialectical Exploration Of Documentary Performance, Ben Stewart

Theses : Honours

Documentary filmmakers 11 engage directly in the study of the phenomena of life that surrounds us. We hold the ability to show and elucidate life as it is, considerably higher than the occasionally diverting droll games that people call theatre, cinema etc." (Vertov, 1984, p. 47). The ability to 'show and elucidate life as it is' is a controversial claim that the majority of academic documentary discussion is concerned with. I intend to add to this discussion through an exploration of performance and its pertinence to the ability of documentary to represent reality truthfully. The reception of documentary is significantly …

What Are The Benefits Of Dance In Relation To Developing Creative Potential For The Individual?, Shannon Riggs

Theses : Honours

This thesis proposes to discuss the benefits of creativity for the individual and highlight the increasing importance of creativity in today's society. The thesis discusses how creativity can be identified, nurtured and developed and what factors effect the development of creative potential. Creativity plays a major role in dance as an art form. This thesis draws attention to the fact that dance teaches many of the key skills needed to develop creative potential and how dance can be utilised as an avenue to enhancing an individual's creative ability. This thesis will outline the parallels between learning dance and developing creative …

Death Lilly : Performing The 'Flower Girl' Role In The Age Of Consumption, Catherine Gomersall

Theses : Honours

This self-reflexive photomedia project interrogates the 'flower girl' role as a cultural fetishism of 'innocent' white-girl femininity, which I claim is perpetuated in the bridal fantasy. In my photomedia work the theme of 'death' and the uncanny is explored as well as the themes of 'wildness' and 'violence' in order to subvert the dominant discourse of ideal white femininity which is defined in popular culture by a sanitised bourgeois aesthetic. I attack the bourgeois surface of the bridal magazine in my artwork as I perform the 'flower girl' role in the context of popular culture and capitalism. The flower girl …

Financial Philanthropy Towards Australian Public Art Galleries By Individual Benefactors: Some Empirical Evidence From The National Gallery Of Victoria, Elisha London

Theses : Honours

The purpose of this study is to examine why individuals philanthropically contribute finances to public art galleries in Australia. As· government funding decreases philanthropy is becoming an increasingly attractive option for public art galleries as alternative sources of revenue need to be sought. A thorough understanding of the factors that influence giving is imperative for any organisation that engages in philanthropy as a revenue stream. This study examines these factors using a fundraising campaign conducted by the National Gallety of Victoria as a case in point. The motivations and characteristics of donors who gave to this campaign are examined using …

The Art Of Trash: Evaluating Troma Entertainment As Paracinema, James W. Macdonald

Theses : Honours

The aim of this research is to explore the anti-establishment function of the work of Lloyd Kaufman and his film studio, Troma Entertainment. The research focuses on Troma's capacities as paracinema, and examines how in relishing their derided position in the cultural field, Lloyd Kaufman's films represent an anti-establishment cinematic form, combating an institutionalised idea of cultural value. Through challenging the rules of taste, Lloyd Kaufman's films serve to push the boundaries of what is considered valuable in contemporary culture. Films that revel in their 'bad taste' through extreme themes, poor humour and amateurism, make a stand against the mainstream …

The White Death: Representations Of Salt Affected Landscapes In The Wheatbelt, Grant Currall

Theses : Honours

This exegesis examines the significance of salt-affected landscapes in Western Australia's Wheatbelt, particularly sites affected due to pastoral settlement. It explores ways in which landscape imagery has been constructed and controlled by cultures to represent a particular relationship between settlement and the land. A focus on both American and Australian photographic practitioners and their understanding of landscape aesthetics will be incorporated to reveal how unconventional subject matter like dryland salinity can be re-presented to provide an alternative perspective of cultures relationship with nature in the Wheatbelt. Finally, an enquiry into the impact of national identity on landscape will also explore …

The Influence Of Genetics And The Environment On Human Personalities, Relationships And Experiences, Patrice Smith

Theses : Honours

It's no mystery that our genetic make-up plays an integral part in the outcome of our lives, but to what extent exactly are our personalities, relationships and experiences pre-determined by this genetic code? There are two forces that contribute to the outcome of these aspects of our lives. Genetics and Environment. The significance of the environment, i.e., our upbringing, lifestyle and the world around us is often emphasized by psychologists as the more dominant force, however our genes are just as, if not more, influential on our lives. My choreographic process is directly in relation to the group of artists …

Hogarth To Monster Wheels : A Grotesque Connection, Christopher Ridley

Theses : Honours

When an audience is exposed to deformed, altered and abnormal entities, their interpretation relies on some form of cultural awareness of both the expected and the altered shape to stimulate a reaction. I maintain that the stimulus for this reaction has its roots in a dark and terrifying primal force, the manifestation of which we regard as the grotesque. This thesis looks for a commonality in a satirical interpretation afforded to this grotesque force. By using the caricatures in William Hogarth's engravings and the altered cars in three contemporary films. I search for a correlation between the way Hogarth and …

The Camfields : "The Comforts Of Civilisation" In Early Colonial Western Australia, Joan Groves

Theses : Honours

This thesis explores and examines in some detail the lives of a little known Anglican missionary couple in early colonial Western Australia. Henry Camfield and Anne Breeze came to the Swan River colony separately: Henry as farmer-settler and Anne Breeze as governess. They married, moved in the higher echelons of Perth society and later went to Albany where Henry took up the position of Government Resident. Subsequently they both became involved in raising and "Christianising" Aboriginal children in an institution known as Annesfield. While some prominence has been given to a well-known pupil of that institution, Bessie Flower (later Cameron), …

An Investigation Into Lindsay Vickery's Rendez-Vous: An Opera Noir, Adam Willett

Theses : Honours

A study of Rendez-vous: an Opera Nair, a contemporary chamber opera written by Australian-born composer Lindsay Vickery (b. 1965). The opera was based upon the novel Djinn by the French postmodernist author Alain Robbe-Grillet. Vickery composed the opera over a two-year period from 1993-1995. It was finally performed in 2001 after some revision. The novel contained a non-linear narrative and film genre references. The non-linear narrative structure was represented through a serial-like musical device. Musical influences were derived from classical music and film. Applied technology was utilised in the composition process and in the final production with the introduction of …

Through The Window: The Subject And The Voyeur's Gaze Within Cinema And Video, James A. Doohan

Theses : Honours

The underlying theme of this thesis is that cinema and related media create sites in which the viewer becomes a kind of voyeur, and in doing so normalises the voyeuristic gaze. Relationships between those who possess the gaze and those who become the object of that gaze are structured both ideologically and through the apparatus of the camera itself. These ideologies are arguably driven by a patriarchal paradigm, particularly within mainstream cinema where men appear to control the gaze and women are positioned as the object of that gaze. Even within cinema however that appears to be explicitly misogynistic like …

Misconceptions: Loss And Melancholia In Poetry Of Miscarriage, Stillbirth And Abortion, Donna Yannakis

Theses : Honours

This thesis argues that cultural and discursive attitudes towards miscarriage, stillbirth and abortion attribute maternal blame to these losses and silence the expression of grief over them. It further argues that, following pregnancy loss, this silence and blame, coupled with the veneration and discursive production of motherhood as a woman's biological and psychical destiny, produce 'symptoms' that, according to Freud, are a sign of a pathological melancholia. I suggest, however, that these symptoms - self-reproach and impoverishment of the ego as responses to pregnancy loss, do not necessarily indicate a woman's pathological failure to resolve loss but reflect the social …

The Dancing Mind, Rebecca Mccormac

Theses : Honours

How is it that we go from the unknown to the known? Is there a parallel relationship between mind and body? How does the brain inform the body? An active approach to cognition conceives of the mind as one with the body. The human brain controls feeling, cognition, perception, action, learning and other basic functions, and therefore it is vital to consider the influence of neuroscience on the development of cognitive psychology and vice versa, when looking at a dancing body/mind.

Transforming Messiaen : The Application Of Elements Of The Musical Language Of Olivier Messiaen To The Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, Johannes Luebbers

Theses : Honours

The music of Olivier Messiaen is a unique and interesting contribution to the canon of 20^th Century art music, but one that has received little attention from the jazz world. Through a detailed study of his music, this dissertation aims to gain a deeper understanding of Messiaen's musical language and investigate the possibilities of applying that language within the jazz idiom. In addition to a discussion of Messiaen and his music, a detailed analysis of the author's own composition for pipe organ and jazz orchestra, Auguries of Innocence, will explore the results of this application. The complete scores and …

Tan Dun's Eight Memories In Watercolor: Insights Into Performance, Zhen Zeng

Theses : Honours

"Shostakovich, as· a composer also living under a dictatorship, taught me to express deep humanity. From Takemitsu, I learned that Western and Eastern instruments can be part of the same color palette. John Cage led me to discover structures and sounds as yet unknown, by always keeping an open mind. I owe deepest thanks to these three composers, whose contributions to music have also helped me develop myself---as a composer from a·. traditional culture, growing up in a high-pressure society, living in a now international world." (Tan Dun) The global reach of Tan Dun's music reached its zenith recently at …

Time In Kyrgyzstan, Robert Mcpherson

Theses : Honours

The topic of the exegesis is travel documentary photography. The exegesis is based on previous written academic work on travel documentary photography and it is related to my own experience when photographing the people and the landscapes of Kyrgyzstan. In the exegesis I argue that travel documentary photography is highly subjective and ambiguous. There is no such thing as a purely objective representation of the 'Other'. Rather it is and illusion of objectivity that emerges through the eye of the photographer. In travel documentary photography I argue that we make the 'Others' seem less like us than they are because …

Bob Brookmeyer: Composer, Performer, Pedagogue, Mace Francis

Theses : Honours

Before my California stay (1968-1978) I considered myself a player first and a writer second, although I did a lot of writing, from Ray Charles to Thad [Jones] and Mel [Lewis].1 Since 1979 I have come to view myself as a composer who also plays trombone; add conducting and teaching and that gives me 4 hats to wear. I do not have a swollen head, so they all fit nicely. (Brookmeyer, 1997, n.p.)

Although acknowledged as one of the pivotal figures in twentieth-century jazz, the career and the music of Bob Brookmeyer has received scant attention in secondary literature. This …

The Classical Guitar In Paris: Composers And Performers C.1920-1960, Duncan Robert Gardiner

Theses : Honours

The rise in status and popularity, and even the acceptance of the classical guitar, is a twentieth-century phenomenon which owes much to the labour of the famed Spanish guitarist Andres Segovia. It is because of the talents of Segovia and his contemporaries that the classical guitar has a wealth of first-class repertoire to call its own. Since the conception of the first twentieth-century work composed specifically for the classical guitar by Manuel de Falla, and because of the efforts of Segovia, a great interest in the instrument-and a large body of guitar music has come out of France. This dissertation …

East O' The Sun And West O' The Moon: The Construction Of National Identity In Norwegian Fashion Photography, Anne-Britt Kjoensburg

Theses : Honours

This exegesis compliments my photographic project which was to produce a body of work that explores Norwegian identity through fashion using myths and iconography to communicate Norwegian-ness, and depicts the Norwegian lifestyle in a surprising and humorous way. My aim has been to find out if there is any distinctive aesthetic approach/style that constructs, defines and reproduces Norwegian identity, and if Norwegian fashion photography is being influenced by the resurgence of interest in Norwegian style. I have looked at how humans use fashion as a technique to construct various identities rather than a mask that covers the self and how …

Impressions Of Standard Japanese And Osaka Dialect, Stephen Bumstead

Theses : Honours

In various countries there has been much research involving attitudes to standard and non-standard language (for example Giles, Baker and Fielding 1975, Strongman and Woosley 1967, Cheyne 1970), much of which has found a tendency to ascribe speakers of a standard dialect or accent with higher values in status traits such as intelligence, but lower values in solidarity traits such as sincerity, than speakers of a non-standard dialect or accent. The current research investigated and compared the attitudes towards standard Japanese and the Osaka dialect. The participants were 5 males and females born and raised in Tokyo and 5 males …