Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Explorations In Double-Stops: Three New Pieces For Expanding The Role Of The Double Bass In The Jazz Ensemble, Ashley De Neef

Theses : Honours

This dissertation investigates the potential for using double-stops - the sounding of two or more simultaneous notes - as a means for extending the traditional role of the double bass, within compositions for a small jazz ensemble. It is the contention of this dissertation that it is possible to use double-stops to perform a more advanced function within the jazz ensemble, without compromising the double bass’ primary harmonic and rhythmic duties.

A historical overview of the history of the double bass within western classical and jazz music will be provided, as to outline and define what the double bass’ role …

Australia’S Microtonal Modernist: The Life And Works Of Elsie Hamilton (1880-1965), Talisha Goh

Theses : Honours

This dissertation represents the most complete account to date of the life and works of Australian composer Elsie Hamilton (1880-1965). Through examining the theories of the Anthroposophical movement, I demonstrate how her music feeds from this belief system, and also demonstrate how Hamilton’s stance is congruent with the modernists of her generation. In addition, I position Hamilton’s modal system within the complex mathematics of Greek musical theory (as conceived by her collaborator, Kathleen Schlessinger). Finally, I provide modern editions and electronically manipulated sound files to all of Hamilton’s surviving compositions. Elsie Hamilton’s story is fascinating. This dissertation welcomes her into …

Elliott Carter And His Use Of Metric And Temporal Modulaton In His Eight Pieces For Four Timpani : An Examination Into The Application Of Click Tracks During The Preparation And Performance Of These Works, Tegan Lebrun

Theses : Honours

Elliott Carter’s Eight Pieces for Four Timpani have become integral works in the solo timpani repertoire. They continue to offer technical and musical challenges to both developing and professional players and have influenced the development of the solo timpani genre to date. These pieces contain metric and temporal modulation – musical processes which alter certain performance parameters concerning pulse and subdivision tempi.

This dissertation investigates Carter’s use of metric and temporal modulation in his Eight Pieces for Four Timpani and examines the effects click track application has on the performance of these works. A brief biography of Carter and his …

Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless: The Revelation Of Filmmaking As Cinephilia, Alexandra Proud

Theses : Honours

Auteur, Jean-Luc Godard directed his first feature film Breathless (A bout de soufflé) in 1959 after a decade of working as a film critic for the contentious journal, Cahiers du Cinema. Central to my thesis is the assertion that Breathless is contentious in critical dimension to Godard’s literary criticism. It takes a certain breed of individual with a genuine passion for the state of the French film industry to sustain a politically charged critique of cinema from literary film criticism to filmmaking. The breed of individual is known as a cinephile – an avid moviegoer who may also engage …

Brad Mehldau’S Approach To Orchestration At The Piano In A Trio Setting As Demonstrated On “August Ending” (2004) And “Secret Beach” (2006), Gabriel Fatin

Theses : Honours

Brad Mehldau is one of the most accomplished and original pianists playing today, and his musical output is met with a grand reception from critics and the public alike. Influenced predominately by the jazz piano lineage including Wynton Kelly and McCoy Tyner, rock music, and classical music, he has developed a highly unique way of playing, which early on was reminiscent of Bill Evans. One of the most striking aspects of his playing is in the way that he orchestrates his improvisations across the piano. He has the ability to play independent solo melodies in his left hand and right …

Eighteenth Century Techniques Of Classical Improvisation On The Violin: Pedagogy, Practice And Decline, Flavia Claudia Todea

Theses : Honours

The art of improvisation flourished in both instrumental and vocal music during the late seventeenth and throughout the eighteenth centuries. The violin techniques of improvisation taught in the eighteenth century (such as ornamentation of melody, decoration of fermatas, extemporization of cadenzas and creation of preludes) formed an integral part of instrumental pedagogy and performance practice at the time, which then declined significantly from the early nineteenth century onwards. It seems that this practice of improvisation has been neglected and its principles almost forgotten in the world of classical Western music today. This paper makes an argument for the re-introduction of …

Whores And The Law: A Case Study Of The Sexual Double Standard And The Contagious Diseases Acts In Mid-Nineteenth Century England, Alexandra Wallis

Theses : Honours

This thesis examines how the sexual double standard in mid-nineteenth century England disempowered women and female prostitutes through the Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s. The Acts were created in an attempt to lower venereal disease among the soldiers in the British army. The method for this was to target prostituted women suspected of being infected and have them examined after which they could be interned in a lock hospital for three to nine months. Radical feminism has done much to highlight the harm experienced by women in prostitution. Thus using radical feminism, in particular the theoretical perspective of Catharine …

Exploring The Mediality Of Live And Studio Composition: The Case Of Computer Music, And Its Implications In “Ambivalence Of Density”, Michael Terren

Theses : Honours

This dissertation attempts to apply the communications theory concept of “mediality,” as described by Jonathan Sterne, to the context of music composition for different mediums, namely the media of the live performance and the studio work (the recording, the concrete work). Mediality denotes the complex “web of practice and reference” between different media—how we interact with and perceive media, and how this affects the content of the medium. The mediality of live and studio composition is posited as cross-referential, non-hierarchical and non-dichotomous—a relationship of “dependence and imbrication” rather than antagonistic binaries.

I investigate the mediality of live and studio composition …

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid: Exploring The Rhetoric Of The Monster In Political And Horror Posters Of The 20th Century, Julia Lane

Theses : Honours

Australia’s current social and political climate takes us back to a time when there was a strongly perceived fear of the other. This fear is heavily reflected by the monsters which we, as a society, create. This research unearths the constructed monsters of the 20th Century for a critical assessment of what makes a monster. More specifically, it focuses on depictions of monsters within political and horror poster designs. The purpose of this research is to identify and respond to the rhetoric apparent within and between poster images, specifically concerning the cultivation of fear of the other through the …

Memory, Truth And Justice: A Contextualisation Of The Uses Of Photographs Of The Victims Of State Terrorism In Argentina, 1972-2012: Communicating An Intersection Of Art, Politics And History, Richard Askam

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Photographs of the victims of Argentine state terrorism from 1972 to 1983, and most prominently those of the detained-disappeared victims of the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional dictatorship (1976-1983), have had a significant role in elucidating the demands of human rights activists since the aftermath of the Trelew Massacre in 1972. In this thesis I examine the role of photographs of victims of state terrorism in the construction of unofficial, or counter, narratives critical of those produced by two dictatorships and by elected democratic administrations in the demand for truth and justice, and in the construction of social memory. I discuss …

The Australian Football League And The Closet, Andrew Douglas

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis examines the complete absence of openly gay males from the ranksof the professional players in the Australian Football League (AFL). It seeks to explain this absence in the context of the modern gay rights movement. incontemporary Australian society. It compares and contrasts the effects of thismovement on both the AFL and other mainstream Australian social institutions.

Over more than four decades, the gay rights movement has effected a number of social changes. These changes include both specific legal reforms and more general trends such as the increasing social visibility of gay men across a range of mainstream institutions …

Feeling The Fleshed Body: The Aftermath Of Childhood Rape [Thesis], Brenda Downing

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The point of propulsion for this research is my raped and censured body with its somatic aftermath narrative. This doctoral research project is a feminist and creative investigation that sought to uncover and articulate the long term somatic impacts of childhood rape as they manifest in the adult female body. I employed a multi-modal, complementary, and embodied methodology using a combination of autoethnography, somatic inquiry, writing-as-inquiry, and performance-making-as inquiry. In addition to my autoethnographic explorations, I gathered information from other women raped in childhood, as well as information from women’s healthcare professionals. Drawing on the autoethnographic and participant information gathered, …

A Leap In The Dark: Identity, Culture And The Trauma Of War Mediated Thorough The Visual Arts Of North-East European Migrants And Émigrés To Australia After 1945, Eileen Whitehead

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis explores the contribution to the cultural life of post-war Australia by migrant artists from north-eastern Europe. It researches the lives and work not only of displaced artists arriving in the mass exodus from Europe after the Second World War, but also second and third generation artists descended from original migrant families, and much later émigré artists.

Art histories written to date about the post-war period provide little coverage of the contributionto the art and culture of Australia by migrant artists from north-eastern Europe. The coverage in the literature written about the visual art produced by established Australian artists …

What Remains Is The Book: The Idea Of The Book In And Around Electronic Space, Andy Simionato

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The purpose of this study is to question the idea of the book in general and how this idea is transforming in electronic space, understood as a space of flows as distinct to a space of places (Castells, 1989, p. 349). In order to question the idea of the book in electronic space we must begin at its ending, or more specifically, at a point in the histories of the book that is widely understood as representing a closing of a parenthesis - that began with the invention of the printing press, up to the end of print—spanning some 500 …

"Wonderfully Ordinary" Words From A Romantic Archive Of Elizabeth Jolley's Writing For Students : Creative Process As A Garland Of Fragments, Andrea Wood

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This project, including the visual artworks and poetry developed for the exhibition Wonderfully Ordinary, is the outcome of practice-led research into the creative process. Through creative practice—and the development of a personal and fragmentary process of invention—it aims to generate knowledge about creative practice as a form of philosophy in action. Drawing on Paul Carter’s concept of material thinking and historical ideas arising from Western Australian author Elizabeth Jolley’s (1923–2007)creative process and writing, it explores ways in which Friedrich von Schlegel’s (1772–1829) philosophical conception of the Romantic fragment might be revealed as a continuing idea of interest and tool …

The Role Of Strangers In Victorian Novels: A Psychoanalytical Study Of Their Repressions, Functions And Aspirations, Mohammad Ahmed Al-Abdulrazaq

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The aim of this study is to examine the stranger characters in three Victorian Novels, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge and Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. The exploration of the characters is based on the analysis of their psyche to understand how they are utilized by the Victorian writers. The study highlights how the fictional strangers can assist in the course of the action of the novel and function as a stimulus by which the actions and thoughts develop plausibly and feasibly. Utilizing the views of Freud, Erikson and others the study will allow for …

Tasha: A Practice-Based Problematisation Of Australian Comedy Cinema’S Representation Of Gender, Family And Nationhood, Vanessa Barnett

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Between 2007 and 2012, 140 fictional feature films were financed with the assistance of Australian film funding bodies. Of these 140 films, only 31 featured female protagonists and of these 31 films, only 8 were comedies (see Appendix B). These figures show statistically, Tasha, the creative film component of this research project, is not a typical Australian comedy film; it is the story of Tasha, an unemployed girl from Girrawheen in her early twenties, who has lost her sense of identity. As Australian films such as Little Fish¸ Candy, Jedda and Muriel’s Wedding would suggest, this is certainly …

Religion, Heritage, And Power： Everyday Life In Contemporary China, Asan Xue

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Based on an ethnographic study of the religious life of ordinary people in the town of Dongpu, this research explores the relationships between: religion and state power; Chinese ritual (li, 礼/禮) tradition and Christian culture; and religion and intangible cultural heritage in contemporary China.

This research found that both the practitioners of Chinese rituals and the Christian community deploy tactics to resist and negotiate with the hegemonic official culture through spatial and religious practices in their everyday life. Chinese ritual practices dedicated to deities and ancestors are defined as idol worship in the doctrine of Christianity and denigrated …

Examining Tacit Exchange, Embedded Within Socially Shared Hand-Stitching Practices, With The Shipibo Artists Of Peru, Nicolle Anne Desmarchelier

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This exegesis reflexively examines the role of the tacit in my intercultural creative exchange with a number of the Shipibo artists of Peru. Central to the research was a three month residency spent in Peru with these artists. The research reflexively examines the impact of the residency on my creative praxis.

In particular, the research explores how the process of hand-stitching, embedded within the day to day lifeworld, can offer a space for such intercultural exchange. Furthermore, the research focuses on the shared hand-stitching practices as part of a socially communicative process. This creative exchange is placed in the social …

De Concentv Amisso Qvaerendo: An Investigation Into The Relative Benefits Of Three Different Types Of Ambient Music On The Observed Agitated Behaviour And Quality Of Life Of Dementia Sufferers In Residential Aged Care Facilities, Peter Wilkinson

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

There is an increasing body of research evidence to support the use of music as a therapeutic modality in reducing the agitated behaviour frequently associated with late-stage dementia. Although much of this evidence suggests that music interventions are most effective when they are “individualized”, this type of intervention is often difficult to implement in large, busy, aged care facilities where residents may be located together in communal areas during the day. The challenge therefore is to try and identify a particular musical genre which, when played as “ambient” or “background” music, demonstrates a consistent capacity to reduce agitated behaviour in …

Material Murmurings, Brooke Zeligman

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis, Material Murmurings, comprising of exegesis and creative practice, focuses on the central research question: “How do we understand the materiality of glass and what happens when said materiality is approached through feminist scholarship?” This question forms the basis for an investigation through creative practice and analysis via an interpretive framework of feminist knowledges of the body. The creative practice embraces glass as the central medium with a series of exhibitions that responded to the interpretive paradigm. It is expected that Material Murmurings will highlight and make evident the value of post-technical approaches in glass art which have only …

Cultures Of Practice Within Design: An Exploration Of The Differences And Similarities Between Photography And Painting As Representational Practices, Alun John Price

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Contemporary designers and photographers face many challenges as the profession rapidly develops. This is especially the case in in the Western Australian context. A review into the recent history of the Western Australian design profession is evidence that designers and photographers are consistently shifting between commercial and self-expressive practice. However, the urge to keep up with technological advancement has masked conscious development of this shift, which is a key to self-realisation and improvement for a designer and photographer. This lack of conscious questioning limits holistic development in design practice. This research reflects on myself as a designer developing a response …

A Stirring Of Cultures: The Contest For Place, Belonging And Identity In Australia, Garry Stewart Henderson

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The creative work, The Wounded Sinner, and the accompanying exegesis, form a volume of writing that considers aspects of place and belonging in a contemporary Australian context through the agencies of Aboriginality, migration and homelessness. While these issues are present and, at times, contentious in the structure of modern Australian society they have roots in past eras of empire building, racism and the movement from agrarianism to industrialisation. The characters are drawn from my own experiences and, as such, validate both the creative work and give the exegesis substance.

Jeanie Bayona is an Aboriginal woman who was raised, from …

Sighting Circus: Perceptions Of Circus Phenomena Investigated Through Diverse Bodies, Katrina Lavers

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis is an investigation into modern circus from its beginnings in 1768 through to present day contemporary circus arts. Eight diverse bodies in modern and contemporary circus are explored. These eight bodies act as different lenses to focus enquiry into gaps or ruptures in the grand narratives of circus, to reveal previously missing voices and histories and to set in place new approaches to perceiving circus phenomena.

In The Political Body, the phenomenon of embodied protest is identified and explored in relation to contemporary circus works. The importance of the engaged spectator is identified in determining political, poetic …

The Poetics Of Gravity: Performance Experiments From The Natural Environment To The Stage, Russya Connor

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Gravity understood scientifically is normally accepted as a dictate, however when encountered creatively, the possibilities for playing with and learning from gravity in natural environments are plentiful.

This practice-led research explores gravity in both artistic and functional contexts. Two nature-specific sports (ocean diving and rock-climbing) and then later, aerial silk work, acted as springboards for explorations of creative expression derived from the states of submersion and suspension. To ‘really feel’ gravity, I decided to explore its effects and impressions, physically and emotionally, in environments that draw attention to its presence. Attempts were made to capture gravity in a series of …