Strategic aesthetics in advertising campaigns : implications for art direction education

For over half a century art directors within the advertising industry have been adapting to the changes occurring in media, culture and the corporate sector, toward enhancing professional performance and competitiveness. These professionals seldom offer explicit justification about the role images play in effective communication. It is uncertain how this situation affects advertising performance, because advertising has, nevertheless, evolved in parallel to this as an industry able to fabricate new opportunities for itself. However, uncertainties in the formalization of art direction knowledge restrict the possibilities of knowledge transfer in higher education. The theoretical knowledge supporting advertising art direction has been adapted spontaneously from disciplines that rarely focus on specific aspects related to the production of advertising content, like, for example: marketing communication, design, visual communication, or visual art. Meanwhile, in scholarly research, vast empirical knowledge has been generated about advertising images, but often with limited insight into production expertise. Because art direction is understood as an industry practice and not as an academic discipline, an art direction perspective in scholarly contributions is rare. Scholarly research that is relevant to art direction seldom offers viewpoints to help understand how it is that research outputs may specifically contribute to art direction practices. This thesis is dedicated to formally understanding the knowledge underlying art direction and using it to explore models for visual analysis and knowledge transfer in higher education. The first three chapters of this thesis offer, firstly, a review of practical and contextual aspects that help define art direction, as a profession and as a component in higher education; secondly, a discussion about visual knowledge; and thirdly, a literature review of theoretical and analytic aspects relevant to art direction knowledge. Drawing on these three chapters, this thesis establishes explicit structures to help in the development of an art direction curriculum in higher education programs. Following these chapters, this thesis explores a theoretical combination of the terms ���aesthetics��� and ���strategy��� as foundational notions for the study of art direction. The theoretical exploration of the term ���strategic aesthetics��� unveils the potential for furthering knowledge in visual commercial practices in general. The empirical part of this research explores ways in which strategic aesthetics notions can extend to methodologies of visual analysis. Using a combination of content analysis and of structures of interpretive analysis offered in visual anthropology, this research discusses issues of methodological appropriation as it shifts aspects of conventional methodologies to take into consideration paradigms of research that are producer-centred. Sampled out of 2759 still ads from the online databases of Cannes Lions Festival, this study uses an instrumental case study of love-related advertising to facilitate the analysis of content. This part of the research helps understand the limitations and functionality of the theoretical and methodological framework explored in the thesis. In light of the findings and discussions produced throughout the thesis, this project aims to provide directions for higher education in relation to art direction and highlights potential pathways for further investigation of strategic aesthetics.

Project 27 : insights into a production-centred study on art direction and love

This paper offers insight into the development of a PhD in advertising art direction. For over half a century art directors within the advertising industry have been adapting to the changes occurring in media, culture and the corporate sector, toward enhancing professional performance and competitiveness. These professionals seldom offer explicit justification about the role images play in effective communication. It is uncertain how this situation affects advertising performance, because advertising has, nevertheless, evolved in parallel to this as an industry able to fabricate new opportunities for itself. However, uncertainties in the formalization of art direction knowledge restrict the possibilities of knowledge transfer in higher education. The theoretical knowledge supporting advertising art direction has been adapted spontaneously from disciplines that rarely focus on specific aspects related to the production of advertising content, like, for example: marketing communication, design, visual communication, or visual art. Meanwhile, in scholarly research, vast empirical knowledge has been generated about advertising images, but often with limited insight into production expertise. Because art direction is understood as an industry practice and not as an academic discipline, an art direction perspective in scholarly contributions is rare. Scholarly research that is relevant to art direction seldom offers viewpoints to help understand how it is that research outputs may specifically contribute to art direction practices. There is a need to formally understanding the knowledge underlying art direction and using it to explore models for visual analysis and knowledge transfer in higher education. This paper provides insight into the development of a thesis that explored this need. The PhD thesis to which this paper refers is Strategic Aesthetics in Advertising Campaigns: Implications for Art Direction Education.

Young Children, Pedagogy, and the Arts

"Young Children, Pedagogy and the Arts is an innovative text that describes practices and research that cross all five strands of the arts���visual, drama, music, dance, and media���and illuminates ways of understanding children and their arts practices that go beyond the common traditions. The book: - Offers practical and rich illustrations of teachers��� and children���s work based on international research that integrates theory with practice; - Brings a critical lens to arts education; - Includes summaries, reflective questions, and recommended further readings with every chapter. Young Children, Pedagogy and the Arts provides a more nuanced understanding of the arts through an exploration of specific instances in which committed teachers and researchers are discovering what contemporary multimodal tools offer to young children. Chapters contain examples of ���doing��� the arts in the early years, new ways of teaching, and how to use emerging technologies to develop multiliteracies, equity, agency, social and cultural capital, and enhance the learning and engagement of marginalized children."--publisher website

Experimental arts practice incorporating motion capture

My practice-led research explores and maps workflows for generating experimental creative work involving inertia based motion capture technology. Motion capture has often been used as a way to bridge animation and dance resulting in abstracted visuals outcomes. In early works this process was largely done by rotoscoping, reference footage and mechanical forms of motion capture. With the evolution of technology, optical and inertial forms of motion capture are now more accessible and able to accurately capture a larger range of complex movements. Made by Motion is a collaboration between digital artist Paul Van Opdenbosch and performer and choreographer Elise May; a series of studies on captured motion data used to generate experimental visual forms that reverberate in space and time. The project investigates the invisible forces generated by and influencing the movement of a dancer. Along with how the forces can be captured and applied to generating visual outcomes that surpass simple data visualisation, projecting the intent of the performer���s movements. The source or ���seed��� comes from using an Xsens MVN ��� Inertial Motion Capture system to capture spontaneous dance movements, with the visual generation conducted through a customised dynamics simulation. In my presentation I will be displaying and discussing a selected creative works from the project along with the process and considerations behind the work.

12 principles for the effective supervision of creative practice higher research degrees, dispatches from the field

In late 2012 and early 2013 we interviewed 25 experienced and early career supervisors of creative practice higher research degrees. This journey spanned five universities and a broad range of disciplines including visual art, music, performing art, new media, creative writing, fashion, graphic design, interaction design and interior design. Some of the supervisors we interviewed were amongst the first to complete and supervise practice-led and practice-based PhDs; some have advocated for and defined this emergent field; and some belong to the next generation of supervisors who have confidently embarked on this exciting and challenging path. Their reflections have brought to light many insights gained over the past decade. Here we have drawn together common themes into a collection of principles and best practice examples. We present them as advice rather than rules, as one thing that the supervisors were unanimous about is the need to avoid proscriptive models and frameworks, and to foster creativity and innovation in what is still an emergent field of postgraduate supervision. It is with thanks to all of the supervisors who contributed to these conversations, and their generosity in sharing their practices, that we present their advice, exemplars and case studies.

Undulating matter : a topology of the studio

With specific reference to the writing of Dan Graham and the experiences of creative practice, this paper will elaborate an account of studio practice as a topology - a theory drawn from mathematics in which space is understood not as a static field but in terms of properties of connectedness, movement and differentiation. This paper will trace a brief sequence of topological formulations to draw together the expression of topology as form and its structural dimension as a methodology in the specific context of the author���s studio practice. In so doing, this paper seeks to expand the notion of topology in art beyond its association with Conceptual Art of the 1960s and 70s to propose that topology provides a dynamic theoretical model for apprehending the generative ���logic��� that gives direction and continuity to the art-making process.

100 futures now : designing sustainable futures

This presentation tells the story of an initiative in middle schooling at Kelvin Grove State College that begins in the Art studios, but reaches out to other disciplines and approaches, and to community and industry partners. It is inspired by the potential of 'future thinking' to become a compelling focus in contemporary art and design. Ethically it espouses a simple premise": every student in our classrooms now has a stake in creating livable, democratic and creative futures. Every student has the potential to be an active force in making that future. "100 Futures Now" is a project that envisages creative and imaginative students working in collaboration with artists and designers to visualize amazing futures and communicate their vision through art and design. "100 Futures Now" is one in a series of innovative curriculum initiatives at Kelvin Grove State College designed to build sustainable practice in arts education with the support of partners in industry and universities and with resident artists and designers. The model blends elements of art and design methodology to focus on the critical and creative thinking skills prioritised in ACARA and 21st century curriculum. The organisers are developing a sustainable model for working with resident artists that goes beyond a single arts intervention or extension/enrichment experience. In this model artists and designers are collaborators in the design of learning experiences that support future programs. This model also looks to transfer the benefits of residencies to the wider school community (in this case to middle schooling curriculum) and to teachers in other curriculum areas, and not exclusively to the immediate target group. In "100 Futures Now", story-making is the engine that powers the creative process. For this reason the program uses a series of imaginative scenarios, including those of speculative fiction and science, as departure points for inquiry, and applies the methodologies of arts and design practice to explore and express student story telling and story making. The story-making responses of student teams will naturally be expressed multimodally through visual art, design artifacts, installation, performance and digital works. The project���s focus on narratives and its modes of communication (performance/installation) are inspired by the work of experimental contemporary design practices and the speculative scenarios of U.K. based designers Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. Thanks to the support of an Arts Queensland Artist-in -Residence grant in 2014, resident artists and designers who work with a diversity of ideas and approaches ranging over science, bio-ethics, biodiversity, behavior and ethics, ambient sound, urbanism, food, and wearable design, will work with middle school students as catalysts for deeper thinking and creative action. All these rich fields for future speculation will become triggers for team inquiry into the deeper connections between the past, the present, and future challenges such as climate, waste, energy, sustainability and resilience. These imagined futures will form the platform for a critical, sustainability/design futures approach that will involve questioning assumptions and empowering students as agents rather than consumers of change.

Talking across the fence : partners for art education

This presentation explores a model for building and sustaining secondary ��� tertiary partnerships in Arts education. It traces the evolution of partner relationships in a challenging educational landscape, assesses the value of dialogue between educators, design professionals and community stakeholders, and tells the story of a particular secondary ��� tertiary partnership exploring new pedagogy in Art and Design, between Kelvin Grove State College, the School of Design Creative Industries Faculty of QUT, and the Design Minds program of the State Library of Queensland. Among other benefits, tertiary and industry partners have brought a myriad of diverse voices into the classrooms, enabled the direct interaction of learners with tertiary student mentors, and with art and design practitioners. The working model has also now matured into formal and informal partner agreements that help guarantee its viability into the future. This presentation, which deals with the opening of new terrain between committed partners, is also the story of how design has gradually been integrated in the curriculum, enriching and expanding the repertoire of Art programs, and how one Visual Art Faculty in a large inner city Brisbane School has adopted design thinking and ���metadesign��� as a model for future innovation. From the process of interaction and dialogue among educators and practitioners over several years has emerged a conviction that both partnering and design pedagogy are key tools in developing forward thinking curriculum for the Arts. In addition, hammering out a model that works for students across different year levels and in diverse settings by putting ideas into practice and micro-managing this process in studios and workshops has challenged teachers to rethink their own Art pedagogy. Finally, in the ecosystem of Schools and in the wider systems that are now driving change in education, survival for the Arts may depend on the networking and affirmation derived from innovating partners. Our story, the story of committed individuals who have sustained a dialogue across boundaries, may provide a valuable model for other arts educators fighting to retain agency in their schools.

Future perfect

"Future Perfect" is a solo artist exhibition featuring a 9 channel video installation, which is comprised of looped computer animation projections. In the first room, the big one, there are nine projections of looped computer animations. Many of these look like representations of gallery spaces containing sculptures, including rotating interpenetrating discs, bouncing coloured coffins, and jostling cardboard cubes (the cubes are blank, then covered in drawings, then covered in photographic imagery). In one video, a man and a woman walk towards one another but never get together. In the second room, an animated video on a flatscreen suggests an origin story. The subtitles tell how, in Russia, my great-grandfather made a joke about Stalin's child bride that cost him his life. That one isn���t a loop; it has a beginning, middle, and end. Lying on the floor, in front of the video, are two slightly crumpled mural prints of photographs of the ocean. There's also a clear Perspex cloud shape on a wall. Viewers will see themselves reflected in it, as if it were a distant hovering mirage. The first room of the exhibition, where objects are set in perpetual motion, is about departure. The second room registers some sense of arrival. The future perfect implies looking back on something that hasn't happened yet; future and past are conflated and the present is somehow deferred. The future perfect combines anticipation and reflection, and it relates to my interest in combining 3-D animation with other mediums like drawing, painting, and shot video. In my work, the virtual and actual coexist in tension, just like experience and expectation in the future perfect.

Permanent shift: the topology of Didier Vermeiren's Cariatide �� la Pierre

Photographic documentation of sculpture produces significant consequences for the way in which sculptural space is conceived. When viewed as discrete mediums the interaction of the photograph and its sculptural subject is always framed by notions of loss. However, when taken as a composite system, the sculpture-photograph proposes a new ontology of space. In place of the fixity of medium, we can observe a topology at play: a theory drawn from mathematics in which space is understood not as a static field but in terms of properties of connectedness, movement and differentiation. Refracted through the photographic medium, sculpture becomes not a field of fixed points in space, but rather as a fluid set of relations - a continuous sequence of multiple ���surfaces���, a network of shifting views. This paper will develop a topological account of studio practice through an examination of the work of the contemporary Belgian sculptor Didier Vermeiren (b. 1951). Since the 1980s, Vermeiren has made extensive use of photography in his sculptural practice. By analysing a series of iterations of his work Cariatide �� la Pierre (1997-1998), this paper proposes that Vermeiren���s use of photography reveals patterns of connection that expand and complicate the language of sculpture, while also emphasising the broader topology of the artist���s practice as a network of ���backward glances��� to previous works from the artist���s oeuvre and the art-historical canon. In this context, photography is not simply a method of documentation, but rather a means of revealing the intrinsic condition of sculpture as medium shaped by dynamic patterns of connection and change. In Vermeiren���s work the sculpture-photograph, has a composite identity that exceeds straightforward categories of medium. In their place, we can observe a practice based upon the complex interactions of objects whose ontology is always underpinned by a certain contingency. It is in this fundamental mobility, that the topology of Vermeiren���s practice can be said to rest.

Double blind: Supervising women as creative practice-led researchers

Many women creative practice-led researchers appear inhibited by a number of factors directly connected to their gender. This paper discusses these factors, including the culture of visual arts professional practice, the circumstances surrounding women postgraduate students, and unproductive self-theories about intelligence and creativity. A number of feminist strategies are discussed as potential interventions that may assist women creative practice-led researchers and their supervisors to reap more personal and professional rewards from their postgraduate research.

Pars pro toto: Experimental exhibition design and curatorial paradigms

'Pars pro toto: Experimental Exhibition Design and Curatorial Paradigms' is situated within the ongoing debate over the conflation of art and curating, and the subsequent tension between artistic autonomy and curatorial intervention. This practice-led research project acclimates these polarities using a collaborative and discursive curatorial methodology in the creation of two exhibitions. Both exhibitions, one digital and one primarily physical, investigated how the temporary exhibition can operate as a site for provocation, how the suggested methodology facilitates the relationship between artist and curator within this paradigm, and outlines factors that assist in expanding the definition of the contemporary curatorial role.

Sepulchre

The work in Sepulchre (2015) came from my research into female ritual practices and my fascination with specific mythological and historical narratives. These themes were explored during a month-long Summer Residency at Boxcopy Contemporary Artspace. Of particular note were the chronicles and rituals from the terrain around the Adriatic Sea, including Greece and Italy. During the residency, I kept referring to specific mythological texts, which had women as the main protagonists. I kept returning to female characters whose representation was framed by aspects of their sexuality. When looking at these women together, they seemed to sit within a greater narrative archetype, a communal dialogue of shared characteristics, repetitious narrative components and mutual landscapes. Sepulchre became my attempt to develop a conversation between these women by drawing from their commonality, and reimagining these collective elements into sculptural objects and moving images. The video explores an apotropaic gesture, a Baubo-style ���flashing���. A glass star chart rests on white cliffs, speaking to the narrative of Andromeda and her position as both a celestial and terrene landscape. Another object, a wall mounted copper light burst, pays homage to the framing device used by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. By reconciling these dialogues, I was interested in exploring expanded portrayals of female sexuality and depictions of subversive and authorial femininity, developed through connotations with mysticism, ritual practice and women���s knowledge.

Stillness: A meditation in new media art

While technology is often seen as a noisy, impatient and pervasive aspect of our lives, this practice-led research project investigated the counter proposition���that we might be able to evoke sensations of stillness through technology-mediated artworks. Investigations into stillness were informed by Buddhism, phenomenology, and experiences of meditation and the practice of archery. By combining visual art, performance, installation, video and interaction design, a series of experimental, interdisciplinary artworks were produced and exhibited to evoke a sense of stillness and to impel audiences to consider the form and nature of stillness in relation to time, space and motion.

Catacoustics

'Catacoustics' was an exhibition of sculptural assemblages and photographs that continues my exploration of self-portraiture and the sculptural object. The exhibition was presented as part of the 2015 MetroArts curated exhibition program (Curator: Amy-Clare McCarthy). The work specifically extends the formal vocabulary of my studio practice to incorporate a replica casting of the Ian Fairweather memorial rock at Bribie Island, Queensland. The resulting casts are combined with a series of heptagonal forms derived from the memorial plinth and other sundry components taken from previous exhibitions.,The final arrangement of this diverse field of elements are determined in part by their formal properties (e.g. their capacity to nest, prop, balance, support each other) frequently also taking the horizontal/vertical and the orientation of surrounding walls as formal cues. In so doing, the body of work acts as a manifestation of object-agency. Within this studio methodology, practice is theorised as a site for the interplay of non-human agents. The resulting exhibition thus acts a meditation on the ontology of art practice, conceived as a 'topology' - a fluid network of relationships forged largely by objects.