Transiting with the environment: an exploration of traveller’s reorientations as creative and collaborative practice

Travellers undertake a process of reorientation and realignment that is particular to each destination. This process intensifies when travelling long distances across borders, cultures and climates, as travellers utilise performative, embodied and creative methods that respond to each new environment. Certain destinations, such as those with unique and extreme natural environments, induce a socio-cultural imaginary that primes travellers for what kind of experience they might have. Large, immersive landscapes and climates congeal with expectations of what each destination requires in order to navigate through it. Common bearings of distance and scale are skewed, as travellers are positioned within areas of vastness. In these moments immersive experiences contrast with daily processes, such as the act of packing a bag, as this heightened sensory awareness exacerbates the subtle material and spatial negotiations. Utilising interviews and photographic documentation of travellers to Iceland and Nepal, this paper develops the proposal that certain destinations intensify our attunement to these moments of reorientation, facilitating situated and creative methods.

As recent developments in the fields of mobilities and tourism draws attention to material interactions during travel, and current ‘new materialism’ movements in theory and practice reveal alternative affective methods of engagement, an exploration of interactions with/in immersive sites is needed in order to evaluate the potential that these kinds of transitions offer everyday experiences of movement. Nigel Thrift’s proposition of Non-Representational Theory provides clarity on the ways in which spatial awareness influences such transitions and environmental experiences. Using his acknowledgement of a more ontologically driven responsiveness to space, this permits a shift away from the presupposed containment of spaces as isolated destinations, toward a relational spatiality that encompasses all actors – including environments – as vital elements in the generative processes of situating our movements.

Creative strategies that afford sensory, aesthetic and embodied performances provide ways to examine these experiences, providing a multitude of possibilities as individual experiences shift towards collective and collaborative performances, as we are immersed within a range of human and non-human actors. This paper explores the transition away from ‘consuming’ environments, and advocates for the need to turn towards a situated collaboration with environments, propelling an awareness of sustainable and creative travel practices. An understanding of affirmative differences is required within travel cultures, rather than expressing transitions as confined within the ‘home’ versus ‘away’ dichotomy that lingers from elite western travel narratives. In order to undertake the many movements required, this paper draws on the theoretical approaches of sustainable nomadism as described by Rosi Braidotti to highlight the linkages of environmental and bodily experiences.

Through multidisciplinary literature, interviews and personal reflections, this paper proposes that certain destinations amplify processes of alignment with the environment, developing affective, embodied and situated experiences that overcome the human/non-human divide.

Reproduction game demo

An 8 screen stereoscopic 3D Multi-user environment set in a circular formation. Paticipants are tracked by 8 kinect sensors as they move around the 360 degree installation. Participants inherit a species upon entering. Artificial Life based entities cluster towards the human particpants of their species and their songs evolve according to the interactions.

How are Australian higher education institutions contributing to change through innovative teaching and learning in virtual worlds?

Over the past decade, teaching and learning in virtual worlds has been at the forefront of many higher education institutions around the world. The DEHub Virtual Worlds Working Group (VWWG) consisting of Australian and New Zealand higher education academics was formed on 2009. These educators are investigating the role that virtual worlds play in the future of education and actively changing the direction of their own teaching practice and curricula. 47 academics reporting on 28 Australian higher education institutions present an overview of how they have changed directions through the effective use of virtual worlds for diverse teaching and learning activitiessuch as business scenarios and virtual excursions, role-play simulations, experimentation and language development. The case studies offer insights into the ways in which institutions are continuing to change directions in their teaching to meet changing demands for innovative teaching, learning and research in virtual worlds. This paper highlights the ways in which the authors are using virtual worlds to creat opportunities for rich, immersive and authentic activities that would be difficult or not possible to achieve through traditional approaches

Inspirited landscapes: the anthology project

 

Patient deterioration education: Evaluation of face-to-face simulation and e-simulation approaches

Background: Simulation-based education is one strategy that may be used to teach nursing students to recognize and manage patient deterioration. Method: Final-year preregistration nursing students (n=97) completed three face-to-face laboratory-based team simulations with a simulated patient (actor) and 330 students individually completed a three-scenario Web-based simulation program: FIRST2ACTWeb™. Results: Both groups achieved moderate performance scores (means: face to face, 49%; e-simulation, 69%). Course evaluations were positive, skill gain showing a greater effect size in the face-to-face program than for e-simulation, and higher satisfaction and more positive appraisal. Conclusion: Face-to-face simulation and e-simulation are effective educational strategies with e-simulation offering greater feasibility. Either strategy is likely to add value to the learning experience.

Anthology

This research is a practice led investigation of large-scale site specific performance installation works that respond to local and historical trauma, place making, and belonging for communities and audiences. The research is part of an ongoing PhD which is primarily questioning how layers of history and lived experience manifest or ‘imprint’ upon natural landscapes and urban sites using the driving concepts of landscape, archaeology, and community immersion to inform the practice. The site of the primary research investigation was Anthology www.anthology.net.au- a major site-specific theatrical journey through Westlake, now known as Stirling Park – Ngunawal land, a traditional pathway and the site of one of the camps created to house the workers building the new city of Canberra. Tents and a hall were erected followed by 61 cottages built in 1923, for married tradesmen building the infrastructure for the new Federal Capital of Australia. These families lived at Westlake for 50 years until the 1960’s when the families were relocated, the houses sold and removed. A community demolished. Westlake is now parkland (and prime real estate), nestled between the lake and the Embassies of Yarralumla. The event took place between 26th November and the 6th December 2014. The performance installation was created and produced over a 3-year period with $45,000.00 in funding provided by ArtsACT and the Centenary of Canberra. Anthology alluded to the power of immersive, site-sympathetic performance as a regenerative force for communities right now. What lies in wait for artists in sites, in places…to be uncovered…with its final form revealed through careful excavation? Anthology centralised rituals of remembrance and the importance of place as vital to the restoration and regeneration of community through processing and transcending what has been lost, hidden, suppressed or in the case of Westlake or Stirling Park ‘vanished’.

Interactive exploration of data with visual metaphors

Visual Analytics (VA) is an approach to data analysis by means of visual manipulation of data representation, which relies on innate human abilities of perception and cognition. Even though current visual toolkits in the Business Analytics (BA) domain have improved the effectiveness of data exploration, analysis and reporting, their features are often not intuitive, and can be confusing and difficult to use. Moreover, visualizations generated from these toolkits are mostly accessible to specialist users. Thus, there is a need for analytic environments that support data exploration, interpretation and communication of insight that do not add to the cognitive load of the analyst and their non-technical clients. In this conceptual paper, we explore the potential of primary metaphors, which arise out of human lived and sensory-motor experiences, in the design of immersive visual analytics environments. Primary metaphors provide ideas for representation of time, space, quantity, similarity, actions and team work. Using examples developed in our own work, we also explain how to combine such metaphors to create complex and cognitively acceptable visual metaphors, such as 3D data terrains that approximate our intuition of reality and create opportunities for data to be viewed, navigated, explored, touched, changed, discussed, reported and described to others, individually or collaboratively.

Using iTextbook as an alternate frontend to learning management systems

Learning management systems (LMS) have been a popular tool for delivery of learning content as well as the management of learners and courses. In recent years, the ubiquity of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets has seen the increased popularity of using them to consume eBooks. While the LMS is popular among administrators, accessing content on mobile devices appear to be the preference of our learners. Furthermore, there are reports on a number of shortcomings with learners using the LMS, e.g., the experience of using LMSes on mobile devices falling short and learners are less engaged interacting with the LMS than with their mobile devices, etc. In this paper, we investigate the idea of using eBooks as an alternative frontend for learners to interact with the LMS. A proof of concept eBook was developed for a data management course to showcase how content on the LMS can be deployed via the eBook interface while connecting our learners to the LMS for learning management. We find that this approach delivers a rich and immersive experience to our learners, as they would expect from their devices. The outcomes also gave us food for thought regarding how LMSes may evolve in the future.

Encountering the ‘other’: interpreting student experiences of a multi-sensory museum exhibition

The Immigration Museum Melbourne, Australia, launched the Identity: Yours, Mine, Ours exhibition in 2011. Aimed primarily at secondary school students, this long-term installation seeks to foster reflection on identity and belonging, as well as dialogue about racism, through an interactive, immersive museum experience. This paper describes a multi-method research project, which included narrative interviews, focus groups and video diaries with 47 Year 11–12 students from three secondary schools in Victoria, Australia, and discusses each method's contribution to an overall empirical understanding of the installation's impact on students' experiences. Emerging findings suggest the ways in which the exhibition space supports students to encounter and engage with individual stories and experiences, thus moving beyond an abstract tolerance of cultural diversity by unsettling the self and destabilising stereotyped and prejudiced interpretations of the ‘other’. The paper concludes by discussing the potential for triangulated qualitative approaches to provide rich emic perspectives on multi-sensory exhibitions.

Geo-identity, urban school choice and education campaigns for public schools

Educational campaigning has received little attention in the literature. This study investigates long-term and organised urban campaigns that are collectively lobbying the Victorian State Government in Australia, for a new public high school to be constructed in their suburb. A public high school is also known as a state school, government school, or an ordinary comprehensive school. It receives the majority of its funding from the State and Federal Australian Government, and is generally regarded as ‘free’ education, in comparison to a private school. Whilst the campaigners frame their requests as for a ‘public school’, their primary appeal is for a local school in their community. This study questions how collective campaigning for a locale-specific public school is influenced by geography, class and identity. In order to explore these campaigns, I draw on formative studies of middle-class school choice from an Australian and United Kingdom perspective (Campbell, Proctor, & Sherington, 2009; Reay, Crozier, & James, 2011). To think about the role of geography and space in these processes of choice, I look to apply Harvey’s (1973) theory of absolute, relational and relative space. I use Bourdieu (1999b) as a sociological lens that is attentive to “site effects” and it is through this lens that I think about class as a “collection of properties” (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 106), actualised via mechanisms of identity and representation (Hall, 1996; Rose, 1996a, 1996b). This study redresses three distinct gaps in the literature: first, I focus attention on a contemporary middle-class choice strategy—that is, collective campaigning for a public school. Research within this field is significantly under-developed, despite this choice strategy being on the rise. Second, previous research argues that certain middle-class choosers regard the local public school as “inferior” in some way (Reay, et al., 2011, p. 111), merely acting as a “safety net” (Campbell, et al., 2009, p. 5) and connected to the working-class chooser (Reay & Ball, 1997). The campaigners are characteristic of the middle-class school chooser, but they are purposefully and strategically seeking out the local public school. Therefore, this study looks to build on work by Reay, et al. (2011) in thinking about “against-the-grain school choice”, specifically within the Australian context. Third, this study uses visual and graphic methods in order to examine the influence of geography in the education market (Taylor, 2001). I see the visualisation of space and schooling that I offer in this dissertation as a key theoretical contribution of this study. I draw on a number of data sets, both qualitative and quantitative, to explore the research questions. I interviewed campaigners and attended campaign meetings as participant observer; I collected statistical data from fifteen different suburbs and schools, and conducted comparative analyses of each. These analyses are displayed by using visual graphs. This study uses maps created by a professional graphic designer and photographs by a professional photographer; I draw on publications by the campaigners themselves, such as surveys, reports and social media; but also, interviews with campaigners that are published in local or state newspapers. The multiple data sets enable an immersive and rich graphic ethnography. This study contributes by building on understandings of how particular sociological cohorts of choosers are engaging with, and choosing, the urban public school in Australia. It is relevant for policy making, in that it comes at a time of increasing privatisation and a move toward independent public schools. This study identifies cohorts of choosers that are employing individual and collective political strategies to obtain a specific school, and it identifies this cohort via explicit class-based characteristics and their school choice behaviours. I look to use fresh theoretical and methodological approaches that emphasise space and geography, theorising geo-identity and the pseudo-private school

Material damage: expanded cinema

Over a 35 year career de Bruyn’s bracing and immersive work has investigated legacies of trauma anddisplacement, dealing with the residue of the white Australia policy and his own experience ofchildhood migration to Australia from Holland.In recent years de Bruyn has presented his hand drawn 16mm animation films as performances, withde Bruyn manipulating the images live, and accompanying them with a live vocal soundtrack. returnsto Auckland to deliver an expanded cinema performance for 16mm projectors and voice.

The dawn of the dark ride at the amusement park

Plotting the evolution of the dark amusement park ride is important in understanding the hybrid nature of the entertainment industry we see today. This paper looks specifically at two amusement park rides and shows how they form an important landmark in the evolution of immersive technology. The investigation focuses on Pittsburgh's Old Mill Ride (1905) in the USA and Blackpool's River Caves (1907) in the UK. Two rides which were the first of their kind and represent the solidification of technical and conceptual approaches being developed on both sides of the pacific. Whilst these rides are mentioned in isolation in a small number of academic texts, their connection and importance in the timeline of popular media has been overlooked. A combination of field and historical research examines how these rides were unique and influenced other media that preceded them.

Woven

Woven was a visual exploration of 'Bloodlines' in the Australian landscape aligned with practice-led methodology exploring an intersection of landscape/archaeology and immersive performance.

Dirt Babylon

Construction of a school room installation and immersive performance as part of Dirt Babylon Glebe Park (commissioned by Robyn Archer for the Centenary of Canberra) in collaboration with Rebecca Rutter and ex- Splinters artists, November 2013

Exploring undergraduate nursing students' perceptions of working in aged care settings: a review of the literature

OBJECTIVES: To explore undergraduate nursing students' perceptions of working in the aged care setting through a review of the literature. DESIGN: A review of available literature relating to undergraduate nursing students' attitudes, perceptions and experiences in the aged care setting, or in the care of older adults. DATA SOURCES: CINAHL Plus with Full Text was the primary database used. Other databases include PsycINFO and Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition. REVIEW METHODS: Studies focused on undergraduate nursing students and their experiences in the aged care setting and on the perceptions and attitudes of nursing students toward older adults, were included. Studies that did not present an original study or those that did not meet the aim of the study were excluded from the review. RESULTS: Following removal of duplicates and exclusion of articles not meeting the aim of this paper, 24 articles remained. Three main themes emerged from the review of the literature: perceptions of aged care placement, attitudes to working in aged care, and experiences in aged care. CONCLUSION: The experiences of nursing students employed as undergraduate AINs in the aged care setting can provide an immersive clinical learning experience in preparation for their new graduate (NG) year. Furthermore, it is an opportunity to challenge ageist attitudes and instil core nursing values in novice nurses such as promoting compassionate care.