Renegade judgement : a study of madness in medicine and literature

Explores socio-historical understandings and treatments of madness, examining literary works alongside contemporary medical texts. Incorporating notions of scientific objectivity, individual subjectivity and social totality, the thesis shows conceptual overlaps between art and science, identifying continuities and conflicts between fictional, clinical and cultural investigations into madness.

Murray and Marx

Theory from Marx and related thinkers challenges interpretation of Les Murray's poetry. Topics discussed are: dialectics and dreams; death and its place in our lives; and poetry and religion. Using Marx, religious ideas are given meaning for our lives and thus, it is argued, interest and complexity is discovered in Murray's poetry.

Dora Lynnell Wilson (1883-1946) : a life in art

This thesis fills out Wilson's previously unresearched biography and argues for a reassessment of her standing as an important inter-war artist in Melbourne. The role of cultural gatekeepers in building and deconstructing artistic reputation is discussed, with examples of Wilson's art and an inaugural Catalogue of her known works.

Descartes on the human soul : philosophy and the demands of Christian doctrine

By the 17th century Catholic orthodoxy had defined a range of propositions concerning the human soul as revealed by God and verifiable by natural reason. The writings of Rene Descartes display a consistent adherence to these orthodox propositions. The conclusion presents him as ultimately unsuccesful in convincing his contemporaries that his philosophy provided the rational demonstration of the key soul doctrines and that he was worthy of the title "Christian philosopher"

Protecting public art

A documentation and discussion of the volunteer based Protect Public Art! pilot project that aims to create an inventory of culturally significant outdoor sculptures and monuments in Victoria, gauge community awareness of public art and outdoor cultural heritage and identify opportunities for future projects. It clearly shows that working with volunteers requires specialised knowledge and planning.

From the private to the public : a pilgrimage of symbols and metaphors

The marks and imagery that visual artists use to form images often consist of, or incorporate, elements of a visual symbolic language. When the artist's personal set of symbols aligns with that of the society in which the artist works it would be anticipated that the works produced could be readily interpreted and appreciated by that audience or society.

Revolt and discovery : towards an understanding of practice as research through Kristevan aesthetics

This paper will examine Kristeva’s conceptions of revolution and revolt to demonstrate the significance of her work for practitioners and researchers working in the emerging field of creative arts practice as research, a field of research that is burgeoning in the UK, Australia, Canada and Scandinavia. I will argue that Kristeva’ thought elaborates the aesthetic underpinnings of discovery and provides a rationale for the methodologies used in artistic research.

In her later work on interpretation, Kristeva places a greater emphasis on the need for analysis or theory, since the art and culture of revolt produce unfamiliar or mutant meanings that are difficult for audiences to grasp in terms of their potency for engendering social change and individual empowerment. However, she places the responsibility for this analysis and interpretation on the art critic. But what if (as is the case with the advent of artistic practice as research), the maker and the “critic” become one and the same? Can this shift in the status of artistic practice within the knowledge economy, be understood in terms of Kristeva account of the sense and nonsense of revolt? I will address these questions by revisiting aspects of Kristeva thinking on experience-in practice and examining her more recent and extended elaboration of revolutionary practice. The paper will explore how her thinking can provide practitioners with a framework for understanding creative arts research as the production of new knowledge. If as Kristeva argues, that art and literature are amongst the few means of revolt and renewal, it seems appropriate to turn to her thinking in order to articulate a rationale and argument for claiming that practice as research can operate as a driver of change and innovation in contemporary culture.

The first part of this task will involve tracing what Kristeva sees as three forms of revolt made possible through aesthetic experience. This will involve a closer examination of the notions of transgression and art as experience. Following on from this discussion, I will discuss how Kristeva’s work constitutes both an implicit and explicit critique of science allowing us to conceive of artistic research as an alternative and performative production of knowledge. Finally in this paper, I will apply and illustrate these ideas through an analysis of a selection of a number of research projects successfully completed by artistic researchers in Australia. I hope to show that artistic practice as a mode of enquiry, reveals the inextricable and necessary relationship between practice and theory, interpretation and making, art and life. I suggest that it is this interrelationship, that underpins what Kristeva describes as creative and revolutionary practice. In the context of creative arts practice as research, Kriteva’s account of experience–in-practice indicates that interpretation and analysis must fall to the practitioner-researcher himself or herself - rather than to another person who has been external to the procedures of making - to trace the significant experiential, subjective and emergent processes involved in the production of the work that allows it to reveal the new. This is necessary if the generative and revolutionary impact of artistic research is to be fully understood in the wider research arena.

Voice art

This study investigated people's ability to control changes in voice volume in order to create digital art. The results demonstrated that with practice, people without previous vocal training are able to improve control over their voice volume. However, it is not sufficient to create art.

A typology of operational approaches for stakeholder analysis and engagement : findings from Hong Kong and Australia

Stakeholder analysis and engagement are the main tasks in stakeholder management. To identify operational approaches for stakeholder analysis and engagement, six interviews and a questionnaire survey were conducted in Hong Kong, and an additional 15 interviews were held in Australia. The main finding is a typology of practical approaches for practitioners in construction. A total of 30 approaches are comprised in the typology, and they are classified by application. To test the usefulness of the typology, action research is applied to two real-life projects in Australia. The implication is that the selection of the approaches is an art and a contingency approach as well, requiring practitioners' judgments. Each approach has its strengths and limitations, so the most appropriate way for effective stakeholder management is to use a combination of elements from each approach as circumstances dictate. This study can serve as a reference for the systematic consideration of the project management team about the operational approaches for stakeholder management in construction projects.

Aesthetic experience and innovation in practice–led research

Within the context of ERA, this paper addresses the question of how we might provide practitioners with a framework for understanding creative arts research as the production of new knowledge. Drawing on the thought of Julia Kristeva, it examines the aesthetic underpinnings of discovery and the implications and significance of this for research training and the development of more effective pedagogies both within and beyond the university.
Kristeva’s work constitutes both an implicit and explicit critique of science allowing us to conceive of artistic research as an experiential and performative production of knowledge. As a mode of enquiry, artistic practice reveals the inextricable and necessary relationship between practice and theory, interpretation and making, art and life. This interrelationship underpins the aesthetic dimension of revolutionary practice and its production of unfamiliar or mutant forms of knowledge that is often difficult to grasp in terms of its capacity to engender social change and innovation. In the context of creative arts practice as research, the notion of experience-in-practice indicates that interpretation and analysis must fall to the practitioner-researcher, himself or herself, rather than to another person who has been external to the procedures of making, to trace the significant experiential, subjective and emergent processes involved in the production of the work that allows it to reveal the new. This is necessary if the generative and revolutionary impact of artistic research is to be fully understood in the wider research arena. In the final part of this paper, I will apply and illustrate these ideas through an analysis of a number of artistic research projects successfully completed in Australia.

Religiosity and subjective wellbeing in Christianity, Buddhism and Taoism

The relationship between three religions (Christianity, Buddhism and Taoism) and subjective wellbeing were studied. Religiosity and spirituality-religion satisfaction were significant predictors of subjective wellbeing. A new construct of religious self-esteem and a new scale of Christianity secondary control were found as useful in explaining subjective wellbeing.

Entrapping Christian and Muslim Arabs in racial cartoons in Australia : the other anti-semitism

Racial Cartoons are a powerful force disguised as entertainment operating to shape public opinion. During the 1980s, 1990s and after 9/11 in 2001, cartoons in the Australian press were particularly directed against Muslim and Christian Arabs without remorse or fear of redress or accountability. The offensive of such cartoons has essentially been directed on three fronts—oil, politics and religion. The drawback resulting from socio-cultural, historical and other differences are no doubt visible; but equally obvious is that anti-Semitism, which was directed against the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s, is today mostly directed against the public relations deprived, opinion silenced and undemocratically governed, ethnically diverse Arabs. It is argued in this paper that several forces were behind such distorted visual strategies adopted by the Australian press. Pre-judgement stemming from an inbuilt bias of the cartoonist, or highlighting characteristics which conform to the national interest are likely factors. The debate in Australia as to whether public images and attitudes of a minority “cause” or “determine” policy or whether policy itself changes attitudes is still resting with the jury.

Alchemy & ambiguity : poetic responses to visual art, primarily portraiture

The author critiques the contemporary definition of poetry responding to art (the verbal representation of visual representation), and shows that this process is unstable and introduces changes, and by this means the visual work of art and the poem complement each other to influence the viewer/reader to produce new meanings.

Diversity and architecture

Architecture can be defined as the art and tectonics of place making. The discipline of architecture involves a broad set of practices including design of the built environment, development of architectural projects either community~ based or oriented towards a (private) client, and advisory work for governments. Architecture also involves a wide spectrum of knowledge including urban design and urban planning, and a variety of architectural ideas, theories and movements. Various dominant ideologies have manifested themselves in built form, whereas other, marginal cultural parameters have emerged in the vernacular or traditional architecture. Architecture is considered the medium through which society is organised and materialised. It resonates with symbolic meaning as well as pragmatic order through built places.