The practice of adaptation : turning fact and fiction into theatre

Adaptation of novels and other source texts into theatre has proven to be a recurring and popular form of writing through the ages. This study argues that as the theoretical discourse has moved on from outmoded notions of fidelity to original sources, the practice of adaptation is a method of re-invigorating theatre forms and inventing new ones. This practice-led research employed a tripartite methodology comprised of the writing of two play adaptations, participation by the author/researcher in their productions, and exegetical components focused on the development and deployment of analytical tools. These tools were derived from theoretical literature and a creative practice based on acquired professional artistry "learnt by doing" over a longstanding professional career as actor, director and writer. A suite of analytical tools was developed through the three phases of the first project, the adaptation of Nick Earls’ novel Perfect Skin. The tools draw on Cardwell’s "comparative analysis", which encompasses close consideration of generic context, authorial context and medium-specific context; and on Stam’s "mechanics of narrative": order, duration, frequency, the narrator and point of view. A third analytical lens was developed from an awareness of the significance of the commissioning brief and ethical considerations and obligations to the source text and its author and audience. The tripartite methodology provided an adaptation template that was applied to the writing and production of the second play Red Cap, which used factual and anecdotal sources. The second play’s exegesis (Chapter 10) analyses the effectiveness of the suite of analytical tools and the reception of the production in order to conclude the study with a workable model for use in the practice of adapting existing texts, both factual and fictional, for the theatre.

Conceptual fashion : design, practice and process

While Conceptual fashion design practices have been a pervasive influence in fashion since the early 1980s, there is little academic analysis that might explain how they are distinct from conventional fashion design practices. In addition, fashion practitioners have not historically contributed to fashion research. As a result, contemporary fashion practitioners have difficulty setting critical contexts and expanding their creative work as there is little relevant literature available from practitioner perspectives. This project uses practice-led research to develop a discourse for understanding Conceptual fashion design process and how it relates to more conventional fashion design practices. In this exegesis I use Conceptual art as a lens to expand understandings of Conceptual fashion and my own creative practice. This analysis demonstrates that there are valuable connections to be drawn between Conceptual art and Conceptual fashion practice. In particular, these connections reveal the differences between the way Conceptual and more conventional fashion designers relate to the conceptual and the visual in their design process. This exploration demonstrates that while fashion is a visual field, Conceptual fashion designers produce a more ‘intellectual’ type of fashion that uses the visual to communicate ideas that question the nature of fashion. I explore the relevance of these ideas through application and experimentation in my creative practice projects by drawing from systems and rules identified in the work of early Conceptual artists and contemporary Conceptual fashion designers.

Cloud computing : how does it differ from IT outsourcing and what are the implications for practice and research?

The purpose of this paper is to provide an evolutionary perspective of cloud computing (CC) by integrating two previously disparate literatures: CC and information technology outsourcing (ITO). We review the literature and develop a framework that highlights the demand for the CC service, benefits, risks, as well as risk mitigation strategies that are likely to influence the success of the service. CC success in organisations and as a technology overall is a function of (i) the outsourcing decision and supplier selection, (ii) contractual and relational governance, and (iii) industry standards and legal framework. Whereas CC clients have little control over standards and/or the legal framework, they are able to influence other factors to maximize the benefits while limiting the risks. This paper provides guidelines for (potential) cloud computing users with respect to the outsourcing decision, vendor selection, service-level-agreements, and other issues that need to be addressed when opting for CC services. We contribute to the literature by providing an evolutionary and holistic view of CC that draws on the extensive literature and theory of ITO. We conclude the paper with a number of research paths that future researchers can follow to advance the knowledge in this field.

Artscience in practice : exploring the critical and creative potentials of transdisciplinary art and science practice using a methodological and conceptual framework of creative becoming

In response to a growing interest in art and science interactions and transdisciplinary research strategies, this research project examines the critical and conceptual affordances of ArtScience practice and outlines a new experiential methodology for practice-lead research using a framework of creative becoming. In doing so, the study contributes to the field of ArtScience and transdisciplinary practice, by providing new strategies for creative development and critical enquiry across art and science.

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.

Rebuilding in Ranongga : reflecting on practice based research

Two hundred million people are displaced annually due to natural disasters with a further one billion living in inadequate conditions in urban areas. Architects have a responsibility to respond to this statistic as the effects of natural and social disasters become more visibly catastrophic when paired with population rise. The research discussed in this paper initially questions and considers how digital tools can be employed to enhance rebuilding processes, but still achieve sensitive, culturally appropriate and accepted built solutions. Secondly the paper reflects on the impact ‘real-world’ projects have on architectural education. Research aspirations encouraged an atypical ‘research by design’ methodology involving a focused case study in the recently devastated village Keigold, Ranongga, Solomon Islands. Through this qualitative approach specific place data and the accounts of those affected were documented through naturalistic and archival methods of observation and participation. Findings reveal a number of unanticipated results which would have been otherwise undetected if field research within the design and rebuilding process was not undertaken, reflecting the importance of place specific research in the design process. Ultimately, the study proves that it is critical for issues of disaster to be addressed on a local rather than global scale; decisions cannot be speculative, or solved at a distance, but require intensive collaborative work with communities to achieve optimum solutions. Architectural education and design studios would continue to benefit from focused community engagement and field research within the design process.

Acquiring ‘doctorateness’ in the creative industries : an Australian perspective on professional research doctorates

Over the last two decades, particularly in Australia and the UK, the doctoral landscape has changed considerably with increasingly hybridised approaches to methodologies and research strategies as well as greater choice of examinable outputs. This paper provides an overview of doctoral practices that are emerging in the creative industries context, from a predominantly Australian perspective, with a focus on practice-led approaches within the Doctor of Philosophy and recent developments in professional doctorates. The paper examines some of the diverse theoretical principles which foreground the practitioner/researcher, methodological approaches that incorporate tacit knowledge and reflective practice together with qualitative strategies, blended learning delivery modes, and flexible doctoral outputs;and how these are shaping this shifting environment towards greater research-based industry outputs. The discussion is based around a single extended case study of the Doctor of Creative Industries at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) as one model of an interdisciplinary professional research doctorate.

Ambivalent realities : postcolonial experiences in contemporary visual arts practice

This practice-led research project investigates how new postcolonial conditions require new methods of critique to fully engage with the nuances of real world, 'lived' experiences. Framed by key aspects of postcolonial theory, this project examines contemporary artists' contributions to investigations of identity, race, ethnicity, otherness and diaspora, as well as questions of locality, nationality, and transnationality. Approaching these issues through the lens of my own experience as an artist and subject, it results in a body of creative work and a written exegesis that creatively and critically examine the complexities, ambiguities and ambivalences of the contemporary postcolonial condition.

Beyond actuality : locating an authentic hybridity between heterogeneous media in an installation art practice

Addressing possibilities for authentic combinations of diverse media within an installation setting, this research tested hybrid blends of the physical, digital and temporal to explore liminal space and image. The practice led research reflected on creation of artworks from three perspectives – material, immaterial and hybrid – and in doing so, developed a new methodological structure that extends conventional forms of triangulation. This study explored how physical and digital elements each sought hierarchical presence, yet simultaneously coexisted, thereby extending the visual and conceptual potential of the work. Outcomes demonstrated how utilising and recording transitional processes of hybrid imagery achieved a convergence of diverse, experiential forms. "Hybrid authority" – an authentic convergence of disparate elements – was articulated in the creation and public sharing of processual works and the creation of an innovative framework for hybrid art practice.

Medium and mode : relationships between visual experience and perception in an installation arts practice

Working primarily within the natural landscape, this practice-led research project explored connections between the artist's visual and perceptual experience of a journey or place while simultaneously emphasizing the capacity for digital media to create a perceptual dissonance. By exploring concepts of time, viewpoint, duration of sequences and the manipulation of traditional constructs of stop-frame animation, the practical work created a cognitive awareness of the elements of the journey through optical sensations. The work allowed an opportunity to reflect on the nature of visual experience and its mediation through images. The project recontextualized the selected mediums of still photography, animation and projection within contemporary display modes of multiple screen installations by analysing relationships between the experienced and the perceived. The resulting works added to current discourse on the interstices between still and moving imagery in a digital world.

ADSA Performance as Research Guidelines

The relationships between performance, research and scholarship in drama, theatre and performance studies have been of critical importance to ADSA and its members for more than two decades now. The ADSA Performance as Research Guidelines offer a comprehensive articulation of policies, approaches, practices, and issues impacting on the production of performance as research, particularly advise on producing performance as research in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.

Designing fashion : an exploration of practitioner research within the university environment

This thesis positions practitioner research within the emerging discipline of fashion and disputes that practitioner knowledge of fashion is predominantly tacit. This research contributes to the understanding of practitioner knowledge and proposes an object based model of practitioner research as an alternative to existing practice-led methodologies. The thesis theorises fashion objects as a site of significant knowledge and argues their potential to record and communicate fashion knowledge and disseminate practice-led research.

Writing embodied practice from the inside : outside the exegesis

The textual turn is a good friend of expert spectating, where it assumes the role of writing-productive apparatus, but no friend at all of expert practices or practitioners (Melrose, 2003). Introduction The challenge of time-based embodied performance when the artefact is unstable As a former full-time professional practitioner with an embodied dance practice as performer, choreographer and artistic director for three decades, I somewhat unexpectedly entered the world of academia in 2000 after completing a practice-based PhD, which was described by its examiners as ‘pioneering’. Like many artists my intention was to deepen and extend my practice through formal research into my work and its context (which was intercultural) and to privilege the artist’s voice in a research world where it was too often silent. Practice as research, practice-based research, and practice-led research were not yet fully named. It was in its infancy and my biggest challenge was to find a serviceable methodology which did not betray my intentions to keep practice at the centre of the research. Over the last 15 years, practice led doctoral research, where examinable creative work is placed alongside an accompanying (exegetical) written component, has come a long way. It has been extensively debated with a range of theories and models proposed (Barrett & Bolt, 2007, Pakes, 2003 & 2004, Piccini, 2005, Philips, Stock & Vincs 2009, Stock, 2009 & 2010, Riley & Hunter 2009, Haseman, 2006, Hecq, 2012). Much of this writing is based around epistemological concerns where the research methodologies proposed normally incorporate a contextualisation of the creative work in its field of practice, and more importantly validation and interrogation of the processes of the practice as the central ‘data gathering’ method. It is now widely accepted, at least in the Australian creative arts context, that knowledge claims in creative practice research arise from the material activities of the practice itself (Carter, 2004). The creative work explicated as the tangible outcome of that practice is sometimes referred to as the ‘artefact’. Although the making of the artefact, according to Colbert (2009, p. 7) is influenced by “personal, experiential and iterative processes”, mapping them through a research pathway is “difficult to predict [for] “the adjustments made to the artefact in the light of emerging knowledge and insights cannot be foreshadowed”. Linking the process and the practice outcome most often occurs through the textual intervention of an exegesis which builds, and/or builds on, theoretical concerns arising in and from the work. This linking produces what Barrett (2007) refers to as “situated knowledge… that operates in relation to established knowledge” (p. 145). But what if those material forms or ‘artefacts’ are not objects or code or digitised forms, but live within the bodies of artist/researchers where the nature of the practice itself is live, ephemeral and constantly transforming, as in dance and physical performance? Even more unsettling is when the ‘artefact’ is literally embedded and embodied in the work and in the maker/researcher; when subject and object are merged. To complicate matters, the performing arts are necessarily collaborative, relying not only on technical mastery and creative/interpretive processes, but on social and artistic relationships which collectively make up the ‘artefact’. This chapter explores issues surrounding live dance and physical performance when placed in a research setting, specifically the complexities of being required to translate embodied dance findings into textual form. Exploring how embodied knowledge can be shared in a research context for those with no experiential knowledge of communicating through and in dance, I draw on theories of “dance enaction” (Warburton, 2011) together with notions of “affective intensities” and “performance mastery” (Melrose, 2003), “intentional activity” (Pakes, 2004) and the place of memory. In seeking ways to capture in another form the knowledge residing in live dance practice, thus making implicit knowledge explicit, I further propose there is a process of triple translation as the performance (the living ‘artefact’) is documented in multi-facetted ways to produce something durable which can be re-visited. This translation becomes more complex if the embodied knowledge resides in culturally specific practices, formed by world views and processes quite different from accepted norms and conventions (even radical ones) of international doctoral research inquiry. But whatever the combination of cultural, virtual and genre-related dance practices being researched, embodiment is central to the process, outcome and findings, and the question remains of how we will use text and what forms that text might take.

Using strengths-based approaches in early years practice and research

Strengths-based approaches draw upon frameworks and perspectives from social work and psychology but have not necessarily been consistently defined or well articulated across disciplines. Internationally, there are increasing calls for professionals in early years settings to work in strengths-based ways to support the access and participation of all children and families, especially those with complex needs. The purpose of this paper is to examine a potential promise of innovative uses of strengths-based approaches in early years practice and research in Australia, and to consider implications for application in other national contexts. In this paper, we present three cases (summarised from larger studies) depicting different applications of the Strengths Approach, under pinned by collaborative inquiry at the interface between practice and research. Analysis revealed three key themes across the cases: (i) enactment of strengths-based principles, (ii) the bi-directional and transformational influences of the Strengths Approach (research into practice/practice into research), and (iii) heightened practitioner and researcher awareness of, and responsiveness to, the operation of power. The findings highlight synergies and challenges to constructing and actualising strengths-based approaches in early years childhood research and practice. The case studies demonstrate that although constructions of what constitutes strengths-based research and practice requires ongoing critical engagement, redefining, and operationalising, using strengths-based approaches in early years settings can be generative and worthwhile.

Scenographic practice in contemporary chamber theatre

This research study explores the practice of scenography in contemporary chamber theatre. The practice-led approach allowed for the exploration of theoretical insights around scenography (the arrangement of the performance space, lighting, sound, design, objects and performers) in chamber theatre, directly resulting in the creation and staging of a new theatre work, 'A Tribute of Sorts'. The production was directed by the researcher and staged in two professional theatre companies, Queensland Theatre Company and La Boite Theatre Company in Queensland, Australia. The study investigated if the scenographic components of the chamber theatre performance could be employed as a machine that operates according to its own logic of operations, psycho-plastic manipulations, and metatheatricality. By doing so, testing if the scenography becomes a dramaturgy that contributes to spectorial meaning-making in and of itself.