Catherine or Kate : the tertiary spaces of collaboration, performance and humour in contemporary art

The traditional model of visual arts practice is one that privileges highly individuated and predominantly material investigations and outcomes. This approach overlooks and devalues the formal and informal dialogues and collaborations that take place in the process of making art. This Masters research project considers how the experience of working in collaboration can generate a new model for thinking about practice-led methodologies in visual arts. It aims to do this by mapping out and elaborating on the processes and approaches to making that fellow Masters student Catherine Sagin and I have come to use in our alliance as ‘Fiona Mail’, ‘Catherine Sagin’ and ‘Catherine or Kate’ respectively. The fluidity of our collaborative moniker is one example of the way this project creatively explores and re-assesses the implications of collaboration. Drawing upon the contextual frames of conceptual art, performance art, and comedy this research looks at the significance of and possibilities for working as a collaborative duo.

Catherine or Kate, the royal name dilemma : humour and performance in collaborative art practice

The traditional model of visual arts practice is one that privileges highly individuated reflection and research on studio based, predominately material outcomes. This archetypal approach to thinking about cultural production tends to overlook all of the conceptual and contextual collaborations that take place, both informally and formally in the process of making artworks. The aim of this practice-led research project is to creatively and critically explore the potential for actively engaging in a collaborative process for making artworks. It will focus on this approach to research and making through performance and video based works made in conjunction with Kate Woodcroft. Through doing this it aims to explore the possibilities for thinking and working beyond singular, materially based practices and develop new understandings for this as a model for generating new and unexpected creative outcomes. Key departure points for this discussion include; tertiary performance, conceptual art, and humour.

Exploring the Roles of Technology and Social Play in Art Museums

This co-written chapter was included in an edited book featuring invited authors from different countries and different areas of museum research and practice. The chapter uses a theory of play by Johan Huizinga (1938) to frame case studies of play-based interactive experiences in museums in various countries. The aim was to use theory to ground museum practice, in order to evaluate existing practical implementations as well as to inform the design of new ones. The book was nominated as one of the 10 best museum education books of 2011 by Museum Education Monitor, and the chapter led to a subsequent technology residency the author undertook in the Spike Island gallery, Bristol in 2012, funded by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, Arts and Humanities Research Council and Arts Council England. It also informed his subsequent postgraduate teaching, an example of which is a recent MA project, which deconstructs play from a computational perspective. Collaborations have continued with the co-author, which have resulted in a number of invited lectures. In this chapter the authors explore play as a structure for supporting visitor learning, drawing from international research in museums and interaction design. Four aspects of play first proposed by Huizinga are explored – the free-choice aspect of play, play as distinct from real life, play as an ordering structure, and the role of play in bridging communities. The chapter argues that play provides museums with ready-made structures and concepts, which can help planning for visitor learning. The research was equally divided between the co-authors, who developed the conceptual and theoretical aspects of the article by drawing on their own research alongside key examples of museum design and digital media.

Sustainability performance of construction : conceptual models of satisfaction levels in construction projects

In general, the performance of construction projects, including their sustainability performance, does not meet optimal expectations. One aspect of this is the performance of the participants who are independent and make a significance impact on overall project outcomes. Of these participants, the client is traditionally the owner of the project, the architect or engineer is engaged as the lead designer and a contractor is selected to construct the facilities. Generally, the performance of the participants is gauged by considering three main factors, namely, time, cost and quality. As the level of satisfaction is a subjective issue, it is rarely used in the performance evaluation of construction work. Recently, various approaches to the measurement of satisfaction have been made in an attempt to determine the performance of construction project outcomes - for instance, client satisfaction, customer satisfaction, contractor satisfaction, occupant satisfaction and home buyer satisfaction. These not only identify the performance of the construction project but are also used to improve and maintain relationships. In addition, these assessments are necessary for the continuous improvement and enhanced cooperation of participants. The measurement of satisfaction levels primarily involves expectations and perceptions. An expectation can be regarded as a comparative standard of different needs, motives and beliefs, while a perception is a subjective interpretation that is influenced by moods, experiences and values. This suggests that the disparity between perceptions and expectations may possibly be used to represent different levels of satisfaction. However, this concept is rather new and in need of further investigation. This chapter examines the methods commonly practised in measuring satisfaction levels today and the advantages of promoting these methods. The results provide a preliminary review of the advantages of satisfaction measurement in the construction industry and recommendations are made concerning the most appropriate methods to use in identifying the performance of project outcomes.

Integrating customer orientation, employee compensation and performance management: A conceptual framework

Compensation systems are an essential tool to link corporate goals such as customer orientation with individual and organisational performance. While some authors demonstrate the positive effects of incorporating nonfinancial measures into the compensation system empirically, companies have encountered problems after linking pay to customer satisfaction. We argue that reasons for this can be attributed to the measurement of customer satisfaction as well as to the missing link between customer satisfaction and customer retention and profitability in theses cases. Hence, there is a strong need for the development of an holistic reward and performance measurement model enabling an organisation to identify cause-and-effect relationships when linking rewards to nonfinancial performance measures. We present a conceptual framework of a success chain driven reward system that enables organisations to systematically derive a customer-oriented reward strategy. In the context of performance evaluation, we propose to rely on integrated and multidimensional measurement methods.

Expected Performance of the ATLAS Experiment - Detector, Trigger and Physics

A detailed study is presented of the expected performance of the ATLAS detector. The reconstruction of tracks, leptons, photons, missing energy and jets is investigated, together with the performance of b-tagging and the trigger. The physics potential for a variety of interesting physics processes, within the Standard Model and beyond, is examined. The study comprises a series of notes based on simulations of the detector and physics processes, with particular emphasis given to the data expected from the first years of operation of the LHC at CERN.

Benefits of all work and no play: The relationship between neuroticism and performance as a function of resource allocation

The authors evaluate a model suggesting that the performance of highly neurotic individuals, relative to their stable counterparts, is more strongly influenced by factors relating to the allocation of attentional resources. First, an air traffic control simulation was used to examine the interaction between effort intensity and scores on the Anxiety subscale of Eysenck Personality Profiler Neuroticism in the prediction of task performance. Overall effort intensity enhanced performance for highly anxious individuals more so than for individuals with low anxiety. Second, a longitudinal field study was used to examine the interaction between office busyness and Eysenck Personality Inventory Neuroticism in the prediction of telesales performance. Changes in office busyness were associated with greater performance improvements for highly neurotic individuals compared with less neurotic individuals. These studies suggest that highly neurotic individuals outperform their stable counterparts in a busy work environment or if they are expending a high level of effort.

THE INTERPLAY PERFORMANCE PRACTICE: PLAY AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN LATE CAPITALISM

Practitioners of the performance form “InterPlay” utilize dance, storytelling and song to build community and generate social change. I elucidate how this community of practitioners conceptualizes “social change.” I argue that the InterPlay social movement organizes around the application of play to performances of self in everyday life. I explore how the InterPlay non-profit corporation, Body Wisdom Inc., employs this technique to address racial justice in its organizational practices. I also examine how practitioners understand their use of this performance play in places of work, concluding that—even in these endeavors—they see social change as a process immanent to both individual people and the systems they create, not as the intervention of an autonomous external power. Ultimately, I argue that, within late capitalism, play should no longer be conceptualized as an activity separate from everyday sociality but as an immanent process of change constitutive of a socioaesthetic domain.

Contemporary dramaturgy in theatre for young people : the conceptual shape of displacement and installation

This thesis investigates Theatre for Young People (TYP) as a site of performance innovation. The inquiry is focused on contemporary dramaturgy and its fieldwork aims to identify new dramaturgical principles operating in the creation and presentation of TYP. The research then seeks to assess how these new principles contribute to Postdramatic Theatre theory. This research inquiry springs from an imperative based in practice: Young people under 25 years have a literacy based on online hypertextual experiences which take the reader outside the frames of a dramatic narrative and beyond principles such as linearity, dramatic unity, teleology and resolution. As a dramaturg and educator I wanted to understand the new ways that young people engage in cultural products, to identify and utilize the new principles of dramaturgy that are now in evidence. My research examines how two playwright/directors approach their work and the new principles that can be identified in their dramaturgy. The fieldwork is scoped into two case studies: the first on TJ Eckleberg working in Australian Theatre for Young People and the second on Kristo Šagor working in German Children’s and Young People’s Theatre (KJT). These case studies address both types of production dramaturgy - the dramaturgy emergent through process in devised performance making, and that emergent in a performance based on a written playscript. On Case Study One the researcher, as participant observer, worked as production dramaturg on a large scale, site specific performance, observing the dramaturgy in process of its director and chief devisor. On Case Study Two the researcher, as observer and analyst, undertook a performance analysis of three playscripts and productions by a contemporary German playwright and director. Utilizing participant observation, reflective practice and grounded analysis the case studies have identified two new principles animating the dramaturgy of these TYP practitioners, namely ‘displacement’ and ‘installation.’ Taking practice into theory, the thesis concludes by demonstrating how displacement and installation contribute to Postdramatic Theatre’s “arsenal of expressive gestures which serve as theatre’s response to changed social communication under the conditions of generalized communication technologies” (Lehmann, H.-T., 2006, p.23). This research makes an original contribution to knowledge by evidencing that the principles of Postdramatic Theory lie within the practice of contemporary Theatre for Young People. It also contributes valuable research to a specialized, often overlooked terrain, namely Dramaturgy in Theatre for Young People, presented here with a contemporary, international and intercultural perspective.

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.