RMIT UniversitySchool of ArtPostgraduate Art Research by Project项目型艺术类研究生

Currently, Australia is one of only a handful of countries in the world that validates the making of artworks as research by offering Postgraduate Research Degrees such as the Master of Art (Fine Art) (MA), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) and the Doctor of Fine Art (DFA). In Australian Universities there are as many variations of requirements for the completion and examination of a PhD or DFA by creative project as there are institutions, but generally most specify some kind of creative presentation such as an exhibition accompanied by a thesis or exegesis. Some universities privilege the textual document over the project, while some apportion a percentage of the total marks to the project and a percentage to the text. In the School of Art at RMIT University, the study for an MA, PhD or DFA culminates in an exhibition or performance of a comprehensive body of artworks accompanied by a visual record of the research – the Appropriate Durable Record (ADR) – and, for PhD and DFA, an exegesis, a document that sheds light on the history, theoretical concepts and technological issues, among others that underpin the creative work and lead to new thinking, making and theories.

目前，澳大利亚是世界上仅有的准许将制作艺术品作为其研究项目，并授予研究生学位的少数国家之一，比如授予文学硕士（美术）学位（MA），哲学博士研究生学位(PhD)及美术博士研究生学位(DFA)。在通过创意项目来完成和考核哲学博士研究生(PhD)和美术博士研究生(DFA)方面，澳大利亚各大学的诸多不同的要求和其他研究机构是一样的。但是，通常来讲，大部分大学要求有某种创意展示，比如附有研究论文或注释的展览。一些大学更看重论文，而不是项目，而另一些大学则将毕业论文和项目作品按照比例纪录到总成绩当中。在RMIT艺术学院，MA，PhD或DFA的学生最终将以一场展览或有影像记录的艺术品综合体作品表现（称为适当耐久记录即Appropriate Durable Record，简称ADR）来完成学业。而就PhD和DFA的学生而言，除此之外，还要有一个文本注释，讲述作为创意作品的基础并引致新思想，新创作和新理论的历史背景、理论概念及技术问题。

In the School of Art it is understood that the processes of undertaking the creative project – the experimental works and the testing of ideas right through to the finished artwork – is the research itself. We recognise that the manipulation of materials and the creation of artefacts encourages particular and novel ways of thinking, which lead to the generation of new knowledge and understanding. The consideration that the creative practice of the researcher can lead to new ways of thinking is at the heart of the pedagogy of postgraduate research in the School of Art at RMIT University.

在艺术学院里，我们的共识是：实行创意项目的过程，即从试验作品，构思的测试，到最终的作品，这本身就是一种研究过程。我们认识到材料的运用和艺术品的创新能够激发独特而又新颖的，能够导致新知识和理解领域的思维模式。研究者的创新实践能够引领新的思维模式，这一考虑也正是RMIT艺术学院研究生教学的核心所在。

Art has always been synonymous with originality and a sustained creative practice embodies investigation. When postgraduate students in the School of Art manipulate their chosen media, be they oil paint, precious metals, printmaking techniques, wood and plaster, sound recordings or photographs, they work through series of actions or processes that are tested against

self-determined criteria in the process of an investigation to achieve an envisaged outcome. All artists have reasons for the ways that they go about their practice but the postgraduate researcher is a conscious practitioner who sets out to realise an objective that has been defined in accordance with the question to be answered, for as with all research, the research question is central to the creative project.

艺术一向是原创性的同义词。艺术是一种包含研究探索在内的持续创意实践。当艺术学院的研究生对所选择的媒介进行加工时（不管这种媒介是油画、稀有金属、版画复制、木刻及石膏，录音还是照片），他们是用自己定的标准，通过研究探索，最后达到他们预想的结果。所有的艺术家对他们所进行的实践方法都有自己的解释，然后，从事研究的研究生是有意识的去实现一个目标，这个目标是根据需要回答的问题而设定的。因为和所有的研究一样，研究的问题是创意项目的核心。

The postgraduate researchers in the School of Art answer their research questions through the making of artwork and reveal the processes leading to the formation of an answer in both visual and textual formats – in the ADR and the exegesis respectively.

艺术学院的研究生通过创作作品来阐述他们研究的问题，并且分别在适当耐久记录和注释中以视像和文本格式来揭示答案形成的过程。

Postgraduate research study in the School of Art offers students studio based research options within a broad range of practices and disciplines.

艺术学院研究生课程还为研究生提供了可供选择的各种实践及学科的工作室。

The School of Art’s Postgraduate Research Programs are distinguished by their emphasis on practice-based research. Projects are underpinned by contemporary theory to extend the boundaries of knowledge and contribute to the cultural capital of the local and global community. Supervisors are recognised practitioners and experts in their field who provide a supportive yet challenging environment in which students can pursue individual programs of study within a studio or studios of their choice.

艺术学院的研究生研究课程因侧重于实践研究而突显其特色。各项目从当代理论出发，扩展知识面，并为地方和全球社会的文化宝库作出贡献。研究生导师是在其自身领域中公认的从业者和专家，他们为学生提供支持，也提供了具有挑战性的环境，在这个环境中学生可以通过在工作室或他们自己选择的工作室中从事个人的研究项目。

Associate Professor Lesley DuxburyPostgraduate Research Coordinator

School of ArtRMIT UniversityGPO Box 2476VMelbourne VIC 3001, Australia

phone: +61 3 9925 1988fax: +61 3 9925 3755email: artschool@rmit.edu.auurl: http://www.rmit.edu.au/art

Fleur SummersMISSING LINKS - Evolutionary theory as a model and scientific intervention as a strategy for artistic process and production

Master of Art (Fine Art) by project

Supervisors: Peter Cripps and Suzie Attiwill

Research Question: In what ways can a series of artist-made objects retain information pertaining to the construction process and a history of the process be elucidated through an objective, formal analysis using scientific methods?

Science and art are often posed as binary opposites or as bifurcated practices. Science is perceived as ‘hard’, analytical and systematic and art as ‘soft’, subjective and subject to chance. However, the strategic approaches of science and art have much in common. Both involve cycles of analysis and synthesis. Both involve techniques of observation, are creative and use abstract models to understand the world.

Abstract symbols and synthetic systems are common strategies in the production of scientific knowledge about natural phenomena. In particular fields, scientists are reliant on developing knowledge of the area by creating conceptual projections of invisible structures. This generally involves the development of specifically designed tools. For example, microbiology is a field, which is defined by structures, which can’t be seen by the naked eye. The world of the microscopic is reconstituted through the microscope, which, along with a range of biochemical tests, allows the scientist to detect and

describe certain organisms. However, these interpretive tools and concepts are embedded within the discipline. Only the organisms detectable through the filter of the microscope are defined as part of the field. This system of seeing things determines what is seen and how this knowledge is produced. It both constrains and enables knowledge within the discipline.

The objective of this research project is to undertake a scientific analysis of the products of artistic process in order to explore the convergence of art and science in my own practice. By using general scientific observational techniques to gather evidence and by applying evolutionary theory as a model, I aim to explore and elucidate connections between formal relationships in relation to the conceptual and actual development of my own artistically produced objects. This comparison of artistic and scientific modes of thinking and researching will result in a series of installation-based works.

Bianca HesterMaterial Adventures, Spatial Productions: Manoeuvring sculpture towards a proliferating event

PhD by project

Supervisors: Peter Cripps and Suzie Attiwill

Research Question: How does approaching sculpture as event produce relations between modes of production, engagement and reception?

What was initially a hunch has since undergone a deepening whereby I have developed a commitment to sculptural practice as a platform from which to orient the PhD. In the opportunity provided by the process of writing this exegesis, I have begun to understand that throughout the research project, a double-movement has occurred. Simultaneous with a process of opening sculpture up (engaging it in processes of interrogation, investigation, experimentation, re-working and proliferation across a multiplicity of terrains) so that its eventfulness finds articulation, the project has also designated sculpture as a primary platform from which to manoeuvre.

It is with caution that I assert the term sculpture, acknowledging that it summons notions of a demarcated “singleness” (Krauss 1999: p.53) and a form of object-hood handed down from “modernism’s claims for art’s autonomy allied to medium specificity” (Ross 2002: p.101). This designation is laden with assumptions that divide material from form, form from content and figure from ground. These are assumptions with which my project shares no collegiality. This situation has produced a tension that has led me to ask, Why is it that sculpture becomes the framework through which to position the

practice. Why not installation, relational practices or performance? This question opens onto another: What is specific about sculpture that is particularly useful when engaging with it as an expanded and eventful practice so that its specificity orients particular kinds of engagement related to expanding the possibilities for its production and reception?

The answers to these are partially located in the conditions that a sculptural tradition brings with it. In this context theorists such as Alex Potts have identified sculpture’s intensified relationship to questions of materiality, spatial relations, and extended temporal durations in its modes of production and reception (Potts 2002). Therefore, as the PhD project has worked to engage sculpture as an event, by expanding it to engage many activities and relations, it has proceeded via the terms of what is specific to sculpture. It has been questions related to materiality, approaches towards making, the durational conditions of sculptural reception, and sculpture’s relationship to spatial production that have informed the themes articulated in the four chapters comprising the exegesis.

Maria Esther Peña BriceñoBodies in Transit: a visual examination of the mythologies of the corporeal constructions of borderers occupying the border between Mexico and the United States of America.

Master of Art (Fine Art) by project

Supervisors: Phil Edwards and Nick Mourtzakis

Research Question: How may visual imagery observed in the corporeal identity of border dwellers be translated into a contemporary visual art practice?

This project explores, through a visual art practice, the mythologies and corporeal identity of the border dwellers that occupy the geographical boundary between Mexico and the United States of America.

Corporeal identity is defined here as the symbolic spaces in Chicano/Latino imagery that recall the body in transit or migration between cultures. Contemporary art practices are used to examine the cultural and spiritual displacement experienced by Latin Americans as they search for the myth of the “American Dream”. Fictional narratives from the border culture of the Latin Americans as well as a survey of relevant sociological and

academic literature inform both the visual artwork and the exegesis.

This project explores and examines the imagery and mythology in ¨Latino¨ and ¨Chicano¨ border cultures through contemporary art practice. The artwork produced in this study explores the nature of hybrid cultural transience as a metaphor in contemporary art. My exegesis investigates the latino and chicano cultures emerging along the border of the USA and Mexico, in order to seek connections between the reality of their daily existence and their mythological reality.

John WallerEntity: an artwork exploring autonomous, artificial life-inspired computer animation and interactivity

PhD by project

Supervisors: Lesley Duxbury and Peter Cripps

Research Question: In what ways can I utilise artificial life animation techniques to invoke an interactive engagement?

This project was motivated by my interests in visual art, science, and computer-based animation. In particular it was inspired by what I had read about an area of science called artificial life. Scientists and computer programmers have been using an artificial life approach to modelling life processes to gain a greater understanding of them. Examples of these are the way ants forage for food, or the evolution of predator-prey communities. One of the tenets of artificial life is that simple rules can lead to complex behaviour. This captured my imagination and was the catalyst that led me to

investigate the possibilities for using some of these ideas in an art project.

The purpose of the artificial life aspects of the project is to instigate the interactivity which in turn would initiate the emotional engagement which is at the heart of the project. By emotional engagement I mean a state of engagement where the viewer gets involved to the point where the ‘willing suspension of disbelief ’ comes into operation and the viewer is immersed in the experience of the interaction.

Philippa MurrayThe Floating World – An investigation into illustrative and decorative art practices and theory in print media and animation

Master of Art (Fine Art) by project

Supervisors: Martine Corompt and Dominic Redfern

Research Question: How can I develop artworks using new media technologies that contribute a particularly Australian voice to the lineage of decorative/illustrative art?

The initial stage of my Masters program was concerned with researching the illustrative techniques, distinctive spatial arrangement, and history and culture of the Edo period in Japan with particular attention to the idea of ‘The Floating World’. This term was used to describe the prosperous city of Edo (old Tokyo), which was, throughout C17th – C19th, a significant metropolis.

Considered under the theme ‘The Floating World’, my artwork represents a sustained exploration of decorative and illustrative art practice and theory incorporating experimentation with associated genres such as magic realism, gothic romance, the uncanny, iconography, surrealism and other metaphorical and abstract representational practices. I use the themes and methodologies of Edo-period work to translate them into a contemporary Australian, as well as a contemporary new media setting. I was particularly interested in using recent art technologies designed for illustration, such as

vector-based digital drawing and animation programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Flash, to create artworks that reference the decorative line work of the Edo-period. I was also interested in developing an installation practice that utilises new media formats (such as the monitor or the digital print) in ways that reference traditional Edo formats (such as the screen or the scroll).

More broadly, this project was an investigation, both theoretical and practical, into the way drawing and illustration have been processes through which to (literally) give shape to hopes and fears, and to describe understandings of self and the world. I was particularly interested in exploring how, through the act of abstraction and the use of metaphor and decoration, a capacity to ‘speak the unspeakable’ and ‘know the unknowable’ are somehow enabled.

Mon-Xi WuOrganic Abstraction: Sculptural Ceramics that explore natural form with reference to the Chinese philosophic concept of Yin and Yang

Doctor of Fine Art by project

Supervisors: Kevin White and Sophia Errey

Research Question: In what ways can I select and organise elements of botanic form from the natural world in order to interpret the concept of Yin and Yang?

Since the twentieth century, with the dominant development of abstract art, biomorphic abstraction has become a significant genre of abstraction. Biomorphic abstraction usually possesses simplified forms, organic-like curvilinear structure, and emotional significance. The presentation of this genre does not derive from direct mimicry of the natural world. Instead, it presents the artist’s inner aesthetic experience founded on their observations. With the diverse development of contemporary ceramic art, ceramics has transformed its role from being mainly concerned with function, to embracing more diverse and non-functional modes of expression through the influence of contemporary abstract art. This has enabled biomorphic abstraction to have a renewed focus within studio ceramics. As a contemporary ceramist focusing on sculptural expression, my work has been informed by contemporary

abstract art and ceramic art. The mode of biomorphic abstraction fascinates me and provides me with an essential basis of creation.

In this studio-based project I explored potential developments of abstract natural form through reference to the Chinese philosophic concept of Yin and Yang, and how an interpretation of the contrary and complementary qualities of Yin and Yang can be married to form a unified expression.

I have a particular interest in natural forms. Botanic objects found in my living environment, such as seeds, fruits, buds, or sheaths have become my main source of creative inspiration through their astonishing variety of shapes, colour and textures. Thus, in this project botanic objects are used as expressive subject matter through the presentation of an abstract organic structure.

Roseanne BartleyThe Crafting of Text on Emblematic Objects: Jewellery and Tableware

Master of Art (Fine Art) by project

Supervisors: Robert Baines and Sandra Kirby

Research Question: How can the historic emblematic object be referenced in contemporary jewellery and tableware?

This project will examine the historical use of text on emblematic objects and through a studio-based practice investigate the signifying properties of object, text and material in the communication of symbolic message. It will involve the manufacture of contemporary jewellery and tableware and will reference cultural and political themes. The symbolism of these themes will be explored through words, which signify, in the language of object making (for example the word ‘detail’), and in the language of the Australian vernacular (for example ‘sorry’).

In my research I will examine the established history of emblematic objects, which through their incorporation of text, their function and scale in relation to the body, organise, distinguish, categorise, unite or isolate groups of people.

The objects will be produced primarily in alloys of silver and collected discarded materials having a typology or symbolic meaning. The decision to work with these materials is based on my understanding with how they perform under certain conditions and my interest in how they signify value in contemporary culture. My intention is to consider the material and cultural significance of silver in the production of one off or multiples of emblematic objects. This contrasts the employment in commercial production of metal such as tin, brass or pewter, or materials such as paper and plastic that are more commonly used by industry for economic and production efficiencies.

Robin Kingston‘The Un-limiting Conditions’: An Investigation into the Roles of Intuitive and Rational Thought in the Construction of Abstract Painting

PhD by project

Supervisors: David Thomas and Sophia Errey

Research Question: How can intuitive and rational thought be used in the construction of visual artworks?

This project addresses the use of intuitive and rational thought in the construction of contemporary abstract painting and more particularly my painting practice. I am an abstract painter. My artwork is not an abstraction derived from realism or the figurative. It arises from another vocabulary of making an artwork, and from an inner impulse I name intuition rising from a subjective response. I also use a formal visual vocabulary. Its use corresponds with rational thought in my work and incorporates elements including line, colour, scale, form, rhythm, interval, touch, gesture and surface that are components of content expressing order, complexity and sensibility. The construction of the artwork is a contemplative process, which aims to enable viewers to become aware of their own looking through a vocabulary associated with the making of the work. This vocabulary is diverse and includes issues such as the choice of materials and their inherent qualities, the support and structure of visual forms and strategies of application including chance, risk, play and forgetting

My investigation is primarily about issues of painting and more particularly contemporary abstract painting. This research project is a practice-led, trial and error method, based on action and ‘doing’. There are many streams of abstraction but my practice is not derived from imagery in the external world, but rather the nature of the work and content arises through the construction of the painting. It is a mutable, continuous unfolding – a relationship between hand, eye, mind and the inherent properties of the materials I choose to employ. My painting is a continuation of Western painting and, more specifically, geometric and gestural abstraction, where structures that are common to those canons such as the grid, or striped sequences, are overlayed with personal manipulations of the formal and ephemeral elements of painting. Examples include the choice of colour combinations, the use of a regulated grid whose structure breaks down to form another and the use of touch and interval that is made unique through my construction.

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