This thesis formulates an approach towards the creation of a gesture activated and body movement controlled real time virtual 3d world in a dance performance context. It investigates immersion and navigation techniques derived from modern video games and methodologies and proposes how they can be used to further involve a performer into a virtual space as well as simultaneously offer a stimulating visual spectacle for an audience. The argument presented develops through practice-based methodology and artistic production strategies in interdisciplinary and collaborative contexts. Two choreographic performance/installations are used as cases studies to demonstrate in practice the proposed methodologies. First, the interactive dance work Suna No Onna, created in collaboration with Birringer/Danjoux and the Dap Lab, investigates the use of interactive pre-rendered animations in a real time setting and in real time by incorporating wearable sensors in the performance. Secondly, the potentials offered by the sensor technology and real time rendering engines led to the “creation scene", a key scene in the choreographic installation UKIYO (Moveable Worlds). This thesis investigates the design, creation and interaction qualities of virtual 3d spaces by exploring the potentialities offered by a shared space, between an intelligent space and a dancer in a hybrid world. The methodology applied uses as a theoretical base the phenomenological approach of Merleau-Ponty and Mark Hansen‟s mixed reality paradigm proposing the concept of the “space schema", a system which replicates and embeds proprioception, perception and motility into the space fabric offering a world which “lives”, functions and interacts with the performer. The outcome of the research is the generation of an interactive, non-linear, randomized 3d virtual space that collaborates with a technologically embedded performer in creating a 3d world which evolves and transforms, driven by the performer‟s intention and agency. This research contributes to the field of interactive performance art by making transparent the methodology, the instruments and the code used, in a non-technical terminology, making it accessible for both team members with less technological expertise as well as artists aspiring to engage interactive 3d media promoting further experimentation and conceptual discussions.

This thesis intends to advance educational research by providing exploratory insights about the roles of, and relationships between, the actions, language, and gestures of college and elementary-aged students surrounding measurement estimation. To the best of my knowledge, prior research has examined the role of speech and gestures as they relate to areas of mathematics such as algebra and geometry, however, this work has not been extended to the area of measurement. Similarly, language and gesture have been explored but the three-way interplay between actions during problem-solving, and the language and gestures observed during explanations after problem solving has not been investigated in mathematics. To actualize the findings from this research in practice, this thesis uses the findings from two studies on behavior during measurement tasks to propose text and image support for an elementary-aged measurement game, EstimateIT!, to support students as they practice how to measure objects and develop conceptual skills through embodied game play. Specifically, this thesis intends to provide 1) a synthesis of the work on gestures in mathematics as well as the research methods used to study gestures, 2) a coding guide to analyze the gestures of mathematics learners, as well as their actions and language, 3) an application of the coding guide to explore the behavior of college and elementary students during measurement estimation tasks, and 4) proposals for action-guiding support for EstimateIT! to help elementary students develop and reinforce an understanding of measurement during gameplay based on the more mature strategies demonstrated by college students as they complete similar tasks.

Games as a means of education have been starting to become more of an everyday reality. Not only are games used in classrooms, but they are used in industry to train soldiers, medical staff, and even surgeons. This thesis focuses on physically active (i.e. embodied) multiplayer games as a means of education; not only by having students play, but also by having students create games. The embodied multiplayer aspect allows for a more interactive experience between players and their environment, making the game immersive and collaborative. In order to create these games, students must exercise their computational thinking abilities. The Wearable Learning Cloud Platform has been developed to enable students to design, create, and play multiplayer games for STEM. This platform allows users to create, edit and manage the behavior of mobile technologies that act as support to players of these games, specified as finite-state machines. The platform provides a means of testing created games, as well as executing (running) these games wirelessly by serving them to smartphones (or smart watches) so that students can play them with other students, in teams, or as individual players. The platform features a full drag and drop game editor with a sophisticated validation engine that prevents users from making syntax errors. Visually programmed games transpile to JavaScript for execution on the game server and provide two separate levels of programming abstraction. This platform has been successfully tested with 18 participants and they have shown significant improvements in their understanding of Finite State Machines and have shown an increase in their Computational Thinking abilities.

This portfolio of published research contains nine papers and assesses the life cycle environmental burdens of energy technologies and buildings. Several analytical tools were used but these all fall under the umbrella of environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), and include energy analysis, carbon appraisal and the consideration of other environmental issues. The life cycle of all products starts with an assessment of embodied impacts. The current author has completed significant research on the embodied carbon of materials. This includes the creation of a leading embodied carbon database (the ICE database) for materials which has been downloaded by over 10,000 professionals and has made a significant contribution to knowledge. This portfolio of work includes analysis on methods for recycling in embodied impact assessment and LCA. This is an influential topic and therefore appears in two of the publications. The ICE database was applied by the current author to over 40 domestic building case studies and an embodied carbon model for buildings was created from these. The latter was used to provide benchmark values for six types of new houses in the UK.The portfolio of work then progresses to full LCA of energy systems. LCA is used to assess the embodied impacts versus operational impacts of 11 kV electrical cables. In this case embodied impacts were not significant and preference should be given to reducing electrical losses in the cables. The tool of LCA was then applied to a national electricity network. It revealed that Lebanon had a particularly poor centralised electricity network that was both unreliable and unsustainable with high impacts in all environmental categories. The final paper in this portfolio is on Building Integrated PV (BIPV) and brings together all aspects of the current author’s work and knowledge. It considers embodied burdens, electricity generation and BIPV can replace roofing materials.

Magister Artium - MA / There is a theoretical gap in scholarship pertaining to masculinity and disability in dance. Existing scholarship on masculinity, disability and dance respectively, seldom bring these three themes into conversation with each other, missing opportunities to examine the nuances of masculinity. Through an ethnographic study, I endeavoured to capture the narratives of three professional disabled male dancers from different contexts and backgrounds. The phenomenological approach was selected in order to enhance understanding of my participants’ experiences in an attempt to illuminate how these dancers negotiate and embody their masculinity in dance spaces. The nuances of masculinity, disability and dance are therefore interpreted through a phenomenological framework and seek to foreground the intricacies of negotiation and subjectivity. Through face-to-face in-depth interviews, watching performances and rehearsals as well as less formal conversations, this project aims to illuminate the lives of Marc Brew (Scotland), David Toole (England) and Zama Sonjica (South Africa) as disabled male dancers. I am particularly interested in disability’s ability to challenge normative ideas around dance, identity and masculinity. I argue the need to change limiting perceptions of hegemonic masculinity and the male dancer’s body to advance the artistic medium of dance and allow for constructive dialogue around issues of access and inclusivity. Furthermore, like Roebuck (2001), I am interested in the ways in which contemporary dance works "contributes to the development of a more sensitive understanding of the ways in which dance articulates masculine identity" (Roebuck, 2001: 1).

The changing climate and damaging effects of CO2 on the environment has led to awareness throughout the construction industry of the need to deliver more sustainable solutions. The use of geosynthetics as a sustainable construction solution was demonstrated by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) in a report entitled Sustainable Geosystems in Civil Engineering Applications (WRAP, 2010). The WRAP report presented a series of case studies in which geosynthetic solutions provided both cost and CO2 savings in comparison to non-geosynthetic solutions. However, in what is a huge field the report concentrated on specific areas relative to the calculation methods or on the potential construction applications. This EngD research built on this work by WRAP and aimed to establish a rigorous framework for the comparison of CO2 emissions between geosynthetic and non-geosynthetic solutions. This EngD research reviewed CO2 calculation methodologies and techniques to produce a rigorous framework that could be adopted in comparative CO2 studies between geosynthetic and non-geosynthetic solutions. It was demonstrated on three case studies looking at geosynthetics in the function of containment, drainage, and reinforcement, highlighting the possible CO2 benefits of employing geosynthetics. The development of the case studies and framework highlighted the need for accurate embodied carbon data. There was an absence of geosynthetic specific embodied carbon values in the commonly employed databases. The EngD research sought to address this and through some experimental work in collaboration with geosynthetic manufacturers calculated embodied carbon values for four types of geosynthetics.

This thesis attempts to answer the question of how a framework for a contemporary Australian male spirituality might be formulated. It provides a theoretical base for constructing a spirituality for Australian men that would prove more relevant than the religious patriarchal framework that many men have traditionally experienced. The study makes use of the potentially positive impact on men's spirituality, and that of Australian men in particular, of three of the most significant revolutions affecting contemporary society - the feminist, environmental and embodiment movements. A critical examination is first made of the many strands of the contemporary Men's Movement and the spiritualities associated with them to gain an overall view of the state of men's spirituality today. From this overview, a new philosophical and religious stance is developed, spiritual virism. This may be defined as a sacred worldview by and for men, which, informed by feminist spiritual principles and perspectives, results in a range of redefined personal and collective spiritualities for men in relation to the Sacred. As a result, men are challenged to work actively for the deconstruction of religious patriarchy with a view to the liberation of both men and women. Spiritual virism, in turn, defines the methodology employed throughout the thesis. It is a critical analytical methodology drawn from the disciplines of academic spirituality and feminist theory. It entails the deconstruction of life-denying forms of patriarchal religious attitudes and the construction of more life-giving forms of spirituality. As experience is central in both spiritual and feminist research, personal texts, involving my own spiritual experience expressed in my paintings and in autobiographical commentaries on them, are the prime starting points in this analysis. Discursive discourse, involving more abstract methodology, follows. The deconstruction of the traditional patriarchal understanding of the Sacred in Western Christianity is undertaken first. The construction of more life-giving images of the Sacred, drawn from parallel paradigms in feminist thealogy and earth-based religion, follows. The results are that men may find a positive re-imaging of the Sacred in non-gendered forms such as the Source or the Great Cycle of Life, or in gendered forms such as the god, radically reinterpreted, and especially in the feminine Sacred, the Goddess. Evolving contemporary perceptions of the place of the environment in spirituality, such as ecofeminism, deep ecology, the new science and ecotheology, are employed to help construct more positive spiritual practices for men with respect to nature, the earth and the cosmos. This follows a deconstruction of traditional patriarchal understandings of them within society and Western Christianity. Insights such as the Sacred embodied in the unfolding cosmos, in the living earth and in the web of all life, lead men to a more contemplative, less exploitative attitude to the world around them. Thirdly, having deconstructed the traditional patriarchal attitude of Western Christianity to the male body, the positive impact of contemporary embodiment theory and practice on a spirituality for men is sought. Implications are drawn from feminist understandings of the sacrality of the female body, from Christian embodiment theology and from the practices of body-honouring religions. A more body/earth-centred spirituality, which is non-dualistic and respects the sacredness of the body and sexuality, emerges. A unified spiritual framework draws together and integrates the positive insights of each of these studies. In seeking the application of this generic male spirituality to the Australian context, this framework is brought into dialogue with contemporary approaches to Australian spirituality. The result is a way of formulating an Australian men's spirituality from the perspective of An Australian Man in Search of an Embodied Spirituality, the title of my thesis. This spirituality is rooted in the land of Australia, where the body of the Australian man is seen as sacred and embodied within the sacred body of the Australian land. A sacred Australian mythos is explored to personalise this embodiment. This images the masculine Sacred, the god, as embodied within the man, who both move within the all-encompassing female Sacred, the Goddess, embodied within the land of Australia.

The use of modular construction systems for residential purposes currently represents a very small proportion of all housing construction. The focus of these systems is on niche markets typified as cheap alternatives, homeowner involvement in construction or adaptations to construction constraints (build time availability, site access, etc.). Governments, regulatory bodies and industrial members are progressively moving towards increased environmentally sustainable practice. This progression is evidenced by the development of design and construction rating tools and the introduction of statutes and regulations governing construction and design. This work investigates the improvement of residential construction practice in terms of environmental sustainability outcomes through the use of modular housing systems. Two key aspects of environmental sustainability identified are embodied energy and material waste reduction. A modular system has been investigated because methods and procedures that directly relate to these two areas are well addressed by such systems. In order to validate the potential of modular systems in this environmental regard, three main areas have been addressed. The first is the ability for modular systems to generate the type of floor plans currently offered by Australian high-volume builders. Second, the environmental improvement potential offered by modular systems is addressed. Lastly are the issues of structural performance and the means of the tailoring of prefabricated modular systems to residential construction standards. Through the treatment of these three areas, potential benefits of modular systems are identified, with future work necessary to implement such benefits highlighted. The need for such improvements is noted, and a framework for evaluating future developments in this area of research is presented.

In this project notions of presence and absence will be explored through a study of 'the fold'. I will closely examine a number of paintings that depict folded drapery or cloth and from this examination I will select examples that evoke a response in me to these fundamental states of being, My objective is to produce a body of paintings that explore the structure of the fold and its expression through light, shadow and darkness to develop a range of images that metaphorically represent these phenomena and the possibility of a relational field between the two. This examination will re-present, reinterpret, fragment and transform the selected images using the materials of oil painting and drawing to visualize my response to the changing perceptions of this phenomenon. This investigation is informed by philosophical and psychoanalytical writings that explore the phenomenology of states of presence and absence. In part, these states are suggested by other terminologies, for example, form and space or volume and void. The project draws on the work of writers who have examined and changed perceptions of this phenomenon, particularly where they attribute the structure of absence to contribute to an understanding of subjectivity, question the favouring of presence in Western thought and explore the relationship between the two.

The aim of this Thesis is to study the relationship of investment decision with technological progress and the adoption of new technologies. In more specific, the main focus is given to some policy experiment. This dissertation is divided in 4 chapters, including the introduction and the review of the literature: · The Second Chapter deals with the impact of productive public capital on the decision to invest, taking into account irreversibility and uncertainty. Many authors have stressed the importance of the Government as ultimate risk manager. On the one hand, there is an extensive literature on how public expenditure affects growth. The purpose of the chapter is to take another perspective: to study if the productive public capital can reduce the risk faced by the private sector, in the presence of irreversibility and uncertainty. Thereby, we want to emphasize the stabilizing role for the public capital. · The Third Chapter: introduces a theoretical link between embodied technological progress, the irreversibility and uncertainty literature. In this model, Replacement is postponed in the presence irreversibility and uncertainty. The age of the oldest machine evolves stochastically. Firms can invest even if they are not using all the units, getting rid from the perfect procycle models in the irreversible literature. Furthermore, we reproduce the empirical evidence at firm level: investment is lumpy and infrequent. · The Fourth Chapter studies the impact of public policies aiming at the reduction of the adoption cost of new technologies. We assume an economy that presents AK production function with two distinct features: the adoption of new technologies is costly and embodied in new machines, and there is diffusion and learning process. Studying how technological progress, uncertainty and irreversibility affect the decision to undertake new projects and the acquisition of new equipments by private sector, we expect that this Thesis can contribute not only with academic debate but also with the efficiency of public policies.