This project contemplates where New Zealanders will turn to in the future for resonating, identity-based design, and explores two potential scenarios. The first scenario questions whether existing ‘classic’ motifs – currently enjoying pride of place on national identity T-shirts and accessories, and commonly used over the last century within the tourist souvenir industry – will still be relevant, and still resonate, if used in different ways. The second scenario questions whether a new round of more obscure, overlooked, ‘lower case’ and everyday domestic artefacts and experiences will resonate with New Zealanders. This project sets out to ‘craft nostalgic resonance’, through conceptual recycling from my own biography, in order to connect with viewers through personal recognition located within their own biography. It draws from experiences and artefacts specific and personal yet at the same time, inevitably, part of a larger collective story, in the creation of a new range of identity-based souvenirs for New Zealanders. The resulting body of work, and its successful public dissemination, proves that it is possible to craft nostalgic resonance through conceptual recycling, and that this approach could be extended to both a wider range of original artefacts and experiences, and a wider range of souvenir products in the future.

As an expressive language, fashion design has an innate capacity to engage a full gamut of sensorial responses. This research explores the contribution of synaesthesia to fashion design in an effort to highlight the positive aesthetic and intellectual impact of this integration. Such research advances my creative practice. The method of realising garments which address synaesthetic principles is an extension of personal interest in synaesthesia, driven from both an experiential perspective and a desire to gain a greater understanding into theories in relation to challenging the senses in a contemporary fashion world. If fashion includes novelty as a crucial and desirable aspect, and can be defined as an ever evolving and self rejuvenating art form, then the energy and frivolity of these components in association with multiple sensory stimuli and response will expose the consequence of the study through design-work. Recognition of the importance of sensory cross-overs in fashion design will reveal the quintessence of how humans position themselves and respond to a specific environment. If realisation of the senses is with regard to surroundings, and fashion becomes the surrounding which elicits multiple involuntary responses from stimuli, a conscious recognition has begun. Traditional theories on the organisation of sense modalities speculate that humans perceive their world with five senses, the most dominant generally being sight. The combined effect of these senses creates the environment in which we inhabit. The visual and tactile senses have long been the focus of the fashion product but, of all the senses, touch is most key to our species (Ackerman, 1990). Sound, taste and smell have been under-recognised as providers of ceaseless information about our environment. The investigation into the notion that fashion and other sensory systems are not separate entities assists with establishing the links between sensory integration and fashion design. The emergence of the synaesthetic paradigm has highlighted a unity between the senses rather than the traditional hierarchy of favouring the visual. The research on synaesthesia relative to fashion design occupies a parallel position to neurological theory and allows synaesthetic investigation to be a pivotal determining factor towards my outcome. I have engaged in critical self-reflection of my design process and production as a means of elucidating stimuli associated with multi-sensory perception.

ABSTRACT This thesis analyses a range of reality television programmes produced in New Zealand as part of a wider investigation into the affective strategies and discursive practices of the medium of television itself. The capacity of television, and more specifically reality television, to bring things close and render them present - spatially, temporally, socially and emotionally – is the thematic fulcrum of this study. Closeness is variously interpreted here as proximity (in terms of space, geography or social position), co-incidence (in terms of time) and intimacy (in terms of emotional affect). The present-ness of reality programming is both temporal (occurring now, in the present tense) and physical (occurring here, in this body, in this home, in this country). It is through this affect of present-ness that reality television most clearly engages with the domain of the real. Thus, this study also turns upon a consideration of the various significant ways in which reality television defines, pursues and manifests moments of realness on screen. The thesis is broken down into two parts, entitled Here and Now respectively, reflecting the double axis of spatial (incorporating social) and temporal present-ness. Within this bi-partite structure, six chapters focus in turn on a number of different discursive threads: Viscerality, Ordinariness, Community, Amateurism, Intimacy and Temporal Immediacy, producing a cumulative theoretical framework through which to address reality TV. In terms of methodology, this thesis pursues its exploration of reality television through close textual readings of selected programmes which have been produced for a New Zealand audience. Where appropriate, however, it draws on international examples of reality programming, in particular, those high-profile formats from Europe and the United States which have generated new paradigms for the production and reception of reality television worldwide. In addition, this thesis analyses programme form and content through a range of theoretical frameworks drawn from television studies and other academic disciplines. It also seeks to engage with international critical and academic debates surrounding the often controversial rise of reality programming as a televisual phenomenon in the nineties and into the twenty-first century. The production of this thesis coincides with a surge in academic output on the subject of reality television, and has benefited from recent publications in this area. This thesis attempts to balance both general and specific interests in New Zealand’s reality programming. On one hand, it places reality television within the context of long-established, international academic discussions about television as a medium, with the intent of showing that reality programming has an innate applicability to the domestic medium out of which it has arisen. On the other, this thesis pursues a more specific project, as it considers locally-produced programming as the particular output of the island nation of New Zealand. In this case, I argue that the particular aesthetic and discursive practices of reality programming, which devolve upon the ordinary, the domestic and the local, are well-suited to the ongoing production of culture and identity in a settler nation such as New Zealand.

Whole document restricted, see Access Instructions file below for details of how to access the print copy. / Torrent of Portyngale is a late medieval romance, preserved in a single manuscript, MS Chetham’s 8009. It is a complex mix of romance themes: adventure, loss and restoration, family and social status, piety and hypocrisy, woven around the love between Torrent, the orphaned son of a Portuguese earl, and Desonell, heir to the throne of Portugal. Cohesion to so wide a range of thematic material comes from the author’s careful elucidation of the religious and moral significance of the text’s events. While popular literature with a didactic purpose is not uncommon in medieval literature and elsewhere in romance (cf. Sir Amadace), modern criticism has failed to fully appreciate the purposeful combination of the two in Torrent of Portyngale. Torrent is perhaps the most critically neglected member of the Middle English verse romances. This is, in part, due to the state of the text, which suffers from extensive scribal corruption. The first modern edition, by James Halliwell (1842), was also careless and did little to create a good impression. The poem’s most recent editor, Eric Adam (1887), appreciated the shortcomings of Halliwell’s work and sought to restore Torrent. He incorporated evidence from fragmentary early prints of the text and drew on the fruits of nineteenth–century romance scholarship. Despite his good editorial intentions, however, it is now clear that he also made errors and editorial decisions that have coloured the way in which Torrent has been viewed since. The substantial body of twentieth and twenty–first century scholarship on Middle English romance and medieval studies in general has diminished the value of Adam’s edition to the point where it may be regarded as obsolete and a new edition long overdue. This fresh edition of Torrent has been prepared from microfilm of the manuscript. It re–examines the text’s phonology, morphology, syntax, dialect and vocabulary, to indentify and evaluate overlooked clues to help answer such fundamental questions as its date (scholars have dated it from the mid– fourteenth century to the first half of the fifteenth century) and provenance (it has been mapped from East Anglia to South Lancashire). Both the unflattering reputation that Torrent of Portyngale has gathered in modern times and the long–held notion that it is lacking in originality are challenged by the thorough re–examination of the state of the text, its scribes and their practices and evaluating them against prior and current romance scholarship. This new analysis provides a window through which Torrent can be viewed and valued as a product of its time, allowing it to be judged more accurately against its contemporaries and offering many new insights into a text that was clearly once popular.

Madness is often associated with violence, criminality, and degenerative human failure in stigmatising media reports, and these are most people’s site of information about madness. Despite (or maybe because of) reductions in stigmatising reporting, negative perceptions of madness persist, notwithstanding stringent broadcast standards and expensive public health campaigns. When regulation dominates, extreme views can move underground into less monitored areas such as film which enjoys a wider scope to explore ideas and issues concerning a culture. Agencies which have more freedom to represent madness beyond objective journalistic conventions can be more subversive. This work takes Foucault’s archaeology of madness (among other works) as its point of departure to look at cinematic representations of madness, exploring the notion that cinema reflects and reinforces the asylum discourse. It investigates cinema as a strategy of neurotic reiteration to confine madness in narrative—to close down the spectre of the Other—in cultural structures to exorcise it from the collective consciousness. Commercial imperatives drive stigmatising representations of madness, drawing on cultural loadings inherent in the asylum discourse, trading on demonising and pathologising to exacerbate drama and tension, essential elements of tragedy. Foucault’s framework is the basis for detailed analyses and close readings of a selection of cinematic representations, critiquing their role as constituent of, and constituting, the spectacle of madness. The films considered are from New Zealand and dominant (i.e. Hollywood) cinema in order to permit comparisons between representations here and overseas. This work follows my master’s thesis (1999), which used a similar methodology to examine representations of suicide in cinema in four popular films. Here, I look at the ideas that represent knowledge and authority about madness as represented in discourses associated with cinema. I look at loadings of illness, moral failure, Otherness, animality, and the mechanisms through which the asylum discourse of containment and spectacle is validated (or otherwise). This links with Fuery’s discussion of madness and cinema, and madness as a necessary aspect of spectatorship that makes cinema possible. It also connects to my current employment on a project addressing stigma and discrimination against people with experience of madness.

This study arises out of the researcher’s experience in the fields of costume and fashion. It develops, through design practice and reflection, a design process for fashion wear made from post-consumer recycled materials. Theoretical analysis provides global, historical, philosophical and design contexts within which to develop an ethos for this variant form of fashion wear designated ReFashion. Differences in design process between conventional fashion and ReFashion are detailed to highlight the significance of provenance of materials in the light of a perceived need to slow down clothing production and consumption. This perception is informed by scientific predictions that failure to engage with urgently needed changes to the prevalent economic paradigm will result in planet earth reaching a tipping point with potentially disastrous results for its inhabitants. Fundamental to the ReFashion ethos is preparedness for a speculative post-apocalyptic future that might render the fashion system unable to operate as it currently does, necessitating a more self-sufficient approach to clothing needs, with an accompanying shift in perceptions of what is deemed fashionable. The theme Survivalist Fantasy provides a lens to bring conceptual and material aspects of the work into focus. Informed by sustainability, Survivalist Fantasy recontextualises a failure of sustainable initiatives on a global scale and their adaptation on a local scale specifically in the arena of clothing.

The following thesis examines how documentary texts, in particular those that are associated with the tradition of political documentary, negotiate their way into being. For this purpose, I use a series of documentary case studies, each one structured around a work of my own. The five documentaries I examine were made through the decade 1990-2000 and, although these works address a range of specific cultural and political issues, they were produced either out of the US or New Zealand, the two countries within which I have lived while a documentary maker. My methodological approach is two-fold. First, I place each documentary within a framework designed by Bill Nichols as a way of defining documentary. Nichols, a major presence in the field of documentary studies, looks at documentary as constructed through a matrix of factors: the interplay of possible documentary modes and styles, pressures brought to bear through the institutional context surrounding documentary production, such as funding and distribution, the expectations of the genres' audiences, and the dialogue and influences generated by a community of documentary practitioners and their films and videos. In following Nichols' model, I offer up a modal and textual analysis for each of my own works cited, and examine, through a mixture of anecdote and theory, how funders, distributors, audiences and my fellow makers shaped my documentaries. In carrying out this examination, I also highlight certain debates that raged through the decade, particularly around documentary realism and identity politics, that were to have considerable impact on my work. My second methodological approach is to situate each work within a history of "political documentary". In Chapter One of this thesis I have attempted to categorize the various formulations of the sub-genre, which have developed since the inception of film over a century ago. In the ensuing chapters I examine how each of my documentaries draws on that history. My own body of works of course was produced in a relatively short period, but even within this time the historical changes the world has undergone are immense. Documentary is ever sensitive to its context and I chart the impact of political change on the texts being scrutinized. Although the focus, my own work, may appear narrow, the thesis draws on the tradition of participant observation and seeks, by analyzing the complexities of production within a series of case Studies, to cast light on contemporary documentary practice generally. / Whole document restricted, but available by request, use the feedback form to request access.

Samuel Arnold (1740-1802) was a dominating figure of his time whose works. enjoyed critical acclaim and popular success. In the twentieth century he has remained known as the editor of Handel’s works but his reputation as a composer, strong in his own time, has suffered a critical eclipse. The intention of the present thesis is to provide the first specialized study of Samuel Arnold. In so doing the author aims to examine his accomplishments as a prominent musician, to re-establish his critical reputation as a composer, and at the same time to offer a thematic bibliographic catalogue of his works. The first volume gives a detailed account of Arnold's life and works. Though biographical articles on the composer have appeared in Grove’s Dictionary and the New Grove, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Dictionary of National Biography, and in A Biographical Dictionary of Actors and ... Musicians (ed. Philip H. Highfill), much has been left unsaid. The author has synthesized information in secondary sources and verified these sources whenever possible by reference to the documents treated; in addition he has, by personal consultation of contemporary documents in English archives, discovered a mass of material hitherto unrecorded. Chapter one, therefore, summarizes all the known facts about the composer and his activities as a leading figure in London’s musical life, while chapter two is devoted to a complete survey of Arnold's non-dramatic works, ranging from nine oratorios, through instrumental music to settings of English poetry and other intimate or occasional pieces. The selective approach in discussing Arnold’s non-dramatic works has not been followed, however, for chapters three to six, which deal with his stage music. Arnold’s sixty-nine operas, seven pantomimes, three ballets, and seven scores of incidental music are so significant, both musically and historically, that the author has considered it essential to deal with each one individually. Besides presenting new material on the genesis and reception of each work, the author analyses all the surviving music. Chapter three, therefore, is devoted to Arnold’s all-sung operas, chapter four to the full-length operas with spoken dialogue, chapter five to the afterpiece operas with spoken dialogue, and chapter six to the pantomimes, ballets and incidental music; more than one hundred music examples illustrate the study. To complete volume one there is an extensive bibliography, as well as a transcription of Arnold’s unpublished additional music to John Gay's Polly (1777). The second volume is devoted to the compilation of a thematic catalogue of Arnold’s complete works. The aim of this catalogue is to provide a guide to the identification of his compositions and to add a comprehensive descriptive bibliography both of his manuscripts and of the early editions of his printed works. The catalogue is, therefore, meant to tell what Arnold wrote, when and (often) why he wrote and published a certain work, who printed and sold it, and where copies are to be found. In collating the works, information on their internal make-up has been given in each case, and, in addition, a full description of the title-page of each of the first editions is set out. For the bibliographical detail it has been necessary to examine contemporary newspaper advertisements, all the appropriate publishers’ catalogues, the muniment books at stationers Hall and, where possible, a copy or several copies of every item listed. The holdings of the appropriate public and private libraries were consulted and a large number of changes and additions made to the information collected in such works of reference as the British Union-Catalogue of Early Music and the volume of Repertoire International des Sources Musicales devoted to the eighteenth century. The present bibliographical and musicological account sheds new light on samuel Arnold’s life and works, and, equally important, on the world in which he lived. It is concluded that not only was he a cultivated man, prominent in the musical life of his time, but also a skilful composer, whose diverse productions have their own merits. / Whole document restricted, but available by request, use the feedback form to request access.

This project seeks to sidestep the debilitating effects of music performance anxiety by cross-referencing knowledge from the areas of adolescent psychology with literature on MPA in singers in general in order to target adolescent singers early in their training. As well as considering the causes, symptoms and treatment of music performance anxiety, the project examines the role of the natural anxieties of adolescence in triggering music performance anxiety and seeks to chart a way through. Its intended readership is the classical singing teacher.

This study examines the researcher's music therapy intervention with hospitalised adolescents within a paediatric hospital The hospital is located in a New Zealand city serving a broad multicultural population of mainly Pakeha, Maori and Pacific Island people. There is a large body of literature showing that experiences of hospitalisation are often unpleasant and that the challenges adolescents encounter during hospitalisation can also be detrimental to their development. The researcher employed an action research model of cycles of planning, action and reflection to explore the potential for practice improvement in meeting the needs of hospitalised adolescents. In addition, young people's feedback on the sessions and input from supervisors also contributed to the researcher's planning. Personal goals in clinical practice and specific planning for the needs of individual participants were the starting points of each cycle. Subsequently, each cycle had a learning analysis to relate planning to action and to collect the knowledge for the next cycle or future practice. The researcher found that through scrutiny of her clinical work she was able to improve her professional practice. The findings also showed that relationship-building through music therapy was able to support the developmental needs of hospitalised adolescents.