Being storied; a lived experience of time discusses selected aspects of the research and studio practice undertaken in the course of the year 2008. Central to the process has been attending to the mundane acts of everyday life in the rural environment in which I live. It discusses actions such as walking, listening, collecting and documenting as well as experiments with a waste material, used baling plastic that is installed in various ways into the landscape. Parallel to this are investigations with sound and text, which have drawn on my varied musical background. There is an exploration of time - the idea of durée, human experience of time, quality of attention through intense focus, and memory as it accumulates over time. Art of the everyday has also been a key area of research. Life changing events have occurred during the course of the year. The death of parents has substantially influenced the work. The practice described is multi-faceted, involving the use of text, sound, photography and film.

Since the late 1970s much interest has been shown in the development of electric guitar technique. Advances have been considerable, enabling players to explore new genres and repertoires but development methodologies have remained woefully fragmented. A new approach that sets out to promote electric guitar technique with development methodology is the purpose of this study. To this end, a process of transcription combined with an advanced technical analysis has been undertaken including a full categorization of the technical subgroups extant within each Caprice. The hypothesis behind this task has been to ascertain whether a ‘technical essence’ could be discovered in the Caprices and how that could be imparted in the process of transcription. Transcribing the 24 Caprices for the electric guitar disclosed the technical components required for development which were then reduced to their constitute elements. The virtuosity and variation within the Caprices ensured that the each identified technique was developed to a high degree. The subjective nature of transcription ensured that multiple solutions were explored when a single solution to a technical problem was not obvious. The analysis section of the study demonstrated that three fundamental techniques were required to play all 24 Caprices: alternate-picking, sweep-picking, and hammer-ons and pull-offs. The analyses also provided trends showing how each technique needed to be developed to comprehensively cover all twenty-four pieces. In conclusion, the hypothesis was found to be correct.

The objective of this research is to demonstrate that co-creative sketching as a part of the participatory process has the potential to support the developmental nature of a visual communication tool used to promote the exchange of experience. The tool is intended to create an informative hub that influences a travellers experience of a location. Ethnographic research as reflective sketching was conducted in the Tongariro National Park. Within this setting reflective sketching located the kitchen and common area of traveller specific accommodation as an ideal collaborative environment to conduct participatory design research. In this collaborative environment snowboarders and skiers who are aged between 20-30 years are identified as the target audience. This specific audience participated in co-creative sessions throughout the design process, resulting in the participatory design of the tool. The design aim of the visual communication tool was to promote the exchange of experience between snowboarders and skiers about a specific location. This was achieved by adapting generative tools made up of a visual language which supported the word of mouth exchange and individual expression. The exchange of experiences was facilitated by co-creative sketching with the visual language during a state of play. Playful co-creative sketching supported word of mouth dialogue between the snowboarders and skiers in a way that co-created an informative visual representation of the dialogue or contextmap. The resulting contextmap represented an image for experience which was beyond an individuals conception and made individuals tacit-knowledge accessible to audiences within and outside the moment of exchange, creating an informative hub which influenced the specific audiences view of experience for a location. An action research methodology is used during the course of this research, informed by the approaches of co-creation, context-mapping and generative tools. These approaches constructed a theoretical framework for the participatory development and co-creative sketching of the communication tool. This supportive thesis discusses the context, the theoretical concepts and provides an in depth account on the research through design process; the week-by-week participatory process undertaken to develop the visual communication tool.

The objective of this research is to demonstrate that co-creative sketching as a part of the participatory process has the potential to support the developmental nature of a visual communication tool used to promote the exchange of experience. The tool is intended to create an informative hub that influences a travellers experience of a location. Ethnographic research as reflective sketching was conducted in the Tongariro National Park. Within this setting reflective sketching located the kitchen and common area of traveller specific accommodation as an ideal collaborative environment to conduct participatory design research. In this collaborative environment snowboarders and skiers who are aged between 20-30 years are identified as the target audience. This specific audience participated in co-creative sessions throughout the design process, resulting in the participatory design of the tool. The design aim of the visual communication tool was to promote the exchange of experience between snowboarders and skiers about a specific location. This was achieved by adapting generative tools made up of a visual language which supported the word of mouth exchange and individual expression. The exchange of experiences was facilitated by co-creative sketching with the visual language during a state of play. Playful co-creative sketching supported word of mouth dialogue between the snowboarders and skiers in a way that co-created an informative visual representation of the dialogue or contextmap. The resulting contextmap represented an image for experience which was beyond an individuals conception and made individuals tacit-knowledge accessible to audiences within and outside the moment of exchange, creating an informative hub which influenced the specific audiences view of experience for a location. An action research methodology is used during the course of this research, informed by the approaches of co-creation, context-mapping and generative tools. These approaches constructed a theoretical framework for the participatory development and co-creative sketching of the communication tool. This supportive thesis discusses the context, the theoretical concepts and provides an in depth account on the research through design process; the week-by-week participatory process undertaken to develop the visual communication tool.

Accompanying workbook not available in digital format / Both empirical and anecdotal evidence indicates that visual communication1 design practices implemented by designers with full colour vision often disadvantage, and sometimes endanger, colour-blind people. The thesis The Machine postulates that colour-blind people – comprising approximately 8% of males and 0.5% of females (Lewis et al., 1990) – are marginalized by such practices. It argues that this group could benefit from a design strategy that enhances the communicative potential and visibility of colour. The proposed strategy involves embedding pattern into potentially confusing colours such as red and green. The embedded pattern would function for colour-blind people as an additional clue to the identity of these colours. The thesis contends that while colour alone can be confusing for colour-blind people, patterned colour could offer a solution with a wide range of possible applications. The research aims of The Machine include: developing a system of patterned colour; creating a wordless picture book that demonstrates the effectiveness of the system; constructing a narrative around the condition of red-green colourblindness; and employing visual rhetoric2 to increase awareness of and sensitivity to colour-blindness among those with full colour vision. The design of the thesis is supported by research in a number of interrelated areas. These include the history of pattern post-1850, particularly in Western culture; precedents for patterned colour; and visual rhetoric in story-telling. The research also incorporates an analysis of the defining characteristics of ten late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century wordless picture books. The thesis is further supported by applied research into patterned colour and visual rhetoric. The Machine aims to benefit colour-blind people, a significant minority group whose visual needs are currently inadequately met. In addition, it proposes broadening the cultural role and significance of pattern. Moreover, by incorporating informative elements usually associated with pedagogic material, it aspires to extend the boundaries of the fantasy picture book genre. 1 Visual communication (n): communication that relies on vision (Wordnet, 2006). 2 Visual rhetoric: the use of visual techniques, such as the creation of visually ‘engaging’ characters, as a means of persuading a target audience

Accompanying workbook not available in digital format / Both empirical and anecdotal evidence indicates that visual communication1 design practices implemented by designers with full colour vision often disadvantage, and sometimes endanger, colour-blind people. The thesis The Machine postulates that colour-blind people – comprising approximately 8% of males and 0.5% of females (Lewis et al., 1990) – are marginalized by such practices. It argues that this group could benefit from a design strategy that enhances the communicative potential and visibility of colour. The proposed strategy involves embedding pattern into potentially confusing colours such as red and green. The embedded pattern would function for colour-blind people as an additional clue to the identity of these colours. The thesis contends that while colour alone can be confusing for colour-blind people, patterned colour could offer a solution with a wide range of possible applications. The research aims of The Machine include: developing a system of patterned colour; creating a wordless picture book that demonstrates the effectiveness of the system; constructing a narrative around the condition of red-green colourblindness; and employing visual rhetoric2 to increase awareness of and sensitivity to colour-blindness among those with full colour vision. The design of the thesis is supported by research in a number of interrelated areas. These include the history of pattern post-1850, particularly in Western culture; precedents for patterned colour; and visual rhetoric in story-telling. The research also incorporates an analysis of the defining characteristics of ten late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century wordless picture books. The thesis is further supported by applied research into patterned colour and visual rhetoric. The Machine aims to benefit colour-blind people, a significant minority group whose visual needs are currently inadequately met. In addition, it proposes broadening the cultural role and significance of pattern. Moreover, by incorporating informative elements usually associated with pedagogic material, it aspires to extend the boundaries of the fantasy picture book genre. 1 Visual communication (n): communication that relies on vision (Wordnet, 2006). 2 Visual rhetoric: the use of visual techniques, such as the creation of visually ‘engaging’ characters, as a means of persuading a target audience

Just as memory pervades our everyday lives, it pervades the lives of the characters and readers of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Acts of recall or recollection occur in almost every chapter as the characters in these novels devote much of the present to keeping in touch with some aspect of the past. Memory is integral to Harry Potter and His Dark Materials, highlighting the following problematic questions: Who are we and how do we relate to the past? How is what we wish for the future grounded in the past and the present? Memory is at the core of constructivism, the active construction of reality by the individual through the use of mental activity. In this thesis I maintain that the central protagonists in Harry Potter and His Dark Materials, Harry Potter and Lyra Belacqua, actively construct their "selves" from memories and narratives – their own and those of others – just as the novels' readers negotiate their own identities in the world outside of the novels. The constant recalling of the past to confirm and amply one's present creates a complex web of remembering and forgetting, assimilating and discarding, which we attempt to explicate through the use of culturally appropriate metaphors. The thesis comprises three chapters that correlate memory with genre, narrative, and technology respectively. I commence the thesis by exploring the idea of genre as collective memory. I position Harry Potter and His Dark Materials within the genre of heroic fantasy and examine how the monomyth provides readers with the memory triggers they require to decode the structure of these texts. The novels conform to and yet manipulate the preconceived patterns present in the heroic or "high" fantasy genre, where narrative, memory and identity are all linked by the desires of the stories' participants. Chapter Two applies Freud's concept of Nachtraglichkeit, which supposes the process of memory is one of incessant reconsideration or "retranslation", the reworking of memory traces in the light of later knowledge and experience. This conceptualisation of memory is compared to the common, but less productive, tendency to describe memory through objectifying metaphors, such as the idea that memory works analogously to a photograph. Chapter Three addresses how knowledge and experience in Harry Potter and His Dark Materials are furnished by prosthetic memory devices, such as photographs, the Pensieve, the alethiometer and the Amber Spyglass, “that permit us to transcend "raw" biological limits – for example, the limits on memory capacity or limits on our auditory range” (Bruner, Acts of Meaning 34). The novel's protagonists are then armed with these devices in trying to make sense of the landscapes they inhabit. Ultimately, we are all story-tellers (for better or for worse), weaving our self-narratives from material gleaned from the collective memories and prosthetic memory devices of the society we belong to, our own experiences, and the tales of others, trying to achieve the uniformity of consciousness and an awareness of the connection between the actions and events of the past, and the experience of the present, which are fundamental to a sense of individual identity.

As we pass the 6oth anniversary of the end of World War Two (WW2) historians are diligently collecting the memoirs of veterans to preserve for future generations. Public archives of memorabilia, letters, photos and artefacts, in the process of digitisation are complimenting the stone memorials of the past. This material culture of memory discusses human interaction. “The poor, the rich, the brave and the afraid, the hero and the deserter” (Moriarty, 1999, p 654). In contemporary museum culture this digitised information is presented in either web-based systems, or interactive kiosks. However, this approach to packaging memories and historical data often leaves out much of the depth of the topic information, skimming the surface of the knowledge conveyed. New solutions to memory and artefact display have been developed effectively in the Churchill room’s exhibit designed by Small Design (Kabat,2008) and Memory Miner (Memory Miner, 2008), a home-based memory archive programme by John Fox. Both convey the memories and artefacts upon a mapped interface, using our desire to discover and connect with memories to navigate the narrative in a self-guided format. The Storytelling Memories project seeks to build on current research to formulate an interactive platform of memory immersion and experience within a museum environment. The project utilises a touch sensitive surface as an interface between the viewer and the memories. A physical controller, when placed near the interface surface will “unlock” contained memories, enabling an open-ended storytelling experience. The design encourages the user to interact directly with the memories to create their own dialogue, with the intention of developing a more emotive, personal connection to the Veteran.

This thesis bridges narrative theory and the practice of developing narrative exhibitions in museums. It aims to show how an understanding of narrative theory provides a dynamic context for evaluating ongoing exhibition practices and adapting them to changing attitudes and aspirations. For practitioners within the museum sector it introduces a rich body of previously under-utilised scholarship along with a method of interfacing it with museum practice. The idea of deriving ideas for museums from other sectors is not new. Museums increasingly embraced narrative in the 1980s after seeing its value in attracting audiences to film, theatre and theme-parks. Then it was assumed that what was relevant in one sector would be equally relevant in another. However, the interim upsurge of Media Studies suggests that rigorous examination of how each medium operates is necessary in order to identify similar constraints and affordances before scholarship from one area of practice can be appropriately applied in another sector. In opening a path for museum practitioners to gain insight from narrative practitioners in other sectors, the thesis intends also to open the way for knowledge to flow from the discipline of museum studies out into other areas of narrative practice, where cross-disciplinary approaches have already gained ground. At the outset, a context is established through a review of narrative literature. Two different approaches are used. Firstly a broad review of different ways to approach narrative is carried out and a typology of narrative is developed. Secondly commonalities are identified between narrative in exhibitions and narrative practice in other media. Exhibition practices are then described in detail, focusing on experience at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, where research was enriched by in-depth interviews with exhibition development staff. Te Papa’s development of narrative exhibitions is traced, and two case studies demonstrate how their model is put into practice to achieve narrative delivery within the museum galleries. For museum professionals and narrative practitioners in other fields, this thesis provides an opportunity to examine processes of narrative delivery against a backdrop of theory. It makes a useful link between the museum sector and other areas of narrative practice.

This thesis seeks to describe the indigenous realities, meanings, and perspectives that are central to the music and dance practices of the Lak (Siar) people in Southern New Ireland, Papua Now Guinea. The insights recorded here are those gained through the experience of twenty-three months living in Rei and Siar villages as a participant in many aspects of Lak social life. The music and dance practices of the region are examined in the context of the wider social and cultural setting. Lak performance realities, are indivisible from kinship structures, ritual proceedings and spirituality. By contextualising Lak music and dance within the frame of the extensive and socially defining mortuary, rites my intention is to show how music and dance not only reflect but also create Lak realities. By examining the ethnographic materials relating to music, dance and performance in the context of mortuary sequence broader elements of Lak society are brought into focus. In these pages I argue that Lak society is reproduced literally and symbolically in these performances.