This research posits art as an encounter, an encounter between the conceptual worlds of artists and of viewers. It acclaims the respective art skills within the marae (communal meeting place) named Tangatarua at Waiariki Institute of Technology, Rotorua. Tangatarua Marae is a place of bicultural encounter. This writing includes readers in the social relations of this encounter. This is a qualitative study that uses an interpretive epistemology to examine some of the art forms of Tangatarua. My focus is on micronarratives - that is, on intimate, improvised meanings generated by some of the small artworks. These reference and affirm the symbolism of the carvings but are less visible due to their lesser scale and interstitial placement within the interior architecture. They are rendered more visible through the phenomenological detail of participant accounts as well as the positivism of a formalist critique. I posit art as a dialogical activity, inseparable from the phenomenological conditions that precede and inform it, and inseparable from the emergent meaning that is forged at its encounter. I contend that the collaborative mode of art production within Tangatarua embodies this dialogical model. I amplify some of the tangible art forms of Tangatarua by dismantling the intangible discursive forms that have impinged on them. These include aspects of the political context of the establishment of the marae, Waiariki Institute of Technology’s bicultural framework, and the pedagogy of its Art School. My writing is underpinned by a participatory paradigm acknowledging my situatedness as an artist participant within Tangatarua, a woman of Ngai Tahu descent, and art tutor at Waiariki Institute of Technology. This study similarly acknowledges the multifaceted, experiential transactions between those artists whose small collective gestures have informed and transformed the interior of Tangatarua.

Storytelling: circles and straight lines is a qualitative, retrospective analysis of my thesis (a collection of iconoclastic New Zealand short stories, entitled In Transit), in which I define the scope of my creative work by: positioning my approach within the wider contemporary and literary contexts; explaining its conceptual framework; and describing my intention and process. To these ends, I have drawn extensively on my personal experience, accumulated knowledge, and orientation, supplemented by wide reading. Throughout the text, I substantiate my views, arguments and conclusions with reference to noted writers, critics, language experts, and philosophers.

The focus of this study is the exploration and interpretation of women's visual and textual experiences of menopause. It is a conversational mapping of embodied space and time as they re-imagine memories and actual experiences which have informed their changing sense of self during the transitional stages of menopause. The research examines the ways in which artwork, visual diaries, journals, creative writing and poetry make visible a fresh perception of their female sense of the lived body. The project examines the contemporary cultural meanings of femininity, sexuality and identity which have informed women's understanding of their bodies and gender during the transformative years of menopause, and it explores the ways in which these forms of knowledge have influenced their artistic modes of self-representation.In the first chapter I acquaint the reader with the context of the research, and outline my understandings of the human body and social theories. I direct the exploration of texts towards a range of feminist theoretical perspectives which suggest women's biological and reproductive bodies provide spaces for re-visioning personal and social change.The next two chapters explain how I develop theoretical and methodological arts-based approaches enabling an innovative and appropriate investigation of the phenomenon in question. I explain how I have blended various textual expressive genres with interpretive research methodologies and philosophical viewpoints. In these chapters I recount the imaginative strategies and techniques used to portray the ontological, phenomenological and epistemological perspectives of the lived experience of menopause.Following this, I present seven stories. Each story portrays how artistic genres grasp particular experiences and transform them into imaginative expressive inter-textual representations. / The stories also demonstrate how this type of research is done, and how the meaning-making processes of collaborative research draw out resonances towards real and imagined, and internal and external sites of personal and political significance.Accompanying the stories is a fourth chapter entitled Menopause Perspecta X 5. In writing this section, I adopt a different narrational approach and voice as I move from the realm of storyteller to that of art curator presenting a series of visual images and the poetic writings of five women. As well as portraying different voices speaking at different levels, each presentation continues the task of opening spaces for translation between word and image.The thesis concludes with a reflective overview of the menopausal body, image and text. In the coda, Notes Towards A Work In Progress, I express my thoughts on creating alternative spatial practices, and tell another story. Through its poetic and lyrical content, I attempt to offer possibilities for restoring a sense of menopausal self, love, hope, and a meaningful relationship with the world.

This thesis examines the relationship between narrative and meaning in young people’s dramatised stories and how social meaning is generated in community performance. It is an investigation into drama performance projects with culturally diverse teenagers in an inner city secondary school in Melbourne between 2004 and 2006. The methodological approach is reflective practitioner and case study research involving field based data collection. The study investigates the relationship between narrative content and socio-cultural meaning, the dynamics between performers and audience and the power relations between the teacher-artists and young people. / I conceptualise the drama workshop as an intracultural ‘third space’ (Bhabha, 1994) in which young people explored their emergent, hybrid cultural identities. This space was generated through a dialogic pedagogy based on Freire’s theory (1998) and an analysis of power structures underlying the work. / The centre of this thesis is an analysis of young people’s use of narrative to construct and negotiate the meanings of their dramatised stories. I have used narrative theory to inform and develop a drama process, drawing on the work of Bruner (1996) and Winston (1998). This approach enabled young people to develop complex, local meanings in their plays. / The young people used character to experiment with their personal narratives of identity and to develop dramatised stories containing moral messages that both reflected and commented on their local context, critiquing both their school subculture and the wider society. The plays were eclectic in form and reflected young people’s aesthetics and sense of ‘reality’. / In performance, audiences saw the performers simultaneously as fictional characters and as themselves. This complex dual awareness led audiences to infer a relationship between the dramatised story and the performers, generating ‘performative reflexivity’ (Turner, 1986) a state in which both audience and performers entered into deep reflection on social values.

This study explores the meaning of occupation, defined as a “conceptual entity… [which] includes all the things that people do in their everyday life” (Sundkvist & Zingmark, 2003, p. 40). Using a phenomenological hermeneutic method informed by the writings of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002), this study provides an understanding of the meaning of occupation interpreted from the perspective of 12 New Zealand adults who experienced a disruption to their occupations. The review of the literature suggests that early writers from the time of the Bible identified that occupation is not ‘wide open’, there are many factors that shape how and when a person engages in an occupation, which in turn shapes the meaning of occupation. Within the occupational therapy literature, discussion of the meaning of occupation is overshadowed by describing and defending practice. In occupational science scholars and researchers have focused largely on understanding occupation from a conceptual perspective rather than the ontological meaning of occupation. The exploration of the meaning of occupation is being advanced by only a few. In this study participants told their stories about their occupations. Data were analysed by indentifying key themes and engaging in a hermeneutic thinking process of going back to the work of Heidegger and Gadamer. Writing and re-writing was the method used to bring new understandings to the data. The findings of this thesis suggest that the meaning of occupation is complex, and tends to remain hidden. Analysis focuses on the call, Being-with, and possibilities. The call to occupation seems to be in response to what it is we care about or what concerns us. Being-with others while engaging in an occupation creates a bond and mood; the meaning of occupation changes depending on who the occupation is done with or without. The meaning of occupation is also revealed in the possibilities that are opened up or closed down. Occupation shows both ourselves and others what it is we are capable of in the journey of who it is we are becoming. Each of these facets of meaning work in unison and can be likened to three cogs in a wheel, each interconnected with the others. The thesis concludes by recognising that not all voices have been heard and argues for uncovering more about the meaning of occupation from the perspective of lived experience. A challenge is made to consider the meaning of occupation not as something that is individually derived but as something that is connected to the broader context of the world and others in the world.

This practice-based project explores the photographic phenomenon of ‘moment beyond moment’, which refers to the combined representations of an existing image in an environment, together with the real-life situation at the moment the photograph is taken. I call this photograph an ‘extended photograph’. Employing practical works of extended photographs and focusing on interactions between the moment in real-life and the moment in an existing image, the research explores the transformation of meanings caused by the interactions of these moments in an extended photograph. The research owes its approach to grounded theory, contrary thinking and Chinese Buddhist ‘Sudden Enlightenment’ to further its aim of exploring the unpredictable interaction of these moments, and to disclose the potentials of meaning transformation. My research outcome intends to initiate a discourse with photographic practitioners and theorists on the phenomenon of moment beyond moment in a working environment that is encaged by the excessive existence of displayed images. The thesis is composed as a creative work that consists of a series of photographic images accompanied by an exegesis component. The images represent a nominal 80%, and the exegesis 20% of the final submission.

Storytelling: circles and straight lines is a qualitative, retrospective analysis of my thesis (a collection of iconoclastic New Zealand short stories, entitled In Transit), in which I define the scope of my creative work by: positioning my approach within the wider contemporary and literary contexts; explaining its conceptual framework; and describing my intention and process. To these ends, I have drawn extensively on my personal experience, accumulated knowledge, and orientation, supplemented by wide reading. Throughout the text, I substantiate my views, arguments and conclusions with reference to noted writers, critics, language experts, and philosophers.

This research posits art as an encounter, an encounter between the conceptual worlds of artists and of viewers. It acclaims the respective art skills within the marae (communal meeting place) named Tangatarua at Waiariki Institute of Technology, Rotorua. Tangatarua Marae is a place of bicultural encounter. This writing includes readers in the social relations of this encounter. This is a qualitative study that uses an interpretive epistemology to examine some of the art forms of Tangatarua. My focus is on micronarratives - that is, on intimate, improvised meanings generated by some of the small artworks. These reference and affirm the symbolism of the carvings but are less visible due to their lesser scale and interstitial placement within the interior architecture. They are rendered more visible through the phenomenological detail of participant accounts as well as the positivism of a formalist critique. I posit art as a dialogical activity, inseparable from the phenomenological conditions that precede and inform it, and inseparable from the emergent meaning that is forged at its encounter. I contend that the collaborative mode of art production within Tangatarua embodies this dialogical model. I amplify some of the tangible art forms of Tangatarua by dismantling the intangible discursive forms that have impinged on them. These include aspects of the political context of the establishment of the marae, Waiariki Institute of Technology’s bicultural framework, and the pedagogy of its Art School. My writing is underpinned by a participatory paradigm acknowledging my situatedness as an artist participant within Tangatarua, a woman of Ngai Tahu descent, and art tutor at Waiariki Institute of Technology. This study similarly acknowledges the multifaceted, experiential transactions between those artists whose small collective gestures have informed and transformed the interior of Tangatarua.

Western museums are public institutions, open and accessible to all sectors of the population they serve. Increasingly, they are becoming more accountable to the governments that fund them, and criteria such as visitation figures are being used to assess their viability. In order to ensure their survival in the current climate of economic rationalism, museums need to maintain their audiences and attract an even broader demographic. To do this, they need to ensure that visitors feel comfortable, welcome and secure inside their spaces. They also need to give visitors clear entry points for engaging with and valuing the objects and knowledge on display in exhibitions. This thesis maps a grammar of three-dimensional space with a strong focus on the interpersonal metafunction. Building on the social semiotic tools developed by Halliday (1978, 1985a), Halliday and Hasan (1976), Martin (1992) and Matthiessen (1995), it identifies two interpersonal resources for organising space: Binding and Bonding. Binding is the main focus of the thesis. It theorises the way people�s emotions can be affected by the organisation of three-dimensional space. Essentially, it explores the affectual disposition that exists between a person and the space that person occupies by focussing on how a space can be organised to make an occupant feel secure or insecure. Binding is complemented by Bonding. Bonding is concerned with the way the occupants of a space are positioned interpersonally to create solidarity. In cultural institutions like museums and galleries, Bonding is concerned with making visitors feel welcome and as though they belong, not just to the building and the physical environment, but to a community of like-minded people. Such feelings of belonging are also crucial to the long-term survival of the museum. Finally, in order to present a metafunctionally diversified grammar of space, the thesis moves beyond interpersonal meanings. It concludes by exploring the ways textual and ideational meanings can be organised in three-dimensional space.

Doctor of Philosophy / Many criticisms of the prevalent deflationary theories of truth stem from some misunderstanding. Clarification can be found from considering Quine's reasoning on the disquotational feature of the truth predicate. Quine's disquotationalism and Horwich's minimalism are similar theses with respect to the concept of truth, though the difference between the choices of the primary truth bearers and the divergence in their accounts of meaning and reference are striking. Chapter Two is devoted to making plain Quine's reasoning regarding the disquotational concept of truth, and to constructing a disquotational theory of truth. Also in this chapter, the topic of how to enhance the deductive power of this theory is discussed. The following chapter aims to square Quine's theses of inscrutability of reference and ontological relativity, with an account of the disquotational schema of reference. Whether or not a disquotational schema of reference and all its instances can be seen as providing a genuine reference scheme, as claimed by Horwich and most deflationists, is also discussed. In Chapter Four, after an introduction of Horwich's minimalist conception of truth, there are a number of issues considered, in particular Horwich’s use-theoretic account of meaning and compositionality, along with the divergence between his account of meaning and Quine's. The final chapter, Chapter Five, provides a thorough analysis of three important factors regarding the disquotational theory and the minimal theory of truth. Among them, the first factor discussed is what sort of equivalence relation occurs within each instance of the disquotational schema or each axiom of the equivalence schema. Following this, there is an analysis of in what way the disquotationalist and the minimalist can explain all general facts involving truth. The last factor involves considering the proper ascription of the disquotational or the minimal truth predicate. Along with the analysis of these three factors, the issue regarding which theory of truth is preferable is elaborated.