An apparatus was developed to project spinning golf balls directly onto golf greens. This employed a modified baseball/practice machine with two counter-rotating pneumatic wheels. The speed of the wheels could be varied independently allowing backspin to be given to the ball. The ball was projected into a darkened enclosure where the motion of the ball before and after impacting with the turf was recorded using a still camera and a stroboscope. The resulting photographs contained successive images of the ball on a single frame of film. The apparatus was tested on eighteen golf courses resulting in 721 photographs of impacts. Statistical analysis was carried out on the results of the photographs and from this, two types of green emerged. On the first, the ball tended to rebound with topspin, while on the second, the ball retained backspin after impact if the initial backspin was greater than about 350 rads-1. Eleven tests were devised to determine the characteristics of greens and statistical techniques were used to analyse the relationships between these tests. These showed the effects of the green characteristics on ball/turf impacts. It was found that the ball retained backspin on greens that were freely drained and had less than 60% of Poa annua (annual meadow grass) in their swards. Visco-elastic models were used to simulate the impact of the ball with the turf. Impacts were simulated by considering the ball to be rigid and the turf to be a two layered system consisting of springs and dampers. The model showed good agreement with experiment and was used to simulate impacts from two different shots onto two contrasting types of green.

The main aim of this thesis is to explore the use of learning technology within the music technology curriculum. First of all, it is recognised that there is a problem for music technology tutors in providing support for students who have 24-hour access to a music technology studio: typically, there is no support available outside of normal working hours. One solution is to implement the use of learning technology in the studio. However, there is no research to date in the field of music education that considers the pedagogical value of an interactive multimedia-based tool for music technologists. In order to address this matter, two learning technology interfaces were designed to support music technology students in different areas of the curriculum, specifically recording and psychoacoustics, and empirical work was carried out in order to evaluate their effectiveness. The intention was for both interfaces to enable contingent learning, or learning at a time of need, so that music technology students could undertake a creative task and retrieve help without having to leave the studio environment or seek assistance from a member of staff. In the light of general educational literature on learning and teaching, the information contained within the pages of these interfaces was divided into two categories, procedural and conceptual. The former provided step-by-step guidance on the execution of a task, while the latter provided broader theoretical knowledge associated with that task. A second aim of this thesis is to examine the effect of acquiring procedural and conceptual information through the interfaces on students' abilities to perform a task and retain knowledge about it. Two experiments were carried out involving 48 first-year undergraduates and 30 second-year undergraduates respectively. For each experiment, the students were divided into two groups and were required to carry out a task using one of the interfaces. In completing the set task, the first group was asked to gather procedural information from the interface, while the second group had to gain conceptual information. One month later, the students were asked to carry out the same task, but without using the interface. On both occasions, the students submitted task material for assessment. In general, the results showed that there were some significant differences in the levels of knowledge retention and task performance between the two groups of students, notably in favour of those who had acquired conceptual information.

This research takes a practice-based approach to exploring perceptual matters that often go unnoticed in the context of everyday lived experience. My approach focuses on the experiential possibilities of knowledge emerging through artistic enquiry, and uses a variety of modes (like textiles, sound, physical computing, programming, video and text) to be conducted and communicated. It examines scholarship in line with the ecological theory of perception, and is particularly informed by neurobiological research on sensory integration as well as by cultural theories that examine the role of sensory appreciation in perception. Different processes contributing to our perceptual experience are examined through the development of a touch-sensitive, sound-generating rug and its application in an experimental context. Participants’ interaction with the rug and its sonic output allows an insight into how they make sense of multisensory information via observation of how they physically respond to it. In creating possibilities for observing the two ends of the perceptual process (sensory input and behavioural output), the rug provides a platform for the study of what is intangible to the observer (perceptual activity) through what can actually be observed (physical activity). My analysis focuses on video recordings of the experimental process and data reports obtained from the software used for the sound generating performance of the rug. Its findings suggest that attentional focus, active exploration, and past experience actively affect the ability to integrate multisensory information and are crucial parameters for the formation of a meaningful percept upon which to act. Although relational to the set experimental conditions and the specificities of the experimental group, these findings are in resonance with current cross-disciplinary discourse on perception, and indicate that art research can be incorporated into the wider arena of neurophysiological and behavioural research to expand its span of resources and methods.

This thesis explores the ability of data visualisation to enable knowl-edge discovery in digital collections. Its emphasis lies on time-based visualisations, such as timelines. Although timelines are among the earliest examples of graphical renderings of data, they are often used merely as devices for linear storytelling and not as tools for visual analysis. Investigating this type of visualisation reveals the particular challenges of digital timelines for scholarly research. In addition, the intersection between the key issues of time-wise visualisation and digital collections acts as a focal point. Departing from authored temporal descriptions in collections data, the research examines how curatorial decisions influence collec-tions data and how these decisions may be made manifest in timeline visualisations. The thesis contributes a new understanding of the knowledge embedded in digital collections and provides practical and conceptual means for making this knowledge accessible and usable. The case is made that digital collections are not simply represen-tations of physical archives. Digital collections record not only what is known about the content of an archive. Collections data contains traces of institutional decisions and curatorial biases, as well as data related to administrative procedures. Such ‘hidden data’ – information that has not been explicitly recorded, but is nevertheless present in the dataset – is crucial for drawing informed conclusions from dig-itised cultural collections and can be exposed through appropriately designed visualisation tools. The research takes a practice-led and collaborative approach, work-ing closely with cultural institutions and their curators. Functional prototypes address issues of visualising large cultural datasets and the representation of uncertain and multiple temporal descriptions that are typically found in digital collections. The prototypes act as means towards an improved understanding of and a critical engagement with the time-wise visualisation of col-lections data. Two example implementations put the design principles that have emerged into practice and demonstrate how such tools may assist in knowledge discovery in cultural collections. Calls for new visualisation tools that are suitable for the purposes of humanities research are widespread in the scholarly community. However, the present thesis shows that gaining new insights into digital collections does not only require technological advancement, but also an epistemological shift in working with digital collections. This shift is expressed in the kind of questions that curators have started seeking to answer through visualisation. Digitisation requires and affords new ways of interrogating collections that depart from putting the collected artefact and its creator at the centre of human-istic enquiry. Instead, digital collections need to be seen as artefacts themselves. Recognising this leads curators to address self-reflective research questions that seek to study the history of an institution and the influence that individuals have had on the holdings of a collection; questions that so far escaped their areas of research.