Master of Arts in Fine Arts - Fine Arts / A Community Partnership Art Event, resulting from curating and facilitating an educational collaboration was held on the 23 March 2004, ten years into South Africa’s democracy. Through a Masters in Fine Arts coursework entitled “Creating, Curating and Critiquing” offered at the University of Witwatersrand, I attempted to test the boundaries of the Arts and Culture Learning Area and explore alternatives to the current definition of “outreach”. The grade six learners from The Ridge School, an independent boys’ preparatory school and Salvazione Christian School, an assisted government school, were brought together over a period of ten weeks during regular school art lessons. Through the guidance and expertise of various artists, workshops were cocoordinated with the collaborative ideas of the learners coming to the fore. The process and dialogue established between learners, artists and educators was intended to shift my own parameters of teaching primary school art. Focusing on people rather than the final products points to a readiness to view knowledge not as a commodity owned b#31;#31;the expert teacher, but rather as something which can be constructed and developed with the learners. Originally the collaboration was intended as a celebration of the opening of new premises for Salvazione Christian School. The public art happening was held in a tent next to the informal settlement where a large majority of the children from Salvazione Christian School live. 3 Rather than what might be described as a modernist approach to art education, where the focus seems to be on the artist and artwork, the focus was on linking art to social interaction, and it was through the discovery of a form of hybridity that a number of differences between the two communities were challenged and exposed. This resulted in an approach that seems similar to the manner in which the Indian writer, Salman Rushdie writes of hybridity: “Hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs.” (Coombes, 2000:39) Through this hybridity tensions were created and explored rather than a ‘rainbow’ or melting pot created, where differences are glossed over as in a multicultural approach. The primary research methodology was participant observation in which directly observed data was analyzed and interpreted. Data was gathered from the interactions in the workshops, setting up the exhibition and the art event. As intended, a link between art and ‘outreach’ was established. In order for this link to change into a community partnership, it must be seen as part of a much longer process. The process as a whole did become a different kind of primary school art space, preparing the way for possible positive transformation of the visual arts in the arts and culture learning area at primary school level.

This thesis is an investigation of the complex processes and relationships between the physical human performer and the technologically manufactured cyber-human counterpart. I acted as both researcher and the physical human performer, deeply engaged in the moment-to-moment creation of events unfolding within a shared virtual reality environment. As the primary instigator and activator of the cyber-human partner, I maintained a balance between the live and technological performance elements, prioritizing the production of content and meaning. By way of using practice as research, this thesis argues that in considering interactions between cyber-human and human performers, it is crucial to move beyond discussions of technology when considering interactions between cyber-humans and human performers to an analysis of emotional content, the powers of poetic imagery, the trust that is developed through sensory perception and the evocation of complex relationships. A theoretical model is constructed to describe the relationship between a cyber-human and a human performer in the five works created specifically for this thesis, which is not substantially different from that between human performers. Technological exploration allows for the observation and analysis of various relationships, furthering an expanded understanding of ‘movement as content’ beyond the electronic connection. Each of the works created for this research used new and innovative technologies, including virtual reality, multiple interactive systems, six generations of wearable computers, motion capture technology, high-end digital lighting projectors, various projection screens, smart electronically charged fabrics, multiple sensory sensitive devices and intelligent sensory charged alternative performance spaces. They were most often collaboratively created in order to augment all aspects of the performance and create the sense of community found in digital live dance performances/events. These works are identified as one continuous line of energy and discovery, each representing a slight variation on the premise that a working, caring, visceral and poetic content occurs beyond the technological tools. Consequently, a shift in the physical human’s psyche overwhelms the act of performance. Scholarship and reflection on the works have been integral to my creative process throughout. The goals of this thesis, the works created and the resulting methodologies are to investigate performance to heighten the multiple ways we experience and interact with the world. This maximizes connection and results in a highly interactive, improvisational, dynamic, non-linear, immediate, accessible, agential, reciprocal, emotional, visceral and transformative experience without boundaries between the virtual and physical for physical humans, cyborgs and cyber-humans alike.