Culture and Creativity Seminar Series

As we learn from First Nations peoples throughout Australia, creativity is deeply embedded in culture, and culture is deeply creative. The CCCR’s seminars explore the ancient and cutting-edge relationship between culture and creativity. They open conversations by presenting new work in a wide-range of humanities, social science, creative and applied disciplines.

To learn more about the CCCR (Centre for Creative and Cultural Research), head to https://www.canberra.edu.au/research/centres/cccr

  • Julian Knowles – Solar Halo: An AV Work for 16 Atmospheric Weather Stations and Live Performer

    Culture and Creativity Seminar Series
    Culture and Creativity Seminar Series
    Julian Knowles – Solar Halo: An AV Work for 16 Atmospheric Weather Stations and Live Performer
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    With the arrival of the internet and public data streams, new opportunities have arisen to explore the ways in which real-time (or live) data may be deployed in an art work. This recent technical development has opened the possibility of art works being responsive to live internet data, thus extending the notion of context responsive art into the datasphere so that artworks may become ‘internet enabled’.

    This talk will present an overview of the creative research work Solar Halo: an AV work for 16 atmospheric weather stations and live performer, presented at Harvestworks, New York City in December 2023.

    Solar Halo investigates the use of live internet data in performance as a way to explore the dynamics of weather systems in real time performance. Using custom developed software, the project draws upon live data from sixteen atmospheric weather stations – eight across the Australian Alpine Country and eight across New York City. Live weather data then drive an audio-visual system with which the performer interacts.

    Bio
    Julian Knowles is a composer, performer and researcher, working with new and emerging technologies. Julian’s research driven music and audio/visual works have been presented at events and venues such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Audiosphere, Museo Reina Sofia Madrid, Experimental Intermedia, What is Music?, Australian Perspecta, Liquid Architecture, the Melbourne International Film Festival, VIVID Sydney, and the Sydney Opera House. He is Executive Dean in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Canberra. 

    This research was supported by the Experimental Intermedia Foundation and Harvestworks, as well as the Bogong Centre for Sound Culture.

  • Kerry Martin – The Materialisation of Testament: An Artistic Response to a Truth-Telling Royal Commission

    Culture and Creativity Seminar Series
    Culture and Creativity Seminar Series
    Kerry Martin – The Materialisation of Testament: An Artistic Response to a Truth-Telling Royal Commission
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    Royal Commissions are increasingly seen as a powerful forum for truth-telling, providing an important public mechanism for the examination of difficult issues.

    Based on the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2012-2017) this seminar examines the role of art in responding to commissions of inquiry, and how it can provide a platform for ongoing conversations about what are often challenging and traumatic topics. It explores the artist/researcher’s approach to the use of a reparative aesthetic (an approach to art making designed to make gentle but powerful statements about shameful events), the artist as witness trauma that is not their own, and the use of beauty as a legitimate strategy or entry-point into violent, shameful and difficult topics.

    Bio

    Kerry Martin is a visual artist in the final stages of a creative practice PhD at the University of Canberra’s Centre for Creative and Cultural Research. Her practice is motivated by the logic of a reparative aesthetic, an approach aimed to hold the viewer’s attention on the difficult subjects she explores. Martin works primarily with textile techniques. Her work focuses on manual methods, and she frequently employs the slow, repetitive process of hand stitching as a fundamental element of her work. She consistently examines questions relating to the human condition and areas of social injustice.  She is interested in how beauty, text, the repetition of mark making, and the multiplicity of display can be an impactful form of bearing witness.

    This research is supported and funded by an Australian Government Research Training Program Stipend Scholarship.

    This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to KerryMartin_Presentation.mp4

  • Denise Thwaites – Orbital Maneuver (Otherwise Known as a Burn)

    Culture and Creativity Seminar Series
    Culture and Creativity Seminar Series
    Denise Thwaites – Orbital Maneuver (Otherwise Known as a Burn)
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    The title of this seminar is ripped from a Wikipedia entry about space travel. The presentation has little to do with aeronautical engineering, and everything to do with diverting fixed orbits of thought and action, through multilingual and interdisciplinary collaborations. To explore these ideas, I draw on recent research projects co-curating the experimental contemporary arts program ‘Corps Celestes/Etres Terrestres [Celestial Bodies/Terrestrial Beings]’ with Dr Manuela de Barros as part of Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles’ NOVA_XX Biennale, and on-going collaborations with Dutch publishing platform, Amateur Cities.

    Bio
    Denise Thwaites is a curator, writer and researcher specialising in contemporary cultural economies, who is currently Senior Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Arts at the University of Canberra. Denise was awarded her PhD in Aesthetics through The University of New South Wales (Australia) and l’Université Paris 8 (France), before joining UNSW iCinema Research Centre as a Postdoctoral Fellow. She has worked in the contemporary arts sector at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Australia Council for the Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (all Sydney), alongside co-curating independent projects for the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam), Artspace (Sydney), This Is Not Art Festival (Newcastle), New Beginnings Refugee Culture and Arts Festival (Sydney), and Next Wave Festival (Melbourne). Her research has been published in Cordite Poetry Review, Meniscus Literary Journal, Runway Journal of Experimental Art, Performance Paradigm, Artlink, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, Culture, Theory and Critique and Derrida Today.

    This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to DeniseThwaites_Presentation.pptx

  • Claire Rosslyn Wilson – Collaborating at a Distance: Explorations of Creative Play In and Across Place

    Culture and Creativity Seminar Series
    Culture and Creativity Seminar Series
    Claire Rosslyn Wilson – Collaborating at a Distance: Explorations of Creative Play In and Across Place
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    During Claire’s Donald Horne Creative and Cultural Fellowship she has been working on a practice-led research project that investigates the making and sharing of micro- multimedia creative works to investigate familiar and unfamiliar places. It especially explores ways of communicating about place through creative practice. In this presentation Claire will draw from her collaborations at a distance and interviews she has so far conducted as part of the Fellowship, which investigate in what way creative frameworks and ways of collaborating might foster thoughtful intercultural exchange and reflection on place-making. The research asks: what are the limitations of these online collaborations? To what extent can they provide some insight into unfamiliar places? Are there any insights from these examples of practice that suggest different ways of encountering and engaging with familiar and unfamiliar places?

    Bio
    Dr. Claire Rosslyn Wilson is a poet, researcher and editor based in Barcelona. Claire develops video works that explore the unfamiliar (both in terms of unfamiliar places and cultures and the unfamiliarity of the more-than-human). Originally from Naarm, and having worked for periods in Thailand, Singapore and now Barcelona, Claire is particularly interested in how creative practice can be an entry point into exploring the unfamiliar and the unknown in an open and curious way. Claire has a practice-led PhD focusing on translocal creative practice.

    This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to ClaireWilson_Presentation.pptx

  • Cathy Hope – The Transformative Power of the Arts: Creative Placemaking in Haig Park

    Culture and Creativity Seminar Series
    Culture and Creativity Seminar Series
    Cathy Hope – The Transformative Power of the Arts: Creative Placemaking in Haig Park
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    The multi-award winning 2019 project Haig Park Experiments successfully transformed Haig Park from an under utilised and dangerous park into a vital community hub in the heart of Canberra. The park’s transformation has increased social participation in the inner-city public realm, reduced social inequality for women, children and older adults who now feel safer in the park, and contributed to wellbeing by providing a vibrant green space.  

    This seminar outlines the central role of creative play and placemaking in enabling this transformation by sharing the lesser-known stories from the 26 Experiments, and thus the power of the arts and creative play as an agent of social change.

    Bio
    Dr. Cathy Hope is Engagement and Impact Director and Coordinator of the Play, Creativity and Wellbeing Project in the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra. Cathy’s research informs and supports the local creative industries and uses creative-led approaches to improve place and wellbeing outcomes in Canberra. Cathy has co-facilitated hundreds of playful projects with and for the Canberra community in partnership with local government, industry and community.

    This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to CathyHope_Presentation.pptx