creative work as

research
research seminar

Kirsty Beilharz
creative work as research
cf. creative work as “merely” art

• What does it mean for artefacts (music composition, poetry, creative writing, sculpture,
installation, theatre performances, writing new works, plays, lm/video, exhibitions, designs, inter-
arts, website exhibitions, models, digital architecture, visual artworks) to “count” in the academy?

• contributes to new knowledge (research)

• contributes to learning and teaching (scholarship)
• Why?
• outcomes contribute to internal performance assessments such as the Research Outputs
Collection (ROC) and Research Productivity Index (RPI), as well as the external Excellence in
Research for Australia (ERA) assessment exercise (University level)

• evidence in TEQSA national standard of Scholarship that informs the student experience
(College & University College level)
 creative work as research
cf. creative work as “merely” art

• What constitutes creative work as research?

1. materials/artefacts that create new knowledge or use existing knowledge in an innovative way

2. publicly available (de ned in terms of dissemination — prestige of venue, size and reach of
audience, quality of exhibition/performer/production)

3. peer reviewed or equivalent selectivity: competitively judged by experts, e.g. jury or expert
panel assessment, competition, peer review, commissioned

4. described in terms of scope: major, substantial or standard (equivalent to a monograph book

publication in heft, e.g. an opera, symphonic work, solo show, entire play script) vs. a shorter
instrumental work, a group exhibition, a role in co-created performance (equivalent in gravity to
a journal paper)

5. signi cance may be demonstrated by evidence of excellence, extent of dissemination, and

in uence on the eld or other indicators of impact
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creative work as research
cf. creative work as “merely” art

• Why is it important?
• informs scholarship, learning and teaching, may provide opportunities for student
participation and industry partnerships

• maintain your professional or expert practice, and engagement with communities of practice
• a valid outlet for creative practice, practice-led research, practice-led teaching, and other
forms of research such as action research and ethnographic research methodologies

• opportunities to engage in innovative industry partnerships e.g. design solutions, co-

creation, research for real-world problems

• reputation-building of the College and individual researchers because creative works are
highly visible in the public domain, often more accessible than academic work (not
cloistered academic work for highly specialised audiences)
creative work as research
cf. creative work as “merely” art

• What might creative work as generation of new knowledge or utilising existing knowledge in
new contexts or innovative applications look like?

• an “exegesis” interpretative analysis of a creative work accompanying the art proper

• extending technical or production knowledge through a creative output as vehicle for
discovery

• a creative work that explores a new research methodology or evaluation, e.g. measuring
responses in a new way, understanding audience/participants/experiences di erently

• using a creative application to explore a new technology or idea and evaluating it

• exploring an existing idea in a new context, new country, new application, etc. in order
to produce new solutions to an old or “wicked” problem
 performance as research
enquiry through a vocal or instrumental practice?

• Community engagement? Communities of practice ethnography, E.g.

Lotte Latukefu’s community music, Joanna Swadling & Christine
Carroll’s music for people in aged care - what changes in performative
relationship? Beilharz shakuhachi honkyoku repertoire study in Japan

• Curated programmes; Researched programme notes

• New interpretations; new or extended instrumental practices; historical
performance practice; invented or innovative instruments

• Performing in new
settings (Antarctica,
indigenous sacred
settings, hydrophone
sound art) - grants,
fellowships, residencies

• Audience exploration,
interactive arts,
educational arts
performance as research
enquiry through a vocal or instrumental practice?
song of sorrows
for ute + piano

• a variation on the creative work + ‘exegesis’ pattern, this is

an original music composition for ute and piano, which is
represented on its merits as an artwork in the Australian
Music Centre (publisher) and will receive an international
première performance post-COVID in USA.

• accompanied by a substantial philosophical essay (hopefully

for independent publication)

• musically, it is a “lament” on inequity and injustice, and

contributes to the discipline by developing contemporary
extended technique repertoire for the ute, exploring a wide
range of tone colour and control

• commissioned by Molly Barth, Vanderbilt University

Nashville, TN
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song of sorrows
for ute + piano
• the composition was written during — and in response to — the
2020 global pandemic

• a re ection on the tragic injustice of the pandemic for marginalised

peoples, which (in the case of some nations and communities) has
resulted in avoidable loss, death, illness, cultural obscurity, and
lasting devastation; for certain groups of people more than others:
marginalised, often voiceless, peoples who have been, and will
continue to be, those most severely harmed: the elderly; people
experiencing socio-economic disadvantage

• recognition of people managing chronic physical conditions;

people who are vulnerable due to mental health; indigenous rst-
nations peoples; people with inadequate access to hygiene
resources; or ethnically vulnerable groups

• The disease itself is tragic. But more shamefully, unnecessary

tragedy lies in the human decisions made — the opportunity to
have acted sooner, more compassionately and humanely in order
to minimise consequences, and to provide wise instructions and
fair distribution of resources (personal protection equipment,
masks, civil isolation and travel restrictions, abundantly available
testing, etc.) — rather than decisions motivated by capitalist greed
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song of sorrows
for ute + piano
• the philosophical essay is “The sovereignty crisis for American Christians under Cult Trump: sovereignty cloaking
the slide of liberal democracy into authoritarian capitalism according to Schmitt’s analysis of exceptionalism”

• the essay examines the con ict between liberal democracy that was traditionally the political persuasion for
Reformed Christianity and Trump’s abuse of national sovereignty for his sel sh purpose

• the essay argues that Trump invoked sovereignty for the wrong motivation, destabilised democracy by
normalising a state of “exception” over legal institutions, and by eradicating the moderating voices amongst his
advisers and agencies designed to co-partner in sovereignty

• based on Schmitt’s analysis of sovereignty after the collapse of the Weimar Republic in Hitlerian Germany, the
essay claims that authoritarian leadership, the disintegration of conventional democracy, the loss of civilian liberty,
is evident in Donald Trump’s America, Xi Jinping’s China, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and other totalitarian regimes

• Carl Schmitt’s theory, that established the discipline of Political Theology, highlights the intertwined relationship
between sovereignty and the concepts of the neighbour and ‘enemy’ or insider and outsider. He famously said
that “the sovereign is he who decides on the exception,” i.e. the authority who categorises a situation as an
emergency or exception to the norm, and invokes political sovereign control (outside or beyond the civil law) or
suspends the law for the preservation of the state
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 gestural interaction
installations as research
• human scale gestural-interaction
• discipline keywords: interactive space,
sentient spaces, smart spaces, internet Sydney
of things, physical computing, University
responsive architecture, user experience Sensate Lab
design, gestural interaction, digital
architecture, auditory display, media
architecture
UTS Building 6 SmartSlabs
• part of a systematic program of designs,
installations and creative works that
evaluated the interaction experience
(HCI, UX), human-scale computing,
physical computing, gestural interaction; Sonic Tai Chi in Sydney Powerhouse BetaSpace
assess comprehension of visual and
sonic interfaces; measure engagement,
funded under an ARC project for
gestural interaction with soni cation (the
grant funding enabled us to fabricate
and test designs in real settings)
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 polymedia pixel
vienna media
architecture
biennale 2010: Beilharz, K., Haeusler, M., Barker, Ferguson,
S. Polymedia Pixel in Oliver Schuerer, Gernot
Tscherteu, Martin Tomitsch (Curators) Media
Architecture Biennale 2010, Künstlerhaus Wien,
Austria 7-30 October, catalogue published by Media
Architecture Institute.

• individual modular dodecahedrons that can be

assembled in an intelligent array, wireless,
visual and sonic, photosensitive,
communicates with other ‘pixels’ in a cascade
or structural array, no external writing, energy-
neutral, weather resistant, stackable,
suspendable

• we designed the fabrication, circuitry,

programming, smart sensing (adapting to light
and noise levels) with energy-conscious solar
power source
• The artefact was also reported in conventional research
outputs:

• (2011) Haeusler, M. & Beilharz, K. ‘[Architecture =

Computer] – from computational to computing
environments’ in Proceedings of CAAD Futures, Liège,
Belgium, 6-8 June 2011, ISBN: 978-2-8745-6142-9, pp.
217-232.

• (2010) Haeusler, M., Beilharz, K. and Barker, T. 'Interactive

Polymedia Pixel and Protocol for Collaborative Creative
Content Generation on Urban Digital Media Displays',
International Conference on New Media and Interactivity,
Istanbul, Turkey, 28-30 April 2010.
 gestural interaction
with sonification
• Soni cation is generally considered in a statistical
data analysis context

• This research discusses the development of an

interface for live control of soni cation – for
controlling and altering soni cations over the course
of their playback.

• Designed primarily with real-time sources in mind,

rather than with static datasets, and intended to be
performative, live data-art creative activity

• The interface enables the performer to use the

interface as an instrument for iterative interpretations
and variations of soni cations of multiple datastreams

• Using the interface, the performer can alter the scale,

granularity, timbre, hierarchy of elements,
spatialisation, spectral ltering, key/modality, rhythmic
distribution and register ‘on-the- y’ to both perform
data-generated music, and investigate data in a live
exploratory, interactive manner
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windtraces
sounds
installation
tamarama
beach

Kirsty Beilharz
(formerly) UTS
&
Aengus Martin
(formerly) Sydney University

Sydney Bondi Sculpture by

the Sea 3-20 November
2011
 • Australian Music Centre record of
Windtraces sound installation work

• The sonic installation aims to create

dynamic responses to environmental
factors. This can include human activity,
temperature, wind, precipitation and light.

• Included in Sculpture Glossary on inclusion

of sound as a fourth dimension in artwork.

• Colin Black documented it in Australian

Sound Arts (blog); SMH, Mosman Daily, etc.

• Windtraces uses data from meteorological

sensors as inputs to algorithmic processes,
which generate a dynamic soundscape in
real-time. We describe its development from
practical, conceptual and artistic
perspectives. At Apple AUC CreateWorld
Conference 2011 (Best Paper Award) & in
Proceedings; and “The ʻInterfaceʼ in Site-
Speci c Sound Installation” in NIME
Conference Proceedings, University of
Michigan.
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windtraces
• Considering site-speci c installation as a large-scale musical instrument, the people
interacting, data driving soni cation, weather (in the case of the meteorologically-
driven installations presented) become agents or performers in uencing the musical
rendering and expression

• Considering site-speci c installation as a large-scale musical instrument, the spatial

environment, its acoustic properties and the way it a ects human circulation and
listening to the work, form an integral part of the interface (the ‘sounding board’)

• There are di erent considerations and optimisations designing an interface for a

single expert user to designing for novice or non-expert multi-user scenarios,
especially in broad-access public sites

• When an interface gives agency to an unpredictable data- source, such as weather,

the design needs to balance random behaviours and structural coherence

• Wind direction is mapped to a set of probability distributions. Di erent types of

movement are evoked using di erent time intervals and sets of probability
distributions, e.g. to create clear wave-like motions or complex scenes with many
sounds following random paths around the network of speakers

• When an interface gives agency to an unpredictable data-source, such as weather,

the design needs to balance data- determined, uncontrollable musical expression
and the designer’s aesthetic intentions
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 hyper-shakuhachi
• hyper-instruments extend the capabilities of acoustic
traditional instruments

• algorithmic methods of computer generatively need

to respond to the expressive nuances of a human
performer, such as pressure or breath intensity,
dynamic loudness, assonance in the tone quality
(a ected by embouchure in a woodwind instrument),
and the “spaciousness” created by silence

• instrument design has evolved through “extended” or

alternate playing techniques to analogue then digital
processors and computational processing in real-time
to expand the palette of performance possibilities

• creating augmented or hyper-instruments is a

research discipline in itself, and methods of controlling
autonomous computational creativity (A.I. systems/
generative algorithms) with human input is also its
own research discipline area. This project brings the
two together in the search for an aesthetic, musical
outcome
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 • "Mechanisms for Controlling Complex Sound Sources: Applications to Guitar Feedback

related papers Control,” Aengus Martin, Sam Fergusson & Kirsty Beilharz, in Proceedings of the 2010
Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2010), Sydney, Australia.

• “Understanding and Evaluating User Centred Design in Wearable Expressions,” Jeremiah

Nugroho & Kirsty Beilharz in Proceedings of the 2010 Conference on New Interfaces for
• “Spatialization and timbre for e ective auditory graphing,” June Musical Expression (NIME 2010), Sydney, Australia.
2007. Hong Jun Song, Kirsty Beilharz. Proceedings of the 8th
WSEAS International Conference on Acoustics & Music: Theory &
Applications, Vancouver, Canada, June 19-21, 2007. 71 Citations.
• “Expressive Wearable Soni cation and Visualisation: Design and Evaluation of a Flexible
• “Interaction as a Medium” in Architectural Design, August 2007 Display,” Kirsty Beilharz, Andrew Vande Moere, Barbara Stiel, Claudia Calo, Martin
Leonardo 40(4):368-369, DOI: 10.1162/leon.2007.40.4.368. Joanne Tomitsch, Adrian Lombard in Proceedings of the 2010 Conference on New Interfaces for
Jakovich, Kirsty Beilharz. 37 Citations. Musical Expression (NIME 2010), Sydney, Australia

• “Gestural hyper instrument collaboration with generative

computation for real time creativity: in January 2007, DOI: • “An Interface for Live Interactive Soni cation,” in Proceedings of the 2009 Conference on
10.1145/1254960.1254990, Conference: Proceedings of the 6th New Interfaces for Musical Expression
Conference on Creativity & Cognition, Washington, DC, USA, June
13-15, 2007. Kirsty Beilharz, Sam Ferguson. 27 citations.
• “ParticleTecture: Interactive Granular Soundspaces for Architectural Design,” Joanne
• “Symbiosis between participation and system design: from Jakovich & Kirsty Beilharz in Proceedings of the 2007 Conference on New Interfaces for
interactive art to urban development” in December 2006 CoDesign Musical Expression (NIME07), New York, NY, USA
2(4):249-257 Follow journal, DOI: 10.1080/15710880601008067.
Joanne Jakovich, Kirsty Beilharz, Matias Echanove.
• “Tele-touch embodied controllers: Posthuman gestural interaction in music performance,”
• “Designing Sounds and Spaces: Interdisciplinary Rules & September 2011 Social Semiotics 21(4):547-568, DOI: 10.1080/10350330.2011.591997
Proportions in Generative Stochastic Music and Architecture” in
January 2004J of Design Research 4(2), DOI: 10.1504/
JDR.2004.009838. • “Navigation of interactive soni cations and visualisations of time-series data using multi-
touch computing” in May 2011 Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces 5(3-4), DOI: 10.1007/
• “Body as Instrument – Performing with Gestural Interfaces,” Mary s12193-011-0075-3. Sam Ferguson, Kirsty Beilharz & Claudia A. Calò, 55 citations.
Mainsbridge & Kirsty Beilharz in Proceedings of the 2014 New
Interfaces for Musical Expression.
• “Pervasive Expression: Pervasive Visual, Auditory and Alternative Modality Information
• “Hyper-shaku (Border-crossing): Towards the Multi-modal Gesture- Display” in January 2008, Conference: Pervasive Computing 2008, Sydney, Australia.
controlled Hyper-Instrument,” Kirsty Beilharz, Joanne Jakovich &
Sam Ferguson in Proceedings of the 2006 International Conference Andrew Vande Moere, Kirsty Beilharz, Bert Bongers, Stephen Barrass.
on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME06), Paris, France.
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a ‘saturated phenomenon’
lens applied to analysis of
symbolism in music of
olivier messiaen

• this is not my creative work(!) but

included here to show the a new
analytical method or research
methodology can be applied to
“an existing problem” or an
established work to bring out new
knowledge, i.e. to do research

• composers’ exegetical analysis ts

in this category, as would the
analysis of a play or other creative
text

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creative work as research
summary recap

• creative work as research includes:

1. materials/artefacts that create new knowledge

2. are publicly available

3. peer reviewed or equivalent selectivity or competitive assessment by

discipline experts

4. demonstrates signi cance and in uence on the eld or equivalent

impact
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next research
seminar
Dr Dion Khlentzos — June 8

Preventing domestic violence through an emotion-focused

parenting program for fathers in addiction recovery