Towards a conceptual framework for touchscreen 360° video on small mobile screens: Praxis in action

This paper describes a praxis approach to the conceptual framework required for producing touchscreen 360° video on small mobile screens, using a Point Grey Ladybug 3 camera. It is specifically concerned with how theory can help inform practice within a tertiary education environment, through a survey of the available literature of this emerging field. It concludes with a brief summary of a 360° video project shot as a result of these preliminary findings, and offers some possibilities for further development

Navigating Knowledge Frameworks at the Intercultural Interface

As we emerge not altogether unscathed in 2022 into what optimistically might be called a postpandemic world, we are confronted by the pressing need to address global and climate instabilities against a general backdrop of complexity. Potential solutions must be balanced against environmental and societal concerns that cannot take for granted that any system is somehow isolated. Here then is the crux of new materialist and post-humanist approaches – a shift “away from Kant”1 and away it seems, from humancentric understandings of who, or what, has agency in the world. Despite acknowledging the agencies of non-human others, such as electrical grids2 and quantum entanglement,3 or proposing new speculative realist frameworks by which to engage with such agentic capacities,4 finding workable solutions within such dynamics remains stubbornly difficult. What does become clear, at least, is that these Eurocentric traditions, arising from the European Enlightenment project, have not served the environment particularly well. Newtonian physics can no longer claim mastery over the tangible world through recourse to universal laws acting in isolation, and liberal humanism is revealed to be underpinned by Eurocentric cultural traditions of human exceptionalism and the rights of the individual exceeding the rights of the collective. As I have argued elsewhere,5 such traditions within the European imaginary arise from Judeo-Christian notions of dominion over the nonhuman and are reinforced by successive bifurcations between nature and culture through Plato/Aristotle-Descartes-Kant metaphysical trajectories

Book review of 'New Zealand Film: An illustrated history.'

Review of 'New Zealand Film: An illustrated history' for 'The journal of New Zealand art history 2012-13

Aligning the Vibrations: Resounding Matters

Te Kore, to Te Pō, to Te Ao MaramaTe reo Māori (the Māori language) is an oral language, so these “Te Kore, to Te Pō, to Te Ao Marama” words are most commonly encountered as spoken. Unlike Western traditions, precontact Māori cultures did not impose Cartesian divisions between nature and culture on the world. Nor does te reo position entities in an oppositional manner, as for instance the Greek prefix ‘in-’ does on the words ‘tangible’ and ‘intangible.’ Similarly, the Greek prefix ‘inter-’ inscribes the possibility that within oppositional entities there is always an in-between. Sound vibrates, resonates and reverberates, sound is always inherent to material movement, both in its generation and propagation. Vibrations are one of the ways that the material world makes itself felt. If language is communication, then in this understanding it is not just a human prerogative

Creative art at the hyphen in Aotearoa-New Zealand. Tōia Mai: A partnership project

History of how the public art sculpture 'Tōia Mai' came into being as a result of a series of partnerships between Wintec's Māori Achievement Unit, the artist Joe Citizen, Wintec students and staff, and multiple external stakeholders including mana whenua

Inaction is also action: Attempting to address Pākehā paralysis

As a Pākehā creative arts tutor and practice-led researcher working for the regional polytechnic Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec), I have often been aware of what Tolich (2002) calls ‘Pākehā paralysis’— which is the tendency by Pākehā not to engage with Māori, because it is ‘too hard’ due to an inability “to distinguish between their role in Māori-centred research and their role in research in a New Zealand society, which involves Māori among other ethnic groups.” (Tolich, 2002, p. 176). The default position is often one of avoidance, or worse, positioning Māori within a ‘mainstream’ education framework that frequently makes universalist assumptions in a manner that has been called “whitestreaming” (Denis, 1997, as cited in Milne, 2013, p. 3). Intellectually being aware of these issues, is however, quite different to doing something about it as a Pākehā schooled and practising within the same liberal humanist traditions one is attempting to be critical of

Escaping the anthropo art scene in Aotearoa

Recent posthumanist critique of the Anthropocene’s metaphysical underpinnings are grounded in the same cultural trajectories that such critiques seek distance from. Eurocentric realist and new materialist approaches tend to rely on scientific objective knowledge, without acknowledging how such claims are themselves culturally produced. Existing Māori and Indigenous philosophies on the interrelated nature of the universe may however provide some critical insights into engaging with these Western cultural presuppositions

Punking the panopticon

This presentation was part of a public lecture that was given at the Thames Steampunk festival in November 2015. It identifies some of the precursors of immersive interactivity that were prevalent in Victorian times as an introduction to the field today. It ends with a summary of some of my own recent research projects, that have variously explored interactive 360° video, movement-tracking, walk-in installations, and wireless sensor networks. All images that are used in this presentation exist in the public domain

Fluid dynamics and the art of deep base.

Multi-disciplinary performance that explored interactive elements between video, sound and glitter. Generative loops were used to create a dynamic sonic field above a bass speaker, which acted as a performative space for different types of glitter. This was then integrated into video using a multi-camera set-up, and mixed with graphic modifiers. Generative sound feedback was also achieved by recording the audience and glitter bounce