Sample research statements from ERA 2018 submission NTRO Type Title of output Research Statement Public exhibitions Adelaide Chamber Singers 2016 Research Background: Adelaide Chamber Singers' 2016 Concert Season was created and and events Concert Season curated by Carl Crossin - Artistic Director and Conductor of Adelaide Chamber Singers (ACS). The Season consisted of four concert programs which explored, through performance, (a) the creative nexus between contemporary choral and music from the European Renaissance particularly in relation to settings of the same, or similar texts, and (b) the power of music to reinforce textual narrative in musical forms. Three of the four programs featured the world premiere of new music commissioned by Carl Crossin and ACS for this Season. Research Contribution: Program One explored several settings of texts in praise of music including a comparatively new work by Australian Paul Stanhope – Lament for St. Cecilia – composed as a companion piece for Britten's famous Hymn to St. Cecilia. Australian Daniel Brinsmead's Ode to Music (an ACS commission) was also premiered. Program Two presented the Adelaide premiere of James Whitbourn's Annelies, an extended narrative work with texts from the Diary of Anne Frank. Program Three explored the concept of contemporary composers re-imagining the works of earlier composers. Program Four featured a new work (ACS commission) from Australian Paul Stanhope in a performance that subsequently won the South Australian "2016 Performance of the Year Award" at the 2017 Art Music Awards. The major part of Program Four however was a 'chamber' performance of Faure's Requiem. This work is usually the province of much larger choirs but, in this context, was praised for its clarity and intimacy. Research Significance: Three new choral compositions (ACS commissions) entered the Australian choral repertoire in 2016. Press reviews were consistently very positive and, as such, provide a measure of the impact of ACS programs and performances within the musical community and an indicator of peer respect for the ensemble and its programs and performances.

Public exhibitions 10 Minutes to Midnight: Survival in Research Background: 10 Minutes to Midnight is the culmination of community-based arts and events the atomic age projects with atomic survivor communities including: Pitantjatjara Anangu in Yalata and Oak Valley, communities who were relocated from traditional Maralinga Tjarutja lands

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prior to the tests; and nuclear veteran and descendant networks in Australia and Britain. Research Contribution: The creative works fit within a long tradition of artists and communities responding to 'the bomb'. Featured are original projection installations, digital artwork, contemporary photo media, sound design, sculpture, film and rare archival material. As well as exploring the horrors of the atomic age, the exhibition embodies humanitarian messages of hope, celebrating the resilient communities and individuals who continue to pursue recognition and justice, and courageously share their stories for the benefit of future generations. Research Significance: The timing of the exhibition coincides with the 70-year anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings - the beginning of the atomic age. The level of community engagement with the project broke new ground in the idea of art and participation, and showed how artists and community combine in the act of commemoration and healing. Public exhibitions Turner - Romantic and Research Background: The curated concert 'Turner – Romantic and Revolutionary' was and events Revolutionary commissioned by the Art Gallery of South Australia to complement the exhibition Turner from the Tate. Research Contribution: The preparation of the program required research into the art and ideas of Turner, and focused on how Turner's artistic praxis might translate into a sonic medium. Themes from the paintings were reflected in the musical choices: Venice (barcarolle), the Romantic sublime (Liszt), night (nocturne). Much of the music dated from Turner's lifetime: Haydn, Field, Mendelssohn, Liszt. Creative response came in the form of a specially commissioned work for the concert, The Fallacies of Hope for quintet by Stephen Whittington, based on an unfinished poem by Turner, which explored the dialectic between visual trope, sonic nuance and literary expression, using the form of the barcarolle. Research Significance: When Turner from the Tate moved from the AGSA to the National Gallery of Australia, the musical program was judged to be so integral to the exhibition as a whole that it also accompanied the Canberra exhibit. The performers in both cases were The Australian String Quartet, and Stephen Whittington. Original Creative Piano Lessons Research Background: 'Piano Lessons' is a memoir that investigates a new form of writing Work about music and music education. It thus contributes to both creative writing and the literature of music in an innovative and highly appealing way, part-autoethnography, part- entertainment, part-instruction. It chronicles the author's first steps towards a life in music, from childhood piano lessons with a local muso to international success as a concert pianist. Research Contribution: The work creates new knowledge in the field of creative writing through its development of appropriate modalities for conveying the hopes and

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uncertainties of youth, the fear and exhilaration of performing, and the complex bonds between teacher and student. This is part a process of formal invention, and part a question of voice and tone. The content and balance in this hybrid, episodic, carefully judged work contributes significantly to contemporary Australian life writing. Goldsworthy refracts her childhood experiences through the prism of music, casting new light on human experience and the world of music. Research Significance: The work enjoys critical acclaim, awards, reprintings and its adaptation into recital and stage versions. Winner, 2010 Australian Book Industry Awards (Newcomer of the Year); Shortlisted, 2012 Melbourne Prize Award for Best Writing; Shortlisted, Colin Roderick Award (Australian Life Writing); Shortlisted, 2010 Australian Book Industry Awards (General Non-Fiction); Shortlisted, NSW Premier's Literary Awards (Non-Fiction). Reviews include: "Goldsworthy delivers an expertly spun narrative, told with wry, self-effacing charm, elegant economy and the genuine love of a student for her teacher." —The Australian; "This impressive debut will surely mark Anna Goldsworthy's arrival as an Australian writer to be reckoned with." — The Age Original Creative Inspired Design: European and Research Background: Inspired Design was curated by the Art Gallery of South Australia's Work North American decorative arts Curator of European and Australian Decorative Arts, Robert Reason. Supported by the Copland Foundation, the exhibition and accompanying publication focused on the Gallery's European and North American decorative arts collection. Research Contribution: The exhibition provided insights into what are regarded as defining moments in the history of Western aesthetics, style and fashion. It further emphasized the role of curation as both a research process (through the juxtaposition of artefacts in order to highlight specific historical trends) and as an outcome of the research undertaken in preparation for the exhibition. Research Significance: The exhibition was the first to document comprehensively the rich artistic heritage of Europe and North America, as expressed through the decorative arts collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia. Aside from its historical significance, the exhibition shed further light of the importance of philanthropy in supporting the aims of the Gallery more broadly, and the narratives it seeks to communicate. In this case, the uniqueness of the collection is a reflection of the diverse nature of what has been over 130 years of philanthropy at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Original Creative Bapo Research Background: Bapo makes a distinctive contribution to contemporary Australian Work writing and transcultural Asian Australian writing and the translation of Chinese aesthetic

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ideas in contemporary creative practice. It builds on my previous fiction, notably The Red Thread, that adapted classic Chinese memoir into a contemporary fictional mode. It also extends my research practice, as demonstrated in a number of essays and projects in recent years, on transnational or transcultural reading and writing, of which Bapo is a key example. Through practice-led research the work contributes to our rethinking of the dominant paradigm of world literature. Research Contribution: This book-length collection of short fiction takes the concept of bapo, a term from Chinese visual art to describe a kind of illusionistic collage which is fragmentary and elegiac, so-called 'brocade ashes', to assemble a sequence of stories and sketches. The research explores experimental ways to evoke relations between China and Australia in terms of content and adapt formal ideas of essayistic prose or semi-fictional story from Chinese tradition into a contemporary Australian context. This is the first work of fiction to identify bapo ('eight broken') as a model for a 'composed' book of this kind and to relate it to changing, multiple possibilities of cultural and personal identity. Research Significance: The book received positive reviews in the national press (Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Book Review, ABC Books & Arts) and specialist journals and was shortlisted for the Steele Rudd Award 2015. Parts of it have been translated into Chinese. The book contributed to and enlivened the current discourse relating to Australia's engagement with China, and vice versa. Live performance James Muller and SCJO big band Research Background: James Muller is an internationally acclaimed jazz guitarist, ranked of creative works tour of USA 2015 consistently among the best in the world. His research portfolio straddles performance and composition, both undertaken in a range of settings, from solo to small ensemble and big band. Muller received an Australia Council Music Fellowship grant (2013-14) in support of the creation of a body of works for solo jazz . A selection of these were arranged by the respected German jazz composer/arranger Florian Ross, and formed the core repertoire for a tour to the United States in December 2015 by the Sydney Conservatorium Jazz Orchestra, directed by Muller. The CD recording included here as supporting evidence was made at the end of the tour, in . Research Contribution: The tour explored the dynamic that exists between solo and big band settings of solo jazz guitar repertoire. An added dimension was the pedagogical aspect of exposing young musicians to original works performed in what are crucibles of jazz: LA, Chicago and New York. Musically the repertoire expands the role of the guitar from its more traditional accompanying function in large jazz ensembles, and assumes a leadership hitherto seldom accorded the instrument. Research Significance: The tour and supporting CD counteract

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the perception that the guitar is limited in ability to achieve a dominant role in large ensemble settings. The audience numbers, in particular in an area where this research finding had is strongest impact – the Chicago Midwest Clinic (a conference dedicated to brass instrumentalists). Live performance Guitar Duo Concert at Shanghai Research Background: The concert performance constitutes the duo's second visit to China of creative works International Guitar Festival and their first concert in Shanghai. Research Contribution: Lee and Fartach-Nani's forging of new repertoire across a stylistically broad spectrum has contributed to bringing the guitar duo repertoire in line with the classical guitar's solo traditions which are characterised by an explicitly transcultural approach. This approach to repertoire is exemplified in the duo's Shanghai recital which alongside Ludger Vollmer's intellectually charged composition Set of Dreams and Thomas Wallisch's Artpop piece Complicando also included the Chinese premieres of Coco Nelegatti's tango composition Pobre De Ellos, Carlo Domeniconi's transcultural work unreal-dance op. 151 and Richard Charlton's pop-infused composition Along Parallel Lines. Research Significance: The festival was held at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, China's second highest ranked music institution. Over the course of their 25 year history as a duo South Korean guitarist Lee Song-Ou and German guitarist Oliver Fartach-Naini have worked on ameliorating this imbalance, which is particularly evident in much of Asia where the more traditional culture of the solo recitalist and a Segovian outlook on repertoire continue to dominate the Western classical market. In their pursuit of promoting the guitar duo format and producing repertoire with more stylistic diversity Lee and Fartach-Naini have established a long track record of collaborations with composers across the globe. Live performance Resonant Ghosts Research Background: Building on Harrald's previous work in combining contemporary art of creative works practice with Heritage Interpretation, "Resonant Ghosts" pushed the concept of site- specific installation and augmented reality using digital media, blurring the line between entertainment, education and community engagement. This project expanded further the idea that contemporary art practice could be used in a heritage interpretation context to make a new kind of engaging experience for audiences, and to reinvigorate public interest and engagement with abandoned public space. The premiere of the work was part of the event "Southern Encounter", which incorporated sound-art works written specifically for presentation on a train journey along an abandoned rail route between Goolwa and Strathalbyn. Research Contribution: "Resonant Ghosts" explores shaping the perception of place through blurring the line between the natural sound environment and the mediated

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environment of the installation. This is achieved by leveraging numerous acoustic and psycho-acoustic phenomena to build a series of sound images that shift the audience through various periods of the site's acoustic ecology. As a piece of art, the work is essentially a contemporary gallery installation presented in an unusual exhibition space – in this instance, a steam train parked 65 metres off the ground above Currency Creek. Research Significance: As a research project the work is unique, combining community engagement and renewal with contemporary art imperatives. The approach to blurring the mediated and real acoustic environments has been highly successful, with many audience members commenting at the premiere that the work (and event as a whole) offered a new kind of experience that they hadn't had before. Subsequently, in 2013 the premiere event 'Southern Encounter' won two national APRA Art Music Awards for Excellence in Experimental Music and Excellence in a Regional Area. Recorded/rendered CD 25 Research Background: The chamber music format of guitar duo has a long tradition and is creative works the most popular collaborative pairing. However, its repertoire proves not as diverse as the stylistically much broader canon of solo guitar compositions. Over the course of their 25 year history as a duo South Korean guitarist Lee Song-Ou and German guitarist Oliver Fartach-Naini have worked on ameliorating this imbalance, which is partially due to the fact that non-guitarist composers are much more likely to write for solo guitar rather than for two . In their pursuit of stylistic diversification Lee and Fartach-Naini have established a long track record of collaborations with composers across the globe. Research Contribution: World premiere recordings that cover a stylistically broad spectrum of new repertoire from six countries and four continents speak to the innovation of this output. The explicitly transcultural approach taken is a reflection of a preparedness by composers and performers alike to look beyond the European traditions in order to embrace what is here termed ethnoclassicism – an eclectic phenomenon whereby guitar- idiomatic elements, art and vernacular musics come together. Traditionally a more prominent feature of the classical guitar's solo repertoire this research project adds new guitar duo compositions to the guitar's culture of eclecticism by juxtaposing ethnoclassical compositions by guitarist-composers with less ethnoclassical works by non-guitarist composers. This is exemplified in Coco Nelegatti's tango composition Pobre De Ellos and Ludger Vollmer's intellectually charged work Set of Dreams respectively. Research Significance: This CD contains works, which internationally accomplished composers Thomas Wallisch (Austria), Geonyong Lee (South Korea), Richard Charlton (Australia), Carlo

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Domeniconi (Italy), Stephen Whittington (Australia), Coco Nelegatti (Argentina) and Ludger Vollmer (Germany) have written specifically for this guitar duo. Recorded/rendered James Muller "Neurotica" Research Background: As a guitarist James Muller has toured with international musicians creative works of the calibre of Chad Wackerman, John Scofield, Christian McBride and Nigel Kennedy. Muller received an Australia Council Music Fellowship grant (2013-14) in support of the creation of a body of works for solo jazz guitar. Neurotica is the fifth CD he has recorded and released commercially, and features Muller as soloist and bandleader. Research Contribution: Compositionally, the CD explores the combination of ambient textures, electronica and rhythmic displacement and polyrhythms in a contemporary jazz setting. As such, the recording juxtaposes the metric stasis commonly attributed to ambient music with constantly evolving polyrhythm and syncopation. From a performance perspective, the use of the apparently limited resources of a guitar trio to achieve those compositional aims broke new ground. Research Significance: John Shand, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, recognised the significance of the recording: 'James Muller has a way of making a melody line dance, of making it twitch and contort. However fast the line, the guitarist loads the phrasing with nuances of rhythm and also dynamics, so the notes jostle and collide as they come hurtling at you. Sometimes they cease to form a line so much as a labyrinth within which the melodies' quality can still be discerned.' (SMH, 13 May 2016) The use of the guitar in directing the textural excursions central to the album's contribution to new music expands the capabilities of the instrument. Recorded/rendered Girlhouse - Original Motion Picture Research Background: The soundtrack to GIRL HOUSE was created and produced by creative works Soundtrack (Score) , a music production company of whom Tom Hajdu is one of two partners. While the company is best known for their work scoring films, their portfolio includes records and art installations as well as music for television commercials and television programs. Research Contribution: The contribution lies in the ways that the soundtrack is shown to expose the nuances of the plot, the film, which follows the trials and tribulations of a young college student who moves into a house that streams content to an X-rated website. According to Hajdu, tomandandy 'tried to develop a suspenseful tone while avoiding cliché. The themes of the film, while obviously contemporary, are also connected to primal human experiences …juxtaposing terror and imbalance with the trappings of modern internet life'. As such the soundtrack engages in a dialogue with the plot, in the sense that it moves between technologically mediated sounds and traditional orchestrations, and in so doing offers a commentary on the implications (and dangers) of

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technology on contemporary life. Research Significance: The soundtrack makes a contribution to a body of work created by tomandandy that includes the Resident Evil franchise, , Arlington Road, The Rules of Attraction, The Hills Have Eyes, and The Mothman Prophecies. The significance of this body of work is that it has breathed new life into the horror genre. It has also led to collaborations with , , , , William Burroughs, Alicia Keyes, and Wes Borland. Portfolio Hajdu Feature Films Research Background: In 1990 Tom Hajdu co-founded tomandandy, which has grown into one of the largest music production companies in the world. The company's research – which focuses on both the artistic outcome and the creative process – has generated a large body of musical scores for an array of internationally celebrated motion pictures. A selection of these are represented here. Hajdu's approach to film scoring has helped shape the contemporary media industry, and became the signature sound of MTV, and helped to internationalize the channel. Research Contribution: Central to the research undertaken in the creation of the film scores is the development of a new process that lowered music production costs to a faction of previous levels, while at the same time improving creative quality. The lowering of costs produced better, unexpected results which led to a fundamental change in the music and media industries: composers no longer necessarily mapped out media with click tracks, for example, rather they could approach the music canvas in the way that Jackson Pollock might approach a painting - splashing sounds together with pitched elements to create unexpected hybrid results. This hybridity is particularly well-suited to the suspense/horror genres represented here. Research Significance: The research – the process and its artistic outcomes – has led to collaborations with musicians including Lou Reed, David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, Leonard Cohen; visual artists Jenny Holzer, Tom Sachs, the Starn Brothers; writers such as William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg; directors including , () and . tomandandy's work on the Resident Evil film franchise has generated over half a billion dollars (US) worldwide. Hajdu's research has led to collaborations with world leading ad agencies including Saachi, McCann Erikson, Chiat Day, and music for brands such as Mercedes, Ford, Nike, Adidas, Microsoft and Apple. Portfolio Nici Cumpston: new landscape Research Background: This portfolio gathers work by artist/curator Nici Cumpston selected photo-art in national and for prestigious exhibitions where it is framed in intersecting personal, community, national international contexts and international contexts. Cumpston is of Afghan, English, Irish and Barkindji Aboriginal heritage, a descendant of the Darling River people of northern NSW. She is culturally

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affiliated with the River Murray people and has lived in the South Australian Riverland. Her art researches and documents the ongoing demise of this once abundant area as different 'signs' reveal past occupation. Artefacts and the bones of Nookamka ancestors are being exposed as the drying lake recedes. Trees become accessible and can be walked around. Research Contribution: Cumpston's art explores the connection people have had with country over tens of thousands of years. Her images portray the beauty of the environment, and raise awareness of its degradation. Three of Cumpston's hand coloured photographs were selected for the National and Torres Strait Islander Triennial national touring exhibition Undisclosed. They possess both strength and gentleness, such seeming contradictions enabling her to communicate to broad audiences with grace and clarity. Her work for the Royal Academy, London show Australia (2013) revisions Australian landscape in an international context. Research Significance: As a contemporary Indigenous photo- artist, Cumpston contributed significantly to Making Change (Beijing & Sydney, 2012) and, following a residency at Fowler's Gap Arid Zone Research Station, in innovative work for having-been-there (Melbourne and Kluge-Ruhe, Charlottesville, Virginia). The artist uses a large-format Hasselblad camera to investigate a post-industrial landscape that carries remnants of ancient tool-making. She responds to this primary subject with 'temporal empathy', says writer Una Rey. Inclusion in these exhibitions is a marker of excellence. Portfolio The quotidian in the music of Research Background: The portfolio explores the Quotidian aesthetic being developed by Graeme Koehne Graeme Koehne. The three short works employ familiar forms and tropes in response to everyday events and sensibilities. Research Contribution: Research innovation lies in challenging the belief that postmodern art seeks deliberately to contest conventions. Koehne explores an ideologically more neutral embrace of the everyday as a source of inspiration for its own sake. Twilight on Dove Lake and Just Walk Beside Me were commissioned by the Hush Music Foundation. Both works premiered on December 7 2013 by the TSO, and released on CD HUSH013. The Hush Foundation invited Koehne to observe the activities of the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, with a view to composing music as a soothing background for medical procedures: a form of music therapy that reassures through easy familiarity and accessibility. Lullaby & Flying Music for and piano premiered on October 13 2012 at the Port Fairy Music Festival. The lullaby appears on Close Your Eyes and I'll Close Mine, Tall Poppies TP 228. Here, the hackneyed musical genre, the lullaby, is framed against the rituals of the concert stage, not with the view to parodying or discrediting either, but rather to interrogate where the border lies, a

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demarcation then nullified in Flying Music. Forty Reasons to be Cheerful was commissioned by the Adelaide Festival Centre to celebrate its 40th anniversary. Premiered by the ASO on May 31 2013 the work was composed to accompany a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. As such Koehne sought to celebrate the often overlooked everyday features of this iconic work: simple folk-like melodies, marches and references to contemporary popular culture. Research Significance: The works included here make a significant contribution to the Australian art music repertoire. Their importance is confirmed in the prestige and outreach of the commissioning organisations and premiere performance venues.

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