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    Life-drawing : trauma and intimacy in the essay qua drawing : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Fine Arts, Massey University Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2022) Amodeo, Gabrielle
    Developing from a foundation of practice that included expanded field of drawing explorations, installation, and texts presented with gallery-based exhibiting, this research asks how an expanded practice of life-drawing—in which the essay operates in the capacity of a drawing—is valuable as a mode of representing experiences of trauma and intimacy within a contemporary visual arts context. Through an engagement with autotheoretical practices, and through proposing the form of an expanded practice of life-drawing (as a parallel to life-writing), this research investigates the theorised experiences of trauma and intimacy, both separately and in tandem, as they relate to drawing and the essay. It particularly looks at the dissociation of trauma in comparison, and in relation to, accrued observation as a practice of intimacy. This research also explicates the similarities between the essay and drawing, similarities that pull them so close, the essay can be sited within an expanded definition of drawing. To argue this, it investigates the effect of conceptual art and related commentaries on loosening understandings of drawing particularly, and art disciplines generally, away from traditional material concerns, allowing space for the essay in the capacity of a drawing. It then proposes the essay qua drawing as valuable in embodying the relationship between dissociation and intimacy. The essay qua drawing addresses the way drawings and essays can inform, exacerbate, disrupt and enhance the experience of trauma and intimacy. Both drawing and the essay are almost definitionally involved with forms that relate to the experience of trauma (in particular, gap and fragment) and the experience of intimacy (as a practice of accrued observation). The outcome is a novella-length personal essay presented in a limited-edition book that, in style, sits between artist-book and commercially published book.
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    Drawn chorus : the creation of embodied drawing processes responsive to the detrimental impact of human-produced sound on humpback whales : an exegesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy, Fine Arts, College of Creative Arts – Toi Rauwharangi, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2021) O'Toole, Maria
    Drawn Chorus is an embodied speculation on how “sound” is experienced as pressure from a whale’s perspective. At the heart of this methodological drawing study is my investigation of an intuitive space between “perceiver and perceived”, in which I listen, imagine and speculate on a whale’s experience of human-generated sound as it interferes with the natural sound environment of oceanic space. Sound is essential to these marine mammals; it is a primary means of communication. Noise travels through the sea as pressure, and it travels further in the sea than in the air. Through the development of drawing research processes that tune into bodily, sensory and gestural responses to ocean acoustics, a visual language for the unseen sound forces experienced by whales has evolved. Relational encounters with science and nature played a role in this production of knowledge. For this research, I have evolved a multifaceted visual language for pressure through attunement to: 1) NIWA scientists researching the impact of human-generated sound, 2) my own direct sensory experiences from swimming with whales in their wild habitat, and 3) my own speculative and imagined responses to environmental stresses. In my drawings I have intertwined the journey of a line with my own sensory and intellectual understandings of the complexities of pressure experienced by whales in compromised marine environments. What knowledge does a methodological investigation amongst the “thick flesh” of the “world” between “the body sensed and the body sentient” (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 138) reveal? My embodied drawing methodology inhabits a critical space which contributes to aesthetic speculation on the whale’s experience of human-generated sound. For this thesis, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1968) provides a useful conceptual and theoretical entry point to an embodied understanding of the space in-between the “seer and the seen”. This embodied research takes place in the perceptual space of the “chiasm”; Merleau-Ponty’s theories of “intertwining” are relevant here because they explore a crisscrossing or exchange between the sensing body and sensed thing. I have reimagined this intertwining within the chiasm as a drawing process. Donna Haraway’s concept “making kin” is also crucial because it unfolds contemporary theory on entering the “troubled contact zone” or “troubled patterning” between human and non-human. This thesis also introduces the term “embodied pressure” to describe the key processual drawing investigation that evolved during this research. Through embodied understanding of environmental pressures this research explores the body as a site of cognition to address specific ecological concerns. Thus, locating this research in the field of contemporary ecological art practice.
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    Sketch recognition of digital ink diagrams : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2020) Ghodrati, Amirhossein
    Sketch recognition of digital ink diagrams is the process of automatically identifying hand-drawn elements in a diagram. This research focuses on the simultaneous grouping and recognition of shapes in digital ink diagrams. In order to recognise a shape, we need to group strokes belonging to a shape, however, strokes cannot be grouped until the shape is identified. Therefore, we treat grouping and recognition as a simultaneous task. Our grouping technique uses spatial proximity to hypothesise shape candidates. Many of the hypothesised shape candidates are invalid, therefore we need a way to reject them. We present a novel rejection technique based on novelty detection. The rejection method uses proximity measures to validate a shape candidate. In addition, we investigate on improving the accuracy of the current shape recogniser by adding extra features. We also present a novel connector recognition system that localises connector heads around recognised shapes. We perform a full comparative study on two datasets. The results show that our approach is significantly more accurate in finding shapes and faster on process diagram compared to Stahovich et al. (2014), which the results show the superiority of our approach in terms of computation time and accuracy. Furthermore, we evaluate our system on two public datasets and compare our results with other approaches reported in the literature that have used these dataset. The results show that our approach is more accurate in finding and recognising the shapes in the FC dataset (by finding and recognising 91.7% of the shapes) compared to the reported results in the literature.
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    Orthogonal orthodoxy : exegesis presented for PhD
    (Massey University, 2014) Trevelyan, Peter
    In this investigation, drawing and sculpture will occupy (highly mobile and permeable) positions as respectively; ideal, abstract, perfect system in two dimensions, and actual, tenuous, compromised and contingent reality in three. The systems explored here will have their basis in the diagram, a mathematical system for the delineation, quantification and occupation of physical space. The translation of this system into the compromised, imperfect real world will be the main strategy used to investigate these drawing technologies, a three dimensional investigation of two dimensional methods and media. How can a sculptural practice, utilising drawing media as material and geometric formalism as methodology, undertake an investigation of systems (specifically abstract spatial systems, but with wider ramifications too), manipulating those systems so that the audience may experience a bodily affect of dread at the prospect of imminent collapse? I aim to confront the viewer with static object that are felt, understood immediately, viscerally, as being in a process that will systematically lead to its own decay, it is untenable. The research will demonstrate new knowledge in the discipline of sculpture, specifically the effect of gravity as an activating force, producing kineticism in static objects and the affect gravity can induce in the audience when adroitly manipulated as a physical sculptural force.
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    Inbetween : drawing breath : an embodied practice : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2014) OToole, Maria
    In this inquiry I explore the role of phenomenology and embodiment within a drawing practice. In phenomenology of Perception (1945), French Philosopher Maurice Merleau Ponty argued that people perceive and conceptualize everything bodily. He stipulated that our very consciousness is embodied. My closest companion on my journey is the philosopher Gaston Bachelard (Bachelard, 1969). Bachelard insists on the transfer of the poet’s affectivity to the surrounding space and objects: a process, which endows all matter with a poetic essence and expands the experience of intimate space into a poetic space. My practice is a perceptual experience of space and time, which focuses closely on the senses and sensuality. When applying Bachelard’s philosophy in the studio issues around embodiment arose. It became obvious that this project was bigger than the studio could contain, it needed to take a walk. In large-scale performative drawings I am exploring the inbetween space that I experience when taking a walk, when the rhythm of my body and imagining consciousness slips into another space where daydreams open up and expands my experience of a vast inner landscape. The resulting works are a form of lyrical abstraction. ‘Each one of us should make a surveyor’s map of his lost fields and meadows. In this way we cover the universe with drawings where we have lived. These drawings need not be exact, but they need to be written according to the shapes of our inner landscapes.’ Gaston Bachelard