12/7/2020 MA Awarded

Cairns 12/7/2020

Email from Dean of Graduate Studies, SCU, has recommended the award of degree of Masters by Thesis. Title of thesis (Exegesis) was:

Re-framing the Australian Coastline:

A contemporary reinterpretation of artwork from the parallel French (Baudin/Peron) and English (Matthew Flinders) 1801 voyages of exploration along the Australian tropical and sub-tropical Coast.

6/7/2020 Cairns: Table of corrections and revised Exegesis.

6/7/2020 Cairns

Supervisors approved the corrections to the Exegesis, recommended by the two examiners, and the Table of corrections and revised Exegesis were sent to SCU Graduate School as the final step in the examination process.

Cairns 14/5/2020 (Examiners reports)

The MA Visual Arts, external examiners reports are back and are positive, requiring the usual minor corrections to the satisfaction of the internal examination committee. One more re-write and subject to supervisors (and Examination committee) approval I can print off three copies for formal binding and submit them.

Cairns 11/4/2020 Winding up the project.

The MA story continues.

 1/1/2018 Contact Graduate Studies and supervisors Restart project

18/4/2018       Rebuild 3D computer models and 3D print prototypes at Cairns TAFE.  Contact NMA Canberra and confirm exhibition details.

1/5/2018, Travel to Canberra for "Art in Science" exhibition (French 1801 Artworks)

1/5/2018 located record of extra drawings at National Archive Paris.

5/6/2018 Contacted  Nadine Gastaldi, Conservateur général  du patrimoine, Chargée de mission Cartes et plans, Direction des fonds, Archives nationales. Paris
Reply: Scans are not possible, ? personal visit only.

12/6/2018 Progress report and request for 12 month interruption of candidature. "Forms" filled in and sent to Academic supervisors Interruption approved.

 18/6/2018 New BlackBelt 3D "conveyer-belt" style 3D printer available at Cairns TAFE,  plus large format Laser cutter, & CNC router to be delivered in 2018-2019. Start "Deferment" for 12 months Restart project in June 2019, use break to sort out Laser cutter and large format 3D printer

7/2/2019 Still on deferral, visit SCU Show/tell examples of TAFE 3D prints from BlackBelt  printer. Approved but need to explore the artists use of colour Problem - parallels work on colour by Mabbely = use 3D textures instead.

2/06/2019 Still on deferral, visit SCU Due to restart 18/6/2019 Establish progress reporting schedule

19/6/2019 Restart as per Graduate Studies timeline, due to submit exegesis Feb 2020

3/7/2019 Pack&Send Cairns TAFE to Lismore, SCU = $205+$87.5 All 3D prints and Laser etched Acrylic/LED artwork = 3 x installations of 3D prints, 2 x 90x60cm fractal art, 1 x 90x60cm 3D print composite.

1/9/2019 First working draft of Dissertation + Art installations = OK to proceed
[at least another 5,000 - 10,000 words required]

30/9/2019       Progress report accepted by SCU On Track for writing chapters and completing my Artwork for exhibition.

1/10/2019-1/1/2020 Purchase LED 60x60mm panels as backing for Lithophanes = $100 Bauer Lion fish,  image "Jelly fish" lithophanes,  Sandcrab lithophanes, Laser etch "Reef" fractals (rebuild Laser at TAFE first)

4/12/2019 Drop-box draft final version of dissertation to SCU Supervisors.

5/12/2018: redo abstract

12/12/2019: major rewrite required

16/12.2019 start rewrite, Pack&Send last artwork = $150

1/2/2020 travel to Lismore SCU: Multiple draft rewrite with direct advice from supervisors.

23/2/2020 Submit thesis/exegesis 

2/3/2020 Set up Art exhibition for examination at Southern Cross University (to be "up" for 2 weeks). A completely new experience and my first public "showing". Assembling the exhibition to try to showoff the artworks to their best advantage was an "artform" in itself and was surprisingly hard work. 

In the event the two weeks was in the middle of the Covid19 pandemic, with the SCU closed for three days in the second week due to an infection scare. Only one of the examiners could travel to Lismore, the other required a video of the exhibition.

I sat in attendance for the two weeks and explained the artworks to a sprinkling of students, lecturers and my friends who called by. An interesting but stressful experience; I felt emotionally exposed and defensive. It was completely different to exhibiting a scientific poster at a conference. It was my work being "judged" in both cases but it was my raw creativity not the application of accepted scientific methods.   

16/3/2020. Pull down exhibition, just before the University closed completely for the Pandemic with lectures only available online. I was extremely lucky to have got my exhibition/examination process done in time. A very tight window of opportunity. Note: I enclosed a copy of the Video of exhibition in the Library copy of the exegesis.

Locked-down over Easter due to Pandemic.

Wait for examiners reports - expected 2-3 months. 

2018 Learning curve gets steeper.

Cairns library

The learning curve gets steeper. I sent my first model of the WA coastline to the 3D "printer" but he pointed out a number of problems. I had built a surface 3D model not a printable model which needs a solid base (skirt) and for that you need another software extension in SketchUp. I had to find a free version of the software and then had import/install it. Literally two steps forward one back.

3D Printing-AU quoted $300 for an A4 page size model and about $80 for a half-page (or smaller 3D model). Prototyping will have to be at the smaller scale with the full size only for final display. {Way too expensive on a Student budget.}

I decided to request an  interruption at SCU to allow me to locate the appropriate tools (3D printers and Laser cutter) to complete my artworks as DIY rather than outsource.

Essentially I moved to the Cairns TAFE campus for most of 2018-2019 to complete my studio work. They had a large-format Laser Cutter (capable of etching acrylic sheet) and a number of medium format 3D printers, plus a BLACKBELT large format conveyor-belt 3D Printer. Here the printer filament cost $30 a roll and I could print my own files, similarly I could buy my own Acrylic sheet and Laser-etch my own artwork. My proposed artwork was "financially possible" under this option/program.

2017 3D modelling

1/2/2017 Cairns JCU library

I started construction of the 3D computer models of the Tropical/Subtropical Coastline of Australia as seen by the artists on board the French and English 1801 voyages of discovery. I have chosen Shark Bay Western Australia and Bowen Queensland as the two sites to concentrate my initial efforts, because:
1. I have sighted the original coastal maps/artwork and re-traced the historic journeys for both sites.
2. There appears to be terrain information (3D) in Google Earth/Maps for both sites
3. I have identified the appropriate 2D "views" of the sites from the painting by Petit in WA and Westall in Qld. (Initial Museum archive research in France and England, with a follow-up at Australian National Library).

I purchased a license for "SketchUp Pro"  and "Photo to Mesh" to turn 2D images into 3D printer models. Considerable learning curves was needed for both software packages.

The 3D Terrain model of Google Earth images was created following UTUBE "SketchUp and 123D Make: Architectural Terrain Model"  ProfDrafting

Cairns and reconcile cost/benefit

15/9/2016 Qld Cairns. (Landed 6.30am 11/9/2016) Flight was uneventful with the standard level of economy class discomfort. It was a no-frills Jetstar flight that was cost-effective and on time. I medicated my cold and slept for the next 24 hours.

By the 14/9/2016 I had sorted the images I had collected and reconciled the bills accrued, so I could evaluate my expenses. At $167 per day for the 14 days travelling, including airfares and coach/scenic-flight,boat trips,  my costs were what I anticipated. Interestingly this was about the same as the daily costs for my 2015 European Study tour.

15/9/2016 Sent off the "Dissertation" chapters that I had been working on. Double-checked/edited the blog and did some serious library work re 3D printing. I may have to go to Townsville campus of JCU for practical advice.

Back-story of the Dissertation chapters was that the external hard-drive I took with me as a back-up, would not read (it had died) when I got home but I assumed the computer copy was OK. However, I found that Word defaulted to the last version saved, which was the back-up version. For the whole trip I had actually been working on the external hard-drive not the computer. I "begged" the IT techs at JCU to try to salvage my files from the dead hard-drive and got most of the data back. They found it was a software "re-write" glitch rather than hardware malfunction. I had to reformat the text and re-write whole "missing" sections of the first two chapters but at least the gist of my manuscript was still there. A case of two steps forward and one back.

At the same time as I discovered the corrupted hard-drive I found that my smart-phone had reprogrammed itself while rolling around in my day-pack. At one stage I thought that it too had died but patient "maze-running"got me through the menu system and the phone functional again. The final blow was as I was rewriting my document, the wide-screen, graphics-enabled HD monitor "blew" with a loud pop and the classic disappearing screen image down to a central dot. Dell explained that monitors are "throw-away" (they prefer the term "uneconomic to repair"), mine was no longer in warranty, and advised that I should buy an up-to-date replacement. I used my smaller, older, non-graphics monitor instead.