Drawing on qualitative analytic studies of improvising musicians this paper discusses ways in which the construction and representation of self-identity can be observed in improvisational practice. Focusing upon improvisation’s relational context and the characteristics and qualities of its interactions, a phenomenological and interpretive analysis is presented that explores the idea of musical meaning as an activity serving the construction and representation of identity. As a contribution to the now well-established challenge to musicology engendered by post-structuralist and post-modern thought, it explores musical meaning’s ontological significance through an analysis of the dialectical processes apparent in musical experience. Demonstrating a connection with processes that serve to define the self, as expressed in social theory and psychotherapeutic models, it becomes possible to better understand music, in particular creative musical experience, as a carrier of identity. As an alternative to a more structuralist semiotic agenda, this paper’s epistemological orientation seeks musical meaning in the experienced dynamics of the encounter.

This project presents the development of a roomscale Virtual Reality (VR) cultural heritage experience, a transmedia storytelling approach for showing museology VR content in a public setting. "Tomb of a Sultan: A VR Digital Heritage Approach" features the 19 th century tomb of Sultan Hussein Shah as a three dimensional model reproduced using photogrammetry from the actual heritage site in Malacca. Roomscale VR experience has been made possible with the introduction of sensor-based head mount displays (HMD).However, the user experience and criteria for hyper-realistic VR in the cultural heritage context requires further study in terms of method and apparatus. In this paper we describe a prototype system, a user evaluation study and directions for future work.

The author defines free improvisation, a form of music-making that first emerged in the 1960s with U.K. composers and groups such as Cardew, Bailey, AMM and the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. The approach here considers free improvisation as creative activity, encompassing its artistic agenda on the one hand and the process-based dynamic of its production on the other. After considering the historical location of free improvisation within Western music history, the article explores free improvisation as analogous with Abstract Expressionist art. This comparison enables a fuller understanding of the activity's conceptual basis and the creative process it engenders.

This paper discusses the arts practice that emerged during the AHRC funded research project ‘Landscape Quartet: Creative Practice and Philosophical Reflexion in Natural Environments’ (2012–2014). The introduction covers the project's eco-critical basis, practical methodologies developed during it (including the roles of experimentation and improvisation), and the particular epistemological value of practice-led research in this context. A broader theoretical discussion then outlines how non-representational theory and Tim Ingold's concept of dwelling help to expand and clarify the argument for participative environmental arts practice. These ideas are then developed through a series of examples and a conceptual approach based on notions of working with, of, and for the environment. It concludes by considering the multifaceted ontological significance of experiences of ecological arts practice, directly, as an in situ performer on the one hand, and with subsequent artefacts, performances and installations removed from the original site, on the other

Park benches are distinctive public spaces that invite a temporary pause for thought and time out from everyday activities and worldly preoccupations. Park Bench Sojourn is a multimodal arts project that explores the uniqueness and universality of these spaces and the kinds of experiences they foster. It asks what it means to be human; surrounded, as we are, by computer technologies and digital media, living lives that are perpetually ‘connected’ and dispersed through the cloud. It reflects on how our technologically determined lives and lifestyles conspire against us to find opportunities to stop, reflect and be witnesses to lived experience. It is a conceptually playful creative work that shares concerns for health and well-being arising from the contemporary mindfulness movement and the traditional practices and worldviews upon which mindfulness draws. The project is based around a range of experiential sojourns, which require participants to find a bench to sit on and then take a sojourn, or a number of sojourns from the project’s website, which may include audio, video, spoken word, or just listening. Other iterations of the project have included a multimedia gallery installation juxtaposing content from a variety of sojourns. Regardless of the format, context or specific content, the project explores ways in which we ‘perform’ ourselves and mediate experience via digital technologies. In this article, we describe the process of translating this mediated and performative artwork into a VR prototype and directions for future work.