Thursday 28 August 2014

Otea Revisited

Graduation and the AUT Art & Design Postgraduate Symposium has come and gone. On Monday 11 August, I was fortunate enough to receive an Art & Design Discipline Postgraduate Research Dean's Award (there were 6 awarded this year!) in the majestic setting of Te Pūrengi (AUT's meeting house).


Desna Jury (DCT Dean) and myself at the awards night. © Photo copyright Andrew Denton 2014. 


Graduation ceremony was held on the previous Friday and I graduated with a Master of Art & Design (first class honours). I was also privileged to receive both a greenstone (pounamu) taonga & Te Ara Auaha certificate presented at a special Faculty of Design & Creative Technologies Maori & Pasifika graduands' breakfast, organised by Tui O’Sullivan.


Award, taonga and certificate. Inset: Tui O'Sullivan, and myself. © Zak Waipara 2014

A trailer of a compilation of my work and other graduating students’ work was screened via an AUTV screen in the Eastwell Lounge.


TV screens displaying the motion comic, the e-comic and the game. © Zak Waipara 2014

This post marks the official completion and submission/acceptance of my Masters thesis (part exegesis and part practical project). It will now be held, as a digital copy, in the AUT Library/Scholarly Commons.

The purpose of post-graduate research is to add to the existing pool of knowledge by opening up new areas of research. But it also allows one the chance to pursue interesting avenues and complete creative projects. It also enables one to think deeply and write extensively in way that is often not required in commercially driven projects, or feasible given time restrictions. In this regard, creative research of this kind is best suited to a balanced approach involving theory and practical outcomes. There is something to be said for have a tangible piece of creative work at the end of a year, or two years, e.g. a short film, an animation, a game, a comic/graphic novel, that the researcher has been allowed to work with and think about over an extended period of time. In fact, my Masters project had been germinating for some time, before I undertook to frame it inside a research context.

For these reasons I place real value on being able to work in this fashion. My goals going forward will be to hopefully continue in this vein, as I have some research ideas I am formulating, building on the ideas of both the Honours and Masters projects. As I get older, it becomes more important to try to realise more personal creative projects, and the research & study pathway was one successful way of making this happen.