Elsewhere you will find biographies of B.J. Ferrier in terms of his work in the Australian entertainment industry (see links).

 

The following is an account of the evolution of his PhD dissertation, an abstract of which is linked to the main menu of this site.

 

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It's a dim, dark memory now, but in 1980 I enrolled in a newly established “Diploma of Music Composition” course at what was then the Northern Rivers College of Advanced Education, at Lismore, N.S.W. This course was the brainchild of composer Dr. James Penberthy. I had at the time just accepted the offer of a position as a member of a progressive funk/rock band based in Byron Bay, Northern N.S.W., called The Feelers. 

Penberthy established this Diploma course with the vision of building a radical but rigorous alternative to the mainstream Conservatorium system, by offering a supportive musical environment for young composers from less traditional or academic backgrounds, such as the rock, popular music and jazz fields. I viewed the course as an opportunity to equip myself with some formal training after a decade of intense work as a professional musician and popular music and theatre composer, in Sydney and Melbourne. The Far North Coast Region of N.S.W. already had a reputation as a counter-culture destination, established from the time of the Aquarius Festival (1973) and my decision to move to Byron Bay had been made in the spirit of a working holiday.  However I had ambition, and I hoped that a period of study would offer a modicum of intellectual discipline, a strategy to avoid simply marking time while experiencing the Byron Bay “alternative” lifestyle.

Many years have past and the NRCAE has evolved into Southern Cross University. I established a permanent home in Byron Shire, and, as one of the first graduates of James Penberthy’s noble experiment in academic optimism, I eventually found myself in the position of being the first S.C.U. post-graduate student to face the task of developing an approach to academic research into popular music, coming from a compositional rather than musicological background.

My admission into this candidature and the granting of a University Scholarship were based on an assessment of my activities as an experimental artist in a field where composition of original music is the recognized form of research. However, the newly established Graduate College had yet to confront the logical conclusions of the historical legacy of offering Contemporary Music, with a composition major, within the School of Contemporary Arts. Under the guidance of my supervisor Dr. Michael Hannan, a proposal was developed that I would undertake my doctoral work based upon the American model of the ‘creative’ degree.  In other words, the major thrust of the work was envisioned to be original creative artistic experimentation, backed up by a documentation component to place it in context. This proposal was eventually approved by the Graduate College, and became the model for later similar submissions.

My doctoral dissertation, the end product of that original submission, thus consists of two parts:

i)    A major creative work, (discussed in Part Two of the thesis;  its scope is outlined at the end of this introduction)

 

and

ii) supporting documentation in the form of a thesis, which places the creative work in context, gives an overview of relevant literature, and reveals key ideas emerging from or relevant to the field in which the creative work is placed.

Research in the performing arts is fieldwork, though a lot of the experimenting goes undocumented. This introduction is devoted to outlining the artistic career that provided the background to this present research, a career perhaps most notable for its sheer diversity of artistic activity or “field work”. Such diversity has been partly an imperative of artistic survival - organisms that grow in an arid zone, such as the Australian regional cultural climate, must be adaptive. 

In an attempt to précis something essential about the diverse and decidedly non-linear nature of my artistic career, I’ve been led to the realization that if there is one constant, it has been a seeking out of situations which allows for immersion in the process of artistic creation. This word ‘immersion’ is also a buzzword associated with multimedia and as such has become an important concept at the core of this study. This is a concept closely akin to that frequently invoked in the performing arts area - suspension of disbelief.

Prior to beginning my career as a musician and composer I undertook undergraduate studies at University of Sydney’s Faculty of Arts, with a double major, in Fine Arts (the academic experience which informs the art theory and aesthetics element to this thesis) and Psychology (hence my interest in the psychology of art appreciation).

In the final semester of my Bachelor degree and armed with some self-taught music skills I walked into, virtually by chance, what became a successful audition for my first fully professional position, as a vocalist in Harry M. Miller’s popular and spectacular theatrical production of Jesus Christ Superstar , directed by Jim Sharman - a stage-show famous for launching the careers of a whole generation of Australian popular music artists (most notably Jon English, Marcia Hines, Air Supply, the Ferretts and John Paul Young). 

The decision to join J.C. Superstar proved to be a significant crossroads (though I returned to the University of Sydney years later to complete the Arts degree) and in retrospect I now consider this to be the beginning of my professional life as a multimedia artist.  A recounting of this career is relevant here, as a background against which the present work has been formulated.
   
As a composer, the earliest significant professional experience was the opportunity to create the soundscape/score for the Lindsay Kemp Mime Company’s interpretation of Oscar Wilde’s Salome at the New Arts Cinema in Glebe (later performed to sell-out crowds at the Roundhouse in London). This involved composing, in collaboration with Andrew Wilson, a strongly spatial, quadraphonic electronic score, augmented by a range of exotic live instruments. Kemp’s (for the times) avant-garde approach to theatre production was to challenge the audience’s senses and sensibilities from the moment it stepped off the street. This was achieved, for example, by employing a one-armed trumpet player to provide an eerie musical ambience in the post-nuclear, graffiti-splashed foyer, the burning of frankincense, and the use of quadraphonic surround-sound in the theatre.

These first professional theatrical engagements were powerful experiences that nurtured a fascination for the processes of artistic immersion and left a strong impression of the power of music in a theatrical context.
Around the same time the then head of classical music for J. Albert & Son Publishing, Dr. Franz Holford, offered me the opportunity to produce an L.P. album of a musical I had composed with writer/lyricist (and later film director) Frank Howson, entitled Magical Frank.  The CEO of Albert’s at the time was the late Ted Albert and he took a personal interest in the project, coming on board as audio engineer.  This work soon also enjoyed a season at the newly constructed Total Theatre in Melbourne. The recording of the work for Albert’s featured Reg Livermore (at the peak of his stage career) and John Paul Young (then the reigning Countdown “King of Pop”) among a talented cast, mainly drawn from Jesus Christ Superstar ranks. I found myself at the helm in a major recording studio, painting pictures and telling stories in sound, using “theatrical” voices and sound montage. The songs were pure melodic pop, influenced by the Beatles’ Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band in the use of ambient sounds and sound effects to evoke imagery and help create a narrative structure.

This opportunity was soon followed by a second L.P. recording for Crest International in Melbourne of another ‘musical fantasy’ I had composed in collaboration with Frank Howson - The Boy Who Dared to Dream, featuring Jesus Christ Superstar principal Trevor White, and award winning Australian actor John Waters.

It became clear to me during the Salome experience that the possibilities offered by early multi-track home audio recording equipment (which had just begun to reach the market in the early seventies), were too creatively attractive to ignore, and also clearly the most immediate path available for creative experimentation with compositional ideas for unusual ensemble voicings.

In Australia, with its relatively small population, non-mainstream composers have proportionately limited access to funding or infrastructure to support performance opportunities.  However, considering that research can be self-funded, I purchased a TEAC four-track open reel recorder, newly available Roland CR-78 analogue “drum machine”, and the Roland JP4 (a four voice polyphonic mono-timbral synthesizer), plus a microphone, and hooked the technology up to a home stereo amplification system for monitoring. I began working with these pre-digital tools, little realizing I was beginning a long journey into the world of technologically-based music experimentation.

Much of the compositional work done during this early career period found a performance outlet in an experimental cabaret format at such venues as Melbourne’s Flying Trapeze Theatre Restaurant (Kabaratz, The Silent Scream Show); and the Pram Factory (The Astounding Optimissimos ). The exciting and supportive artistic climate flourishing at the time in these venues offered me the opportunity to try my hand at writing, acting, lighting design and directing.

Between theatrical engagements I found work in a variety of rock bands (e.g. Jeff St. John Band, Phil Jones and the New Quintessence) and a vocal harmony group and continued to compose. I played with chart-topping pop/rock band The Ferrets, appeared in television commercials, acted in a graduation film for the AFTRS and acted in another mainstream musical, Andrew Lloyd-Webber & Tim Rice's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, at the Seymour Centre in Sydney.

A further recording contract was secured, this time from the R.C.A. Corporation, in collaboration with talented vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Cammie Lindon, as Lindon Ferrier. The singles produced at United Sound Studios in Sydney by the eccentric Spencer Lewis received high-rotation radio airplay and led to several television appearances, but made little impact commercially because, at the time, multi-national recording label support for developing local artists was largely tokenism. On the positive side, I gained considerable performing experience, appearing in productions as diverse as the ABC’s Countdown,  as support artist for Ry Cooder (Palais Theatre, Melbourne) and a Norman Gunston Christmas Show tour. The recognition kept me hard at work composing, recording and experimenting.

As mentioned at the outset of this introduction, by the early eighties when I was beginning to reassess my direction, and the opportunity arose to work in the regional centre of Lismore, northern N.S.W., while simultaneously gaining a more formal training in music composition under Dr. James Penberthy.  Penberthy, though an inspirational teacher, soon found the administrative burden onerous. He was succeeded by percussionist and conductor/composer Richard Mills, who offered a completely different musical focus and more traditional influence.

I was awarded the Diploma of Music (Composition). There followed a period of intensely practical experiences in the city of Brisbane. This began with the opportunity to stage a season of a rock musical I had composed in my spare time, entitled Goodnight World. The latter was a musical spoof of the doomsday theories and religious cults proliferating at the time. The show was set in a television station, where a late night current affairs programme called Goodnight World was being broadcast on the fateful night that nuclear Armageddon arrived. It played to full houses for 4 weeks at La Boite theatre. The musical accompaniments were recorded into an early MIDI sequencer, triggering a Yamaha R-8 drum machine and Korg Poly-800 8 voice synthesizer, with live saxophonist, doubling on flute & clarinet, five principal actor/singers and a chorus of 16 vocalist/actor/dancers .

Interest aroused by this production secured me a job in an epic stage production produced as part of the opening ceremonies for the Queensland Performing Arts Complex. This was Robyn Archer’s Three Legends of Kra, directed by self-styled “king of visual theatre in Australia”, Nigel Triffitt. This show had previously been a hit at the Adelaide Arts Festival and featured a life-size, balsa Viking Ship and six metre tall Japanese Samurai puppet. It afforded me the opportunity to write for and conduct a 150-piece choir and 37-piece orchestra (including 3 buffalo horn players). The success of my music direction and composition for this show led to 5 years experience as composer for a diverse range of productions at Q.P.A.C. 

I also traveled regularly to the Northern Territory during the eighties, after being commissioned to supervise the equipping of the first aboriginal music recording studio for the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association in Alice Springs. I carried out a host of diverse music-related activities for C.A.A.M.A. and the N.T. Arts Council, giving workshops in music technology, recording traditional and contemporary aboriginal music, and performing with aboriginal musicians. One of the most memorable experiences for me was the production, in collaboration with Bill Davis, of two series of 20 half-hour, original music-based radio programmes, aimed at fostering pride in local culture and awareness of health issues among aboriginal communities. The series, entitled Bushfire Radio, went on to win the international Golden Reel Award for community radio. Again music technology was central to the realization of this project.

In the mid-1980s the Queensland Performing Arts Trust (the body responsible for Q.P.A.C.) had purchased a Fairlight CMI IIx, an Australian-designed and manufactured, dedicated music computer, which at the time was state-of-the-art music technology.  Though not a strictly logical purchase (over $50,000) for a theatre complex, at the time it clearly embodied the promise of the future of technologically-based music composition. My composition work at Q.P.A.C was especially interesting, in that it was unfettered by commercial restraints yet undertaken in atmosphere of total professionalism. Many productions were financed by the education arm of Q.P.A.T., under the auspices of Dr. Cathy Brown, a forward-thinking and highly intellectual administrator, who encouraged experimental work. One of the many theatre productions I worked on, as composer and live musician, included the innovative, environmentally-themed music and mime production for children, Solomon and the Big Cat, which won an Australian Society for Excellence in the Arts award and toured nationally. 

This period of working for Q.P.A.T. climaxed with the Concert Hall performance, which I devised and directed, of a production with (for Brisbane in the nineteen-eighties) the impressive budget of over $36,000, entitled Dreams and Machines. This was an experiment in large scale performance art which featured the aforementioned C.M.I., a Fairlight Computer Video Instrument (C.V.I.), and the prototype of the Fairlight Voice-tracker (one of the earliest pitch-to-MIDI converters), as well as vocalists, rock band, classical wind ensemble, choreographer and modern dance group. The years at QPAT also offered the opportunities to begin experimenting with video technology, and several productions, installations and workshops were mounted over a five-year period, which emphasized the experimental combination of processed image and sound, with a high-tech focus. The work undertaken also included the mounting of workshops for disabled people and terminally ill teenagers, utilizing MIDI-trigger pads, interactive composition and live video processing.

Parallel to this unique period of working as a composer for a government institution, I continued to work in the popular music field with a variety of idealistic rock bands, and began experimenting with the promising new multimedia art product, video clips.

It seemed a natural progression when offered the opportunity during Brisbane’s Expo ‘88 of composing quadraphonic soundscapes for the 17 spectacularly large and zany animatronic floats, which made up the $3m QANTAS Light Fantastic parade (which toured the Expo site daily). A second equally challenging multimedia-slanted contract was simultaneously offered - to create a video to be shown on a giant screen behind the UNESCO Youth Orchestra’s performance of An American in Paris, on the River Stage (which I worked on in collaboration with Paul Rainsford Towner).

During the nineties the career diversity continued - while employed as band leader / guitarist for Eartha Kitt's 1995 Australian tour, I was simultaneously appointed composer for the controversial $1 m joint production between the Aboriginal Development Corporation and private backers, at the Sanctuary Cove Theatre, on Queensland’s Gold Coast. This production, entitled Dreamtime People, was supposed to be a permanent tourist attraction in the form of a multi-media theatrical production (featuring a cast of 9 aboriginal actors/dancers/musicians, video, laser lighting and multi-channel music).  This was a naïvely idealistic concept, which confronted the political minefield of aboriginal-white reconciliation just a little before its time. Unfortunately (and ironically) the venture folded in acrimonious circumstances involving racial tension, after only a handful of performances (and sadly, outstandingly positive press revues). It was clear that this was a unique moment in Australian performance art and multimedia, and it subsequently became the topic of an honours thesis leading to the award of Bachelor of Letters (Honours) from Deakin University.

The early 1990s found me involved in a further progression through a period of composing and recording sound tracks for short films, which included Green Tea (winner of the Department of Ethnic Affairs’ Multi-cultural Award) and the AFC funded Moments of Cruelty directed by the late Guy Morgan. Film scores were an obvious outlet for the pursuit of the digital musical experiments begun on the Fairlight C.M.I., but now usurped by an ATARI 1040ST and Mirage Sampling keyboard.

The digital revolution was in full swing, but a devastating house fire consumed my recording studio and all my arsenal of art-making technology, instruments and archives, including two years of Ph D. work. After a period of shock and adjustment, I refocused my energies.  Rebuilding your life after a major catastrophe is inevitably a new beginning - you really have no other choice.  I needed to take positive steps to re-invent myself, and I couldn't face the task of restructuring my first, lost attempt at building a Ph.D. dissertation based on the film-opera. After much introspection about where I wanted to go from here, I finally set out to consciously place myself at ‘the cutting edge’ of multimedia. I set up a new studio, migrating to the Macintosh desktop computer platform, supplemented by a Roland S-770 sampler.  These years saw the burgeoning of desktop digital art tools based on a PowerPC chip and it seemed inevitable that I expand my digital activities into visual and video art. Though, at the time, living in regional Australia I felt isolated in my artistic activities, I was one of countless people worldwide who was seduced by the challenge of the newly available “dream” technology: PhotoShop, scanners, video cameras, analogue/digital video capture cards etc. It seemed within my grasp to make my own movies. It was no longer necessary to wait for film score commissions. I also started experimenting with web-design.

By this time I felt very confident with digital audio technology and music/soundscape composition, and during the latter half of the nineties my creative work began to increasingly focus on the visual - digital graphic art, 3D animation and experimental video art. I received commissions to produce a number of documentary videos for aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, and completed a number of corporate and music video productions. I began to formulate this thesis and found that it became a constant fascination to me to attempt to process intellectually what all this burgeoning of digital technology might mean to the world of art making. I began the collaboration with painter Duane Radford, which was to become the major work central to my Ph. D. submission.

In 1998 I was appointed Assistant Professor, Multimedia at Bond University, Gold Coast, Queensland, and worked there for three years developing and teaching multimedia courses (graphic design, interactive media programming using Macromedia Flash, digital audio) in the School of Information Technology. During 1999-2001 I also taught video production, non-linear video editing and music video production for the School of Humanities at Bond. This was, to say the least, a challenging period in terms of maintaining impetus with my Ph.D. work, but gave me important practical experience and further broadened my knowledge base. The creative component of my Ph.D. component expanded dramatically during this period with my collaborator deciding to increase the scope of the work from one half hour videotape to two. I also did a substantial amount of experimentation in using low-band internet as a creative art space, building the inya-face.com web-site. This site came to the attention of Melbourne-based television producer Tony Skinner, at Channel 9, who encouraged me to develop part of my work into an animated television series. I produced a half-hour pilot animation, entitled In Ya Face, starring the fabulous Head Brothers, Boof and Dick, (the pilot of which appears in Part Two Part B of my PhD submission, the interactive CD-ROM entitled the Machine).

During the post-September 11 travel slump, Bond School of I.T. experienced a dramatic drop in student demand and budgetary problems. My contract with the University came up for renewal at Christmas, 2001, and I was one of the unlucky ones retrenched. I was fortunate to immediately gain a position at Central Queensland University’s Gold Coast International Campus, where I presently teach Multimedia Design and Multimedia Development using Macromedia Director. As I am employed by the School of Informatics and Communication, I was required to deliver a substantial ‘communication theory’ component to my courses. The readings associated with this preparation revitalized my thinking with regard to this research paper. It was since beginning work at C.Q.U. that I began to develop the accompanying interactive CD-ROM the Machine, as my teaching responsibilities centred around Macromedia Director and CD-ROM design/programming. In 2003 I taught a course in Director at Southern Cross University, Lismore and pushed the development of the Machine further, introducing the voice synthesis element. Parallel to these University teaching positions, I also taught Digital Arts and Media part-time at the North Coast Institute of T.A.F.E, Kingscliff campus, for four years. I developed the Macintosh version of the Machine for this teaching programme. This introduction has described the broad picture and significant details of a personal career path which has, from the point of view of this research, given me a wide-ranging practical experience in the diverse gamut of major skill areas associated with multi-media art production.  It is a time when multimedia technology is maturing rapidly and much academic interest is focused on the infinite potential of the creative world accessible through these tools. The speed of change made completing this work an on-going challenge and frustration.

 

In conclusion, the doctoral thesis described in the "Abstract" (see links) culminates thought processes associated with 25 years of music composition and art experimentation in theatre, popular music, multi-media and performance art contexts. It also offers an opportunity to take a very broad view of where this technological revolution could lead in the future.

 

June 2004