http://hdl.handle.net/10292/3 Search the Channel search http://aut.researchgateway.ac.nz:80/simple-search http://hdl.handle.net/10292/346 Title: Talking pictures: a creative utilization of structural and aesthetic profiles from narrative music videos and television commercials in a non-spoken film text<br/><br/>Authors: Ings, Welby<br/><br/>Abstract: This thesis is about storytelling. It is presented in three parts, a major output with two supporting components. The first and primary section is the short film. The second is an exhibition of images, props, and environments created for the work. The third is the exegesis. Situated as creative practice, the project tests and develops structural and aesthetic hypotheses in the creation of a non-spoken film text. These hypotheses are shaped by considerations from two areas.The first is design for narrative music video. An analysis of selected texts leads to a creative reconsideration of the role and profile of imagery, space, time, sound, enigma, closure, and narrative voice. The second area is typography. Reflecting on the anti-language, bogspeak, and the culture that has given rise to its development, the thesis develops inaudible typographical voices that operate as narrative contributions to the film.These two areas of consideration support a unique way of telling stories. This is significant because emerging uses of short film now take these texts beyond the theatre. They are marketed as commercially available stories in their own right. As distribution companies are formatting them on DVDs, viewers are seeing these stories not once, but many times. It is useful therefore, for the design of such texts to consider alternative methods of narration that might work to preserve the durability and complexity of their stories as they unravel over repeated screenings. http://hdl.handle.net/10292/820 Title: Buyers' enduring involvement with online auctions: a New Zealand perspective<br/><br/>Authors: Abdul-Ghani, Eathar Mohammad<br/><br/>Abstract: Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) online auctions represent an important new marketplace from which consumers can access the goods they require, an alternative marketplace to bricks-and-mortar and online retail stores. Sellers are often ordinary consumers and the items on sale are often second-hand household items, although, modern C2C auction sites also accommodate small businesses selling unused products. Consumer behaviour in online C2C auctions is unlike consumer behaviour in bricks-and-mortar or online retail stores. While considerable research has been conducted into the dynamics of bidding in online C2C auctions little research has addressed the motives for consumers’ ongoing participation in this marketplace. The concept of consumer involvement may explain the amount of time and money consumers are spending in online C2C auctions and the frequency of their visits to auction sites. In the context of this thesis, involvement is defined as the long-term and enduring relevance, connection and relatedness of online auctions to a consumer’s life. The aim of this research is to explore the ways in which the consumer involvement construct offers an explanation for variation in buyers’ ongoing use of online auctions. The thesis also seeks to discover which consumer motives contribute to buyers’ enduring involvement with online auctions. TradeMe is New Zealand’s most popular online C2C auction site. In a country of just four million people, the TradeMe auction site has more than 2 million members and accounts for more than 50 per cent of Internet traffic originating from New Zealand websites. This study of buyers who use the TradeMe auction site, offers the opportunity to study online auction consumers in this unique context. Based on an extensive literature review, eighteen propositions were developed regarding buyer motives for enduring involvement with online C2C auctions. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty TradeMe users, to test these propositions and to identify any further motives for enduring involvement with auctions that had not been revealed in the literature review. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed in full. NVivo8 qualitative data analysis software was used to code the interview transcripts. Thematic analysis reveals six themes representing buyer motives for enduring involvement with online auctions. The significant contribution of this thesis is to identify involvement as a useful construct for explaining consumer behaviour in online auctions. In addition to utilitarian and hedonic motives for involvement with online auctions, the interviews reveal that the buyers have a number of social and personal motives for involvement with online auctions. Analysis of the qualitative dataset also reveals a set of marketer activities which encourage ongoing use of the auction site, and a number of factors (anti-motives) which discourage use of the auction site. The research reveals the existence of an off-line community of auction users who value the social contact they experience with one another outside the auction site. Ongoing buyer-seller relationships are also shown to develop outside the auction site, prompted by an initial auction transaction. TradeMe users often express loyalty to the TradeMe website because they are proud of its New Zealand origins, feel secure in using a local auction website, believe they are supporting small New Zealand businesses by buying from TradeMe, and believe they are practicing sustainable consumption behaviour by purchasing second-hand goods. Future research should develop a multi-item, quantitative measure of buyers’ enduring involvement with online auctions and test the validity of this measure with further empirical data. Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:54:23 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10292/819 Title: Can spectators become co-authors in the process of a story narrative<br/><br/>Authors: Enning, Tang<br/><br/>Abstract: This project explores the areas of human perception and story narrative in moving images. Engaged by the research question, “Can spectators become co-authors in the process of a story narrative?”, the research focuses on exploring the co-existence and contradiction between the values of spectators and an author in a process of a narrative by developing a new potential narrative approach with multiple perspectives. I hypothesise that spectators could participate with the story narrative process as co-authors. My key method is to engage with spectators’ participation within a narration (story) by displaying story fragments across multiple screens simultaneously. The potential of having a story spread across multiple screens might bring further interest to authors to re-think the notion of a spectator and tell a story with multiple perspectives in a narrative process with spectators. In order to develop this project, I will use different approaches, such as Grounded Theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1998), Data Visualisation (Tufte, 1983), Action Research (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988) and Heuristics (Moustakas, 1990), which I will explain in further details in each chapter of my exegesis. Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:38:54 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10292/818 Title: The contested<br/><br/>Authors: Neill, Lindsay John<br/><br/>Abstract: The White Lady (WL) is a mobile fast food takeaway eatery. The WL has been trading in Auckland City’s central business district for almost fifty years. The WL opens in the early evening and remains open until the early morning hours. At closing, the WL is towed to a storage area where it remains until this process is repeated. This daily pattern has occurred since the WL opened in 1948. Because of its longevity, the WL, and many of its stakeholders have experienced ongoing change as Auckland City has grown, and competition within fast food has increased. Thus, for many stakeholders, the WL is representative of their lives, a mirror of their reality and life experiences. Obviously, these realities and experiences are different for different stakeholders. In this thesis, I examine the contested “White Lady” (WL): the perceptions and the social meanings that its stakeholder groups attribute to it. This thesis illuminates differences and similarities within stakeholder viewpoints and in doing so defines that pie carts like the WL are a valid part of New Zealand’s culinary and social cultures Ultimately, this thesis provides a platform of knowledge from which stakeholders and others can come to understand and know the differing and similar views that other stakeholder groups hold. With this in mind, this research ranges in scope from the examination of city administration to the symbolism associated with the (WL) by some of its stakeholders. Therefore, this research is founded within socio-historic constructs: the history of fast food and, the similarities that this history holds to today’s WL operation. The contextualisation of hospitality within “three domains” (Lashley, 2004, p.13) aids in defining the WL as well as recognising the competitive growth of New Zealand’s fast food industry. This research suggests that fast food growth and subsequent competition have had negative impacts upon many small fast food outlets including the WL. viii The growth of fast food has facilitated a “slow food” (Jones, Shears, Hiller Comfort and Lowell, 2003, p. 298) movement. This movement coupled with the hierarchy of food typologies, adds a Saussurian overlay and sociological discourse to this work. This overlay clarifies for the reader Bourdieu’s (1984) position that all food is reflective of class status. Within postmodernist constructs and the rise of the individual, (and the consequent opportunity to hear ‘voices from the margins’), movement within class and individuality within New Zealand’s wider culture has occurred. Social change therefore, has facilitated some of the issues within WL contestation. In highlighting Bourdieu’s (1984) concept, the “binary opposition” (Levi-Strauss, 1981, as cited in Adamenko, 2007, p.27) inherent within food hierarchies and, as often expressed within the media, is examined. This examination reveals that while the media inform, this information often contributes to the polarisation of opinion that facilitates the formation of contested viewpoints by WL stakeholders. It is against a backdrop of compliance need, the absence of an official street trading policy, the differing views of stakeholders, and the intensification of competition in fast food, coupled with a lacuna in the knowledge base of younger Auckland residents regarding the WL that this research finds its voice. Sun, 21 Feb 2010 22:56:01 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10292/817 Title: ReDress - ReFashion as a solution for clothing (un) sustainability<br/><br/>Authors: Fraser, Kim<br/><br/>Abstract: The primary aim of this practice based project is to promote debate and alter perceptions of second-hand materials and ReFashion concepts. The work is positioned between the developed world business model extremes of overproduction, and over-consumption, in clothing manufacture. Practical work which represents 80% of this thesis, pitches discarded clothing as an untapped commodity. The investigation poses questions and possibilities with respect to applying the ReFashion concept to a potential business model. By developing prototypes through deconstruction and reconstruction processes, reflection upon current practices of the secondary textile industry has been possible, highlighting ReFashion as a potential ‘Materials Recovery’ process. The second outcome for the research is to provide contextualised information for the fashion manufacturing industry and government agencies, in order to develop innovative applications for new markets. Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:28:14 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10292/816 Title: Mana Wāhine in Information Technology: Ngā Kaiwhatu Kākahu Me Te Kākahu<br/><br/>Authors: Hamilton-Pearce, Janette<br/><br/>Abstract: This thesis argues for an Indigenous women’s cultural construction of information technology (IT). In Aotearoa New Zealand, Māori women have established Mana Wāhine discourses, principles, theories and practices (Evans, 1994; Hutchings, 2002b, 2005; Irwin, 1990, 1992b; Jahnke, 1997b; Pihama, 2001; Smith, 1992; Te Awekotuku, 1991). Mana Wāhine is the power, legitimacy, authority and spirituality of Māori women as determined by mātauranga wāhine [Māori women’s knowledge and epistemology] (Jenkins & Pihama, 2001). Mana Wāhine is about theorising, analysing and conducting research for, by, and with, Māori women (Pihama, 2001).Māori women have always been IT professionals through Ngā Kaiwhatu Kākahu Me Te Kākahu [The Cloak Weavers and the Cloak]. The overall intent of this research is to develop a Mana Wāhine in IT conceptual framework. The research aim is to identify the key discourses, principles and theories of Mana Wāhine for an Indigenous Māori women’s cultural construction of IT?IT has the cultural constructs of the dominant society, which design and shape it (Dirksen, 2001; Stewart, 1993). The herstories of twenty-four Indigenous Māori women in IT provide lived experiences of colonising, decolonising and indigenising of IT. The colonial oppression within IT education and the workplace underpin the hegemonic ‘geek neo-colonial male’ culture. Indigenous Māori women’s culture is constructed as the ‘Other’. The Indigenous peoples’ literature disregards gender and white women in IT literature disregard ethnicity, race and colonisation. The joint effects of being Indigenous Māori women are fraught with complexity. For Indigenous women to participate in IT means assimilating into geek neo-colonial and male beliefs maintaining culture-neutral ideology, as a new form of cultural imperialism. Through such power relations, cultural identity is left at the door when entering IT where Māori women define themselves as the only lonely, the only Indigenous Māori woman.The decolonising and indigenising of IT is where Māori women assert their cultural rights to participate as Mana Wāhine in IT – Ngā Kaiwhatu Kākahu Me Te Kākahu. In future, research needs to assert that Indigenous women be first beneficiaries of IT (Kamira, 2000b). Mana Wāhine deconstructs colonising and culture-neutral ideologies forming a localised view to indigenise IT for women. IT cannot be at the expense of Mana Wāhine. For the benefit of our people, children and ourselves, Mana Wāhine in IT will always fight for cultural survival. Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:12:28 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10292/815 Title: Under the surface: reflections on workers’ narratives from below the minimum wage<br/><br/>Authors: Sinfield, David Lewis<br/><br/>Abstract: This research project is concerned with workers’ narratives, specifically those who have been employed in paid work below the national minimum wage in New Zealand.As a graphic designer who has direct experience of exploitation through employment, I am interested in researching the subjective experience of underpaid workers in New Zealand. In doing this I have sought to creatively synthesize experiences into artworks that provide a deeper insight into the impact of underpaid work. Through this investigation I have attempted to contribute to a broader discussion of underpaid work than what is currently provided, through the analysis of statistical data.In undertaking this project I have also been concerned with investigating new potentials in serigraphy (a graphic medium traditionally associated with working-class politics). I have inquired into how it might be used to create a visual ‘voice’ for contemporary workers’ narratives.Accordingly, this project has employed audio recordings of three personal stories. The research has led to the production of a series of serigraphic prints that artistically interpret the journeys and experiences of the participants. These images sit in discourse with looped audio excerpts of their recorded interviews. In this approach, narratives of marginalisation that have often been muted through their presentation as written records, have been re-conceptualised as an artists' images, with which the recordings are in discussion. Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:02:59 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10292/814 Title: Shoulder dystocia: effective management of an obstetric emergency<br/><br/>Authors: Ansell (Irving), Lesley<br/><br/>Abstract: Shoulder dystocia is an obstetric emergency which can result in significant maternal and neonatal morbidity, and in some cases perinatal death. It is an unpredictable event which causes stress and trauma for all concerned. Widely accepted and current management of shoulder dystocia involves performing a set of manoeuvres described in the HELPERR mnemonic, which are taught in emergency obstetric training sessions.This qualitative interpretive study presents a descriptive and hermeneutic analysis of the narratives of five clinicians who have significant experience in the management of shoulder dystocia. The qualitative descriptive approach is informed by the work of Sandelowski and it incorporates a hermeneutic ‘hue’ influenced by the work of Heidegger. This approach allowed themes to be identified from straight description. The data was then further analysed using the hermeneutic approach, to bring forth the richness and meaning of the participants’ experiences. This research approach facilitated a comprehensive analysis of the data.The findings of this research are that the management of shoulder dystocia has been influenced by HELPERR, so that practitioners most commonly follow the sequence of the mnemonic, despite the fact that some of the manoeuvres are difficult to perform or remember. Alongside this, the research shows that through their experiences, practitioners have discovered by ‘accident’ the manoeuvre of axillary traction. They find this manoeuvre not only more effective, but easier to perform in any circumstance. Another important finding of this research is that there are improved neonatal outcomes when axillary traction is the method of choice for resolving shoulder dystocia. In addition, the research highlights that practitioners who are involved with shoulder dystocia, particularly when the outcome is poor, are at risk of suffering post-traumatic stress and psychological damage, which can result in loss of the practitioner from the profession.In these ways, this research has contributed to the body of knowledge of shoulder dystocia, and more importantly, provides an alternative and effective strategy for managing shoulder dystocia. Thu, 04 Feb 2010 03:32:54 GMT