THE RADICAL POTENTIAL OF BECOMING-WOMAN AND INTRA-ACTION IN THE MUSIC OF ANNE BOYD

Anne Boyd (b. 1946) is recognised in the public domain as one of Australia's distinguished composers. Her work belongs in the Western art music tradition and emerges out of her entanglements with the Australian landscape and the music of South-East Asia. This article considers what some of these entanglements have produced and, in so doing, shifts the emphasis from questions of reflection and representation—in which Boyd's music might be understood to reflect in a representationalist mode those aspects of her identity that are bound with the Australian landscape—to exploring in a performative manner how her music offers glimpses into different aspects of the creative process in action. I consider Boyd's selected musical works and critique various biographical writings on Boyd, drawing on the work of Deleuze which I entangle with Barad's concept of intra-action. My aim is to offer a different model for thinking about the network of mutual engagements that are coimplicated in the music's becoming. I view Boyd's music as a becoming-woman, an animate flow and a dynamic process of intra-activity.     

Dialoguing with the Divided Self as the Outline of a Becoming-Woman in Music

For more than 30 years, I have been researching contemporary women's classical music and have concluded that in the current time, it is difficult to believe in the utopian world for women in music that had once been imagined in the decade of the 1990s. According to Roffe, however, in Deleuzian thought utopia is not really about hope or an ideal society, but about who we are, and what we are capable of, here and now. In this paper, through a dialogue with the divided self, or what Deleuze refers to as the ‘dividual’, I will generate some thoughts about the kinds of actions that a dividual is able to produce at different stages of her work as a musician and an activist feminist. Specifically, the paper will aim to develop a new conception of subjectivity in order to sow the seeds for new ways of thinking about women in music. It will ask two questions: who acts, and who is the subject of that action?; and, how do new ways of thinking transform real world situations? The first question leads to the theme in Deleuze and Guattari's work of ‘a people to come’ or ‘becoming-woman’, the latter a concept that disrupts the male form of subjectivity, challenging the emphasis on ‘man’ as the standard by which all beings and things are measured. The paper will map the question leads to a demonstration of how the self, conceived as a dividual, is able to make an intervention into the nature of subjectivity while at the same time gesturing towards the ways in which the practices of musicology and feminist studies might be transformed.     

Australian forensic textile damage examinations – Finding a way forward since PCAST

Textile damage examinations are requested in a range of crime types such as assault, sexual assault and homicide. They typically involve the examination of clothing for damage such as cut, tear or thermal damage, often then followed by experimental scenario testing to help ascertain the cause of the damage. Understanding the underpinning science is central to the accurate interpretation of the complex mechanism of damage formation. In a stabbing incident for example, an understanding of the dynamic relationship between the knife blade, fabric and skin (or skin simulant) is critical.Recent reports, including the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) report, have scrutinised forensic feature-based comparison techniques. Whilst textile damage was not a focus area, it can be considered a feature-based evidence class, and one which is currently largely reliant upon a practitioner's opinion, experience and professional judgement.This paper will review the current state of textile damage examinations in Australia and survey research being conducted to address the issues raised in the context of the PCAST report. The central contribution of observational data to the evidence class of textile damage will also be explored, as well as some practical measures to counter the effects of cognitive bias.