This blog is now dedicated to my PhD project. As of the beginning of 2024, I have been enrolled as a PhD Candidate at RMIT’s School of Design. This is a practice-led research project investigating which circumstances foster play in adults through a live immersive installation experience (LIIE) lens. The research draws upon my thirty-five years of professional, interdisciplinary arts experience. A distinctive feature of my practice is that, while not exclusively creating with or for children, working with young people has been a significant, important, and consistent practice focus. The knowledge and expertise I have developed over many years underpins my proposed research and has provoked a long-standing question that I have endeavoured but not yet succeeded to solve through my creative works: why won’t adults play as freely as children?

Title: Gasp, lean in and explore: How immersive experience installation art can provoke wonder and playfulness in adults.

Main Question: What are the intimidation thresholds adults may experience that prevent wonder and playfulness, and can these be mitigated through live immersive installation experiences?

Across the PhD period, I will create four iterative versions of a LIIE, “Honouring Mr Stevens”. The first iteration takes place in February 2025. I will explore the methods and aesthetics of my practice, how these intersect with my LIIE works and how they may provoke and/or inspire adult wonder and ludic play.

ABOUT HONOURING MR. STEVENS

Summary (October 2024)

Honouring Mr Stevens is the first iteration of a live immersive installation experience set in the room of an abandoned house.

A bit more…

Honouring Mr Stevens is a live, immersive installation experience set in a room of a (seemingly) abandoned house. Honouring Mr Stevens is constructed using theatre set-building techniques and is a complete, stand-alone unit. Assemblage elements are collected from op-shops with a 1940-1980s bricolage aesthetic.

Honouring Mr Stevens is the first iteration of my practice-based PhD project. Honouring Mr Stevens is suitable for families, but the focus is on adults.

Even though you’ve been invited, you feel a sense of trespass inside Honouring Mr Stevens. In this dis-inhabited space, you explore, move, open, close and play with things. Think Goldilocks-meets-RONE (without the model murals). The room has usual human habitation trappings: couch, bookshelf, table, photos - a life’s detritus. But by exploring, you uncover the uncanny. Supported by subtle lighting and sound design, installation and assemblage elements draw from a liminal and Wunderkammer aesthetic. Assemblages include discoverable kinetic elements. For example, you open a cupboard and interrupt a miniature world going about its business (a puppetry inclusion). You disturb a hair-covered soap - it scuttles away and disappears.

A saucer hovers, spinning over a table, leftover from a séance.

Barking Spider Creative 2016, *House of Dreams*, Johnston Collection, Image courtesy of Adam Luts Photography.

December 2024 - January 2025

December 23rd

I have just reread my Confirmation of Candidature document. I did so because I am using it as a guide to why, what and how I am developing the first iteration of the live immersive installation experience (LIIE) “Honouring Mr Stevens” (HMS). Now that I have the RMIT photographic studio 4.2.3 as my confirmed site for the installation, I have been able to move ahead.

Earlier this month, I saw an Instagram post of a 2002 short film by David Lynch, ‘Rabbits’. In the film, three actors are in a pared-back domestic space with theatrical-style lighting and sound. Each actor wears a hare suit (not a rabbit - hares have long upright ears, which is how these David Lynch masks have been constructed) and wears clothing over the hare suit. One wears a business suit, another a house coat and the third a dress.

Screenshot: *Rabbits* 2002, A Short Film by David Lynch, YouTube link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drjQfQtv2BQ
Accessed 2024-12-21 16:40:19

After watching the film, I have considered the hare as a motif. Coincidentally, a friend reminded me that she has one hundred plastic artificial pine Christmas trees. I propose creating not one space but two within 4.2.3 for the first iteration.

Jason Lehane constructed a room for his 2024 RMIT Master of Fine Art graduate piece, installation work “Things are not what they seem”. This room has the domestic, vintage aesthetic that I intend for HMS. The room can be reconstructed inside 4.2.3, and I propose this room will be the site of an identifiable domestic space. I will curate objects and design a domestic space based on the objects’ collective aesthetic. Across the PhD period, the installation will grow iteratively, adding a new room for each project iteration (four in total). Participants are invited to play, explore, uncover, alter, and add to different elements and components of each room. There will be puppetry in this first iteration, and I will test the efficacy of different forms of puppetry to evoke wonder and (depending on the puppetry form) playfulness. Forms of puppetry to be used are:

Shadow
Kinetic (no puppeteer)
Body (also known as ‘suit’)

Participants will be onboarded outside 4.2.3. Three doors with a glass window meet at the entrance to 4.2.3. I am thinking of creating a shadow or silhouette image for each. Participants will be given an illusion of free choice of which of the three doors they would like to enter (mechanism yet to be determined), but will each enter through the only door to 4.2.3.

As part of onboarding, I am considering offering participants the option to wear a mask, specifically a dog mask or a rabbit onesie (hare onesies are not available off-the-shelf).

Why?

I want to observe people making a choice and to find out:

What motivated the choice?
Did it influence what they did in the installation?
How wearing a mask made them feel.

Why dog and rabbit? Both are unnatural/feral in Australia, and each has deep symbolism and meaning in lore, fairytales and dreams across different cultures. One - the hare, is prey, and the dog, hunter. It is interesting to see a performer as an animal of prey and the participant as a hunter. This shifts the power dynamic, most likely in an unconscious way for the participant, until they encounter the hare, and the performer’s behaviour may indicate (subtly) the dynamic at play. If a participant had elected to don a rabbit onesie, this would alter the hare/rabbit dynamic and play/interaction.

“Body” - Mask as puppet

The style of puppetry is “body (or suit) puppetry”, which uses a mask, most commonly in the context of a creature. The image below is from Spike Jonz’s 2009 film ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ and shows a wild-thing creature body puppet.

Movie still: *Where the Wild Things Are* 2009, Spike Jonze, Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures https://www.legendary.com/film/where-the-wild-things-are/
Accessed 2024-12-29 17:49:06

December 23rd-24th

Instead of a hare, I propose a man in a 3-piece 1940s suit with the head of a mallard duck - a changeling.

Screenshot: Drouyn C 2012, Stage Whispers Melbourne Theatre Company production *Top Girls*. Photographer: Jeff Busby. https://www.stagewhispers.com.au/reviews/top-girls-0
Accessed 2024-12-20 10:23:27

I have been interrogating the use of a hare mask because of concerns about an Alice in Wonderland trope emerging and being interpreted by participants. This feels unoriginal and like low-hanging fruit - a simple method to enable participants to understand or read how to interpret the experience as magical. To test wonder, I need to provide fresh wonder, not wonder re-dressed. Part of my process is to follow advice from my acting teacher, George Loros (Senior acting teacher and advisor at The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, New York, 1994). Loras said, ‘When you think you know what you are doing, do the opposite’. I toyed with several different animals: a deer, goose, goat, swan, antelope and duck. This mallard duck is the one that stuck - and resonates the most. Why? For relatively superficial reasons: ducks are funny, my son and I have a long-standing in-joke about ducks, and I have three china flying ducks, a duck lamp and a taxidermy duck; it would be easy to make a visual connection between the small space and the large through repetition of a duck motif. There is potential for play and exploration with feathers in various ways throughout the installation. Could a duck feather pillow become an object of family tragedy? Is there a trail or path of feathers leading the participant from one space to another? Are feathers secreted in odd, unexpected places in furniture or other objects?

The mallard duck is a changeling. The changeling would be seated in the large space, at a small coffee table, attending to an activity (such as shuffling cards, working on a jigsaw puzzle, sorting seeds, or playing chess). The surrounding room would be dark, and a 1940s standard lamp would illuminate the changeling. Beside him is a chair, two if the session has two participants, ready for a participant to join him, should they choose to do so. Through non-verbal cues, the changeling will offer the participant(s) to join in the activity.

A person in a 3-piece 1940s suit with the head of a mallard duck (AI generated 29/12/24)

*LARP Mask, internet screenshot (29/12/24)*

December 29th

On December 23rd, I visited friends at their new home, and they were getting rid of a very good (realistic) artificial Christmas tree, which I now have, and on December 22nd, I was given a miniature Christmas tree. As I am creating two spaces, one smaller with a sense of confinement and the other a larger, open space. I am still considering how to use the two trees, but for now, the large tree will be in the larger space and the small tree in the smaller to create visual consistency and a motif.

On December 25th, my friend with the one hundred artificial Christmas trees messaged to say she did not want the pine collection used in a public display. I have abandoned the forest idea. Without these materials (trees) being readily available, I am not interested in pursuing the idea because to do so would be antithetical to the principle of how installation objects are gathered. If, by chance, I stumble across a quantity of artificial Christmas trees, kerbside, post-Christmas, or at Reverse Art Truck (or equivalent), I would revisit the idea as the idea of a forest in an interior space fits well with the uncanny.

I resolved, across the following 24 hours, that I could create an uncanny effect using a single Christmas tree well-lit, with a performer in a body puppet. Additionally, I found a small 1960s couch on the curbside with a colour scheme that suits the aesthetic I am generating. I can use this couch in either a small or larger space.

On December 27th, Jason Lehane, my artistic collaborator, told me he wasn’t thrilled with the idea of his study installation from his MFA (room only) being used for HMS. It is cumbersome to re-construct, and he didn’t want to repurpose it as part of his artwork.

For 24 hours, I was feeling very despondent. I had lost the two major framing pieces for HMS. On December 28th, Jason and I had a design meeting, and I explained that I needed some design help with 4.2.3. He challenged me on the need for two spaces, as my Confirmation of Candidature and Ethics documentation stated that there would only be one space. However, the size of 4.2.3 is large and doesn’t naturally read as a domestic space. If I were to set 4.2.3 in the style of The Neighbours, the Bulgarian Pavilion work for the Venice Biennale this year, puppetry would be difficult to achieve because there is nowhere to secret a puppeteer. Jason came up with the design idea of using two book-corner flats at the southern end of the room, and the furniture could be placed in relation to these flats. I thought about this overnight.

On December 28th, walking around the farm, I came up with a more straightforward design solution. Using the two columns/poles that are a feature of 4.2.3, we can suspend lightweight domestic curtains treated with fire retardant on a heavy-duty wire between them. The curtains will hang on the western side of these two poles, creating a long, narrow, separated space, the “small” space. I propose to leave the black curtains on the eastern wall open, and on this wall will be hung an artwork of paper I made for an installation at Glen Eira Gallery in 2017. The work is constructed from sewing patterns from the 1960s. This will have low-wattage LED strip lighting running on a lip at the wall’s base to discreetly illuminate the curtain.

*4.2.3 photographed from the southern end.*

Seamstress installation, Red Rock Gallery, 2018. Photo: Jason Lehane / ed. Penelope Bartlau.

The small space will be flanked with shallow-depth furniture: a chest of drawers, possibly a Singer sewing machine (if I come by one), piles of fabrics, a dressmaker’s dummy, and other bric-a-brac (lace, cotton reels, balls of wool) associated with a sewing/craft room. There will be a 1-metre path for clearance weaving throughout the space. Within the drawers and hidden in and around the bits and bobs, a participant who crosses a threshold and investigates will be rewarded with the incongruous, the uncanny, the odd and the humourous. I broadly term these inclusions ‘unheimlich’. Additionally, there will be materials for the participant to play with, which may include clothes to dress the dressmaker’s dummy and wool to weave around a frame or other object(s).

A long, wooden, black-painted box, the “world box”, will be placed on a small table. The opening to the box is vertical and will have little curtains obscuring the interior. Once a participant opens the curtains, the box contains a world with a kinetic puppet. The box has an improbable depth that goes beyond the curtain behind it and will be unexpected to the viewer. The purpose of the world box is to encourage participants to “gasp and lean in”: it is intended as a component to inspire wonder.

*Atrocious mock-up of the world box on a table*.

At the southern end of the small room will be a constructed wardrobe large enough to walk through, with purpose-built interior spaces on either side of the wardrobe’s interior. On the left-hand side (eastern side), I plan a kinetic puppet with content that is yet to be decided. On the right (western side) is a shadow puppet screen, with space for a puppeteer to operate without being visible. Each of these forms of puppetry can be masked by a pull-across curtain for the HMS sessions that do not contain puppetry. All participants will travel from the smaller space through the wardrobe to the larger space.

*AI-generated image of a (very fancy) wardrobe with a door in the rear that a participant could walk through. (01/01/25)*

*Rough designs Jason and I have been working on. (29/24/24)*

January 2nd

I have had to re-think the mallard duck mask. I cannot find what I am looking for from hire shops or Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC) and buying online from LARPing suppliers is expensive. I have switched to a carp in a three-piece suit, which may change again if a more suitable mask comes up. My friend Emily Barrie (designer) is working at MTC and will hunt for a well-constructed animal mask. The brief I have given her is to look for a helmet-style (full head) mask, and I have steered away from a hare mask, although if it’s all that I can track down, I will live with it. I have been looking at other animals (nothing cute), including mallard duck and carp, goat, and deer. Not cat or dog - I am after animals that are prey, (although an owl would be ok).

The attire of whatever the animal is may change. I am re-reading ‘Wicked’ by Gregory Maguire, and the imagery in the book is informing some choices and decisions. The carp or other animal may be dressed in attire more theatrical and fantastic - to be determined at a later point when other elements are clearer.

*AI generated carp changeling in a 3-piece 1940s suit. (02/01/25)*

I have being trying to source other puppet head masks, and contacted friends at A Blanck Canvas (ABC) to see if they had anything in stock (which they don’t). They pointed me in the direction of a gecko puppet (below), but it feels too garish and scary. I am familiar with and have investigated the stock at Snuff Puppets, but their puppets are too rough-looking. Snuff Puppet’s style is rough and ready-made, for large-scale outdoor use, not appropriate for this indoor and domestic installation setting.

*Oozing Future’*s “The Reptilians”. Photographer unknown.
*Screenshot from* *Instagram* 02/01/2025

I have been considering other forms of puppetry that use the human body as part of the puppet, that will inform the research. In looking through and thinking about possibilities, I have considered a style used by Compagnie Philip Genty in ‘FLOPPEINNCO’ and a variation of which I saw in a show in New York City in 2005, called ‘Shockheaded Peter’, directed by Julian Crouch & Phelim McDermott.

*Edited screenshot of puppet from* *Shockheaded Peter* *(29/12/2025)*

The puppeteer’s head, face and/or hands form part of the puppet, with the rest of the (human) body concealed or veiled. The puppet’s body is the constructed/fabricated part of the puppet. In the case of ‘Shockheaded Peter’ and ‘FLOPPEINNCO’, the puppet bodies were diminutive in scale relative to their head sizes. To the best of my knowledge, this puppetry style does not have a name but is a stylistic inversion of the type of body puppetry I have been thinking about. I am still considering this as an option, if not now, for future iterations of HMS.

*Cropped screenshot of ‘FLOPPIENNCO*’ *by Philippe Genty, music by René Aubrey (12/01/25)*

January 4th

Across the past two days I have been developing a draft of a map of Honouring Mr Stevens. This has helped me plan, and figure out what to put into the large space. (The small space is as detailed above).

As participants exit the wardrobe, they will find themselves in the large space. In front of them at the southern end of the room, they will see a couch lit by a standard lamp, with a side table at either end. I propose a coffee table (possibly) with a fake fish tank, placed in front of the couch. The fish tank (lit blue and may have an underwater sound effect) would contain a kinetic puppet - an incongruous object (yet to be determined). The object would appear to be rotating and floating (using a magnetic flotation device secreted within the tank).

January 12th (Out of date order)

I would like to see if participants choose to sit on the couch or not, and to uncover their choice motivations during the post-HMS interview/survey. The setting is designed as an invitation to sit, and the fish tank is in lieu of a TV screen commonly found in a domestic setting. Sitting on the couch without explicit instruction is a crossing of a threshold. The couch is an invitation, and those who elect to sit will be rewarded with the weirdness of the fish tank. I wonder if it’s fishing for objects using a magnified fishing line on a rod with an object/objects that can be caught.

January 5th

The large artificial Christmas tree, will be adorned with fairy lights, and will have gifts underneath, that participants can open. They will be directed (by a card) to keep the gift. Some gifts will be large, others small, and some small gifts will be in large parcels and playful to unwrap (many layers to get to the gift). Wrapping paper will be cleared after each particpant has left, and gifts replaced as required.

Participants will come through (max 2 at a time, 45-minute turn arounds which include onboarding, installation experience, survey/interview on exit and reset time.

January 8th

I have made up a draft timetable. My gut feeling is that kinetic puppetry should remain through every session (to be discussed with supervisors). I am concerned that my normal practice of rewarding audiences is habitual and may not be appropriate to the research, but I am concerned that the artwork will not be up to scratch without this inclusion. Part of my concerns are around the speed at which I am installing HMS means I can’t develop it in-situ, with enough time to make it as rich and experience as is my normal standard/style. Need to discuss.

January 9th

Turning back to my notes from December 23rd, regarding onboarding. I had proposed that participants could be offered dog masks and rabbit onesies. I am now unconvinced of the relevance of the onesies. However, I have a quantity of dog and cat masks. These could be wrapped as gifts underneath the Christmas tree for participants to open. A small quantity of these masks could be placed within the small space of the installation, hidden in drawers, but only a few. I do not want the site to be saturated with these, nor the element of surprise to be stripped through overt signalling.

Masks as gifts under the Christmas tree will pose at least two potential playful behaviours for remote ethnographic observation (REO) of participants. Firstly, does a participant open a gift (and if so, only one?); secondly, what do they do with the mask? Does it influence or inspire playful behaviour?

*Dog and cat masks I have in stock (photos taken by me at a party in 2019*

I am interested in testing this as part of the first iteration of HMS and seeing what may develop from this inclusion in the research.

Jason and I did a site visit to 4.2.3 this morning. Jason took measurements and is on the case with the wardrobe design. By revisiting the site after creating the map, I am able to envisage better what I have developed. The space is not as large as I had remembered, which is an advantage as I have been concerned that the installation elements will be lost in a large space. Below is a rough design sketch of the wardrobe Jason has created.

January 10th

I have been thrown by receiving an RMIT email regarding the need for greater clarification of the use of the site. I think I have symptoms of P.E.S.T. (Post Ethics Stress Trauma), as my knee-jerk reaction to the email was very Henny-Penny. Next week this will be sorted out.

January 12th

On January 9th, I made an appointment to visit Rose Chong Costumiers in Gertrude Street Fitzroy to look through their collection of helmet-style animal puppet heads. They had quite a number of them, but most were inappropriate.

*Examples of helmet-style animal puppet heads at Rose Chong Costumiers, 09/01/2025*

There were mascot-style heads, which are very large and cartoony/comic in style, made for stadiums, and a bunch of smaller helmet-style puppet heads made of latex. The smaller were generally for use at Halloween, so ghoulish and not what I was looking for. However, there was one - a bull’s head. While this is a new direction, a bull-head body puppet could work. With eyes set in the sides of their heads, bulls are animals of prey, although this may not automatically be interpreted by participants as bulls are not generally identified as animals of prey. In this setting, the creature could be interpreted as a minotaur, with the body of a man and the head of a bull. The Greek myth of the minotaur is that the creature was held in a labyrinth built by Minos and fed on human flesh until killed by Theseus (CED website, London). It interests me that in HMS this (apparently) violent beast would be seated in a domestic setting, wearing a suit, and situated in the (relative) middle of the installation - like the minotaur in the myth. I propose working and have already lined up two female actors who will play the minotaur. I will direct them to execute “civilised” behaviours using classic English style manners, executed in a naturalistic way - not overdone.

There are many threads to be unpacked here, not limited to but which include:

Mr Stevens as Minotaur - what does this indicate or imply, if anything? (Note: The original Mr Stevens story was never intended to be included in this iteration).
Integrating the myth into the whole installation? Ariadne’s thread is an obvious choice and works with the sewing room setting in the small room.
Considering the design to be semi-labyrinth, is this a step too far and unnecessary?
Is there a link, and does there need to be a link between the Christmas trees and the Minotaur?
Is the fish tank relevant and if not, what then on the table?
Cow hides on the floor instead of rugs?
More animal inclusions? The cat and dog masks and other hints at animals throughout the installation, meaning, and potential influence on research into playfulness and wonder.