Single-unit study
You can study individual units for personal or professional development without having to apply for a full QUT course.
If you successfully complete a unit, you may be eligible for credit if you decide to apply for a degree course in the future.
Units anyone can study
These units don’t have any requirements for previous study or background knowledge.
But if your previous studies were not in English, or were completed in a country where English is not the first language, you will need to demonstrate that you meet our English proficiency requirements when you apply.
Creative industries
Communication
CYB111 Communication and Collaboration
This unit examines communication between individuals and teams in academic and professional settings. Through a theory/practice nexus, it aids in developing practical skills needed for effective communication such as giving and receiving feedback, collaborating with others, evaluating messages, presenting material in a professional manner and reflecting on communication experiences. With a focus on intrapersonal and interpersonal skills, this unit strengthens current communication practices in live and mediated settings. Presenting meaningful messages in both small and large groups, working on shared professional documents and reflecting on personal communication skills will provide a strong foundation for future studies and the workplace.
CYB112 Communication and Composition
Writing is an essential skill that you will need to succeed in your university program, as researching, composing, analysing, and forming a persuasive argument are fundamental to all assessment tasks. This unit introduces you to the conventions and practices of academic and evidence-based writing and will train you to interpret and analyse information to form a logical and persuasive argument. This unit confronts how digital technology shapes the form and practice of written communication today to build your information/digital literacies and research/evaluation skills. This unit will equip you with the necessary academic and factual writing skills to complete your assessment at a high standard throughout your course of study.
CYB113 Living in a Media World
This unit introduces students to the dynamic and evolving field of Media Studies. It looks at how various traditions of knowledge have sought to better understand the relationship between media and society. It corrects prevailing myths about media power and develops basic skills for engaging with different types of media. For example, how have scholars evaluated, measured, and theorised the impact of mass media forms such as print, television, and the internet on social and political life? Do “new” media and technologies demand to be understood in new ways, or can we utilize older systems of thought to better understand today’s rapidly changing media world? As future communication professionals, it is crucial that you understand the key concepts, debates, and conversations that have shaped your discipline.
CYB114 Understanding Media Industries
This unit introduces the core concepts, analytical frameworks, and professional practices necessary to understand how the media industries operate as complex economic and cultural phenomena. This includes a comprehensive overview of media industry structures and functions, production and distribution processes, regulatory and technological conditions, ecological implications, and labour practices. You will also explore the political, economic, and cultural foundations of the media industries in national, regional, and global contexts. You will engage with media industry professionals as guests where appropriate to establish a capacity for the subsequent study of and employability in the media industries.
CYB115 Understanding Audiences
This unit introduces the ways in which the media, entertainment, and news industries have imagined, measured and monetised their audiences. Understanding that audiences are powerful economic and cultural constructions in the media and entertainment industries, the unit examines how researchers and industry professionals build knowledge about how people use media and the role that it plays in their lives. The unit establishes a theoretical foundation in audience studies, as well as explores a range of research methods that are used to study audiences/users, and prepares students to evaluate different types of knowledge claims about audiences.
CYB116 Understanding the Internet and Data
This unit explores the centrality of the internet as a communication tool in both the workplace and everyday life. It explores how internet technologies and digital communication platforms refashion communication practices and social organisation, including the centrality of debates around online behavior and codes of conduct. The unit also introduces students to basic data literacy and digital analytic skills.
KKB190 Yatdjuligin - Cultural Safety in Indigenous Australian Context
Culturally Safe practice is an essential element in a professional's ability to work in a holistic and accountable way with Indigenous Australian peoples and their communities. This requires deconstruction of your own cultures, values, beliefs and attitudes by taking you on a learning journey that allows you to move beyond cultural awareness and cultural sensitivity through to cultural safety.This unit will prompt you to develop your own strategies to be a culturally safe practitioner in both innovative and creative ways.
KKB191 Am I black enough? Indigenous Australian Representations
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, identities, communities and cultures have been represented in a variety of mediums and artefacts since colonisation. The purpose of this unit is to deconstruct these representations from Indigenous standpoints and critically analyse how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples continue to be positioned across multimedia. This unit facilitates informed discussions prompted by exposure to historical and contemporary constructions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from Indigenous standpoints and perspectives. This unit allows you to challenge existing perspectives of Indigenous Australia through creative and scholarly works by Indigenous artists and scholars. Engaging with this deconstruction will assist you to apply knowledge and skills of culturally safe practices within your personal and professional practices in a confident and safe manner.
KKB192 Smash the Act - Indigenous Australian Politics
This unit will provide you with an introductory knowledge of Australian Indigenous political culture, history, politics and activism through exploration of Indigenous standpoints. The ongoing history of colonial policy will be examined through Indigenous peoples’ struggle for equal rights, Indigenous rights and self-determination. Core political concepts and institutions in Australian social life such as the nation-state, sovereignty, liberalism, representation and democracy will be viewed from Indigenous perspectives and critically analysed according to their capacity to accommodate Indigenous sovereign interests including treaty and institutional reform. You will be actively involved in contemporary debates such as government policy towards Indigenous peoples and communities, the continuing struggle for land rights and Native Title, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples and other relevant issues as they arise.
KKB193 Indigenous Knowledge: Research Ethics and Protocols
This unit critiques research on Indigenous Australian issues and articulates culturally safe research practice that reflects decolonising methodologies as an underpinning framework. The need for culturally safe research is supported by colonially constructed knowledge and the obvious gaps in understanding of the ongoing life-differentials and social determinants that impact on Indigenous Australians. Interrogation of Western research and Indigenous scholarship and international contexts will challenge you to critically analyse received perceptions of research conduct. Indigenous knowledges and pedagogies will facilitate a transformative learning journey in a process where students critique Western research frameworks that continue to represent Indigenous peoples as the 'other'. The unit will engage your learning through Indigenous knowledge frameworks that facilitate the development of a decolonising research proposal which adheres to Indigenous research ethics and protocols.
Creative practice
KKB180 Creative Futures
This unit introduces creative industries disciplines, inter-disciplinarity and the careers of creative industries practitioners. It aids you to plan your course of study in line with your career interests and potential career opportunities. It enhances your research, written communication and critical thinking skills for various professional and academic purposes. The unit draws upon cutting edge research into the distinctive characteristics of the creative industries and the creative workforce to introduce you to study and work as an emerging inter-disciplinary creative practitioner. You will investigate creative career possibilities and opportunities and develop essential information literacy and written communication skills for both academic and professional contexts. You will envision potential creative career pathways and discover which skills and strategies you’ll need. This will help you make the most of your degree.
KKB185 Creative Enterprise Studio 1
In Studio 1, students develop both enterprise skills and collaborative foundational design thinking skills to better understand the problem space for unique industry or community-based problems. As such, the unit responds to opportunity identification and value creation aligned to industry and/or community-based real world needs. Whilst the value of disciplinary expertise remains constant in this changing world, many problems facing organisations and societies naturally span disciplines. Collaboration and inquiry into these real world problems require a breadth of knowledge and skills in ways that demand and reward curiosity and innovation. Being the first of three Creative Enterprise Studio units, your ability to respond to complex and unique real world problems is strengthened by learning to think and act in diverse ways and draw upon perspectives, methods and insights garnered from the multiplicity of disciplines in your unit cohort.
KYB101 Understanding Creative Practice
This foundational unit provides the principles and skills of creative and critical literacies in creative practice. It introduces the descriptive and analytical vocabulary for your creative practice discipline. It also looks at the principles of Indigenous knowledges and to the contribution that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists have made to creative practice across a range of disciplines. The unit emphasises the productive relationship between traditional academic communication and creative practice with student responses to creative practice exemplars provided in both written and artform-based modes. This provides opportunities to practice academic writing, peer learning, and giving and receiving feedback. The unit prepares you to synthesise practical and theoretical knowledge about creative practice.
KYB102 Pathways to a Creative Career
This unit helps you develop a professional identity. It introduces the principles and skills required for professional creative practice, including tacit knowledge, education and career planning, and professional development for creative industries practitioners. As such, it addresses personal branding, communicating about your work in professional contexts, navigating ethical and regulatory questions, self-care in practice, working toward a distinctive skill set and setting career goals. Creative practitioners begin developing a professional network during the course of their studies and a foundational understanding of how to build and maintain that network.
KYB201 Socially Engaged Arts Practice
This unit addresses principles, practices and forms of performance that privilege community and cultural democracy. By examining the key ideology and teachings and contemporary Australian practice in community and cultural development (CCD), this unit aims to make connections between creative practice, community and their concerns. It also aims to provide opportunities for you to engage positively in these contexts through your respective art form. Creative practice can reach out beyond the walls of conventional performance space and use its transformative powers to activate solidarity and agency in people and communities to facilitate social action and positive change. Knowledge of the ethos, values and processes of working with communities in a responsive and consultative fashion is an important capability for a comprehensive career in arts and provides key career opportunities for emerging artists.
Creative writing
KWB104 Writing the Short Story
The writing of short stories has traditionally been a starting place for writers to begin developing their craft. Via the short story, this unit explores the elements of fiction such as character, voice, setting, plot, dialogue, point of view and modulation, and helps you acquire and practice skills in creative writing. In this unit you will also learn to analyse literary writing, in particular the short story, for craft elements in a way that informs and illuminates your own work. In addition to lectures, tutorial based peer-critique workshops are a central part of this unit. Within them, in a guided and structured way, you will get and give feedback on the stories as they are being written.
KWB113 Introduction to Creative Writing
This unit provides the fundamental skills for writing fiction and poetry as well as the basic theoretical background that underpins them. It looks at the development of these literary forms as a way of understanding how a practitioner might best approach both the writing and critical analysis of them in the contemporary context. It develops a critical understanding of your own and others’ approaches to writing life. You will be encouraged to develop the skills required for professional writing through a series of tasks that introduce key concepts such as characterisation, constructing a scene, and writing dialogue.
KWB116 Creative Non-Fiction
The ability to recognise, analyse and use core types of non-fiction writing is an important part of the professional writer's practice and a highly useful aspect to develop early in a writing career. Creative non-fiction allows writers to combine real life stories with the creative writing techniques employed in fiction, and develops writing skills in a variety of non-fiction written modes and publishing contexts. These include personal essay and humorous writing, life writing and travel literature, and reviewing of books, film, music, and food. This unit encourages you to apply the creative writing techniques of these forms to your areas of interest, and has an industry focus in equipping you with practical and analytical skills in a range of non-fiction creative writing genres.
KWB117 Australian Voices: Writing and Practice
The ability to recognise, analyse and engage with key aspects of one’s national writing culture is an important part of a professional writer's practice. This unit analyses works of contemporary Australian writing focusing on how writing culture in Australia is positioned in terms of industry, genre, and changing concepts of authorship practice. This unit equips you with creative writing and analytical skills in a range of Australian contexts. It offers reading and discussion of contemporary prize-winning works and an understanding of the writing and broader cultural contexts of their publication.
KWB118 Swords and Spaceships: Writing Genre
This unit surveys current trends in genre writing and popular fiction with a focus on writing for reader engagement. You will have the opportunity to develop a piece of writing that makes use of the techniques of your chosen genre and that reflects the concerns and themes appropriate to your genre. It includes focused writing exercises that will enhance the skills needed to develop, research, and write a genre text. It also aims to help you develop an understanding of genre theory. The unit develops your critical understanding of your own and others’ approaches to the writing life, and the theories of genre that underpin those approaches.
KWB211 Creative Writing: Style and Technique
This unit is a masterclass in literary style. Each week in this unit we will look at how one writer produces a particular technique or effect well, we will unpack at a language level exactly what they are doing, and then we will use this understanding to produce a written piece for the week employing that technique. In essence, this unit provides an opportunity to develop different writing techniques through guided writing exercises and theoretical analyses of texts with an emphasis on style and effect. Here you move beyond the basic elements of fiction and develop advanced techniques in creative and professional writing at a low, language-oriented level. Intensive tutorial-based work, self-directed creative practice, guided critical analysis and asynchronous on-line activities characterise the teaching and learning in this unit.
KWB212 Poetry and Poetics
This unit provides important creative and critical skills in writing poetry and cultivating an understanding of how to interpret and use poetic techniques. It explores a spectrum of contemporary and traditional forms of poetry, and is designed for those who are interested in poetics and the use of words in precise, innovative, concentrated and musical ways. It equips students with knowledge of the techniques, poetic forms and modes, and the opportunity to apply this vocabulary in analysing and reading a wide range of contemporary poetry. The unit provides key creative and critical skills in writing poetry, while offering you the chance to practice in a variety of poetic forms and modes, reflectively writing about your own poetry and analytically writing about the stylistics of another person’s work. The unit occurs at the mid-point of the creative writing major, building on KWB211 Creative Writing: Style and Technique, and preparing you for the advanced work of third year.
KWB214 The Artful Life: From Memoir to Fiction
This unit examines the relationship between imaginative literature, especially the novel, and the inspiration we derive from our own lives. Memoir and fiction are major literary forms that are connected by their use of creative writing techniques and by the way they draw material from authors’ personal experiences. They also are pervasive, complex and culturally important literary forms. This unit is designed to help you examine and understand the theory and practice of memoir and long-form fiction writing; the relationship between imagination and inspiration, and the process of planning and research leading to the development of a novel or memoir proposal, including an initial chapter and synopsis. As such, the unit addresses the scope, challenges and practices of developing fiction or memoir; the standards, conventions and possibilities of fiction and memoir forms; and the development of editorial skills in collaboration with others (feedback).
KWB215 Dangerous Ideas: Contemporary Debates in Writing
This unit introduces you to the key debates and ideas animating the field of contemporary creative writing, and allows you to consider your own writing practice in the context of these debates. The unit helps you to develop a nuanced understanding of the issues preoccupying contemporary writers, to gain insight into the historical and cultural factors informing those issues, and to articulate your own perspectives via conversation and debate. You will encounter a spectrum of ideas about what it means to be a writer today as well as the historical and cultural factors informing our ideas of authorship.
KWB217 Editing and Publishing
This unit offers an advanced understanding of the editing process and the contemporary Australian publishing landscape. It develops your editorial acumen across a range of modes and forms, and builds the interpersonal skills required for editorial relationships. These understandings and skills are crucial for those intending to work in the publishing industry and are of great benefit to creative writers. You will learn to edit the work of others with insight, understanding, and technical skill, and gain a greater knowledge of contemporary Australian publishing.
Dance
KDB107 Foundations in Improvisation and Choreographic Practice
This unit introduces the fundamentals of improvisation and choreographic practice. Throughout it you will participate in a series of creative laboratories that seek to enliven an experiential understanding of the body in dance and explore different practices and processes that cultivate tools for dance making. The unit focuses on exploring dance through different approaches to improvisation and task-based processes. This is an opportunity to develop your foundational skills as a choreographer in dance through developing critical skills in experimentation, physical thinking, responsivity, as well as the ability to mobilise your ideas and concepts.
KDB113 Dance Studies
This unit will give you an introduction to the diverse field of dance studies. Through encountering relevant theory, reflecting on recorded dance performances, and participating in physical dance analysis activities, the unit will equip you with critical frameworks through which you can interrogate various aesthetic codes and relevant issues relating to dance in a variety of historical and cultural contexts. This will involve a range of perspectives including dance analysis, writing from practising choreographers and dancers, historical and cultural contextualisation, gender issues, racial diversity, and social dance. These understandings are an integral part of a wide range of pursuits within the dance industry including those of the performer, choreographer, and critic, as well as useful to other Creative Industries' disciplines.
KDB123 Dance Legacies
This unit will introduce you to the dance legacies that underscore dance practice. In the history of Western Arts, a number of key philosophies may be identified including romanticism, classicism, modernism, postmodernism and metamodernism, some of which are also evident in the arts of other cultures. In dance, they led to the formation of aesthetic codes that in some cases are still very much in operation in the dance industry. These will be further contextualised in relation to Indigenous Australian dance and the wider Asia Pacific region. Through encountering relevant theory and reflecting on live and recorded dance performances, you will be supported to critically interrogate how these legacies continue to inform current practices.
KDB222 World Dance
This unit aims to develop your sensitivity, curiosity, and knowledge of cultural diversity and protocols, through participating in dance styles from around the world and learning about their contexts. Through practical classes you will gain an experiential understanding of the dance styles, which will be contextualised through lectures and reflective practice strategies. The new generation of twenty-first century global citizens needs to be agile in the understandings and skills necessary to negotiate cultural difference if they are to contribute to creating peaceful communities. In this unit, participating in dance styles from around the world and learning about their contexts, provides an opportunity for you to develop these attributes.
Design
DYB101 Impact Lab: Place and Context
While you will develop disciplinary knowledge and skills through the course, many problems facing organisations and societies naturally span disciplines. DYB101 explores the potential of design to bring about change. DYB101 introduces design processes and practices for a future characterised by diverse perspectives, social agendas and environmental concerns. You will learn how 21st-century designers from all disciplines apply empathy and the ability to acknowledge and incorporate diverse viewpoints to address challenging themes.
DYB121 Introducing Design Fabrication
This introductory hands-on unit explores concepts, skills and methods required to prototype and fabricate physical objects from your design ideas. Designers need to consider the capabilities of fabrication, associated processes and equipment, and materials available to produce a physical prototype of their design ideas. From this perspective, design fabrication is problem centric and requires a rationale behind the choice of materials and processes, an understanding of the quality of the fabrication outcome as part of an iterative process or for its temporal qualities for concept evaluation, as well as consideration of the ethics of fabrication. The foundational design fabrication skills acquired in this unit will be further developed in subsequent design units in the program.
DYB122 Design Visualisations
This unit Introduces you to design visualisation practice and how to employ a variety of techniques to visualise design ideas to assist you in design thinking, research, communication and presentation.
DYB123 Emerging Design Technology
This unit introduces you to existing and emerging technology and how it applies to design. In this unit you will learn about how technology is used in the design process and to design solutions. Designers need to be familiar with technology to aid them in the design process as well as being able to create products that take advantage of emerging technologies.
DYB124 Design Consequences
Design Consequences is an introductory unit employing theoretical and applied methods to explore the ways in which design influences and is influenced by cultural traditions and practices, beliefs and biases. Working across frames of past, present and future, you will learn how to critically engage with and draw upon these cultural factors and influences to shape and define your design work and practice.The twenty-first century presents designers with a challenging context characterised by the increasingly dramatic effects of climate change, growing levels of inequality, and destabilised geopolitical conditions. This unit will introduce you to a range of ideas, methods, and approaches necessary to understand design not only as products, environments, services and experiences but also as a social, cultural, political, and economic agent.
Digital media
CCB105 Digital Platforms
It is critical for communication professionals to understand the cultural, economic, and technical contexts from which contemporary digital platforms have emerged and in which they are continuing to evolve. This unit focuses on the technological developments, business logics, and socio-economic shifts that have shaped the brief history of digital platforms, focusing on what differentiates digital platforms from other media forms. It develops students’ contextual understanding of digital platforms by exploring how key concepts in digital media studies map onto specific platforms and their audience and user cultures.
CCB106 Popular Culture
The products, practices, and pleasures of popular culture are frequently dismissed as being superficial, unserious, or unimportant. This unit, however, celebrates popular culture as a contested and shifting phenomenon that permeates everyday life. Far from mundane, popular culture is charged with a political valence that reflects—and shapes—our lives. This unit further develops conceptual framework(s) and analytic tools to critically evaluate the texts, artefacts, and/or practices of popular culture. In completing this unit, students will understand how the communication industries produce and circulate popular culture, and will be able to critique the politics of pleasure that frame the consumption of mass culture.
CCB201 Australian Media
This unit critically evaluates the industrial and cultural logics of Australian media. You will develop an understanding of contemporary debates and developments in Australian media, and will learn about how national and local media (including the Indigenous Australian media sector) are shaped by a range of factors including globalising media markets amidst concerns of local content, questions of national culture and identity, and digital disruption. This unit introduces the theories and policies that seek to improve media industry visibility, its consumption, and its social and economic importance. Understanding the technological, economic, and political drivers/impediments for industrial change will help you to form ethical media choices and professional communication practices.
CCB202 Social Media, Self and Society
Social Media has had a tremendous impact on our lives as individuals and members of larger societies. The debates surrounding these new and powerful technologies are often multi-faceted in their complexity. In this unit you will develop skills in critically examining and contributing to debates about social media’s impact on issues such as identity, privacy and the ethics of everyday life. You will draw on scholarly research to evaluate opposing perspectives and become critically informed communication professionals.
CCB205 Digital Media Analytics
This unit equips you with critical understanding and skills in contemporary research and practice methods as they are applied to digital content, platforms and networks. From computational analyses of ‘big social data’ to close qualitative analysis of digital media platforms and practices, the approaches, methods and tools that are grounded in and suitable for the study of digital media are expanding and evolving rapidly. This unit aims to provide you with critical understanding and practical skills in how to select and implement contemporary digital approaches to the collection, analysis and interpretation of various forms of communication data, such as social media content (both textual and visual) and geodata.
CCB206 Global Media and Culture
This unit provides students with a critical understanding of the economic, political, and cultural dimensions of global media industries. It introduces key disciplinary theories and debates about the creation, circulation and consumption of media content as it circulates across different locations and cultures. The unit also enables students to develop skills and knowledge necessary for living and working in globally diverse communities and professional contexts. The unit may survey a range of media industries and cultural forms and/or focus on a single site of global activity as it explores the inherently transnational nature of the content we consume.
CCB304 Social Media Strategy
This unit develops a critical understanding of, and applied skills in, best practice social media management within professional communication contexts. You will engage with the principles, tools and techniques of professional social media practice, social media presence and the development, implementation and analysis of digital communication strategies. It also provides opportunities to apply them in the ever-evolving social media landscape. This is an advanced unit that builds on individual and teamwork approaches to learning and teaching developed in introductory and intermediate units.
CCB305 Critical Issues in Media and Communication
This advanced unit engages with critical and contemporary issues concerned with the complex relationships among media, communication, and culture. It builds upon core knowledge and skills, and is designed to increase confidence in your analytical capacity and problem solving ability as a future media and communications professional. Drawing on the latest from our world-leading researchers, this unit will enable you to apply historical, economic, political, technological, and cultural perspectives when responding to real world issues facing the media and communications industries.
CCB306 Media and Communication Capstone
The ability to engage audiences is a persistent challenge in today's media and communications industries, and is therefore a highly sought-after skill. Working alongside project stakeholders, in this capstone unit you will demonstrate your proficiency in the methods, tools, and analytic approaches used to engage audiences through a ‘real world’ media and communications project. This unit builds upon core knowledge and skills gained throughout your degree, particularly your theoretical and applied understanding of audiences. In doing so, it develops your professional capacity for independence, leadership, confidence, and collaboration. This unit equips you with in-demand knowledge and capabilities to prepare you for your career in the dynamic media and communications industries.
Drama
KRB120 Scenography 1: Introducing Performance Design
This unit will introduce you to scenography through a study of key historical shifts, foundational concepts and techniques in live performance design. 'Scenography' is the art of creating performance environments incorporating elements such as set, sound, light, new media and costume within space; driven by a performance text; and shaped by the performer and director for a live audience. This unit covers the evolution of scenography for theatre, dance and opera; and how these developments continue to influence contemporary performance design. KRB120 is ideal for students interested in designing, directing/choreographing, managing, performing and/or technically facilitating live works. The unit introduces a broad range of design techniques, technology and terminology used in contemporary performance practice. As the first unit in the Scenography minor, this foundation unit serves as preparation for more detailed and practical investigation in subsequent units.
KTB110 Plays that Changed the World
This unit investigates theatre and performance from Greek Theatre to Postmodernism and embraces socio-cultural/political/historical perspectives. It provides foundations in academic writing skills as required in the discipline of drama. It addresses the major movements in the evolution of performance in theatrical history while encouraging critical enquiry, debate and research through study and performance of seminal plays that shaped theatre. An understanding of the evolution of the theatrical form and its relationship with contemporary contexts is vital to a sound knowledge of performance. The facility to identify theatre traditions, the key junctures in the progress of content and form, and the advancement of theatre as an art-form, is foundational to the contemporary practitioner.
KTB111 Acting in Realism: The Authentic Actor
This unit surveys the theoretical and practical components of Stanislavski-based realism which strives towards authenticity. It focuses on the critical and creative theories and techniques needed to cultivate authenticity, imagination and emotion-awareness. Authenticity is the foundation for building and portraying characters for the performing artist. A combination of exercises and scene study will deepen the understanding and playing of action in the realistic mode. Stanislavski-based realism is arguably the most dominant style of acting in twentieth and twenty-first century practice. As such, it needs to be understood in its own terms. Therefore, in this unit you will be encouraged to learn to appreciate the basic construct of the actor craft, your relationship with your emotional interior, and the key concepts and language used to create an authentic performance as the basic skills needed to develop a personal methodology for acting.
KTB120 Diverse Theatre Practice
This unit addresses artistic practices and narratives that, for historical, societal or political reasons, have struggled to find a safe place and a voice in our cultural landscape. Through direct engagement and individual self-reflection, the unit will provide foundational knowledge of the sensitivities of practice and protocols to enhance communication and appropriate professional conduct when collaborating with artists from diverse backgrounds and cultures. An appreciation of how performance and story manifest across distinct cultural boundaries and history is essential for a comprehensive understanding of theatre practice in the 21st century. Theatre practitioners require an awareness of cultural practices and protocols, and understanding of the multiplicity and complexity of a diverse, globalised world, to ensure the voice of Australian theatre reflects a true picture of contemporary society.
KTB121 Acting in Style: The Responsive Actor
This unit engages theoretically and practically with interaction, reaction, participation and co-creation in non-realistic approaches to acting with emphasis on the different styles of comedy. The critical and creative theories and techniques needed to cultivate self-awareness, other-awareness, play and improvisation in acting in different styles, constitute the central focus of the unit. The basic premise of performance is sharing the conspiracy of theatre with the creative collaborators, fellow performers and, most importantly, the audience. Being comfortable with the uncertainty of the live act and empowered by its dynamism and ephemerality are key aspects of the development of the responsive actor. A combination of exercises and scene study will deepen the understanding and playing of action in the comedic mode.
KTB217 Story and Performance
This unit introduces concepts and techniques needed to develop storytelling and script writing skills, in a range of contexts including live performance. It develops professional dramaturgical proficiency in research, analysis, reflection and the giving and receiving of feedback. An understanding of storytelling forms and the development of scripts are fundamental communicative tools for artists. This unit introduces a suite of professional practice skills-sets, including understanding traditions of First Nations’ storytelling; dramaturgy in performance-making and writing for performance.
KTB225 Radical Theatre Forms
This unit develops an appreciation of theatre innovation in both historical and contemporary contexts. It addresses concepts attributed to postdramatic theatre, immersive theatre forms, theatre as a hypermedium, and audience-centred work. Throughout history theatre has responded to changes within society and has developed styles that have reinterpreted and reinvented the notions of character, tension, audience, site, time and narrative. One way to understand new and radical theatre styles is to investigate the historical and contemporary contexts that are shaping current theatrical practice. These practices give rise to theatre that is responsive to site, places the audience at the centre of the experience and engages with non-linear narrative form. Understanding this enables theatre-makers to develop informed choices about where to locate, describe and promote their practice and product. This unit explores forms that reinvent notions of audience, narrative, space and linear time.
KTB227 Leadership in Creative Contexts: Directing Creativity
This unit investigates notions and functions of leadership in the fields of theatre, drama and performance. Through engaging with models of directorial best-practice and examining influential practitioner-leaders, you will unpack the process of leading creativity from both a collaborative and personal perspective, with the aim of achieving a unified creative vision. Whether within conventional hierarchical structures or collaborative models, delivering creative outcomes requires not only knowledge of the personal, logistical and artistic processes of creation, but also an understanding of the processes to safely navigate from concept to fullest expression.
Fashion
DFB102 Introduction to Fashion Communication
This unit provides an introduction to fashion communication and is intended to provide foundational knowledge and skills to pursue further studies in fashion communication. It aims to develop your understanding of fashion as both an everyday cultural form and a complex global industry. Learning in this unit will be important in order to gain an overview of the global fashion system and fashion cultures. You will develop and practise foundational fashion communication skills alongside learning how to apply key theoretical ideas to understanding fashion. This unit will provide you with the conceptual basis to pursue further studies in fashion communication.
DFB104 Fashion Sustainability
This unit is in the developmental stage of the program and provides you with a foundational knowledge of environmental and social impacts of fashion production and consumption. Throughout the unit you will examine the environmental and social impact of different industry business models, materials and production methods in order to develop the skills and mindset to apply more sustainable practices. It also introduces fashion systems as complex supply chains spanning raw fibre through to manufacturing, design, retailing and garment use, disposal systems at end of life, fibre and textiles, industry structures, and business models grounded in sustainable and ethical practices.
DFB208 Fashion Textiles and Technology
This unit provides you with knowledge and skills in applied textile design and technology exploring avenues in speculative design into textile futures. By learning about the technologies involved with textile production you will be able to understand and forecast future design and technology trends that involve textile processes in the wider spectrum. This unit will be presented in an integrated studio environment. As such, it will focus on textiles, materiality and technology. You will be given the opportunity to design experimental textiles in line with industry trends and challenges.
DFB209 Global Fashion History
This unit introduces the foundations of fashion history through a global perspective of trade, culture and style flows between the West and the East. It presents a new approach to the study of fashion history as an exchange between cultures taking a critical and interdisciplinary approach to provide you with the opportunity to build your fashion knowledge in a context of complex global cultural and commercial exchanges in fashion. It unravels competing cultural and political discourses of dress in colonial contexts recognising the multiple sites that contributed to the emergence of fashion. The unit presents instances of colonisation and resistance through dress, including an Australian Indigenous perspective. It provides you with skills in written and oral communication; research and visual analysis; and creative skills. Importantly, it will help you to identify and understand current influences and future directions in contemporary fashion design.
DFB216 Wearables
This unit introduces wearable product design for the purposes of enhancing the user experience within a given context. It provides knowledge and skills to design interactive wearable products. It focuses on demonstrating the use of emerging technologies and rapid prototyping techniques for the purposes of designing wearable products that enhance the user experience within a given context. This unit is designed as an intermediate experience of your course and as such it is desirable that you have completed design foundation units, tangible media or textiles and technology units prior to enrolling in this unit. This unit provides you with opportunities to build, develop and apply creative design proficiency in the context of wearable design and wearable technologies.
Film, screen & animation
KNB125 Animation History and Context
This introductory unit addresses key historical moments, thinking, and practices that have shaped the animation industry. Animation involves a broad range of creative approaches in the production of expressions for the dynamic screen practice. Animation in its truest form conveys believability, often fabricated through frame by frame construction. This knowledge will enable you to progress into units such as KNB135 Animation Aesthetics and KNB215 Animation Performance.
KNB126 Motion Design
This unit introduces aspects of visual narratives and explores the craft of expressing them in a sequential temporal format. The richly diverse field of motion design impacts a wide range of creative areas with fields such as graphic design, animation, visual effects, sequential art, film and games all offering opportunities in motion design. Motion Design has evolved to be more than 'graphics presented in motion'. With the advent of technology, applications and methods for creating them has rapidly expanded into a new form of visual communication, visual effects, infographics and visual artworks. The unit provides an understanding of motion design processes, theories and historical developments. It enables you to effectively design and communicate ideas using graphical and motion-based elements constructed using software and technologies common to the field of motion design.
KNB127 CGI Foundations
This unit introduces the foundations of 3D computer graphics theory, the history of computer-generated animation and 3D production methods. It provides a solid theoretical understanding of 3D space; the technical skills to create 3D computer-generated imagery and the ability to resolve issues that arise during 3D production. In the evolving fields of animation, games and graphical visualisation, you will acquire new literacies and skills to participate fully in the 3D computer graphics production process.
KNB135 Animation Aesthetics
This unit introduces basic to medium level techniques of 3D character animation by investigating the fundamental principles, concepts and approaches to body mechanics and character performance. The focus is on developing an understanding of methodology, planning and execution in order to achieve a sense of physicality and believability. When creating animated content for production, it is important to develop a solid methodology that allows an animator to work quickly and creatively while maintaining an acceptable level of quality. Being able to take direction and creatively respond to a brief while finding the best way to communicate an idea to an audience is a core skill that takes time to develop. The core communication skills of illustration, motion, blocking and layout follow industry standards in pre-production and are required for the generation and presentation of ideas, as well as the exploration of form and character.
KNB136 Visual Storytelling: Production Design
Animation is the art of impossible worlds, requiring a broad base of skills that address the nexus of theory and practice. Core animation skills such as observation, meaning-making, description, interpretation, representation and recording synthesise the foundations laid through critical thinking and affiliated practice. This unit explores the theoretical context for the use of techniques and processes involved in the development of concepts for production. It also introduces some of the drawing skills and processes employed in the visual development phase for animated, live-action production, motion media and games. It addresses design thinking, concept art, character design and modelling, in anticipation of production work. This unit provides a solid foundation for subsequent visual storytelling units, such as KNB216 Visual Storytelling: Cinematic Pre-Visualisation and KNB226 Visual Storytelling: Pre-Production, which inform final year capstone project.
KPB101 Introduction to Screen Production
This unit introduces the principles and technologies of video production for both cinema and television, such as the roles and responsibilities of production teams, production management, design and practice. Lectures by experts in the areas of producing, directing, and cinematography, editing and sound will inform your practice. As the contemporary mediascape simultaneously converges and diversifies technologically and in market applications, there is a growing demand for new content with correlating skill sets in media production. Drawing on production processes and methodologies established in film, video and television, this unit will introduce you to content production both generated and outputted through new media technologies. Skills, knowledge and approaches will be drawn from the fields of scriptwriting, pre-production, production management, direction, producing, camera, sound, editing and post-production.
KPB113 Screen Text Analysis
This unit considers Hollywood and independent film and television text forms, the industry processes that produce these texts, and the audiences that consume them. It introduces key textual analysis techniques to examine screen texts, while taking into account industry and audience contexts. Film and television text production is both an art-form and a business. Therefore, critically informed textual analysis approaches that examine the values, meanings and messages constructed by screen texts are valued by screen practitioners, critics, and educators.
KPB116 Introduction to Screenwriting
This unit introduces various principles, elements and stages that make up the scriptwriting process for narrative production. Skills needed to generate and select ideas, write synopses, and draft scripts will be developed through studying and applying the key creative components of writing for the screen. The unit addresses principles of storytelling, industry standards and practical skills involved in developing projects for narrative productions within film, television and other media. The focus is on how to develop ideas, create engaging characters, and construct scenes for visual mediums. Writing scripts for a range of screen media formats is a learned craft and requires discipline, perseverance, and an understanding of industry practice. Possessing this key knowledge provides capabilities to develop concepts through to script stage.
KPB120 Contemporary Screen Histories
This unit engages with contemporary screen productions and the ways in which they look and sound. It assists you to develop an appreciation of the artistic and cinematic production practices of key individuals and studios. The styles of recent screen productions (how they look and sound) are the result of past and contemporary creative innovations associated with key individuals, production houses, and studios over an extended period of time. This unit considers the styles of screen productions such as motion pictures as being the result of evolving production practices, technological developments, individual and collaborative creative endeavours, and audience expectations.
KPB121 Screen Business
This unit provides an introduction to producing, writing and the theoretical aspects of the movie, television and new media businesses. The production and distribution of screen-based audiovisual material is a significant global industry. In order to properly understand the cultural impact of this content it is important to understand how it functions as an industry. This is important both for those who intend to work in these businesses, and for those who are interested in understanding how cultural and creative business works. Apart from introducing media business, the unit provides an understanding of the importance of researching the expectations and desires of audiences in order to create commercial products designed to entertain, inform or educate.
KPB220 Factual Screens
This unit introduces the traditions of documentary film and television production, stylistic practices in documentary and documentary scripts, and methodologies for producing ethnographic, indigenous and cross cultural documentaries. Understanding the role documentary performs in our media age provides a crucial literacy to this film forms. You will be exposed to the history and theory behind documentary, enabling you to conceptualise and plan your own documentary productions and critique the place of them alongside factual and fictional forms of filmmaking in the contemporary media landscape. The documentary filmmaking tradition has involved many crucial aesthetic, technical and ethical concerns throughout history. For film, screen and animation students, this unit aids you to integrate its contents into documentary scripts and productions, while for other disciplines' students, the unit provides the theoretical underpinnings and processes of documentary production.
Industrial design
DNB110 ID Studio 1: User Centred Design
This unit introduces you to User Centred Industrial Design. It addresses visual and creative thinking within the context of the industrial design process and provides human-centred knowledge focused on usability, usability methods and evaluation techniques. You will learn how to implement physical, cognitive and emotional factors to human-centred product design, services and systems. Understanding the needs and capabilities of people is essential to the design of usable, desirable and viable products, services and systems. In order to do this you will need a solid understanding of user-centred design methods during the industrial design process and the application of form, structure, function and beauty in design.
Interaction design
DXB111 Introduction to Web Design
This unit introduces concepts and skills underpinning the user-centred design of web sites using the web technologies such as HTML and CSS. It enables you to understand web technologies as a medium to explore design concepts and to build responsive, high-fidelity, mobile-first web sites. This includes translating conceptual designs into responsive websites while taking into account principles of interface and user experience design, layout, style and navigation. The unit enables you to formulate solutions to design problems, to produce high quality technical and aesthetic outcomes, and to understand the basic skills needed by web design professionals.
DXB205 Interactive Narrative Design
This unit serves as an introduction to creating immersive environments and building interactive worlds for player performance and dramatic agency. The role of the narrative designer is central to the success of any significant professional project in interactive media and game design. The unit addresses theoretical issues associated with immersive / non-linear story structures and interactive narrative forms through the analysis of game / play systems, the creation of original game concepts and the application of techniques of narrative design. It extends this understanding into practice through the application of relevant skills, which will scaffold you into the production of a portfolio work (suitable for interaction designers, visual communication designers, game designers, media designers, creative writers and performance studies).
Journalism
CJB101 Foundations of Journalism
This unit provides you with foundational knowledge of what ‘journalism’ means today as both a professional practice and cultural form. You will learn about the changing role of journalism in society, how journalism underpins (and undermines) democracy, and be introduced to journalism ethics and law. You will learn how the business activities of media companies shape news values, and how they employ contemporary practices of story selection and verification. Against this industrial context, you will begin to learn journalistic writing conventions and apply effective reporting techniques. In doing so, this unit equips you with the essential knowledge and tools for you to understand and thrive in a complex and dynamic communication industry.
CJB105 Shortform News Production
Journalists must be able to produce content that engages audiences across a range of formats and platforms. In this unit, you will develop the ability to successfully perform a range of newsgathering activities, including interviewing and live blogging. Drawing on this newsgathering activity, you will produce under ‘real world’ deadlines professional quality audio and video content that is suitable for TV, radio, or digital platforms. You will also apply multimedia skills to produce transmedia content that supports contemporary journalism practices, and create digital communication content that engages and/or persuades audiences. In addition to producing content, you will undertake editorial roles that support successful short form news production, and understand the value of community and collaboration in the multifaceted practice of contemporary journalism.
CJB201 Feature Writing
This unit provides advanced journalistic skills in feature writing, such as generating story ideas and new angles, researching and interviewing and writing interesting copy. Feature writing is a mainstay of journalism that practitioners cultivate during a career in this constantly evolving media space. The unit provides experience in the preparation of feature stories of professional quality and gives access to the benefits of reflection and a constructive critique of your research and writing. It aids you in producing credible non-fiction articles in a dynamic and appealing style, engaging skills that are transferable to areas outside journalism. It also provides awareness of the market for feature material for writers including freelance journalists. You are mentored to find publication opportunities in off-campus media.
CJB202 Production Journalism
Contemporary journalism increasingly requires multi-skilled practitioners able to engage and attract audiences through creatively and accurately edited content integrated with compelling visual design. This unit introduces you to the key functions of production journalism for print and digital media by teaching how to produce multimedia (video) and how to edit and design print and digital content prior to publication. It builds on foundation skills in journalism and engages you with the dynamics of visual design and the application of design theory to journalistic practice. You learn to develop material to the publication-ready stage and to apply theoretical concepts in practical contexts. You also gain an understanding of the role of layout and design as a communication tool in print and digital media.
CJB205 Data-Driven Storytelling and Verification
Communication professionals now operate in a world in which data is plentiful, and often relatively easy to access. This situation also throws up a number of challenges, though, with these practitioners needing to know where to find such data, how to make sense of it and, more importantly, how to present that data to an audience in a meaningful and engaging way. This unit therefore equips students with some of these foundational skills, and provides them with a strong understanding of how data can be used to enhance news stories, and help to uncover stories which have not been told yet.
CJB303 Political Communication
This unit surveys the theory and professional practices of political and governmental communication, especially through journalism, media and communications industries. It examines contemporary and historical political issues and communications in Australia and internationally from the perspectives of democratic theory, media influence, strategic image, and issue management. The unit comprises an overview of theoretical approaches to political communication, the construction of political discourse, and the mobilisation of audiences/voters; an understanding of the relationship between communication strategies and the management of politics, with cases drawn from Australian and international politics. Students will develop the capacity to critically appraise strategic issues such as political persuasion, electoral strategy, uses/impacts of digital and social media, and public opinion formation and to create messages about issues connected to politics and government.
CJB304 Critical Issues in News and Factual Media
This advanced unit engages with critical and contemporary issues that are upending news media business practices, values, and trends. It builds upon core knowledge and skills, and is designed to increase confidence in your analytical capacity and problem solving ability as a future reporters and factual storytellers in a rapidly changing industry. Drawing on the latest from our world-leading researchers, this unit will enable you will apply historical, economic, political, technological, and cultural perspectives to understand and master the real world issues facing the factual media landscape.
Music
KMB118 Musicianship 1
This unit introduces the foundational aural and analytical skills to develop your understanding of music and sound. These skills will be applied to a range of musical styles, settings and practices. The development of critical listening and analytical skills, combined with representational and demonstrational skills across a broad range of music and sound, is critical to the developing modern musician. The unit will foster a deeper understanding of music and sound to help inform and situate your creative practice. It complements other creative, practical and analytical units in the degree by fostering a deeper understanding of music and sound.
KMB119 Music Production 1
This unit introduces you to the fundamental principles of music and sound production through a mix of theory and practice. You will gain an understanding of sound recording, sound production and live sound reinforcement while developing listening skills essential for music and sound production. The unit prepares you for later music production and creation units. Understanding how to capture and manipulate sound in live and recorded domains are core skills for anyone involved in making music or in any associated creative practice that involves the use of audio. You will develop a critical and practical understanding of the physical properties of sound, how it is perceived, and how it is recorded and processed to produce a final musical outcome.
KMB129 Music Production 2
This unit builds on Music Production 1. It introduces you to sequencing, sound synthesis, and signal processing as approaches to contemporary music composition and production. You will gain an understanding of the approaches and aesthetics that underpin music production and performance in the digital domain. The unit prepares you for later music creation units.
KMB217 Music Creation 1
This unit provides skills and understanding to create new music across a range of musical practices in performance, production and composition. It introduces musical contexts and concepts to help you to better understand your practice and that of your peers within a complex professional environment, and to be better positioned and equipped to respond appropriately. Successful musicians need to form and negotiate their creative practice within a complex professional environment. They need to develop critical skills to understand their music in context and how it can be connected to an audience. This unit establishes a platform for your practical skills in the creation and presentation of new music. As the first of four units in creative practice, it provides an opportunity for you to explore and present creative ideas with peers in a professionally engaged environment.
Professional communication
CCB307 Digital Advertising and Public Relations Capstone
This capstone unit prepares work-ready graduates by developing students’ adaptive capabilities to thrive in the ever-changing professions of advertising and public relations. It integrates prior knowledge of advertising and/or public relations theories, research, industry trends, and skills of contemporary professional practices required in a convergent digital media and communication world. Through classwork, independent study, and engagement with real-world projects, students develop an understanding of the local and international relevance of their chosen studies, with opportunities to produce a range of communication outcomes as applied and engagement projects that works to advance employability. This unit offers an opportunity for students to attempt the kind of work they admire in industry, in the process creating a communication portfolio and an issue-based strategy plan that reflects the cumulative learning from their degree and mastery of their chosen discipline/major.
CWB102 Influence and Persuasion
This foundational unit provides you with the theories, techniques and practices of analysing and creating persuasive texts. It introduces the theory and practice of persuasive communication across a number of genres to enhance your writing and communication skills. Persuasion and persuasive appeals are an integral (if often unconscious) element of professional communication. Advances in technology have made persuasion a pervasive element of contemporary communication, both personal and professional. Therefore, as a professional communication practitioner, you should be able to understand the principles of persuasion, use the vocabulary of persuasion, and evaluate the efficacy of different persuasive strategies.
CWB111 Scientific and Technical Writing
This unit introduces you to the principles of writing clearly in a science-based context and to the discursive frameworks that inform scientific and technical writing. It aims to provide you with an understanding of the conventions of writing and publishing scientific and technical information and to develop skills in communicating this information for a general audience. Graduates in the fields of engineering, science and information technology are required to assess high volumes of information and to communicate key scientific and technical ideas to a general audience. As such, there are growing industry and research demands for graduates with professional writing skills that deliver clear and well-structured written information about complex material.
CWB200 Interpersonal and Intercultural Negotiation
This unit introduces the wider context of cultural practices that inform communication at the individual and social levels. The unit explores how communication in the workplace and other professional contexts is influenced by factors such as power dynamics, gender, nationality, cultural norms, and ethnicity. It develops your engagement with the theories of and skills for successful intercultural and interpersonal exchange in business and professional relationships in a global context. Your career will be shaped by global forces, events, and contexts. Therefore, to be a global effective communication practitioner, you will need to see communication in the context of social and cultural norms and assumptions.
CWB203 Strategic Speech
The ability to present a spoken message is a highly desirable skill in education, employment and life. Across a range of fields and professions, graduates will have many opportunities to speak in a variety of contexts, both live and mediated. Taking an audience-centred approach, this unit focuses on creating and analysing spoken messages. It introduces theories of language, rhetoric and persuasion which are interrelated to promote understanding and development of your communication skills. Regular practice sessions in a safe and supportive learning environment will enhance skills needed to become competent and confident communicators. An emphasis on self-reflection supports the importance of ongoing development of these skills.
CWB204 Persuasive Communication
This unit provides rhetorical tools, strategies, techniques, and practices of analysis related to strategic communication in professional and workplace contexts. It teaches methods of persuasive communication which allows practitioners to create and understand influential messages. Examples of rhetoric in action are taken from technical, political, and business communication as well as other fields such as creative industries. As a professional communication practitioner, you should be able to understand the principles of persuasion, use the vocabulary of persuasion and evaluate the efficacy of different persuasive strategies. You will be given opportunities to create sophisticated communication artefacts that inform, persuade and instruct depending on the specifics of audience and context.
Visual arts
KVB102 Modernism in Art
This unit addresses concepts and movements that comprise early twentieth-century modernism in art and culture. It provides a coherent theoretical-historical knowledge of the period, 1900-1945, while fostering written, and oral communication skills, as well as building capabilities for visual analysis of art works across different media. Modernism is a crucial area of study for understanding twentieth century and contemporary art and visual culture. A proper comprehension of this period will assist you to become an informed practitioner in contemporary art, design, architecture and art writing.
KVB104 Photo Media and Art Practice
This unit develops an appreciation of the conceptual, cultural and historical contexts of photo media, addressing visual literacy, critical artistic enquiry, and the protocols related to ethical photo media practice. Photo media, which involves the use of diverse photographic processes, plays an important role in contemporary creative practices because of its pervasiveness and its application across a broad range of cultural and conceptual contexts. Photo imaging may also be the predominant mode of specific artists within a broader multidisciplinary approach to practice. This unit introduces a diverse range of contemporary artistic photo imaging concepts and methods as part of a trajectory of photographic history. It provides the opportunity to experiment with a variety of approaches to understand and create engaging and informed photo image portfolios.
KVB110 2D Art: Materials and Processes
This introductory visual art unit provides you with practical experience of two-dimensional art-making to further develop your creative practice. Through both directed and independent activities, you will explore 2D materials and processes such as wet and dry media work, collage/assemblage, printmaking and additive and subtractive processes. These practical activities will be underpinned by the application of a 2D art vocabulary. This unit forms part of a suite of visual arts units that aim to expand your creative skillset and visual literacy for application in the visual art studio and beyond.
KVB113 Australian Art and Identity
This unit introduces the history of Australian art in the 20th Century. It addresses the national, cultural and social frameworks within which this art has been produced, particularly after World War II, emphasising a number of movements and styles in Australian art and their relationship to international tendencies. The unit also considers the nature of Indigenous art and its contribution to the complexities of Australian cultural identity. All of these issues will assist in understanding that Australian art has, and has continued to be, an important expression of our cultural values. This includes the viewpoints of marginal voices from Indigenous culture and multiculturalism, and at the level of gender and sexual politics.
KVB210 Time-Based Art: Moving Images
This unit introduces the theory and practice of the moving image as an art form. It addresses ideas and languages in relation to contemporary video and filmic art and what it shares with television, cinema and other time-based media. These concepts inform the development of methods and skills in practical experience by creating moving-image artwork. The unit looks also at literacy in the meaning, formal codes and conventions of moving images in order to encourage critical and analytical thinking that can be used to effectively communicate concepts through creative practice. An expansive range of video, filmic and time-based imagery currently dominates the cultural landscape. This unit engages with the conceptual and artistic possibilities of moving images which constitute a crucial graduate capability for those committed to building a professional practice in visual meaning-making and communication.
KVB216 Post 1945 Art
This unit introduces the historical, philosophical, economic, political, social, cultural, artistic and formal issues related to art production since 1945 and into the post-modern era. It covers topics on neo-avant-garde, and art's engagement with consumerism, the philosophical underpinnings of movements such as Pop Art, Minimalism, Conceptualism, Performance and Earthworks, Feminist art practice, and post-modern art and architecture. The study of these movements will assist you in understanding the history behind arts production and the styles that have been adopted by other creative industries. This unit provides a skill-base for all Creative Industries students and applies to all disciplines and cultural industries including art criticism, arts practice, architecture, landscape architecture, fashion and music. You will also increase understanding and skills that are pertinent to the study of cultural literature and visual analysis.
KVB222 Spatial Art: Object and Site
This intermediate visual art unit aims to develop your visual and spatial literacy by exploring the theory and creation of site-specific installations. Through both directed and self-directed practical activities, you will develop an engaged, spatial art practice that is grounded in the theory and practice of site-specific art and is framed by contemporary Indigenous and environmental perspectives. You will learn how to produce meaningful public artworks that are actively responsive to their site, and that can successfully engage in contemporary contexts and debates. The knowledge and skills you gain will have a rich array of applications for your subsequent creative arts practice.
KVB223 Post 1989 Art
This unit introduces key ideas and styles of art practice that have emerged since 1989 in a global economy. It develops knowledge and skills that are relevant to cultural literature and visual analysis. It furthers your expertise in problem solving, creative thinking and effective communication of knowledge in a variety of contexts and modes. As a creative industries student, it is important to possess an informed knowledge of art and culture since 1989, including the rise of the experience economy and the centrality of entertainment and post-avant-garde art in global creative industries. The concepts and knowledge gained will aid you to organise and evaluate information, synthesise research material into a coherent form, and write and verbally articulate ideas. This unit is intended to provide a foundation skill-base for you in Creative Industries and is applicable to all disciplines including art criticism, arts practice, architecture and fashion.
Visual communication
DVB101 Visual Communication Design
This unit introduces the principles and conventions associated with the interpretation and production of meaning through visual representation. Visual Communication is based on the creation of meaning through image and text and this plays a critical role in our contemporary world which is visually and media driven. Visual communicators require a deep understanding of conceptual development, design process, typography and image making, and how image-based communication occurs. You will learn how to think and operate as a visual designer through studio-based learning and a series of industry-focused experiences.
DVB305 Design for Health Innovation
The contribution of design-led approaches and methods to innovations in eHealth and healthcare services and technologies is increasing. Challenges impacting Australian and international health sectors require skills and knowledge of consumer- and user-centric approaches. You will become familiar with theoretical frameworks for health and wellbeing and develop knowledge of contemporary design-led approaches to the development of health and wellbeing services, products and experiences. This unit addresses theories, approaches, methods and applications of design to the context of health and wellbeing. It takes into account multiple stakeholder perspectives: health professionals, patients and carers. You will deepen you design skills and knowledge of methods used in Design Thinking to conceptualise, develop and produce a design prototype.
Units you need background knowledge to study
These units have requirements for previous study or background knowledge. Check the unit’s previous study requirements for details. If you have any questions, contact the unit coordinator for the semester you want to study.
If your previous studies were not in English, or were completed in a country where English is not the first language, you will also need to demonstrate that you meet our English proficiency requirements when you apply.
Creative industries
Communication
CCN111 Social Media Data Analytics
Knowing how to analyse social media data sets to answer questions and make decisions that improve content and engagement is a fundamental skill for contemporary communication professionals. It is also essential that future focused communication professionals have both an understanding of how computational technologies transform the world of communication, and the hands-on skills to collect and analyse data. It is included in the early part of the program to develop your foundational data analytics knowledge and computational thinking.
CCN113 Social Media Strategy Project
This Work Integrated Learning unit synthesises the knowledge and skills developed in earlier foundational units associated with effective social media management. It applies them to a professional media and communication industries context. The unit supports the development of collaborative teamwork skills to respond to a real client brief. This reflects the kinds of work that professional communicators undertake.
CCN201 The Digital Creative Economy and the Future of Work
This unit explores how digital transformation impacts on media and communication industries and the working lives of communication professionals. To develop effective communication strategies and pursue work opportunities, communication professionals need to have an understanding of emerging trends in media industries, and how to thrive in this environment as a digital communication professional. As such, the unit provides an advanced and critical understanding of digital transformation, how it disrupts the communication and media industries, and the specific implications for the future of digital communication professionals.
CCN202 Automating the Digital World
This unit introduces contemporary research on the impacts and ethical implications of automation for communication, media, and society. It explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI), algorithms and other forms of automation are transforming communication, the media and communication industry and the wider society. It also addresses the ethical issues surrounding how these technologies are used. It is critically important that digital communication professionals have a future-focused orientation towards embryonic and emerging technologies that are likely to further disrupt media and communications environments.
CCN204 Audience Analytics
Digital technologies have transformed the way communicators engage with and understand diverse media audiences. This unit will explore the fundamental theoretical frameworks, methods and metrics for identifying and understanding audiences. An applied and critical understanding of audience analytics is crucial for communication professionals. This unit builds upon and deepens the ideas and methods for audience analysis introduced in earlier units in this course.
CCN205 Data-Driven Storytelling
This unit examines visual communication for information and the application of principles for effective information design. Understanding and engaging with the ever-growing quantities of data is a challenge for both organisations and individuals. Increasingly, experts are required to not only evaluate and prepare this data, but also to identify and communicate it within organisations, or to stakeholders, clients, users, community groups, etc. The effective visual communication of those stories in the data is a design process informed by advanced principles of information design and is critical for audience engagement. Data-driven storytelling is an advanced visual information design unit.
CCN206 Communicating with Bots
This unit introduces the development and use of artificial intelligence (AI) and bots as effective tools for communication planning and execution. It examines the impact of such technologies on communication planning and practice, and the skills required to develop bots. The unit provides the hands-on experience of applying technology to develop bots that algorithmically communicate via social media platforms. Communication professionals need to understand how to use emerging technologies such as AI to innovatively engage with their users and audiences. Bots, generally defined as “a computer program that performs automatic repetitive tasks”, and other technologies in the field of AI are changing the way communication is planned and executed, and how stories are told and evolve across social media platforms.
Creative practice
KKB285 Creative Enterprise Studio 2
This unit furthers your theoretical and practical knowledge and skills to develop enterprise focused creative projects. It links with work previously undertaken in KKB185 Creative Enterprise Studio 1 and prepares you for the final semester capstone unit KKB385 Creative Enterprise Studio 3. You will build upon your foundational understanding of project development gained in KKB185 and develop skills in project delivery and management through to prototyping your creative idea. The concept of iterative design is introduced through reflection on the success of the prototype and recommendations for future iterations and creative experimentation. This unit allows you to extend your project development skills including field analysis, creative experimentation, communication, problem solving and project evaluation.
KKB385 Creative Enterprise Studio 3
During this capstone unit you will demonstrate creative leadership by initiating an industry linked creative project. It brings together the skills and knowledge acquired throughout your course, drawing specifically from KKB185 Creative Enterprise Studio 1 and KKB285 Creative Enterprise Studio 2. The unit provides you with a framework to develop a project proposal that addresses an identified opportunity. You will then initiate your project proposal, launching your career as a creative industries professional.
KYB103 The Creative Body
This practice-based unit gathers you from across the performance disciplines (dance, drama, music) to explore the relationship between body and creative impulse in a transdisciplinary creative space. It introduces a variety of philosophies exploring the psycho-social dynamics of the body in your creative practice and its place in a space. The human body is a fundamental tool and a central site of study for artists, regardless of their specialisation. Good performance techniques are reliant on an understanding of the body and its capabilities to open the imagination of the individual, the group and an audience. An understanding of the body—how it moves, how it feels and how it relates to other bodies—is crucial to build resilience, connectedness and sustainability in performance-based creative practice.
Creative writing
KWB306 Creative Writing Project 1
This unit provides an opportunity to develop an extended creative writing project in your preferred and strongest genre and form. It will allow you to plan and propose an extended piece of creative work through a series of intensive highly participatory tutorials in collaboration with peer critique groups. Though the major covers a range of writing genres, you choose your strongest genre and write with both breadth and complexity. This unit supports you to demonstrate that you have developed a sophisticated voice or style over the three years of study. The piece of work commenced here will continue to be built on in KWB326 Creative Writing Project 2.
KWB326 Creative Writing Project 2
This unit provides a unique learning opportunity to complete a sustained body of creative work in a genre or form of your choice and identify market and publication strategies for your work. Building on the project commenced in KWB306 Creative Writing Project 1, it offers you the opportunity to continue work on an extended piece of creative writing with the assistance of critiques and peer feedback. The unit aids you to identify markets for creative practice, develop skills and strategies to submit work to publishers for professional consideration, and identify and create pathways for publication.
Dance
KDB112 Dance Technique Fundamentals
This unit introduces dance technique and the application of somatic practices. It includes the principles of safe dance practice, alignment, kinaesthetic awareness, and maintaining a sustainable embodied practice. Through practical classes you will develop your technical foundation in contemporary dance and your understanding of the principles of movement. The development of your engagement and understanding of what your dance practice might be and how it informs your future as a dance practitioner is at the forefront of this unit.
KDB122 Popular Dance Styles
The unit focuses on different dance styles and their application in different contexts, supported by complementary studies. You will continue to explore and develop your emergent understanding of your dance practice and your future as a dance practitioner. This unit builds upon the knowledges you have developed in KDB112 Dance Technique Fundamentals by offering you an introduction to a broader spectrum of popular dance styles. You will undertake a series of practical classes throughout the semester that may include a combination of: Jazz, Hip-hop, Ballet, Contemporary, Latin Dance or Swing.
KDB206 Dance in Contemporary Culture
This unit builds upon embodied knowledge and dance practice developed in KDB122 Popular Dance Styles. Through a series of seminars and practical workshops you will explore different trends in the role and place of dance in contemporary culture. You will explore dance's place in society and the development of trends such as Dance in Museums, Hip-hop culture, Dance as a Political Intervention, and Dance for Well-being.
KDB210 Dance Composition
This unit introduces the fundamentals of dance composition through exploring a range of choreographic practices. It focuses on understanding the tools available for composing dance and using these to develop successful choreographic outcomes. Through studio-based shared practice sessions, online activities, reflecting on readings and performance documentation you will begin to develop an aesthetic understanding applicable across your artistic practice. The unit examines movement ideas, shifting from simple to complex group configurations, and understanding how to develop a compositional methodology for a particular context. It offers the opportunity to develop your choreographic skills and understanding by working in collaboration with a choreographer.
KDB218 Performance in Context 1
This project-based unit develops technique, artistry, communication skills, performance ability and confidence through lectures, presentations, workshops, and student-led rehearsals,. It will enable you to use, adapt and transform your skills for artistic expression in various performing domains including collaborative and interdisciplinary practice. This is the first of two units introducing you to the practice of the Teaching Artist as a facilitator of dance-led experiences. You will apply your developed knowledge of technical skills and artistic practice in the creation of a dance work. These skills are best developed in specific contexts to foster adaptability in dance performance, creative process and workshop settings.
KDB223 Screen Dance
This unit introduces you to the field of screen dance through a critical and practical engagement with the genre. As such, it addresses the key concerns of screen dance practice from a critical perspective, as well as developing your skills in producing and documenting dance across a range of digital platforms. Through mixed delivery and online learning you will develop skills associated with the conceptualisation, composition, filming and editing of movement for the camera. This unit is designed for those with an interest in the merging fields of dance, choreography, film and video production, shared creative practice, collaboration and the screen based presentation of dance works. The skills learned will be transferable across a range of different platforms and can be applied to the creation of new screen dance works as well as to documentation of performance and creative process.
KDB318 Performance in Context 2
This unit aims to enable you to use, adapt and transform your skills for artistic expression in a specific performing domain including collaborative and interdisciplinary practice. As such, this project-based unit provides the context in which you will develop technique, artistry, communication skills, performance ability and confidence through professionally guided rehearsals, classes, performances and workshops. It is the second of two units which builds on the practice of the Teaching Artist as a facilitator of dance-led creative experiences. You will apply your developed knowledge of technical skill and artistic practice to the creation of a performance situated within a specific context while exploring your role as a Teaching Artist from different perspectives.
KDB320 Independent Dance Project
This unit enables you to adapt and transform your dance skills for artistic expression and is the culmination of your previous two Performance in Context units. This guided experience supports you to develop your skills to work independently and to establish your practice as a teaching artist through the key processual stages including conception, development and realisation of your ideas. You will apply your integrated knowledge of technical skills and artistic practice to effectively initiate and realise an independent dance project. This self-contained, discrete project will enable you to develop your skills, professional identity and aptitude for engagement within a variety of industry contexts.
Design
DYB102 Impact Lab: Society and Systems
This unit addresses methods of social impact design and the ways in which these approaches can contribute to transformational social and community focused change. In it, you experience how design approaches and tools can be applied to complex social and community-based challenges. In a context where design can foster inclusion and act as a disruptor and driver for positive change you as a designer, alongside your design peers, have the collective potential to lead or make a better future. Framed around real world challenges; and in partnership with community, government and/or industry partners; you will engage with transdisciplinary design-led participatory entrepreneurial strategies to address key issues within one or more communities. This will develop skills valuable in designing for social impact. This impact lab focuses on people, to foreground the importance of keeping the human condition at the heart of design practice which enables solutions aimed at social change.
DYB301 Design Portfolio for Professional Practice
This unit is a capstone professional practice experience - providing you with an opportunity to explore and define your design purpose and identity, foster career aspirations and expand your professional network. Through this unit you will develop your knowledge and expectations of professional practice and navigate career opportunities. The unit will assist you as you transition from student to professional, translating what you have learned and experienced over the course of your degree to be able to professionally present your skills, knowledge and capabilities into a meaningful and purposeful portfolio.
Drama
KRB121 Scenography 2: Creating Worlds for Theatre
This unit introduces you to the practical concepts and processes associated with the creation of scenography – the world of the theatrical performance. It explores the practical application of the core elements of scenography including set, costume, light, sound and vision, while considering other key performance elements including space, time, narrative, character, performers and audience. The unit facilitates practical application and experience in solving the challenges faced by the scenographer. This includes the demands of crafting and communicating a theatre design, using relevant industry software to model set designs, and the ongoing challenge of documenting the creative process and product. It combines practical investigations with in-depth lectures on the application of design, including the role of the contemporary production designers, the design process and techniques.
KRB220 Scenography 3: Into the 21st Century
In this unit, you will interrogate the evolution of scenography through the 20th Century into the 21st Century within the changing fields of theatre and performance. Through an investigation of key shifts, significant developments, and leading practitioners of this time, the notion of scenography and its role in theatre and performance is questioned. You will be exposed to a broad range of scenographic and performance movements, practitioners and styles which will shape your future experimentation in design for performance.
KRB221 Scenography 4: Intermedial Theatre
This unit introduces scenographic techniques and approaches for intermedial theatre such as conceptualisation through to realisation, while offering an appreciation of the overall production process. It explores the practical realisation of the principles of intermedial theatre - the use of space and technology; the design and composition of visual and aural environments; the demands and effect of the digitally mediated upon the narrative, production, performers and audience. The unit is structured to incorporate a degree of practical application and experience in solving the challenges faced by the designer working in theatre, including 'hands-on' experience of the processes and demands of realising an intermedial performance. As the final unit in the Scenography minor, this studio-based unit comprises predominantly ongoing practical work that you complete under the close guidance and instruction of QUT academic staff.
KTB126 Drama Practice: Collaboration
This introductory unit addresses practical and theoretical understandings of processual, improvised and devised dramatic form. It introduces collaborative practice and play building that is at the heart of the BFA Drama coursework. The unit presents different techniques and processes of content generation and form exploration and develop a language around creative inquiry, taking concepts to action and applying form and genre to original ideas. It offers a descriptive and analytical vocabulary to underpin the application of performance making in preparation for 2nd and 3rd year practical units. Ultimately, this unit will provide a solid foundation for the academic and professional skills of observation and analysis, teamwork, creative leadership and collaboration to explore ideas or generate content.
KTB216 Drama Practice: Interpretation
This unit enables you to build and apply skills of theatrical interpretation and performance through a practice-led process of script-based rehearsal and performance of selected scenes. Performance making stems from three fundamental strategies: interpretation, transformation and generation. Interpretation is the process of creating meaning from an extant work; analysis, research and contextualisation are the tools by which the meaning and significance of performance texts are revealed, developed and actioned by the collaborative group. Led by creative practice, this intermediate unit builds on introductory learning experiences to aid you to effectively perform as Drama practitioners.
KTB226 Drama Practice: Transformation
This practice-led, intermediate unit enables you to build and apply skills in collaboratively devising and performing a show. Under the guidance of a director you interpret and transform key formal features of selected iconic practitioners or performances as the starting point for an original show to be performed at the end of semester. Indeed, transformation can be a process of adaptation, repurposing or one of profound re-imagining of content and/or form through research of form and genre, and the development and application of skills in devising, workshop and dramaturgical interrogation.
KTB316 Drama Practice: Generation
This practice-led advanced unit integrates previous drama practice units, Leadership Dynamics in Performance and Radical Theatre Forms, into a collaborative capstone experience. In consultation with experienced practitioners, this unit activates a process of investigation and generation and employs the theory, skills and practice gathered through the course. You will generate, research, experiment, conceptualise and propose a potentially interdisciplinary work that responds to bigger critical and creative conversations. Indeed, the development of a self-determining practice is dependent on various factors: a mature relationship with collaborators; confidence informed by a sense of personal creative purpose and knowledge; an understanding of the function of research in creating performances with integrity; and a commitment to creating and communicating a shared vision.
KTB326 Drama Practice: Realisation
This advanced unit enables you to independently realise a new work on the page, stage or in between, responding to real world opportunities you may pursue after graduation. Interpretation, transformation and generation all have a role to play in realising a new creative work. This unit activates the foundations of prior drama practice units in a capstone experience which enables you to further develop your creative practice. Successful creative practice is measured by degrees of expertise, diligence and awareness that are acknowledged by audiences, peers and industry. Talent aside, much is dependent on working with others to converge drama theory, skills and practice into proposals, presentations or performances that possess viability and integrity. It is also reliant on the capacity of individuals and groups to formulate and respond to critique and successfully navigate dynamic uncertainties of creative realisation to fashion a viable outcome.
Entertainment industries
CDB201 Entertainment Strategy
This unit develops an advanced, critical, in-depth understanding of economic and labour aspects of the media and entertainment industries. It examines key strategies and trends of entertainment management and work across media platforms, locations and audiences. This unit will give you a broad overview of the financial and commercial elements behind how a wide variety of entertainment products are made, circulated, and consumed. You will learn about emerging business models, changing labour conditions, the tensions of creativity and commercialisation, the role of fans, and dealing with the day-to-day commercial requirements of a creative venture. You will learn the core strategies entertainment producers use to bring creative ideas to life as they strive for a sustainable outcome.
Fashion
DFB110 Fashion Design Studio 1
This unit provides introductory knowledge and skills for the theory and practice of fashion design, focusing on three dimensional design, draping and organic forms. This foundational unit provides knowledge of theoretical and cultural fashion contexts that underpin concept driven fashion design. It addresses fashion design principles and processes, including the development of effective skills to communicate expressively and realise design ideas in an integrated studio environment. The suite of six Fashion Design Studio units form the foundation of learning for understanding fashion design in the Bachelor of Design (Fashion) program. Embedded in this program is a focus on ethical and sustainable practices.
DFB111 Fashion Design Studio 2
This unit provides introductory knowledge and skills for the theory and practice of fashion design, focusing on flat patternmaking and classic western design forms. This foundational unit provides knowledge and skills for the theory and practice of structured fashion design. It addresses fashion design principles, processes and contexts, including the development of effective skills to communicate digitally and realise design ideas in an integrated studio environment. The suite of six Fashion Design Studio units form the foundation of learning for understanding fashion design in the Bachelor of Design (Fashion) program. Embedded in this program is a focus on ethical and sustainable practices.
DFB204 Fashion Product Development
This unit further develops your knowledge, skills and application for professional fashion communication and product development in the fashion industry. It focuses on commercial fashion design and product styling. Developing consumer products in the fashion industry requires diverse skills and knowledge in trend analysis, range building, sourcing, finishing, specification sheets and marketing to ensure successful and sustainable outcomes. By developing a foundational knowledge in product development you will be prepared to work in commercial fashion or to create your own fashion brand.
DFB205 Fashion Media
This unit offers insight into the connection between media and fashion image making. It takes a critical historical, interdisciplinary and industrial approach to the study of fashion media, exploring media and digital social platforms that have contributed to the dissemination of fashion. Cross-pollination between fashion and media platforms from different historical times has contributed to the formation of taste, along with cultural and consumer discourses. This unit explores the evolving and complex fashion communication landscape that has captured key changes in fashion culture and industry, and the fragmentation and opening up of fashion communication to global consumers and identities.
DFB206 Global Fashion Cultures
This unit further develops your knowledge of the complexities of global fashion systems and builds on the application of your skills in fashion visual communication with an emphasis on visual analysis. It focuses on the diverse aesthetics and practices of global fashion cultures since the mid-twentieth century. The aim of this unit is to develop your knowledge of the diversity of global fashion aesthetics since the mid-twentieth century while focusing on consumer-led fashion developments alongside high-end designer fashion of this period. As such, it will deepen your knowledge of how design is connected to social and cultural developments.
DFB210 Fashion Design Studio 3
This unit builds developmentally on previous fashion studio knowledge to navigate the structure and requirements of professional fashion contexts. It develops effective skills to communicate and realise design ideas in an integrated studio environment. It provides expanded knowledge and skills for the theory and practice of fashion design and includes practical skills and knowledge of pattern cutting, garment construction and applied technologies for the communication of design ideas. Embedded in this unit is a focus on ethical practices. The suite of Fashion Design Studio units form the foundation of learning for understanding fashion design in the Bachelor of Design (Fashion Design) program.
DFB211 Fashion Design Studio 4
This unit provides knowledge of fashion design for public consumption. In this unit, you will develop and expand skills to conceptualise, communicate and realise design ideas for mass manufacture in an integrated studio environment. You will build on your previously acquired research, conceptual and fabrication skills as well as develop and apply sustainable fashion practice knowledge. You will synthesise your understanding of product development and retail readiness and will learn about the logistical and practical considerations of fashion design and production. The suite of Fashion Design Studio units form the foundation of learning for understanding fashion design in the Bachelor of Design (Fashion) program.
DFB305 Critical Fashion Studies
This advanced level unit deepens your critical fashion engagement and consolidates your skills in fashion communication. It prepares you to play a leadership role in shaping the dialogues that are transforming fashion practices. The aim of this unit is to develop your critical, analytical and communication skills in the context of the global fashion industry and wider cultural debates. Embracing an interdisciplinary approach characteristic of current fashion scholarship, this final unit builds on the theoretical and practical knowledge developed in DFB206 Global Fashion Cultures and DFB209 Global Fashion History and provides you with the opportunity to develop sophisticated research and written communication skills, preparing you to contribute to shaping the dialogues and debates that are changing the contemporary fashion industry.
DFB310 Fashion Design Studio 5
This unit is the fifth in a series of six Fashion Design Studio units in the Bachelor of Design Fashion program and provides advanced knowledge and skills for the theory and practice of fashion design exploring your individual design identity contextualised within critical and ethical parameters. It focuses on researching and documenting your individual design identity, including the development of advanced skills to research, communicate and realise design ideas in an integrated studio environment. The unit builds upon the understandings acquired in the unit DFB211 Fashion Design Studio 4 and also provides a launch platform to explore in depth your individual design identity culminating in DFB311 Fashion Design Studio 6. The suite of Fashion Design Studio units form the spine of learning for fashion design understandings in the Bachelor of Design Fashion program and include practical skills and knowledge of garment construction and pattern cutting.
DFB311 Fashion Design Studio 6
This 24 credit point unit is the capstone Fashion Design Studio experience and aims to provide you with the opportunity to synthesise your prior learning, within university and the workplace, through the production of a final year project that will be outward looking. Within this unit you will develop your confidence and ability to work with minimal supervision in preparation for graduation exploring your individual style and target audience. During this unit you will complete your final year project and will have the opportunity to apply to present your work in a graduate show or other external event. This unit may form part of the Honours component for continuing DE42 Bachelor of Design (Honours) students.
DFH701 Fashion Design Studio 7
This unit aims to provide an advanced knowledge of fashion design including the conceptual framing and situated context of your practice. It promotes critical analysis, design prototyping and organisational skills required to formulate an extended independently-led fashion project across DFH701 and DFH801. The seventh in a series of eight Fashion Design Studio units in the Bachelor of Design (Honours) program, it forms the start of the capstone experience for an extended independently led fashion project. This unit builds upon the understandings acquired in the six preceding Fashion Design Studio units and also provides advanced fashion research skills to begin to formulate pathways to execute the self-defined independently-led fashion project. DEH701 Research Methods supports the content of this unit. The independently led fashion project will culminate in the final capstone studio unit, DFH801 Fashion Design Studio 8 (semester 2 - 36cp).
DFH801 Fashion Design Studio 8
This unit aims to provide you with advanced knowledge of fashion design as well as professional decision making, planning and organisational skills in order to execute and complete an extended independently-led research fashion project. It is the final in a series of eight Fashion Design Studio units in the Bachelor of Design (Honours) program and forms the capstone experience for an extended independently-led research fashion project.
Film, screen & animation
KNB137 Digital Worlds
This unit provides a strong foundation in the practices and concepts associated with the creation of CGI assets for use within real-time graphics production. Applications of real-time 3D graphics now extend beyond the commonplace use in games into fields such as virtual production, virtual reality, augmented reality film and TV production offering new methods of production, storytelling and interactive experiences. The creation of these experiences requires a firm grounding in the practices, concepts and skills associated with real-time production and asset creation for use in a real-time 3D engine. This unit allows you to take advantage of 3D skills and knowledge developed during KNB127 CGI Fundamentals while laying the critical foundational knowledge and skills needed for more advanced practices undertaken in KNB217. It is a starting point to incorporating real-time technologies into your capstone projects.
KNB215 Animation Performance
This unit advances knowledge on animation performance, including your ability to create complex animations by applying relevant processes and theories. To bring a character to life requires an animator to create more than a sound illusion of movement, you have to communicate and engage a viewer through an animated performance. This unit builds upon the fundamental content from KNB135 Animation Aesthetics, refining and further expanding on simple mechanical movements to focus on expressive communication and characterisation for storytelling.
KNB216 Visual Storytelling: Cinematic Pre-Visualisation
Following exposure to animation's capabilities through critical thinking and practice, the unit builds on methodologies, skills and knowledge acquired in KNB136. The language of cinema is further explored and deployed for productions demonstrating critical practice. This unit deploys cinematic grammar, such as close-ups, composition, continuity, cutting and camera angles, to arrive at an understanding of the transition from literary (text) to visual language. You will be expected to demonstrate your appreciation and comprehension of screen language through rich illustrations that lead to vibrant storyboards and engaging animatics that culminate in enriched storytelling.
KNB217 Digital Creatures
This unit focuses on the creation of culturally contextualised narrative 3D characters within cinematic styles and genres of your choice. Building upon modeling and texturing techniques introduced in KNB127 CGI Foundations and KNB137 Digital Worlds, this unit covers an integral part of the animation production workflow focused on character design contextualized by a specific narrative, modeling texturing, and rigging. On completion of the unit, you will have an understanding of the theoretical and practical foundations of design of a production-ready 3D digital creature as characters.
KNB225 Advanced Animation Performance
This unit advances your knowledge in character animation theory and practices in a project-based learning environment. In order to create an engaging animated character performance the audience can empathise with, it is important to have a good understanding of acting methods as well as animation principles and techniques. The theory and practice in this unit will introduce you to production management while focusing on developing further insights into planning, staging, cinematography, body language and facial expressions animation for character acting in a narrative context.
KNB226 Visual Storytelling: Animation Pre-Production
This unit expands on story development, design and pre-visualisation techniques for productions. As such, it consolidates your exposure to concept development, production design and pre-production knowledge, and the skills introduced in KNB136 Visual Storytelling: Production Design and KNB216 Visual Storytelling: Cinematic Pre-Visualisation. The unit focuses on equipping students with the design and planning skills necessary for cinematic preproduction. These range from concept development through to design and storyboarding to production-ready documentation. As part of this unit you will develop, design, direct, pitch, produce a production bible and an animatic for an animated short. You will be required to draw and therefore be expected to build on illustration skills.
KNB227 CGI Technologies
This unit offers you an opportunity to experiment with emerging forms of production, such as Virtual Production, and explores the theoretical context and the techniques of these new filmmaking methods. It also introduces some of the key technologies such as Motion Capture, Photogrammetry and In-Camera Virtual Production commonly employed in real-time production processes for animated, live-action film, games and live performance events. This unit builds upon the introduction of real-time technologies in KNB137 Digital Worlds and provides a solid foundation in advanced production techniques applicable to final year capstone projects.
KNB310 Advanced Animation Production 1
This unit consolidates your studio practice while focusing on advanced production stages and skill sets and knowledge required to deliver high-quality final outputs for film and related platforms. As part of your work in this unit the entire VFX pipeline is being explored, engaging you in production and post-production processes that bring together 3D assets and images into a short narrative based cinematic sequence of your design. This unit will bring depth and breadth to your technique and applies directly to Advanced Animation Production 2.
KNB320 Advanced Animation Production 2
To prepare for life outside of the academic institution, it is important to be able to showcase your work with knowledge of the requirements of your field. This unit builds on previous studies of animation techniques and production processes to complete a final advanced project and to create a professional showreel and portfolio. It continues to develop animation production skills, concentrating on final output and post-production.
KPB117 Screen Crafts: Non-Fiction
This unit addresses the knowledge and skills required for non-fiction multi-platform content production while engaging with high-end production and post-production technologies. Its content is drawn from the fields of script writing, pre-production, production management, direction, camera, sound and editing. As much of our information is delivered via the electronic media, it is vital that you be trained in the skills and techniques involved in non-fiction screen production (informational programming, magazine-style segments, news stories, documentaries, etc.). In this unit, you learn screen language and production practices, roles and responsibilities of production teams, production management, design and practice. Lectures focus on the major production areas of producing, directing, cinematography, editing and sound that inform this practice.
KPB122 Screen Crafts: Narratives
This unit develops your creative, technical and organisational abilities in the areas of screen storytelling and communication. Screen content specialisation requires you to develop an effective, industry-related range of skills. It builds on and advances basic understandings, skills and principles developed in KPB101 or KPB117. An introduction to the skills of sound and lighting complements the earlier core skills of camera, editing, directing and producing and the unit concentrates on the basics of telling a coherent fictional narrative story for the screen.
KPB208 Screen Genres
This unit helps you to appreciate contemporary screen genres and to develop genre-related analytical skills. It also investigates the connections between genre theory and contemporary practice-based genre approaches. Genre is central to understanding the cultural and industrial contexts and visual forms of narrative screen productions. Since every screen production is a risk, both financial and creative, contemporary production organisations and creators attempt to minimise risk in their future ventures through screen genres. Genre productions appeal to local and international audiences. It is indeed crucial for fans, critics and practitioners to appreciate genre conventions, inventions and innovations, and those genre elements that contribute to the commercial, critical, or creative success of narrative screen productions.
KPB215 Advanced Screenwriting
This unit aids you to better understand screenwriting processes and structural concepts by offering a framework and strategies for the development of a short drama script. Screenwriting occurs within specific socioeconomic frameworks and is supported by specific industry practices. Working within these models, you will become aware of the scope and limitation of scriptwriting for screen projects. In this unit you will have the opportunity to build and extend basic screenwriting techniques and explore topics such as the role of screenwriters in the industry.
KPB216 Screen Content Production Management
This unit introduces film, television and screen business theory and practice, providing foundations for small and larger scale production management. It considers the role of the production manager with a particular focus on the phases of pre-production and production. People with an interest in producing film, television and multimedia productions need to develop knowledges and skills that form the basis of an effective industry-related repertoire in relation to working in a range of media businesses. This unit examines how the production manager supports the producer in screen production projects ensuring that the needs of the production have been addressed via a preliminary schedule and draft budget, within all legal and insurance constraints. The unit addresses the importance of working within the resources available in order to achieve the necessary production values on screen in a highly competitive market place.
KPB217 Screen Crafts: Experiments
This unit examines various forms of experimentation in relation to creative works, challenging you to think beyond mainstream cinema. Filmmakers must push the aesthetic and narrative boundaries of cinema in order to find their own distinctive voice and style. In this unit, you will have the chance to do so, testing your imaginative limits and creative abilities through vision and sound. Evolution in all fields of screen production results from creativity. Successful practitioners of screen content require the opportunity to develop their creative potential through experimentation. Building on prior knowledge acquired in earlier units, you will be encouraged to become wilfully nonconformist in approach, drawing on a wide range of traditions from within the genre of Experimental or Avant-Garde filmmaking.
KPB221 Screen Project Development
This unit equips you as a developing screen content creator with the concepts and skills for project development and pre-production. It addresses the roles played by producers, directors, writers, script editors and other craft practitioners in the creative process. Those who fail to plan, plan to fail. This tried and tested adage applies to every crew member and department involved in screen productions. Hard-to-come-by financing, tight budgets and schedules, and the expectation for high quality, innovative content mean that the planning phase of project development and pre-production is essential. Indeed, it is important for you who wish to work in contemporary screen industries to understand the nature and importance of these critical phases.
KPB222 Screen Crafts: Multi-Camera and Single-Camera Production
This unit addresses creative, technical and organisational abilities in the areas of screen story-telling and communication. It will also provide you with an understanding of the workings of multi-camera television studio production and how this mode of production differs from single-camera modes. You will develop practical production skills as a crew member on both modes of production which will form the basis of an effective industry-related repertoire. This unit builds on skills developed in previous units to make productions such as studio-based multi-camera productions, commercials, community service announcements, short form narratives and client-based productions.
KPB315 Global Screen Studies
This course critically examines global cinema and films from a selection of non-Hollywood cinemas within their historical, aesthetic, production and cultural contexts. National movies are shaped by unique contexts — while non-Hollywood cinemas are responding to the challenges in the contemporary screenscape in complex ways. This course addresses critical writing, research and analytical skills required to evaluate and problematise the history, aesthetics, production and cultural contexts of key global cinemas — and how transnational forces shape ‘local’ screen content. ‘Global cinema’ has been responsible for film language and form innovations in contrast to the conventions of classical Hollywood cinema that have shaped global film making practice. However, as systems of production, distribution and consumption become globalised, traditional understandings of national production are being reconstituted.
KPB325 Screen Issues
This unit develops historical, critical and analytical skills in reading and writing about issues in the screen industries and contemporary culture. It fosters both critical research skills and practical, professional development skills and approaches for emerging practitioners. It looks at contemporary screen production contexts and consumption practices, and how these issues relate to the industries. The unit considers the effect of screen forms on the experience of visual culture and investigates the relationship between evolving digital technologies and existing media. Understanding the contemporary contexts for screen production is essential for screen professionals. This unit brings you up-to-date with the issues and topics most relevant for emerging practitioners who would like to make the most of the opportunities, be aware of risks and become dynamic and adaptive in the process.
Industrial design
DNB111 ID Studio 2: Aesthetics and Visualisation
This introductory unit advances knowledge and skills with analogue and digital visualisation techniques to explore, elaborate and communicate your design ideas effectively. The most common and complex aspect of industrial design deals with creating aesthetically pleasing products imbued with meaning and value through form and function. Continuing the development of design process knowledge and skills established in DNB110 ID Studio 1: User Centred Design, this unit delves deeper into ideas of aesthetics and meaning in order to advance the quality of everyday products.
DNB210 ID Studio 3: Interaction and Experience
A core responsibility of the Industrial Designer is the interpretation of human interactions with products or systems. This unit develops intermediate design research skills and strategies to gain a detailed understanding of the user within the product's social, cultural and technological context. It employs design strategies to identify opportunities of human interactions with products and systems and enhance the user-product experience. In this unit you will strengthen and apply your design, visualisation, model-making and CAD skills at an intermediate level while dealing with user-centred design (UCD) principles to produce interactive designs. This unit builds on knowledge and experience gained in earlier Industrial Design (ID) foundation units. It builds your skills and knowledge in the area of interaction and experience allowing for integration of skills and knowledge in the capstone units.
DNB211 ID Studio 4: Manufacturing Technology
This unit introduces the skills and knowledge to transform design ideas into manufacturable products. It provides experience and skills in creating 3D CAD models and using them to communicate design intent. The unit increases your knowledge of the commonly used materials and processes and of how their manufacturing constraints and opportunities affect the design process. The industrial designer needs to possess skills in translating these constraints and opportunities into viable product designs and to be able to communicate their design intent with sufficient detail to allow that product to be manufactured according to industry standards and capabilities. This unit introduces you to the principles of Design For Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA) and extends your Computer-Aided Design (CAD) skills. The skills and knowledge covered by this unit are amongst those highly sought after by employers and will be applied in all subsequent ID studio units.
DNB212 ID Studio 5: Applied Technology
This unit provides the skills and knowledge required to design products for manufacture. It advances knowledge on commonly used materials allowing you to gain an understanding of how manufacturing constraints and opportunities affect the design process. Industrial Designers need to be able to design products that are viable for production. They also need to possess skills in translating these constraints and opportunities into viable product designs and to be able to efficiently communicate their design intent to allow that product to be manufactured according to industry standards and capabilities. The unit focuses on 3D parametric Computer Aided Design (CAD) and on how this is incorporated into the design process. Additionally, it provides skills in creating 3D CAD models and using them to communicate design intent. The unit builds on the DNB211 ID Studio 4: Manufacturing Technology unit as well as developing CAD and digital presentation skills.
DNB215 Personal Transportation
This unit introduces personal transport and mobility system concepts as applied to the design of a personal transport system for a given context. It focuses on understanding, benchmarking and designing personal transport systems for a specific context. It prepares you for future units including mass transportation and future transportation units. This unit is in the developmental stage of your course and introduces you to some basic concepts for transportation systems and builds on your application of design. It is preferred (but not a requirement) that you have completed design or design visualisation units prior to enrolling in this unit.
DNB310 ID Studio 6: Systems Design
This unit introduces the concept of systems thinking and its application to design to solve complex societal, cultural and environmental challenges. It advances on Industrial design concepts, methods, strategies and processes for innovation with a particular focus on future products and systems. It also builds and consolidates knowledge and experience gained in earlier Industrial Design units, in particular skills and knowledge in the area of systems design. To be able to tackle the most critical problems of our time, we must broaden our view to incorporate a more holistic and comprehensive view of design and systems. This requires the understanding and application of novel systems thinking approaches to the design of products, services and systems that are viable, feasible and desirable for people and the environment.
DNB311 ID Studio 7: Capstone
This is the capstone unit for Industrial Design. It is built upon the earlier Industrial Design units and extends the application of research to the designing products and systems. This is an independent project reinforcing leadership and project management as well as strengthening your expertise. You will focus on research done through design, application of research findings for early and developmental design stages, and will learn to integrate research and design to support novel design ideas. The unit provides you with an opportunity to learn how to manage and lead large authentic projects.
DNB312 Advanced Manufacturing
The aim of this unit is to elevate your knowledge of manufacturing to a level where you can confidently produce products able to be manufactured. It further develops your knowledge of the relationship between manufacturing and design. In this you will gain a greater understanding of manufacturing materials and processes that are commonly used by designers. You will also gain experience applying that knowledge to a design project. For a design to progress from just an idea to becoming a real thing it needs to be able to be manufactured. For this, designers need an in-depth understanding of the ways that products are manufactured and what they can be manufactured from. This forms part of the core technical skills that designers require. This unit builds on previous manufacturing skills and allows for this knowledge to be incorporated into the final capstone unit.
DNB313 Advanced Computer-Aided Design
This unit develops your knowledge and skill in Computer Aided Design (CAD). Its aim is to strengthen knowledge about the implementation of CAD in a design context as well as skills in generating CAD output in a form that accurately communicates design intent. In particular it will focus on building skills using Solidworks, a 3D parametric modeller. Designers need to be able to communicate their 3D design ideas in an accurate way to others in order to have them manufactured. CAD is the primary way that this is done. Therefore good CAD skills are an essential skill, sought after by employers and very useful for design communication in subsequent units, especially the capstone unit.
DNH703 Applied Design Research 1
This unit introduces you to the strategic contribution of applied research including identifying people's needs through to their integration within the system and gap identification. It incorporates studies of the dynamic relationships between people, products/artefacts and systems, and their contextual environment. The unit addresses the ways research about people can contribute to product innovation, as well as how to integrate the applied research skills and knowledge that support the development of an innovative product or system proposal. It covers: human-centred innovation framework application of qualitative research methods to industrial design; situating product/systems within the socio-cultural context; and communication of research outcome. This is a capstone unit which provides you with the foundation for higher research degrees.
DNH704 New Product Development
This unit focuses on the introduction of new products into the market. It provides an overview of the relationship between product design and commercialisation. It introduces strategy development which aims to meet consumer expectations whilst achieving corporate objectives. It covers: new product development process; idea generation; strategic planning; introduction to marketing; product screening and evaluation; and commercialisation and post-launch review. The unit will provide you with background knowledge of management, financial and marketing parameters surrounding the development and commercialisation of consumer products. Launching new products into the market requires a sound understanding of product development tools and methods. Therefore this unit will draw on your understanding of design process and complement this with an understanding of the issues surrounding the translation of a concept into a marketable product or service.
DNH803 Applied Design Research 2
This unit focuses on the design of a product or system to a professional level. It builds upon DNH703 Applied Design Research 1 and extends the application of research to the design of a product. You will learn how to integrate research and design knowledge to support novel design ideas. The unit contains seminar discourse. This is a capstone unit and it provides you with the foundation for higher research degrees.
DNH804 Professional Practice in Industrial Design
This unit focuses on the role of professional practice management and its significance to industrial design. It covers: professional practice and management, career paths in Industrial Design, management of design projects, Design documentation and the role of design administration, intellectual property, and designer-client relationships. The unit provides an overview of the relationship between product design and professional practice. It addresses professional practice management and how you can use this knowledge to manage your own projects. This unit also provides an overview of both current and potential future trends in the Industrial Design profession.
Interaction design
DXB110 Principles of Interaction and UX Design
This unit introduces Interaction and UX Design theories, methods, tools and applications essential for the design of digital products, services and experiences for human interaction. It enables you to undertake user experience research in response to real world briefs, critique leading industry case studies and practices, iteratively prototype solutions, and evaluate usability of the outcome with regard to user experience. Amidst global proliferation of digital products and services shaped by trends in augmented and virtual reality, automation, smart homes, and the Internet of Things; there is a greater emphasis on designing digital interactions, interfaces and systems that improve the human experience. In order to effectively achieve that, this unit provides foundational skills and knowledge in human-centred design, including aspects of the interaction design lifecycle, methods, tools and techniques needed to solve real world problems.
DXB210 Critical Experience Design
This unit explores the way in which critical and speculative design theory and practices can transform established design conventions in new and unexpected ways, leading to innovative design solutions. Design does not operate in isolation. All our decisions as designers affect not only the produced outcome, but the broader society and environments for which it is created. This unit provides you with design skills to create highly engaging and interactive speculative designs, services and experiences, while focusing on their impact and potential of design for change and deep societal transformation. In this unit you will adopt critical thinking and speculative design methods to re-imagine, analyse, design and present solutions for future scenarios (e.g. living in future cities, design of future hospitals and future of the environment) as a way to re-frame present interactions between people, spaces and technologies.
DXB211 Creative Coding
This is an introductory programming unit for designers. It presents core principles of computer programming and explores how these can be applied to produce creative outcomes. It also surveys the ways that designers, artists and other creative practitioners have engaged with computer programming and reflects on the nature of code as a creative medium. A basic literacy with programming is essential in areas of professional practice such as interaction design, visual design, web design, mobile app design and game design. As such, it is important for you to develop core skills in computer programming, as well as knowledge of the aesthetics of computational processes in design and creative practice.
DXB212 Tangible Media
This unit provides in-depth knowledge of tangible media through the production of an advanced tangible media design project. The design and production of computational and interactive media forms requires theoretical knowledge and an understanding of the processes that underpin the tangible as well as the embodied ways in which people interact with such systems. This unit builds upon previous interaction design studies and extends these studies into the field of tangible media.
DXB310 Augmented Interactions
This unit advances on your understandings of augmented interaction. Studio-driven explorations of emerging and future practices and concerns, and engagement in a chosen problem space, will facilitate such process. The unit provides an opportunity for reflective practices to situate your work in the relevant context as well as extend your own understanding of interaction design. You will create an augmented interactive system that responds to a problem or site you identify and research, as well as evaluate people’s experience of it gaining formative feedback. You will use interactive media technologies, such as virtual and augmented reality software tools and sensors, and develop a visual and experiential language for your concept. Understanding social and physical phenomena evolution and how we interact with the world is crucial, even more so today as wireless networks proliferate and that interaction is increasingly mediated.
DXB311 Advanced Interaction Design Project
This capstone unit further develops your interaction design skills through the production of a signature project. It focuses on developing your own specialist Interaction Design work which will serve to assist you in defining your professional portfolio and future career pathways. The outcome will also become your major design work to be presented in the final year exhibition. Design for interaction continues to be a transformative and pivotal field of design for contemporary society, encompassing a range of practice from sustainability, usability, and collaboration to the evocative, playful and expressive. New design opportunities and career options continue to emerge and an understanding of future industry practices and an ability to actively engage in these is essential for career success. This subject provides you with the opportunity to explore emerging areas of interaction design through practice-based research, creative focus and a supportive community of learning.
Journalism
CJB203 Newsroom
The aim of this unit is to advance knowledge of the journalism professional approaches needed to produce quality news material for diverse and changing news audiences. It equips you with concepts and skills needed to plan reports; conduct interviews; write news stories; and present and edit material for radio, television and multi-media outputs. This second-year unit is the first of the newsroom suite of units that are a hallmark of the digital-journalism focus of the QUT journalism degree. With a collaborative newsroom approach, it combines the skills and learning of students from different year levels in a team environment with input from peers, staff and industry practitioners. Therefore, you learn the production principles of quality news production in real time while identifying and pursuing innovative news approaches. In keeping with a commercial newsroom, the QUT newsroom experience aims to create a dynamic and diverse news product.
CJB204 Social Justice and Journalism Ethics
Journalism has a significant influence on the way people see the world, and how they think about their place within it. Journalism therefore has the ability to both address, as well as exacerbate, existing power imbalances that exist in our culture. This unit provides students with a better understanding of these dynamics, and how they can shape their future professional practice in ways that might better account for the structural advantages and disadvantages that different groups (based on gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class and physical ability) face. The unit will introduce students to the professional codes of conduct under which journalists often operate, and how they apply in the Australian context. The unit also provides opportunities for students to explore real-world ethical dilemmas in the media industry, and to work through examples of applied ethical decision-making. In doing so, the unit aims to produce more socially-conscious, ethical journalism practitioners.
CJB302 Newsdesk
This capstone unit models day-to-day operations of a fully-converged, multimedia newsroom (online/audio/video). It aids you in reporting, storytelling and professional training as part of a team publishing material for real audiences. Today’s journalism requires skills to operate in a converged media environment and to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse and fragmented audience. Graduates need to deal with both the instantaneous demands of the 24-hour news and social media landscape, as well as being able to produce far more considered pieces that analyse, educate, inform and entertain. Choosing the right medium for the task, and working to deadlines, is essential. This authentic learning experience in an industry-standard newsroom demands practical, legal, ethical, creative and social issues to be addressed in real time.
CJB305 Longform News Production
Longform journalism continues to evolve on a range of platforms, with digital media tools providing exciting storytelling possibilities, including podcasts and multimedia features. This unit provides advanced journalistic skills in producing longform non-fiction content, using a combination of text, visuals, audio and video. You will learn how to generate story ideas and news angles, and select the most appropriate format for telling stories. You will then apply researching, interviewing and production skills to produce engaging content, including multimedia feature articles, current affairs audio and video, and podcasts. This unit also provides opportunities for reflection and constructive critique of your content. The unit aids you in producing credible non-fiction content in a dynamic and appealing style, applying skills that are transferable to areas outside journalism. It also provides awareness of the market for longform non-fiction content.
Music
KMB109 Creative Practice in Music
This unit establishes a community of practice with an emphasis on collaborative music-making that you can draw on to inform your own work. It introduces you to a range of music contexts, concepts and techniques to help you better understand your practice and that of your peers, and to be better positioned and equipped to respond as appropriate. Successful musicians need to form and negotiate their creative practice within a complex professional environment. They need critical, technical, conceptual and communication skills to understand their music in context and how it can be connected to an audience. This unit introduces you to the fundamental concepts and approaches to develop your practical skills in the creation and presentation of new music. It provides an opportunity for you to explore and present creative ideas collaboratively with peers in a professionally engaged environment.
KMB128 Musicianship 2
This unit builds on the foundational aural and analytical skills introduced in Musicianship 1 to develop understanding of music and sound. These skills will be applied to a range of musical styles, settings and practices. The development of critical listening, analytical skills combined with representational and demonstrational skills across a broad range of music and sound is critical to the developing modern musician. The unit will foster a deeper understanding of music and sound to help inform and situate your creative practice. This unit develops your awareness, critical analytical and synthesis skills across a broad range of music and sound contexts and concepts. It complements other creative, practical and analytical units by fostering a deeper understanding of music and sound.
KMB218 Musicianship 3
This advanced musicianship unit provides you with critical listening, analysis, representational and demonstrational skills across a broad range of music and sound. It fosters a deeper understanding of music and sound to help inform and situate your creative practice. The unit builds on the foundation aural and analytical skills introduced in Musicianship 1 and 2 which music professionals use to analyse, compose, produce and perform music. These skills will be applied to communicate your understanding of complex musical ideas in a range of musical styles, settings and practices.
KMB222 Music and Culture
This unit explores the way that music operates as a form of social, cultural and political communication. Drawing on interdisciplinary approaches, you will investigate and discuss the various contexts in which music circulates and is made meaningful. The unit explores traditional and contemporary music from a range of cultural contexts (including Australian First Peoples music and culture), providing opportunities to listen critically to music, while using key concepts from sociology, musicology, and cultural studies to discuss identity, culture, and the production and consumption of music. This unit is offered in the developmental stage of your course, and lays the groundwork for understanding why music exists in our lives and how it is placed in the cultural spectrum of music making and the perceived effects of globalisation and localism on music.
KMB223 Music and Media
This unit explores how music is used as a storytelling device in a range of visual media. Building upon your awareness as a media consumer and your existing technological skills, you will explore and apply techniques in interdisciplinary contexts. As methods of media content delivery change, creative practitioners are required to enact a range of media production techniques in the communication of ideas. This unit is in the developmental stage of your course and engages you with practical and theoretical approaches, exploring the techniques and contexts of music and visual media in contemporary society.
KMB227 Music Creation 2
Building on Music Creation 1, this unit develops skills and understanding to create new music across a range of musical practices in performance, production and composition. Successful musicians need to form and negotiate their creative practice within a complex professional environment. They need to develop critical skills to understand their music in context and how it can be connected to an audience. As the second of four units in Music Creation, it builds deeper engagement and knowledge used to present creative ideas with peers and industry professionals.
KMB228 Musicianship 4
This unit assists you to develop an awareness of your own musicianship and where this is situated within the diversity of contemporary practices and contexts. It develops your awareness of analytical and synthesis skills across a broad range of music and sound contexts and concepts. It complements other creative, practical and analytical units by fostering a deeper understanding of music and sound. This advanced musicianship unit provides you with critical listening, analysis, representational and demonstrational skills across a broad range of music and sound. The unit will foster a deeper understanding of music and sound to help inform and situate your creative practice. You will build on these skills towards your final year capstone Music Creation units.
KMB317 Music Creation 3
This unit aids you to refine your creative strengths in a focused area of practice connecting these strengths with the development of a professional and artistic identity. It enables you to identify an individual specialisation and demonstrate your musical skills through the creation of new works. You will situate your practice within a well-defined artistic and professional field and realise musical outcomes through engagement in authentic learning and assessment activities. Professional musicians must develop a critical understanding of the relationship between their music making, its artistic contexts and audiences. This unit draws on the practical skills gained in the previous two Music Creation units, advancing on the development of more focused areas of musical expertise and specialisation. As the third of four units, the unit provides you with an opportunity to envision and realise a deep engagement with specific areas of creative practice.
KMB327 Music Creation 4
This unit consolidates your music creative skills in an individually defined area of practice within the broader field of music professions. It develops and refines works and performances in an authentic and professional context and fosters greater entrepreneurial awareness through activation of professional networks and consideration of a sustainable career. This is the capstone unit for the BFA (Music) degree. It draws on your experience from all previous Music Creation units. You will lead and participate in individual or collaborative projects to produce the most fully realised portfolio of work in your degree. The portfolio will demonstrate that you have developed a sophisticated and professional voice over the years of your study. It will also demonstrate a high level of professional activity and engagement. It will be launched to a public audience and demonstrate the highest professional values and an awareness of global potentials in your area of specialisation.
Professional communication
CWB201 Corporate Writing and Editing
Professional communication specialists must have a command of an extensive range of corporate writing genres to create and edit corporate documents. This unit allows you to develop the ability to write in at least two corporate writing genres and be proficient in three other genres. It deals with both the fundamentals of language (grammar, punctuation, style) and common corporate writing genres (manuals, reports, speeches, brochures). As a corporate writing specialist, you must also be able to respond authoritatively to technical and stylistic writing questions when such matters arise in the workplace. You will develop your knowledge about how language works and be able to use that knowledge in practical writing applications. As a result, you will become a more confident writer and communicator in corporate and professional situations.
CWB303 Communication Project
This unit applies prior knowledge of media and/or communication research, industries, and practices; providing an environment in which to develop your communication and project management skills while contributing to the maintenance and development of publicly facing websites or other media. Content creation, project management skills, and collaborative work are extremely important in media and communication industries. You will use these skills and apply them to working on public websites and with industry. This is a capstone unit in which you contribute to a real-world project (research, industry/corporate-based or not for profit) that works to advance your future employability. In doing so, you will work on an online platform that incorporates academic research, is informed by content marketing research (industry/corporate-based), or provides professional content services for clients (not for profit).
Visual arts
KVB117 Visual Arts Open Studio 1
This unit introduces current creative visual arts practices - their processes, reception and contribution to society. It looks at individual visual art practice through applying creative processes, 'art thinking' and the development of a conceptual/contextual framework to support studio activities. The open-ended conditions of current creative practices are diverse, complex and multi-layered. With its emphasis on transmedia experimentation, the studio facilitates the understanding of these conditions to develop creative skills. This unit supports independent, self-directed art practice. By exploring a range of transmedia strategies for art practice and identifying your individual perspectives and interests, you will develop ways of engaging with the possibilities and challenges arising from the practice of contemporary art. This unit also fosters communication skills, self-motivation, sense of inquiry and openness to new ideas, media and ways of working.
KVB127 Visual Arts Open Studio 2
This unit advances your independent, self-directed art practice. By exploring a range of processual strategies for the practice of contemporary art and identifying its active and emergent conceptual dimensions, you will develop ways of engaging with the possibilities and challenges arising from the practice of contemporary art. The open-ended conditions of current creative practices, their processes, reception, and contribution to society, are diverse, increasingly complex, and inherently multi-layered. The Open Studio model of contemporary visual art practice provides a platform to build a robust and flexible creative skillset. Building on learning completed in Visual Arts Open Studio 1, you will expand your individual visual art practice through the exploration of creative processes, the application of 'art thinking'; and the development of a conceptual/contextual framework to support your studio activities.
KVB217 Visual Arts Open Studio 3
This unit integrates creative practice methods and codes, self-directed socio-cultural research, and personal reflection, in order to consolidate a studio-based art practice. It develops a pervasive sense of creative inquiry, self-motivation, self-reliance, and an openness to new ideas and aesthetic experiences. By providing support and structure for these activities and developments, the unit aims to habituate these essential qualities of artistic practice. The open-ended conditions of current creative practices - their processes, reception, and contribution to society - are diverse, increasingly complex, and inherently multi-layered. The Open Studio model of contemporary visual art practice provides a platform to build a robust and flexible creative skillset. This unit foregrounds art thinking, speculative inquiry and combinatory play with the material, conceptual and contextual dimensions of creative practice in order to nurture creative literacy and intelligence.
KVB227 Visual Arts Open Studio 4
This unit focuses on the elaboration and sustained development of an individualised artistic practice within a creative community of practitioners. It foregrounds art thinking, speculative inquiry and combinatory play with the material, conceptual and contextual dimensions of creative practice in order to nurture an expanded and nuanced level of creative literacy and intelligence. The open-ended conditions of current creative practices, their processes, reception, and contribution to society, are extremely diverse, increasingly complex, and inherently multi-layered. The Open Studio model provides a unique and ideally suited position from which to understand these factors and develop a relevant creative skillset. This unit furthers a sense of creative inquiry, self-motivation, self-reliance, and an openness to new ideas and aesthetic experiences. .
KVB317 Visual Arts Open Studio 5
This unit provides conceptual frameworks and practical experience in the Open Studio in order to refine critical, creative and analytical thinking in an integrated, transmedia creative practice. It addresses effective communication in a variety of professional contexts and modes. The conditions of contemporary art practices, their production, reception and contribution to society are diverse, complex and multi-layered. To successfully navigate this environment, professional practitioners require strong self-advocacy skills and the ability to communicate an informed, independent position in various contexts. In this final year unit, you will undertake self-directed, intensive study in the Open Studio, supported by research into a broad range of artists' practices and contemporary art theory. The Open Studio is a creative community, which foregrounds art thinking, speculative inquiry and combinatory play with the material, conceptual and contextual dimensions of creative practice.
KVB327 Visual Arts Open Studio 6
This unit provides conceptual frameworks and practical experience in the Open Studio, in order to synthesise critical, creative and analytical thinking, in an independent, professionally ready, creative practice. It addresses effective communication, presentation and advocacy skills for the variety of contexts and modes you will engage with in the professional industry. The conditions of contemporary art practices, their production, reception and contribution to society are extremely diverse, increasingly complex and multi-layered. Your sustained critical involvement and increasing commitment to conceptual and creative pursuits will be supported by intensive research into artists' practices and contemporary theory. The Open Studio is a creative community, which foregrounds art thinking, speculative inquiry and combinatory play with the material, conceptual and contextual dimensions of creative practice.
Visual communication
DVB102 Image Design and Production
This unit provides skills and knowledge for image creation and production across different contexts, styles and media. It also deals with issues of originality, creativity and suitability of images used in professional visual design, while increasing your skills and creative approaches to areas of illustration, information design, photography, and photo media design. It advances knowledge on aesthetic and formal qualities of new areas of image design and a growing technical skill set which will be built upon in further Visual Communication Design specialisation subjects. In a world of easily reproduced digital imagery, the ability to create your own original illustrations, photos, textures and patterns can be highly competitive. Along with developing practical skills to generate original imagery for your design work, the unit further develops your capacity to critique and reflect upon practice.
DVB201 Typographic Design
This unit provides knowledge and skills of typographic principles, composition and design strategies. It combines theory and practice, history and experimentation, and designing for print and digital media, all within a vibrant studio environment delivered face-to-face and online. You will engage with dynamic, creative briefs and use type as the main element of visual expression in your work. Typically typography is at the core of any visual communication work, independently of media. ‘Good’ typographic design demands well developed technical skills, constant attention to detail as well as a sharp understanding of the context and content of the message being transmitted. Upon completion of this unit you will be able to understand, apply and manipulate multiple aspects of typography as a powerful visual communication tool and to prepare and publish your work in multiple media contexts, including emerging technologies and environmental spaces.
DVB202 Visual Design for Storytelling
While contemporary visual communication often applies concise and immediate messaging for targeted audiences, it can also require extended, multi-layered narrative-led messaging. This unit provides theoretical, conceptual, technical and research skills to produce narrative-based visual communication works. The unit addresses principles and techniques of visual storytelling across multiple media forms such as print, screen and space, and allows you to develop key portfolio pieces which are complex and creative. Visual Design for Storytelling builds upon the Visual Communication foundations, expanding the scope of projects you are equipped for.
DVB203 Theories and Methods of Visual Communication
This unit builds on your understanding of the principles of visual communication and its role in determining the values of our contemporary cultures and societies. Through exploring theoretical perspectives, discussions and class exercises you will critique and analyse images and visual communication designs occurring in multiple contexts. In doing so, you will develop further expertise in the production of contemporary communication design and the ethical, social and professional responsibilities of a designer. This unit directly builds upon the Visual Communication and Image Production units while providing opportunities to engage with critical analysis of images and experiences and evidence this through written expression and report writing.
DVB301 Kinetic Image and Text
Moving image and typographic design has become a leading form of communication in contemporary society, from online contexts, to film and television, to digital signage. An in-depth understanding of and creative skills in motion-based design are essential for visual designers to work on major campaigns and address all client needs. This unit provides you with knowledge of key theoretical approaches, techniques and methods of kinetic design and allows you to explore these through practice within studio-based assessment projects. In taking this focus, the unit builds directly upon prior foundations of Image Design and Typography in the Visual Communication specialisation and prepares students to work at a further, advanced level within the industry.
DVB302 Data Visualisation and Information Design
Information and data is now an essential aspect of everyday life in our technologically-driven and visually rich society. In the contemporary world, the generation of data is much greater than the ability to digest and visualise this as meaningful information. The unit provides advanced knowledge and skills in visual information design and data visualisation allowing you to apply these within a series of practice-based design works. The unit contextualises the growth of this information design specialisation for visual designers, raises issues relating to data collection and integrity, and provides you with a comprehensive understanding of the variety of design approaches that can be engaged within this area. It offers both a practical understanding of established information design models and also the opportunity to develop an innovative and future-forward approached to data visualisation, including utilising interactivity.