Overview

My practice-led research investigates how sustained embodied engagement with a specific aquatic environment generates tacit compositional knowledge — and whether the principles through which that knowledge operates can be consciously applied without displacing the embodied intelligence through which they first arose.

Across three years of regular cold-water swimming in Southern Tasmania (2022–2025), I documented systematic shifts in my compositional practice: changes to harmonic organisation, formal boundary articulation, temporal structure, and relational dynamics that correlated too specifically with accumulated immersion experiences to attribute to coincidence or general artistic development. Retrospective portfolio analysis revealed not a single environmental influence but a convergent condition — what I name pre-articulated synthesis — in which embodied practice, theoretical engagement, environmental ethics, and compositional craft were operating together within compositional intuition before their integration could be recognised or articulated.

The research makes contributions across three domains. Conceptually, it identifies and names pre-articulated synthesis as a specific condition of tacit knowing in which cross-domain convergence precedes analytic separation. Methodologically, it advances retrospective portfolio analysis as a rigorous mode of practice-led inquiry and proposes temporal correlation and physiological specificity as interpretive frameworks for distinguishing environmental influence from concurrent artistic development. Artistically, the portfolio traces a shift from environmental representation toward relational enactment — from composing about water to composing through sustained entanglement with it.

The outcomes include six compositions (2020–2026), a practice-led PhD submitted to the University of Tasmania in early 2026, and a relational framework now guiding my ongoing creative work.

  • PhD: "Southern Ecophony: Towards an Aqueous Compositional Practice" University of Tasmania (near submission, mid-2026) | Australian Research Training Program Scholarship

    This practice-led research investigates how sustained embodied engagement with a specific aquatic environment shapes compositional practice in ways that operate prior to conscious articulation, and whether the principles through which that shaping occurs can be deliberately applied without displacing the tacit intelligence that generated them.

    Through three years of regular cold-water swimming at Kingston Beach, Tasmania (2022–2025), the research documents systematic compositional transformation across a portfolio of six works (2020–2026). Retrospective portfolio analysis — guided by the interpretive considerations of temporal correlation and physiological specificity — reveals a convergent condition in which embodied practice, theoretical engagement, environmental ethics, and compositional craft were operating together within intuition before their structural integration could be recognised or named. This condition is theorised as pre-articulated synthesis: a specific manifestation of tacit knowing in which the convergence of multiple domains is itself what operates below conscious awareness.

    The keystone work Thalassic (2026, electroacoustic) tests whether principles distilled through retrospective analysis can function as explicit compositional methodology. Its composition revealed a productive scalar division: articulated frameworks governed macro-structural decisions while tacit embodied intelligence remained operative at the micro-compositional level — suggesting that conscious articulation and tacit operation can coexist when applied at different scales.

    The research proposes transferable principles for sustained environmental creative practice: depth and duration over episodic encounter; retrospective pattern recognition as a methodology for tacit knowledge; and enactment as an alternative to representation.

    Supervisors: Associate Professor Maria Grenfell, Professor Elizabeth Leane, Dr Carolyn Philpott

  • "Listening to Antarctica: Cheryl E. Leonard's eco-acoustic creative practice"
    With Carolyn Philpott | Fusion Journal, no. 19, 2021, pp. 64-77

    Analysis of how creative practice engages with extreme environments, examining methodologies for environmental listening and eco-acoustic composition in polar contexts.

    "Wild Sea: A History of the Southern Ocean"
    The Polar Journal, 9(2), 2019, pp. 459–460

    Book review engaging with oceanic historiography and human relationships with Southern Ocean environments.

  • Submergency Collective
    Co-founder and Key Artist-Researcher (2024-present)

    Arts-science research platform exploring marine environments through collaborative creative practice. Founded with marine scientist-musician Emily Sheppard and visual artist Dr Mandy Quadrio, Submergency develops methodologies for reciprocal engagement with oceanic ecologies, creating art with rather than about marine environments.

    Our work centres cultural accountability, long-term place-based commitment, and interdisciplinary collaboration that bridges creative practice, marine science, and environmental advocacy. Current projects include "Sounding the Great Southern Reef" (2025-2026, Creative Australia), partnering with Monash Performing Arts Centre, Great Southern Reef Foundation, Bowerbird Collective, and The Waterways Network.

    Submergency proposes that creative practice can contribute meaningfully to marine conservation communication and community environmental literacy when grounded in sustained relationships with specific places and genuine partnerships across disciplines and knowledge systems.

    Core practices:

    • Hydroacoustic field recording and bioacoustic listening

    • Community-engaged oceanic listening programs

    • Spatial audio installations translating underwater acoustic environments

    • Arts-based methodologies for climate communication

  • Selected radio features on ABC Hobart, ABC Classic FM, and RRR Community Radio discussing environmental listening, ocean sound art, and the intersections of music and marine science. Conference presentations on regional arts impact and eco-acoustic creative practices.