Overview

My practice-led research investigates how sustained place-based engagement transforms compositional practice. Through three years of regular cold-water swimming at Kingston Beach, Southern Tasmania (2023-2025), I documented correlations between embodied oceanic immersion and creative innovations that emerged in my compositional work. These innovations differed systematically and aesthetically from my earlier, observational approaches to environmental sound.

This research proposes that meaningful environmental creative practice requires temporal commitment to specific places rather than mobile engagement across multiple sites. Where conventional residency models prioritise breadth and novelty, my methodology demonstrates what depth and duration reveal - that seasonal knowledge may inform musical structure, embodied vulnerability shapes creative decisions, and that tacit environmental knowledge that operates below conscious awareness.

The research contribution is methodological: it develops frameworks for recognising and systematising tacit creative transformation, and demonstrates how composition can enact environmental processes through material structure rather than merely representing them through aesthetic metaphor. The outcomes include six compositions (2020-2026), a practice-led PhD at the University of Tasmania, and the ecosophical framework that now guides my ongoing work with Submergency, arts/science water collective.

  • PhD: "Southern Ecophony: Towards an Aqueous Compositional Practice"
    University of Tasmania (submitting early 2026)
    Australian Research Training Program Scholarship

    This practice-led research investigates how sustained place-based oceanic engagement informs compositional transformation. Through three years of regular cold-water swimming at Kingston Beach, Tasmania (2023-2025), the research documents correlations between embodied environmental immersion and systematic changes in compositional approach.

    The methodological contribution is twofold: (1) developing frameworks for recognising tacit knowledge that operates below conscious awareness during creative practice, and (2) demonstrating how composition can enact environmental processes through material structure rather than represent them through aesthetic metaphor.

    Portfolio analysis comparing six works (2020-2026) reveals innovations that diverged from previous formal training and appeared temporally correlated with sustained swimming practice. Innovations include non-hierarchical sonic relationships, durational temporal structures, and threshold-based compositional parameters.

    The research proposes transferable principles for place-based creative practice: sustained commitment over episodic encounter, retrospective pattern recognition as a methodology for tacit knowledge, and enactment as alternative to representation. The ecosophical framework emerging from this research now guides my collaborative work with Submergency Collective.

    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 Trawlwoolway 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 Indigenous knowledge and 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, The Waterways Network, and Indigenous marine conservation organisations.

    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.