Disability performance in Australia

In disability arts, as in so many things, Australia has both its own cultural specificities, as well as the cultural followings that come with being a colonised country. In Australia, our colonial legacy, multiculturalism, and Asia-Pacific location have always made our relation to our own arts and culture fraught, the subject of ongoing aesthetic, cultural and political contestation. We have historically suffered from what Phillips (2006) calls a ‘cultural cringe’, in which we worry about the individuality, value and volume of our arts and culture compared to others, and this comes up again and again in commentary to this day...

Social media, audiences, and audience co-creativity in contemporary performance: Restoring balance?

Producers, technicians, performers, audiences and critics are all critical components of the performing arts ecology – critical components of an ecosystem that have to come together into some sort of productive relationship if the performing arts are to be vital, viable and successful. Different performance practices developed in different times, spaces and places do, of course, connect these players in different ways as part of their attempt to achieve their own definition of success, be it based on entertainment, educational, expression, empowerment, or something else. In some contemporary performance practices, social media platforms, applications and processes are seen to have significant potential to restore balance to the relationship between performer and audience, providing audiences with more power to participate in a performance event. In this paper, I investigate prevailing assumptions about social media’s power to democratise performance practice, or, at least, develop more co-creative performance practices in which producers, performers and audiences participate actively before, during and after the event. I focus, in particular, on the use of social media as a means of developing a participatory aesthetic in which an audience member is asked to contribute to the cast of characters, plot or progression of a performance. Although diverse – from performances streamed online, to performances that offer transmedia components the audience can use to learn more about character, context and plot online, to performances that incorporate online voting, liking or linking, to performances that unfold fully online on websites, blogs, microblogs or other social media platforms – what a lot of uses of social media in contemporary performance today share is a desire to encourage audiences to reflect on their role in making, and making meaning, of the event. In this paper I interrogate if, and if so how, this democratises or develops deeper levels of co-creativity in the relationship between producers, performers and audiences.

Playing Pranks: Traditions, communities & co-creative cultural performance practice

Pranks, hoaxes and practical jokes are co-creative cultural performance practices that appear across times, contexts and cultures. These practices include everyday play amongst families, friends and coworkers, entertainment programs such as Prank Patrol, Punked or Scare Tactics, and aesthetic and activist pranks perpetrated by situationist artists, guerrilla artists, and, most recently, culture ‘jammers’ or ‘hackers’ intent on turning capitalist systems back on themselves. Although it can, in common usage, describe almost any show off behaviour, a prank in the strictest definition of the term is a performance that deploys a very specific set of strategies. It is an act of trickery, mischief, or deceit, that must be taken as real, and momentarily cause real fear, anger or worry for an unwitting spectator-become-performer, who is meant to play along until the trick is revealed and their response can be represented back to the prankster, other spectators, or society as a whole, either for the sake of entertainment or for the sake of commentary on a cultural phenomenon. A prank, in this sense, deliberately blurs the boundaries between daily and dramatic performance. It creates a moment of uncertainty, in which both the prankster’s ability to be creative, clever, or culturally astute, and the prankee’s ability to play along, discern the trick, discern the point of the trick, and, in the end, be duped, be a good sport, or even play/pay the prankster back, are both put to the test. In this paper, I consider a number of pranking traditions popular where I am in Australia, from the community-building pranks of footballers, bucks parties and ‘drop bear’ tales told to tourists, to the more controversial pranks of radio shock jocks, activists and artists. I use performance, spectatorship and ethical theory to examine the engagement between prankster, pranked spectator, and other spectators, in this most distinctive sort of community-driven performance practice, and the way it builds and breaks status, social and other sorts of relationships within and between specific communities.

Proceedings of the Digital Cities 9 Workshop - Hackable Cities – From Subversive City Making to Systemic Change (Workshop) [Edited Proceedings]

The DC9 workshop takes place on June 27, 2015 in Limerick, Ireland and is titled “Hackable Cities: From Subversive City Making to Systemic Change”. The notion of “hacking” originates from the world of media technologies but is increasingly often being used for creative ideals and practices of city making. “City hacking” evokes more participatory, inclusive, decentralized, playful and subversive alternatives to often top-down ICT implementations in smart city making. However, these discourses about “hacking the city” are used ambiguously and are loaded with various ideological presumptions, which makes the term also problematic. For some “urban hacking” is about empowering citizens to organize around communal issues and perform aesthetic urban interventions. For others it raises questions about governance: what kind of “city hacks” should be encouraged or not, and who decides? Can city hacking be curated? For yet others, trendy participatory buzzwords like these are masquerades for deeply libertarian neoliberal values. Furthermore, a question is how “city hacking” may mature from the tactical level of smart and often playful interventions to the strategic level of enduring impact. The Digital Cities 9 workshop welcomes papers that explore the idea of “hackable city making” in constructive and critical ways.

Brisbane Art Deco: Stories of our Built Heritage

Our built heritage plays an important role in the ongoing story of our city. Modern cities such as Brisbane embraced Art Deco style in its architecture as it swept the world during the interwar period. From inner city landmarks such as the striking McWhirters department store to lesser-known gems further afield like the streamlined Archerfield Airport administration building, Brisbane has a significant range of intriguing and beautiful Art Deco buildings. This publication documents and celebrates a selection of our favourite residential and commercial examples. Written contributions from a range of authors are complemented by stunning modern photography and historic archive imagery, taking readers on a journey through this fascinating era. The articles not only describe the aesthetic and architectural features, but also delve into the associated social history. Brisbane Art Deco: Stories of our Built Heritage is a charming and informative reference, and offers a colourful insight into Brisbane’s built heritage and the life and times of this dynamic city.

Technological adoption and use after mass market displacement: The case of the LP record

This paper investigates the reasons why some technologies, defying general expectations and the established models of technological change, may not disappear from the market after having been displaced from their once-dominant status. Our point of departure is that the established models of technological change are not suitable to explain this as they predominantly focus on technological dominance, giving attention to the technologies that display highest performance levels and gain greatest market share. And yet, technological landscapes are rife with technological designs that do not fulfil these conditions. Using the LP record as an empirical case, we propose that the central mechanism at play in the continuing market presence of once-dominant technologies is the recasting of their technological features from the functional-utilitarian to the aesthetic realm, with an additional element concerning communal interaction among users. The findings that emerge from our quantitative textual analysis of over 200,000 posts on a prominent online LP-related discussion forum (between 2002 and 2010) also suggest that the post-dominance technology adopters and users appear to share many key characteristics with the earliest adopters of new technologies, rather than with late-stage adopters which precede them.

Engaging decision makers in the business case for biophilic urbanism

The cognitive benefits of biophilia have been studied quite extensively, dating as far back as the 1980s, while studies into economic benefits are still in their infancy. Recent research has attempted to quantify a number of economic returns on biophilic elements; however knowledge in this field is still ad hoc and highly variable. Many studies acknowledge difficulties in discerning information such as certain social and aesthetic benefits. While conceptual understanding of the physiological and psychological effects of exposure to nature is widely recognised and understood, this has not yet been systematically translated into monetary terms. It is clear from the literature that further research is needed to both obtain data on the economics of biophilic urbanism, and to create the business case for biophilic urbanism. With this in mind, this paper will briefly highlight biophilic urbanism referencing previous work in the field. It will then explore a number of emergent gaps in the measurable economic understanding of these elements and suggest opportunities for engaging decision makers in the business case for biophilic urbanism. The paper concludes with recommendations for moving forward through targeted research and economic analysis.

The modern primitive and the antipodes: The visual arts and Oceania

In a book seeking to redraw the boundaries between interdisciplinary and transnational modernisms, this chapter contributes to the reorientation in modernist studies by revisiting "primitivism." While no one freely identifies as “primitive,” the spectre of primitivism was a magnet of attraction as well as of critical refusal. It resided on the knife-edge of envy and denunciation, as well as for the projection of alternate imaginative utopias and the worst forms of racial chauvinism. This chapter asserts that primitivism endures as a provocation as much as a utopian aspiration, but it also provides a different understanding of cultures on the "periphery", which is how Antipodean art history has understood itself. The spectre of primitivism not only amplifies the quandaries of modernist cultures—both alerting one to the aesthetic alternatives to modernist cultures, yet also highlighting the fate of traditional culture pitted against modernist cultures, it also suggests the quandaries of a peripheral modernity.

The sequence: Inside the race for the human genome

The human genome project was a grand scientific enterprise which attracted both hyperbole and ridicule alike. The project was lauded as “the moon shot of the life sciences”, the “holy grail of man”, “the code of codes”, and “the book of life”. Such rhetoric has also received scorn. President George Bush senior managed to deflate the pretensions of the project with the accidental slip that it was the “human gnome initiative”. In The Sequence, Kevin Davies seeks to go beyond such metaphors, and provide a candid and honest account of the race of the human genome project. The author is indebted to the authoritative book The Gene Wars, which considered the early struggles over the human genome project. Robert Cook-Deegan observes that there was initially much debate over whether there should be a Human Genome Project at all: The debate became one of “big” science versus “small” science. The reliance on systematic technology development and goal-directed gene-mapping efforts presaged a new style for biology, one that elicited excitement from those attracted to whiz-bang technologies but drew gasps of revulsion from those who aspired to cultivate biology on a more modest scale and with decentralized organisation. The battle was, among other things, over whose vision would control the budget and which scientific aesthetic would prevail.

Albert Namatjira: copyright estates and traditional knowledge

Albert Namatjira was Australia's first Indigenous professional artist. He adapted Western-style painting to express his cultural knowledge of the Arrernte country, for which he was a traditional custodian. In his lifetime, Albert Namatjira achieved great acclaim for his exceptional ability as an artist. However, after his untimely death, he was ignored by the mainstream Australian art world, because of the aesthetic prejudices and social policies of the time. A recent exhibition entitled Seeing the Centre: The art of Albert Namatjira (1902-1959) curated by Alison French has sought to redress this neglect, and provide a retrospective of his work. The exhibition has brought to light that the copyright in the artistic works of Albert Namatjira has not been passed onto his family descendants. In June 1957, Namatjira entered into a copyright agreement with John Brackenreg, the owner of a publishing company by the name of Legend Press, and the associated Artarmon Galleries in Sydney. It was agreed that Legend Press would pay royalties to Namatjira for the sole right to reproduce all of his paintings. Following Namatjira's death in 1959, the administration of his estate passed to the Public Trustee for the Northern Territory Government. The Public Trustee of the Northern Territory Government authorised the sale of Namatjira's copyright to Legend Press in 1983, thereby ending the ability of the descendents of Namatjira to benefit from on-going income from the reproduction of his works. Senator Aden Ridgeway of the Democrats has called on the Federal Government to enter into discussions with the Northern Territory Government to buy back the copyright in Albert Namatjira's works. He argued that exclusive control of the use and reproduction of his works should be restored to his descendants, as well as the receipt of all financial benefits that result from the use and reproduction of his works under copyright protection. The Senator said: 'By doing this, we will all be rewarded, because finally, belatedly, we will be showing Albert Namatjira the reverence that he has always deserved. We will be protecting his legacy for future generations'.

Using mobile technology to motivate adolescents with type 1 diabetes mellitus: A systematic review of recent literature

Introduction Behavioural interventions have been shown to improve outcomes in patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). There are a small number of studies that suggest text-messages (TM), native mobile applications (NMAs), and other mobile tools may be useful platforms for delivering behavioural interventions to adolescents. Aim The aim of this study was to explore, by way of a systematic review of available literature, (a) the outcomes of interventions using mobile technology for youth with T1DM and (b) what mobile technologies, functional design elements and aesthetic design elements have the best evidence to support their use. Methods A search of six online databases returned 196 unique results, of which 13 met the inclusion criteria. Results Four studies were randomised controlled trials (RCTs), and all others prospective cohort studies. TM (10) was the most common intervention technology, while NMAs were used in four studies. The most common outcome measured was HbA1c (9); however, only three studies showed a significant decrease. Similarly, the results reported for other outcome measures were mixed. The studies included in this review suggest that interventions which have data collection and clinician support functionality may be more effective in improving adherence and glycaemic control, but more evidence is needed. Further, the evidence base supporting the use of NMAs in T1DM management for adolescents is weak, with most studies adopting TM as the intervention tool. Overall, the studies lack adequate descriptions of their methodology, and better quality studies are required to inform future intervention design.

Speaking the bitter truth: The role of the creative imagination in the process of healing

This chapter is concerned with the complexity and difficulty of truth telling as it is played out in two graphic novels: Stitches: A Memoir (Small 2009) and Why We Broke Up (Handler & Kalman, 2011). These texts establish a link between creative imagination and pain as the central protagonists come to see the therapeutic value of literature and film in helping them understand the complex emotional worlds they inhabit and the bitter truths about love and relationships. The discussion examines how these texts privilege a particular kind of independent subjectivity through aesthetic creation and appropriation. It also considers how speaking and silence are co-present elements in gender relations and each has its part to play in the double process of suffering and healing.

The iconic and the critical

Theodor Adorno was opposed to the cinema because he felt it was too close to reality, and ipso facto an extension of ideological Capital, as he wrote in 1944 in Dialectic of Enlightenment. What troubled Adorno was the iconic nature of cinema – the semiotic category invented by C. S. Peirce where the signifier (sign) does not merely signify, in the arbitrary capacity attested by Saussure, but mimics the formal-visual qualities of its referent. Iconicity finds its perfect example in the film’s ingenuous surface illusion of an unmediated reality – its genealogy (the iconic), since classical antiquity, lay in the Greek term eikōn which meant “image,” to refer to the ancient portrait statues of victorious athletes which were thought to bear a direct similitude with their parent divinities. For the postwar, Hollywood-film spectator, Adorno said, “the world outside is an extension of the film he has just left,” because realism is a precise instrument for the manipulation of the mass spectator by the culture industry, for which the filmic image is an advertisement for the world unedited. Mimesis, or the reproduction of reality, is a “mere reproduction of the economic base.” It is precisely film’s iconicity, then, its “realist aesthetic . . . [that] makes it inseparable from its commodity character.”...

Architecture, the body and authority in performance

This is a theoretical investigation seeking to learn more about architecture by looking at architectural practice through another discipline. In this research architecture is investigated by examining its relationship with bodies through performance and theatre set design. This thesis aims to build on existing architectural theory, in which an absence of discourse on the body has been identified, by analysing representations of architecture and the body in performance. The research specifically examines the relationship between the body, architecture and authority in performance through the analysis of several performance works.

Destinations: 3 Large Cast Plays for Young People

This book is a collection of three large-cast plays written in response to a very specific problem. My work as a teacher of drama often required me to locate a script that would somehow miraculously work for a cast of unknown number and gender, and most likely uneven skills and enthusiasm, who I hadn’t even met yet. It’s a familiar dilemma for teachers and students of drama in education contexts, at whatever level you’re teaching. I’d first addressed this creative problem with scripts such as Gate 38 (2010). I had tried using scripts that already existed, but found they required such extensive editing to suit the parameters of cast and performance duration that I may as well have been writing them myself. Even in the setting of a closed studio, in altering these plays I felt I was bending the vision of the playwright, and certainly their narrative structure, out of shape. Everyone who’s attempted to stage a performance with a large cast of students in an educational setting knows it takes time to truly connect with a play, its social contexts, themes and characters. It also takes a lot of time to get on top of the practicalities of learning, rehearsing, directing and running a performance with young people. Often the curtain goes up on something unfinished and unstable. I was looking for ways to reduce the complexity of staging a script, while maintaining the potential of this process as a site of rich, enjoyable learning. Two of the plays (Duty Free and Please Be Seated) are comprised of multiple monologues, combined with music-driven ensemble sequences. The monologues enable individuals to develop and polish their own performances, work in small groups, and cut down on the laborious detail of directing naturalistic scenes based in character interaction. The third (Australian Drama) involves a lot of duologues, meaning that its rehearsal process can happily employ that mainstay of the drama classroom: small group work. There’s plenty of room to move in terms of gender-blind casting as well. Please be Seated is mainly young women. The scripts also contain ensemble-based interludes which are non-verbal, music driven, with a choreographic element. They have also springboarded further explorations in form. The ethical and aesthetic complexities of verbatim works; the interaction between music and theatre; and meta-concerns related to the performing of performance: ‘how can the act of acting ‘acted’. The narratives of all three of these plays are deliberately open, enabling the flexible casting and on-the hop editing that large-group, time-poor processes sometimes necessitate. Duty Free is about the overseas ‘adventures’ of young people. Please Be Seated is based in verbatim text about young people falling in and out of love. Australian Drama is about young people in a drama classroom trying to connect with each other and put their own shine on dull fragments of the theatrical canon. The plays were published as a collection in hardcopy and digital editions by Playlab Press in 2015. Please be Seated is a co-write with a large group. These co-author’s names are listed in the publication, and below in ‘additional information’.