An examination of communication across cultures in news media and at informal/personal levels : with concentration on relations among two South East Asian countries and Australia and those two countries and Germany

In the age of globalisation dominated by mass communication, the flow of information contributes to a big extent to the worldviews of its "global citizens". From this point of view the mass media can be seen as one of the most salient sources of cross-cultural communication. This study investigates mass communication across cultures, focusing on South East Asia (Malaysia and Singapore), Australia and Germany. The centre of attention is the Western media coverage of South East Asia and vice versa. In this context a content analysis of newspapers of the three regions has been conducted. In addition, working practices and conditions of Western foreign correspondents in South East Asia have been examined. Apart from the investigation of inter-cultural media coverage, another focus of attention will be the examination of two levels of communication: The business level, concentrating on issues like e.g. the Asian business etiquette; and the private level, looking into the transition to a different culture from the perspective of Australian and German expatriates. Apart from investigating mass communication across cultures and to provide a written analysis of the findings, a series of radio documentaries in English and in German has been produced. They cover the following issues: Foreign correspondents in South East Asia, the expatriate-lifestyle of Australians and Germans in South East Asia, business etiquette in Asia, student exchange Germany-Asia, image and prejudices East-West and Tourism.

Skills for creative industries graduate success

Purpose: Although there is increasing evidence that the creative industries are essential to national economic growth as well as social and cultural well-being, creative graduates often find it difficult to become established professionally. This study investigates the value of career management competence and intrinsic career motivations (as elements of ‘protean career orientation’) in predicting positive graduate outcomes. ----- ----- Design/methodology: Self-report surveys were administered to 208 creative industries graduates from two Australian universities at two points in time: at course completion, and one year later. ----- ----- Findings: Individual career management competence and intrinsic work motivations, measured at course completion, were significant predictors of early career success, using both subjective and objective measures, measured one year later. ----- ----- Practical implications: This study suggests that an emphasis on student development beyond the traditional ‘key’ employability skills may well be worthwhile. The article also suggests a broad learning and teaching approach by which universities can encourage the development of student career identity, and thus engender student intrinsic career motivations and career self management skills and behaviours. ----- ----- Originality/value: This is one of the first studies to demonstrate empirically a link between a particular set of skills and graduate outcomes. In addition, it provides insights into the role of student career motivations in positive transitions to the world of work in the creative industries.

Listen To Me

The artwork I created is to depict missing of face-to-face communication in this digital and information era. It can be seen that social network technologies have enhanced people-to-people communications and enriched their interactions. Yet, these inundated communication mediums have changed people’s preferences for communication through visual-driven interface. This has reduced people’s capabilities of communication skills including listening. Surprisingly, it was reported that 70 percent of young generations are non-auditory learners, influenced by the visual nature of communication (McCrindle, 2006). As a result, they are defined as a pragmatic generation focussed on outcomes and not processes. This serious and societal issue was drawn with a somewhat violent and aggressive form, yet its pop art style should enable audience to approach to the theme with a satirical and light way.

Digitualisation

The artwork was created to respond to the exhibition theme, "DIGILOG+IN". It aimed to express the beauty when digital and analogue materials are combined. It visualised an organic harmony between digital and natural objects through digitalisation and builded a fantasy of digital world. However, there was a conceptual dilemma that a “digitalisation” of natural objects into a digital format should merely become a digital work. In other words, a harmony between digital and analogue (natural) can be only achieved through a digitalising process by removing intrinsic nature of analogues. Therefore, the substance of analogues no longer exists in a digitally visualised form, but is virtually represented. The title of art work “digitualisation” is a combined word with “digi-tal” and vir-tualisation”. It refers to a digitally virtualising the substance of natural objects. The artwork visualised the concept of digitualisation by using natural objects (flowers) that are merged within a virtual space (a building entrance foyer).

Total theory (vertical) and total theory (horizontal)

The works depicted two ostensibly plaster figures 'cocooned' in protective overalls. The pose of both figures had a sense of instability, balancing improbably due to internal weights. This teetering, arching quality, combined with the empty sleeves of the overalls, made reference to the Rodin's Balzac and its aura of heroic subjectivity. As the Tyvek suits depicted in the works are a common part of my studio paraphernalia, these works sought to draw a line between these two opposing aspects of the subjectivity of the artist - the transcendent and the quotidian. The works were shown as part of ‘The Day the Machine Started’ for Dianne Tanzer Gallery + Projects at the 2010 Melbourne Art Fair. The works received citations in The Age and The Australian newspapers.

Thinking feeling

In “Thinking Feeling” a camera zooms in and around an animated constellation of words. There are ten words, each repeated one hundred times. The individual words independently pulse and orbit an invisible nucleus. The slow movements of the words and camera are reinforced by an airy, synthesised soundtrack. Over time, various phrasal combinations form and dissolve on screen. A bit like forcing oneself to sleep, “Thinking Feeling” picks at that fine line between controlling and letting go of thoughts. It creates small mantric loops that slip in and out of focus, playing with the liminal zones between the conscious and unconscious, between language and sensation, between gripping and releasing, and between calm and irritation.

Andrzej Zielinski : pulp digital fictions

This is a review of painter Andrzej Zielinski's exhibition at gallery 9 in Sydney. It highlights the artist's expressionistic style and strong colour sense as well as his association with American painterly traditions. The artist application of acrylic modelling paste and his paintings also gives them a sculptural and architectural dimension, and on a conceptual level play with notions of mimesis and material form.

Was By The Northern Coast

‘Was by the Northern Coast’ was an installation at MetroArts in Brisbane. A pile of warped timber, evocative of a dismantled boat, sits in the middle of the gallery space on a bed of carefully-laid bands of polyester insulation and pine battening. From within the wood stack, the sound of dripping water indicates the flow of water created by a silent internal pump. The sound of water intermingles with a soft soundtrack of Kulning, an archaic form of Scandinavian song. In ‘Was by the Northern Coast’, the detritus of timber mimics the Romantic sublime of the mountain peak and nautical wreckage while the snowy drifts of the Northern European landscape become mistranslated as a field of artificial ceiling insulation. In employing such slippages, the work attempted to create the imaginative landscape of an aesthetic displaced by distance and time.

Stephen Russell : Super Vanitas

This article is an analysis and contextualisation of 'Super Vanitas' a video installation by Stephen Russell that was held at Boxcopy ARI, Brisbane. It discusses the significance of the painting 'Death of Marat' (J.L. David, 1793) to the work and describes the methodological processes that are revealed in the work.

Solo Show

Solo Show is a to-scale model Metro Arts’ gallery, in which it was exhibited. Set upon a timber frame, the model depicts a miniature ‘installation’ within the ‘space’: a foam block that obstructs one of the gallery’s walkways. Developed and produced for a group exhibition that explored the relationship between humour and art, this work explores and pokes fun at ideas of the institution, scale and the artist ego as well as communicating feelings of emergence, insecurity and hesitancy. The work was included in the group show 'Lean Towards Indifference!' at MetroArts, Brisbane, curated by art collective No Frills.

Turtle Twilight

“Turtle Twilight” is a two-screen video installation. Paragraphs of text adapted from a travel blog type across the left-hand screen. A computer-generated image of a tropical sunset is slowly animated on the right-hand screen. The two screens are accompanied by an atmospheric stock music track. This work examines how we construct, represent and deploy ‘nature’ in our contemporary lives. It mixes cinematic codes with image, text and sound gleaned from online sources. By extending on Nicolas Bourriad’s understanding of ‘postproduction’ and the creative and critical strategies of ‘editing’, it questions the relationship between contemporary screen culture, nature, desire and contemplation.

In the Beyond

In this video, phrases sourced from social networking websites are reformatted into a slowly rotating mandala form. As the text changes colour, an abstract, atmospheric soundtrack develops. “In the Beyond” examines how we construct and communicate notions of identity. It mixes language gleaned from social networks, and fuses them with a mandala form. Drawing on Zygmunt Bauman’s theoretical work on “liquid modernity”, this work questions how and where we find space for contemplation and reflection in a contemporary context increasingly defined by temporary social bonds and consumer choices.

Crushing

In this video, phrases float around the screen offering a heartfelt account of a failed romance. Accompanied by a stock music piano soundtrack, the words initially flow at a readable pace. However, as the video progresses, the screen becomes more intensely filled with text so that it cannot be read all at once. This work engages with the signifying processes of romantic clichés. It questions how we communicate grand ideas and emotions using words that seem to have all their sincerity sucked dry. By emphasizing the constructed nature of communication, and by problematizing the process of reading, this work draws attention to the fragmentary and dissociated processes that pervade signifying acts.

Really really

In “Really Really”, a series of words float through animated star constellations. While apparently drifting aimlessly, the words can be rearranged in numerous ways to recount roughly the same sappy avowal of long-distance love. The many combinations of words, and their predictable associations, call attention to the thresholds of verbal expression. When some sincere words are needed most it seems as if they’ve all been said before. And so, this declaration of love is both enabled and haunted by the tension between sentiment and formula. “Really Really” continues my interests in how meaning is constructed and circulated, and in particular, how common models of communication continue to frame and yet fall short of our personal experiences.

Like two ships

In this video, the words animated on screen are sometimes the same and sometimes different from those spoken by a male voice. Both narratives, written and spoken, are constructed entirely from clichés and mixed metaphors. This work examines processes of signification. It emphasizes disruption and disconnection as fundamental and generative operations in making meaning. Extending on post-structural and deconstructionist ideas, this work questions the relationship between written and spoken words. It upsets the assumed efficacy of metaphors and clichés to question the sites and mechanisms of signification.