The Committee on Public Information : a transmedia war propaganda campaign

This article summarises a PhD dissertation of the same name. It develops an understanding of how propaganda entered journalism and popular culture in the United States during World War I through an examination of materials created by the Committee on Public Information (CPI). Three CPI divisions were studied: The Division of News, the Four Minute Men, and the Division of Pictorial Publicity. The methodology of archival contextualisation was created, bringing together the methods of close reading, discourse-historical contextualisation, and Piercian semiotics. A summary of relevant literature is interspersed with thematic historical developments that impacted the relationship between propaganda, journalism and popular culture. This review outlines a gap in knowledge about the archival materials as well as the relationship between propaganda, journalism and popular culture from this period. A discussion about how the expectations of persuasion, truth and amusement relate to each other when mediated in culture, using Lotman’s concept of the semiosphere further develops an understanding of propaganda as a cultural system in relation to other cultural systems – in this case, journalism and popular culture. Findings from the study include that the CPI created a transmedia war propaganda campaign, which enabled propaganda to successfully draw entertainment value from popular culture and credibility from journalism in order to influence public opinion.

Isopropyl 2,2-bis(4-bromophenyl)-2-hydroxyacetate

In the structure of the title compound C17H16Br2O3, which is a restricted commercial acaricide (common name bromopropylate), has two independent and conformationally similar molecules in the asymmetric unit [dihedral angle between the planes of the two phenyl rings in each, 68.7(4) and 77.4(5)deg]. The C-atoms of the isopropyl group of one of the molecules are disordered over two sites with occupancies of 0.638 and 0.362. Minor non-merohedral twinning was also present in the crystal. Intermolecular hydrogen-bonding interactions involving the hydroxy groups and carboxyl O-atom acceptors give separate centrosymmetric homodimers through cyclic hydrogen-bonding motifs [graph set R2/2(10)].

Kallikrein-related peptidase 15 (prostinogen)

The third edition of the Handbook of Proteolytic Enzymes aims to be a comprehensive reference work for the enzymes that cleave proteins and peptides, and contains over 800 chapters. Each chapter is organized into sections describing the name and history, activity and specificity, structural chemistry, preparation, biological aspects, and distinguishing features for a specific peptidase. The subject of Chapter 619 is Kallikrein-related Peptidase 15 (Prostinogen).

Two dicot-infecting mastreviruses (family Geminiviridae) occur in Pakistan

Most mastreviruses (family Geminiviridae) infect monocotyledonous hosts and are transmitted by leafhopper vectors. Only two mastrevirus species, Tobacco yellow dwarf virus from Australia and Bean yellow dwarf virus (BeYDV) from South Africa, have been identified whose members infect dicotyledonous plants. We have identified two distinct mastreviruses in chickpea stunt disease (CSD)-affected chickpea originating from Pakistan. The first is an isolate of BeYDV, previously only known to occur in South Africa. The second is a member of a new species with the BeYDV isolates as its closest relatives. A PCR-based diagnostic test was developed to differentiate these two virus species. Our results show that BeYDV plays no role in the etiology of CSD in Pakistan, while the second virus occurs widely in chickpea across Pakistan. A genomic clone of the new virus was infectious to chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) and induced symptoms typical of CSD. We propose the use of the name Chickpea chlorotic dwarf Pakistan virus for the new species. The significance of these findings with respect to our understanding of the evolution, origin and geographic spread of dicot-infecting mastreviruses is discussed. © 2008 Springer-Verlag.

A proposal to change existing virus species names to non-Latinized binomials

A proposal has been posted on the ICTV website (2011. 001aG. N. v1. binomial_sp_names) to replace virus species names by non-Latinized binomial names consisting of the current italicized species name with the terminal word "virus" replaced by the italicized and non-capitalized genus name to which the species belongs. If implemented, the current italicized species name Measles virus, for instance, would become Measles morbillivirus while the current virus name measles virus and its abbreviation MeV would remain unchanged. The rationale for the proposed change is presented. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.

Provisionality and the impossible task of painting

This thesis explores Raphael Rubinstein’s notion of provisionality as detailed in his influential article from 2009, Provisional Painting and his subsequent exhibition of the same name from 2011. Rubenstein’s writing is discussed in relation to modern art’s rhetoric around the many ‘deaths’ or ‘ends’ of painting as a contemporary art‐making medium, particularly in reference to Yve‐Alain Bois’ 1986 article, Painting: the task of mourning. While Rubenstein predominantly views the provisional via an abstract lens, it is through the work of Sigmar Polke and then Luc Tuymans, Peter Doig and Daniel Richter, that I build an argument to include the work of contemporary representational painters within his notion of provisionality. These new ideas of provisionality are then examined in the context of my recent paintings, which are viewed as contemporary examples of provisionality extended into the representational.

Akin Collection : curation of a collaboration between Indigenous artists and fashion designers to create a retail-ready luxury fashion label

The Akin collection is the outcome of a project to lead, guide and curate a luxury, retail-ready fashion collection from a collaboration between five emerging fashion designers and five established Indigenous artists. Research background There is a history of Indigenous artists in Australia being treated unethically; by misappropriation and misrepresentation of their work, inequity of payment for their creativity and little acknowledgement of their cultural contribution to collaborative fashion product sold globally. This has created an atmosphere of bad press for fashion, as well as a fear for emerging designers to include/collaborate with Indigenous artists for textile prints. This fear has been so intense that many emerging Australian designers are now seeking collaboration with other countries’ Indigenous communities, thus missing out on a rich cultural and diverse aesthetic that could brand a truly unique Australian label in the international marketplace. The fashion brands that have collaborated with Indigenous Australian artists have traditionally been a ONE designer label incorporating Indigenous prints, for collections that have little acknowledgement of the artist’s contribution and strong branding for the label and/or fashion designer. This collection seeks to create an equitable and profitable fashion collection under one brand where all artists and designers receive equal payment, equal promotion/credibility, as well as equal royalties for any garments ordered by retailers. Research question Is it possible to curate an ethical, luxury, retail-ready, international fashion brand with a collaboration of five (5) emerging designers and five (5) Indigenous artists? Research contribution In the fashion industry, existing collaborations for Australian Indigenous artists have been with ONE fashion designer or one existing fashion label. This is the first fashion collection created under one brand name with equal credibility and profits for both artists and designers. The process involved presenting workshops ranging from understanding the logistics and timing of the fashion supply chain, costing of garments, the process of ‘ranging’ fashion product for a collection and creating repeat prints from a specific artwork, ready for digital printing. A workshop was also facilitated so both designer and artist could work together to create (and co-own) unique t shirt prints. Lawyers were consulted and ethical contracts were drawn up to cover all participants in this innovative collaboration. While the collaboration of artist and designer was important, the collection required curation of all elements so that the final collection came together as a professional and cohesive, quality, retail- ready product. This could only be created by experienced practitioners. Research significance The Akin Collection is the first Australian fashion brand to be created as a collaboration between five equally recognised Indigenous artists and five emerging fashion designers. It has familiarized the Indigenous artists to the logistics and culture of the fashion industry and the emerging fashion designers have been familiarized to the logistics and culture of how to collaborate with the unique Indigenous artwork that exists in Australia. After only three months, this culminated in a fashion parade showcasing the Akin collection to over 400 members of the public, government, media and retail. Feedback has been strong from the media and the industry, and a lookbook and photoshoot has been organised to promote and sell the collection both nationally and internationally. These concepts plus the curation outlined, has created a successful, luxury, quality collection ready for the international runways. This project has devised an ethical template for other Indigenous artists and emerging designers to create fashion collections that offer a unique aesthetic that could position and brand Australian fashion in the international marketplace. Key Words Indigenous artists, emerging fashion designers, Australian fashion design, ethical fashion, luxury Australian brand

Architecture et révolution : Le Corbusier and the fascist revolution

In a letter to a close friend dated April 1922 Le Corbusier announced that he was to publish his first major book, Architecture et révolution, which would collect “a set ofarticles from L’EN.”1—L’Esprit nouveau, the revue jointly edited by him and painter Amédée Ozenfant, which ran from 1920 to 1925.2 A year later, Le Corbusier sketched a book cover design featuring “LE CORBUSIER - SAUGNIER,” the pseudonymic compound of Pierre Jeanneret and Ozenfant, above a square-framed single-point perspective of a square tunnel vanishing toward the horizon. Occupying the lower half of the frame was the book’s provisional title in large handwritten capital letters, ARCHITECTURE OU RÉVOLUTION, each word on a separate line, the “ou” a laconic inflection of Paul Laffitte’s proposed title, effected by Le Corbusier.3 Laffitte was one of two publishers Le Corbusier was courting between 1921 and 1922.4 An advertisement for the book, with the title finally settled upon, Vers une architecture, 5 was solicited for L’Esprit nouveau number 18. This was the original title conceived with Ozenfant, and had in fact already appeared in two earlier announcements.6 “Architecture ou révolution” was retained as the name of the book’s crucial and final chapter—the culmination of six chapters extracted from essays in L’Esprit nouveau. This chapter contained the most quoted passage in Vers une architecture, used by numerous scholars to adduce Le Corbusier’s political sentiment in 1923 to the extent of becoming axiomatic of his early political thought.7 Interestingly, it is the only chapter that was not published in L’Esprit nouveau, owing to a hiatus in the journal’s production from June 1922 to November 1923.8 An agitprop pamphlet was produced in 1922, after L’Esprit nouveau 11-12, advertising an imminent issue “Architecture ou révolution” with the famous warning: “the housing crisis will lead to the revolution. Worry about housing.”9

Toward a theory of the architectural subject

The extraordinary event, for Deleuze, is the object becoming subject – not in the manner of an abstract formulation, such as the substitution of one ideational representation for another but, rather, in the introduction of a vast, new, impersonal plane of subjectivity, populated by object processes and physical phenomena that in Deleuze’s discovery will be shown to constitute their own subjectivities. Deleuze’s polemic of subjectivity (the refusal of the Cartesian subject and the transcendental ego of Husserl) – long attempted by other thinkers – is unique precisely because it heralds the dawning of a new species of objecthood that will qualify as its own peculiar subjectivity. A survey of Deleuze’s early work on subjectivity, Empirisme et subjectivité (Deleuze 1953), Le Bergsonisme (Deleuze 1968), and Logique du sens (Deleuze 1969), brings the architectural reader into a peculiar confrontation with what Deleuze calls the ‘new transcendental field’, the field of subjectproducing effects, which for the philosopher takes the place of both the classical and modern subject. Deleuze’s theory of consciousness and perception is premised on the critique of Husserlian phenomenology; and ipso facto his question is an architectural problematic, even if the name ‘architecture’ is not invoked...

The Empty City (playreading)

This 45 minute non-verbal intermedial performance for children was adapted from the picture book I authored of the same name. The process involved writing and re-writing text and music with the result being a new draft of both script and soundtrack. Part of the judging process for the award the script was nominated for involved a playreading, which offered a particular challenge to the researcher in terms of composition and playwriting. How can a script and soundtrack for a non-verbal, intermedial work adapt and innovate the within the formal and practical constraints of the traditional ‘playreading’? This project’s emphasis on nestling intermediality within ostensibly traditional theatrical constraints and processes draws on concepts of musicalisation, identified by Varopolou. (in Lehmann 2006:91) Certain ‘musical moments’ in the piece echoed Ross Brown’s (2010) acoustemological concepts of sonification of everyday life, and the process involved dynamic curation of ‘music under’ for emotional effect, avoiding cinematic clichés and reaching for connections between music and emotion characterized by scholars such as Juslin and Sloboda (2001) The resulting performance was a hybrid of playreading and slideshow, supported by an original soundtrack of ‘music under’ (pre-recorded, but ‘DJ’ed’ live) as well as text-driven moments where music and sound were foregrounded. Research contribution This iteration of The Empty City shows that the tradition of the playreading can be a playful space where even the multiple layers of an intermedial performance text can be represented. The Empty City was a finalist in the 2012-13 Queensland Premier’s Drama Award. A ticketed public playreading of the script was held in the Queensland Theatre Company’s Bille Brown Studio on the 28th of July 2012 alongside the other finalists.

Dutch tilt, Aussie auteur : the films of Rolf de Heer. 2nd ed.

Dutch-born Australian director, Rolf de Heer, is Australia's most successful and unpredictable film-maker, with thirteen feature films of widely varying style and genre to his name. Arising from the author's 2006 - 2009 PhD research at the Queensland University of Technology (which focussed on the psychoanalytic use of sound in his films), and a fixed term Research Fellowship at the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra, Australia, "Dutch Tilt, Aussie Auteur: The Films of Rolf de Heer" was first published in 2009 by VDM in Saarbrucken, Germany. This second edition addresses de Heer's additional film-making since 2009, and as with the first edition, is an auteur analysis of the thirteen feature films he has directed (and mostly written and produced). The book explores the theoretical instability of the concept of auteurism and concludes that there is a signature world view to be detected in his oeuvre, and that de Heer (quite possibly unconsciously) promotes unlikely protagonists who are non-hyper masculine, child-like and nurturing, as opposed to the typical Hollywood hero who is macho, exploitative and hyper masculine. Rolf de Heer was born in Heemskerk, Holland, in 1951 and migrated to Australia with his family in 1959. He spent seven years working for the ABC before gaining entry to Australia's Film, Television and Radio School, where he studied Producing and Directing. From his debut feature film after graduating, the children's story about the restoration of a Tiger Moth biplane, "Tail of a Tiger" (1984) to his breakout cult sensation "Bad Boy Bubby" (1993) which "tore Venice [Film Festival] apart" to the first Aboriginal Australian language film "Ten Canoes" (2006) which scooped the pool at the Australian Film Institute awards, de Heer has consistently proven himself unpredictable. This analysis of his widely disparate films, however, suggests that Australia's most innovative film-maker has a signature pre-occupation with giving a voice to marginalised, non-hyper masculine protagonists. Demonstrating a propensity to write and direct in a European-like style, his 'Dutch tilt' is very much not Hollywood, but is nevertheless representative of a typically Aussie world-view.

Does the social inclusion discourse add value?

The election of a national Labor Government in 2007 saw ‘social inclusion’ emerge as Australia’s overarching social policy agenda. Being ‘included’ has since been defined as being able to ‘have the resources, opportunities and capabilities needed to learn, work, engage and have a voice’. Various researchers have adopted the social inclusion concept to construct a multi-dimensional framework for measuring disadvantage, beyond poverty alleviation. This research program has enabled various forms of statistical modelling based on some agreement about what it means to be ‘included’ in society. At the same time it is acknowledged that social inclusion remains open and contestable and can be used in the name of both progressive and more punitive programs and policies. This ambiguity raises questions about whether the social inclusion framework, as it is presently defined, has the potential to be a progressive and transformative discourse. In this paper we examine whether the Australian social inclusion agenda has the capacity to address social inequality in a meaningful way, concluding with a discussion about the need to understand social inequality and social disadvantage in relational terms.

How can schools support beginning teachers? A call for timely induction and mentoring for effective teaching

Induction programs largely focus on informing the beginning teacher about the school culture and infrastructure yet the core business of education is teaching and learning. This qualitative study uses a survey, questionnaire, and interviews to investigate 10 beginning teachers’ needs towards becoming effective teachers in their first year of teaching. Findings were synonymous with studies in other countries that showed they required more support in the induction process, particularly around the school context, networking, managing people, and creating work-life balances. It also found that these beginning teachers required more support in school culture and infrastructure with stronger consideration of developing teaching practices, such as: pedagogical knowledge development and behaviour management. It highlighted willing and capable assigned mentors who can model practices and provide feedback on the beginning teachers’ practices as pivotal to induction and mentoring processes.

Author in the shadows

A 1000-word review of Nine Lives : in Search of the Sacred in Modern India (Bloomsbury, 2009)

Creative nonfiction : Granta 104

A 1000-word review of Granta 104 - Fathers : The Men Who Made Us (Allen & Unwin, 2009)