Buzz in motion pictures : what is buzz and how can marketing create it?

In the movie industry, the extraordinarily successful theatrical performance of certain films is largely attributed to buzz. Despite longstanding commentary about the role of buzz in successful movie marketing and the belief that it accelerates new product diffusion, limited scholarly evidence exists to support these assertions. This is primarily due to the lack of conceptual distinction of buzz from word-of-mouth, which is often used as the main basis for conceptualising buzz. However, word-of-mouth does not fully explain the buzz surrounding films such as 'Gone With The Wind', 'The Dark Knight' and 'Avatar'. Informed by valuable insights from key experts who have launched some of the most successful movies in box office history, as well as a range of moviegoers, this thesis developed a deeper understanding of what buzz is and how it is created. This thesis concludes that buzz is not the same as word-of-mouth.

The silk road project : dance and embodiment in the age of motion capture

The Silk Road Project was a practice-based research project investigating the potential of motion capture technology to inform perceptions of embodiment in dance performance. The project created a multi-disciplinary collaborative performance event using dance performance and real-time motion capture at Deakin University’s Deakin Motion Lab. Several new technological advances in producing real-time motion capture performance were produced, along with a performance event that examined the aesthetic interplay between a dancer’s movement and the precise mappings of its trajectories created by motion capture and real-time motion graphic visualisations.

Protective legal regulation for home-based workers in Australian textile, clothing and footwear supply chains

Supply chain outsourcing has posed problems for conventional labour regulation, which focuses on employers contracting directly with workers, particularly employees. These difficulties have been exacerbated by the traditional trifurcated approach to regulation of pay and conditions, work health and safety and workers’ compensation. This paper analyses the parallel interaction of two legal developments within the Australian textile, clothing and footwear industry. The first is mandatory contractual tracking mechanisms within state and federal labour laws and the second is the duties imposed by the harmonised Work Health and Safety Acts. Their combined effect has created an innovative, fully enforceable and integrated regulatory framework for the textile, clothing and footwear industry and, it is argued, other supply chains in different industry contexts. This paper highlights how regulatory solutions can address adverse issues for workers at the bottom of contractual networks, such as fissured workplaces and capital fragmentation, by enabling regulators to harness the commercial power of business controllers at the apex to ensure compliance throughout the entire chain.

Colonising Shakespeare? : agency and authority in Gregory Rogers's Shakespearean picture books

“You need to be able to tell stories. Illustration is a literature, not a pure fine art. It’s the fine art of writing with pictures.” – Gregory Rogers. This paper reads two recent wordless picture books by Australian illustrator Gregory Rogers in order to consider how “Shakespeare” is produced as a complex object of consumption for the implied child reader: The Boy, The Bear, The Baron, The Bard (2004) and Midsummer Knight (2006). In these books other worlds are constructed via time-travel and travel to a fantasy world, and clearly presume reader competence in narrative temporality and structure, and cultural literacy (particularly in reference to Elizabethan London and William Shakespeare), even as they challenge normative concepts via use of the fantastic. Exploring both narrative sequences and individual images reveals a tension in the books between past and present, and real and imagined. Where children’s texts tend to privilege Shakespeare, the man and his works, as inherently valuable, Rogers’s work complicates any sense of cultural value. Even as these picture books depend on a lexicon of Shakespearean images for meaning and coherence, they represent William Shakespeare as both an enemy to children (The Boy), and a national traitor (Midsummer). The protagonists, a boy in the first book and the bear he rescues in the second, effect political change by defeating Shakespeare. However, where these texts might seem to be activating a postcolonial cultural critique, this is complicated both by presumed readerly competence in authorized cultural discourses and by repeated affirmation of monarchies as ideal political systems. Power, then, in these picture books is at once rewarded and withheld, in a dialectic of (possibly postcolonial) agency, and (arguably colonial) subjection, even as they challenge dominant valuations of “Shakespeare” they do not challenge understandings of the “Child”.

Sell, give away, or donate : an exploratory study of fashion clothing disposal behaviour in two countries

This study investigates the antecedents to clothing disposal methods in two countries: Scotland and Australia. Increasing volumes of textiles are disposed of in landfill sites to the detriment of the environment. Extant research has identified the influences affecting an increased rate of purchasing and the trend to keep clothing for an ever shorter time. As such, it is imperative to examine the factors that affect consumers’ choice of clothing disposal method as limited research has been undertaken in this area of socially responsible consumption. The results of a survey administered to a sample of female consumers in the two countries identify antecedents of three forms of clothing disposal methods: selling through eBay or second-hand shops, giving away to family or friends or donating to charities. Findings show differences between the countries regarding clothing disposal behaviour. Nevertheless, general recycling behaviour was found to be the strongest predictor for donating to charities in both countries.

Bubble rise velocity and trajectory in xanthan gum crystal suspension

An experimental set-up was used to visually observe the characteristics of bubbles as they moved up a column holding xanthan gum crystal suspensions. The bubble rise characteristics in xanthan gum solutions with crystal suspension are presented in this paper. The suspensions were made by using different concentrations of xanthan gum solutions with 0.23 mm mean diameter polystyrene crystal particles. The influence of the dimensionless quantities; namely the Reynolds number, Re, the Weber number, We, and the drag co-efficient, cd, are identified for the determination of the bubble rise velocity. The effect of these dimensionless groups together with the Eötvös number, Eo, the Froude number, Fr, and the bubble deformation parameter, D, on the bubble rise velocity and bubble trajectory are analysed. The experimental results show that the average bubble velocity increases with the increase in bubble volume for xanthan gum crystal suspensions. At high We, Eo and Re, bubbles are spherical-capped and their velocities are found to be very high. At low We and Eo, the surface tension force is significant compared to the inertia force. The viscous forces were shown to have no substantial effect on the bubble rise velocity for 45 < Re < 299. The results show that the drag co-efficient decreases with the increase in bubble velocity and Re. The trajectory analysis showed that small bubbles followed a zigzag motion while larger bubbles followed a spiral motion. The smaller bubbles experienced less horizontal motion in crystal suspended xanthan gum solutions while larger bubbles exhibited a greater degree of spiral motion than those seen in the previous studies on the bubble rise in xanthan gum solutions without crystal.

A methodology for object identification and tracking in construction based on spatial modeling and image matching techniques

Understanding the motion characteristics of on-site objects is desirable for the analysis of construction work zones, especially in problems related to safety and productivity studies. This article presents a methodology for rapid object identification and tracking. The proposed methodology contains algorithms for spatial modeling and image matching. A high-frame-rate range sensor was utilized for spatial data acquisition. The experimental results indicated that an occupancy grid spatial modeling algorithm could quickly build a suitable work zone model from the acquired data. The results also showed that an image matching algorithm is able to find the most similar object from a model database and from spatial models obtained from previous scans. It is then possible to use the matched information to successfully identify and track objects.

Statistical analyses of weigh-in-motion data for bridge live load development

This paper discusses the statistical analyses used to derive bridge live loads models for Hong Kong from a 10-year weigh-in-motion (WIM) data. The statistical concepts required and the terminologies adopted in the development of bridge live load models are introduced. This paper includes studies for representative vehicles from the large amount of WIM data in Hong Kong. Different load affecting parameters such as gross vehicle weights, axle weights, axle spacings, average daily number of trucks etc are first analyzed by various stochastic processes in order to obtain the mathematical distributions of these parameters. As a prerequisite to determine accurate bridge design loadings in Hong Kong, this study not only takes advantages of code formulation methods used internationally but also presents a new method for modelling collected WIM data using a statistical approach.

The HarmonyGrid : music, space and performance in grid music systems

This research explores music in space, as experienced through performing and music-making with interactive systems. It explores how musical parameters may be presented spatially and displayed visually with a view to their exploration by a musician during performance. Spatial arrangements of musical components, especially pitches and harmonies, have been widely studied in the literature, but the current capabilities of interactive systems allow the improvisational exploration of these musical spaces as part of a performance practice. This research focuses on quantised spatial organisation of musical parameters that can be categorised as grid music systems (GMSs), and interactive music systems based on them. The research explores and surveys existing and historical uses of GMSs, and develops and demonstrates the use of a novel grid music system designed for whole body interaction. Grid music systems provide plotting of spatialised input to construct patterned music on a two-dimensional grid layout. GMSs are navigated to construct a sequence of parametric steps, for example a series of pitches, rhythmic values, a chord sequence, or terraced dynamic steps. While they are conceptually simple when only controlling one musical dimension, grid systems may be layered to enable complex and satisfying musical results. These systems have proved a viable, effective, accessible and engaging means of music-making for the general user as well as the musician. GMSs have been widely used in electronic and digital music technologies, where they have generally been applied to small portable devices and software systems such as step sequencers and drum machines. This research shows that by scaling up a grid music system, music-making and musical improvisation are enhanced, gaining several advantages: (1) Full body location becomes the spatial input to the grid. The system becomes a partially immersive one in four related ways: spatially, graphically, sonically and musically. (2) Detection of body location by tracking enables hands-free operation, thereby allowing the playing of a musical instrument in addition to “playing” the grid system. (3) Visual information regarding musical parameters may be enhanced so that the performer may fully engage with existing spatial knowledge of musical materials. The result is that existing spatial knowledge is overlaid on, and combined with, music-space. Music-space is a new concept produced by the research, and is similar to notions of other musical spaces including soundscape, acoustic space, Smalley's “circumspace” and “immersive space” (2007, 48-52), and Lotis's “ambiophony” (2003), but is rather more textural and “alive”—and therefore very conducive to interaction. Music-space is that space occupied by music, set within normal space, which may be perceived by a person located within, or moving around in that space. Music-space has a perceivable “texture” made of tensions and relaxations, and contains spatial patterns of these formed by musical elements such as notes, harmonies, and sounds, changing over time. The music may be performed by live musicians, created electronically, or be prerecorded. Large-scale GMSs have the capability not only to interactively display musical information as music representative space, but to allow music-space to co-exist with it. Moving around the grid, the performer may interact in real time with musical materials in music-space, as they form over squares or move in paths. Additionally he/she may sense the textural matrix of the music-space while being immersed in surround sound covering the grid. The HarmonyGrid is a new computer-based interactive performance system developed during this research that provides a generative music-making system intended to accompany, or play along with, an improvising musician. This large-scale GMS employs full-body motion tracking over a projected grid. Playing with the system creates an enhanced performance employing live interactive music, along with graphical and spatial activity. Although one other experimental system provides certain aspects of immersive music-making, currently only the HarmonyGrid provides an environment to explore and experience music-space in a GMS.