Prehistoric hand stencils at Fern Cave, North Queensland (Australia): environmental and chronological implications of Raman spectroscopy and FT-IR imaging results

Raman spectroscopy and FT-IR imaging analyses of cave wall pigment samples from north Queensland (Australia) indicate that some hand stencils were undertaken during a dry environmental phase indicating late Holocene age. Other, earlier painting episodes also took place during dry environmental periods of the terminal Pleistocene and/or early Holocene. These results represent a rare opportunity to attain chronological information for rock art in conditions where insufficient carbon is present for radiocarbon dating.

History, status and future of Australia's native Sydney rock oyster industry

The Sydney rock oyster (Saccostrea glomerata) (SRO) is an oyster species that only occurs in estuaries along Australia's east coast. The SRO industry evolved from commercial gathering of oyster in the 1790s to a high production volume aquaculture industry in the 1970s. However, since the late 1970s the SRO industry has experienced a significant and continuous decline in production quantities and the industry's future commercial viably appears to be uncertain. The aim of this study was to review the history and the status of the SRO industry and to discuss the potential future prospects of this industry. This study summarised findings of the existing literature about the industry and defined development stages of the industry. Particular focus was put on the more recent development within the industry (1980s-present) which has not been covered adequately in the existing literature. The finding from this study revealed that major issues of the industry are linked to the management of prevailing diseases, the handling of water quality impairments from increasing coastal development, increasing competition from Australia's Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) industry and the current socio-economic profile of the industry. The study also found that policy makers are currently confronted by the dilemma of saving a "dying art". Findings from this industry review may be vital for current and future fisheries managers and stakeholders as a basis for reviewing industry management and development strategies. This review may also be of interest for other aquaculture industries and fisheries who are dealing with similar challenges as the SRO industry.

Autoethnography : critical appreciation of an emerging art

In this article, the author discusses how she applied autoethnography in a study of the design of hypermedia educational resources and shows how she addressed problematic issues related to autoethnographic legitimacy and representation. The study covered a 6-year period during which the practitioner’s perspective on the internal and external factors influencing the creation of three hypermedia CD-ROMs contributed to an emerging theory of design. The author highlights the interrelationship between perception and reality as vital to qualitative approaches and encourages researchers to investigate their reality more fully by practicing the art of autoethnography.

The lens of ludic engagement : evaluating participation in interactive art installations

Designers and artists have integrated recent advances in interactive, tangible and ubiquitous computing technologies to create new forms of interactive environments in the domains of work, recreation, culture and leisure. Many designs of technology systems begin with the workplace in mind, and with function, ease of use, and efficiency high on the list of priorities. [1] These priorities do not fit well with works designed for an interactive art environment, where the aims are many, and where the focus on utility and functionality is to support a playful, ambiguous or even experimental experience for the participants. To evaluate such works requires an integration of art-criticism techniques with more recent Human Computer Interaction (HCI) methods, and an understanding of the different nature of engagement in these environments. This paper begins a process of mapping a set of priorities for amplifying engagement in interactive art installations. I first define the concept of ludic engagement and its usefulness as a lens for both design and evaluation in these settings. I then detail two fieldwork evaluations I conducted within two exhibitions of interactive artworks, and discuss their outcomes and the future directions of this research.

Microwave International Media Art Festival

An international festival that champions a pioneer role in promoting media/digital art in Hong Kong. Apart from organising international video screenings in which the latest media art with the most recent trend and development being introduced, a series of artist-in-resident workshops, exhibitions, seminars and symposiums were also hosted with a view to enhancing culture exchange and stimulating media art creation among overseas and local artists

On medium specificity and discipline crossovers in modern art : An interview with Jacques Ranciére on Medium-Specificity and Discipline Crossovers in Modern Art

Jacques Ranciere's work on aesthetics has received a great deal of attention recently. Given his work has enormous range – taking in art and literature, political theory, historiography, pedagogy and worker's history – Andrew McNamara and Toni Ross (UNSW) seek to explore his wider project in this interview, while showing how it leads to his alternative insights into aesthetics. Rancière sets aside the core suppositions linking the medium to aesthetic judgment, which has informed many definitions of modernism. Rancière is emphatic in freeing aesthetic judgment from issues of medium-specificity. He argues that the idea of autonomy associated with medium-specificity – or 'truth to the medium' – was 'a very late one' in modernism, and that post-medium trends were already evident in early modernism. While not stressing a simple continuity between early modernism and contemporary art, Ranciere nonetheless emphasizes the ethical and political ramifications of maintaining an a-disciplinary stance.

Service analysis : A critical assessment of the state of the art

The service-orientation paradigm has not only become prevalent in the software systems domain in recent years, but is also increasingly applied on the business level to restructure organisational capabilities. In this paper, we present the results of an extensive literature review of 30 approaches related to service identification and analysis for both domains. Based on the consolidation of a superset of comparison criteria for service-oriented methodologies found in related literature, we compare and evaluate the different characteristics of service engineering methods with a focus on service analysis. Although a close business and IT alignment is regarded as one of the core beneficial promises of service-orientation, our analysis suggests that there is a lack of unified, comprehensive methodology for service identification and analysis integrating and addressing both domains. Thus, we discuss how our results can inform directions for future research in this area.