Alien wailing cinematic score

A short composition featuring unusual soundscapes to create an eerie cinematic piece suitable for science fiction styled projects.

Conservation of genetic diversity in British populations of the diploid endemic Coincya monensis ssp monensis (Isle of Man Cabbage): the risk of hybridisation with the tetraploid alien, Coincya monensis ssp cheiranthos

Coincya monensis is represented in the British flora by two, cytologically distinct subspecies. Coincya monensis ssp monensis is an endemic diploid with a coastal sand dune distribution that includes a number of isolated populations. Coincya monensis ssp cheiranthos is a tetraploid alien, well established in South Wales in early successional habitats. Both subspecies share similar life form traits, flowering times and pollinators. Cluster analysis and phylogenetic reconstruction based on sequences of the mitochondrial nad4 gene confirmed the distinction between alien and endemic taxa. Tetraploid populations carry more polymorphic RAPDs loci and their genetic diversity is partitioned more within than among populations. In contrast, C. monensis ssp monensis has a distinct population genetic structure. Analysis of the multilocus genetic data confirmed a structure of genetically isolated, endemic population clusters in Scotland, Arran, the Isle of Man and South Wales. Experimental hybridisation showed the two subspecies are interfertile. Multivariate analysis of RAPDs data resolved hybrids between alien and endemic clusters and hybrids contained a proportion of alien-specific polymorphic loci. Hybrids of alien maternal parentage contained the mitochondrial nad4 sequence characteristic of the alien subspecies. Since the alien subspecies can invade mobile sand dune communities from urban sites and compete for pollinators, there is a risk that alien and endemic populations will mix and introgress. Conservation of endemic genetic diversity in Britain will require protection for all C. monensis ssp monensis populations. Currently, the most disjunct endemic population in South Wales is most at risk from introgression.

Comparison of genetic diversities in native and alien populations of hoary mustard (Hirschfeldia incana [L.] Lagreze-Fossat)

Increased selfing and inbreeding and, consequently, depauperate genetic diversities are commonly expected for alien colonies. We compared RAPDs data for native (southern Europe) and alien (British Isles) populations of hoary mustard (Hirschfeldia incana). This species is normally out-breeding, but it is capable of self- fertilization. Contrary to the common expectations, genetic diversities in native and alien populations were similar, without any strong evidence of decreased levels of genetic diversities in alien populations. A variety of factors may have contributed to this observation, including high variation in founding groups, founders originating from multiple H. incana source populations, and high rates of past and/or current gene flow. A review of other studies showed that this pattern of similar genetic diversities in native and alien populations was not unusual but has been regularly observed in other invasive plant species.

Nude dalliance with alien abductions turns into a close encounter of the dull kind

Review : Balletlab's  ' And All Things Return to Nature Tomorrow'

Alien aesthetics

Melbourne was visited by Bruce Sterling, one of the founders of the science fiction genre of cyberpunk, for the very first time. Bruce's work as a future thinker and visionary who has been shaping the forefront of design and technology can be followed at his Wired column, Beyond the Beyond. His public lecture at Deakin Edge on August 18th tackled the bleeding edge of contemporary culture: Alien Aesthetics. The idea of Alien Aesthetics is better known through the work of Ian Bogost. According to Bogost, Alien Aesthetics is not concerned with trying to "satisfy our human drive for art and design, but to fashion design fictions". These kinds of alien design fictions can be seen in the images produced by Google's Inceptionism, which capture the deep dreams of artificial neural networks. Alien Aesthetics is also present in pop culture, as in the work of artist Holly Herndon, whose new album Platform has been heralded as a fusion between critical thinking about technology and creative exploration of what she calls "alien sounds". This kind of cross-pollination between contemporary theory and creative practice also took place at a free parallel event at LOOP Bar on August 17th: Conversations about Alien Aesthetics. This event was organised by a partnership between the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University and The New Centre of Research & Practice, a global research platform dedicated to transdisciplinary exchanges between art and science, and featured local and virtual speakers from the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and Brazil.

Sounding loneliness in under the skin

How one affectively sounds loneliness on screen is dependent on what instruments, melodies, voices and sound effects are used to create a sonic membrane that manifests as melancholy and malcontent. It is in the syncretic and synesthetic entanglement that sounding loneliness takes root. It is in the added value inherent in the “sound-image” – to draw upon Chion1 – that loneliness fully emerges like a black dahlia. So many lonely people, where do they all come from? And yet, as I will suggest, this sounding loneliness is not only textually specific, simply or singularly driven by narrative and generic concerns, but is historically contingent and nationally and culturally locatable. For example, the sounds of urban isolation of the American 1940s film noir are different from the Chinese peasant laments of Chen Kaige’s Yellow Earth (1984), or what I will presently argue are the British austere strings of sounding loneliness today. When one employs a “diagnostic critique”2, one undertakes to find the history in the text and the text in the history. It is in the interplay between sound and image that historical and political truth emerges. These contextualised and historicised soundings change across and within national landscapes and their related imaginings. We don’t just see the crumbling walls of the imagined nation state, but get to hear its desolate tunes: The Specials wailing “Ghost Town” – the anthem of/to Margaret Thatcher’s first wave of 1980s neo-liberalism – is a striking case in point. But what specifically is this contemporary “sounding loneliness”, and where does it come from? I would like to suggest that this age of loneliness is composed in, through and within the sonic vibrations found in the wretched politics of austerity. My case study will be the anomic soundings of Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013).

Build your own life : a self-help guide for individuals with Asperger`s syndrome

As someone with Asperger's Syndrome, Wendy Lawson knows all about the social difficulties that accompany the condition. In this book, she guides others on the autism spectrum through the confusing map of life, tackling the building bricks of social existence one by one with humour, insight and practical suggestions. Exploring what it is like to be an adult in an alien world, she looks at the concepts of 'self' and 'other' and talks about the people in our lives -- how to relate to them, how we can use their support and how we can protect ourselves in the process. Using poetry and illustrations, she goes on to explain the difficult notion of putting on a face, looks at how to assess personal skills in order to develop them into a suitable career and how to deal with unwelcome changes in life. This book is essential reading for all those on the higher-functioning end of the autism spectrum, helping them to get the best out of a world that is often confusing and aiding those close to them to understand their perspective. Book jacket.

Flexible delivery in the Australian vocational education and training sector: Barrier to success identified in cases studies of four adult learners

Government policy in Australia is increasingly encouraging training organisations in the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector to adopt flexible delivery approaches, but some researchers are sounding a note of caution. Evidence is emerging that Australian VET learners are not universally ready for flexible delivery, and this is reflected in high attrition rates and low pass rates. The literature on flexible delivery identifies a number of specific factors that can impact on the success of adult learners. However, there seems to be agreement that failure or dropout is not determined by a single factor, but by the interaction of a number of factors that build up over time. To understand these factors, we need to understand the learners - what their participation in education means to them, the context in which they are studying, and the numerous inter-connected factors that contribute to their failure to achieve a successful outcome. This paper discusses four case studies from a research project that followed up a small number of adult learners who enrolled in flexible delivery VET courses but did not achieve a successful outcome.

The nature of data: illusions of reality

The nature of data has changed as human technology has evolved. ‘Natural’ analogue data stimulate our senses, whilst machine produced data provides an intermediary for natural or artificial data to our senses. In the age of the cyborg (a machine with human attributes) and the bionic person (a human with machine attributes), it is possible for data totally alien from ‘natural reality’ to be fed directly to the brain so by-passing the senses. This is a new form of reality, which lends itself to manipulation of a kind never experienced before. The dreams of deceivers may yet be realised on a mass scale.

Editorial

In the way that submissions to journals sometimes observe a strange synchronicity, this issue commences with three essays focusing on film. Relatively little work has been carried out on the ideologies of films designed specifically for children or of that large body of films regarded as family viewing, and which cater both to child viewers and also to the adults who accompany them. The three ‘film’ essays we present here apply a variety of theoretical and methodological frames to films which in the main fit within the second of these categories—family films.

The evolution of the temporary protection visa regime in Australia

While the Temporary Protection Visa (TPV) regime was formally introduced in October 1999 by the Howard Government, the concept of temporary protection was not totally alien to the Australian humanitarian landscape. Earlier examples reflected a standard use of temporary protection as a complementary or interim protection mechanism, offering short-term group-based protection where individual assessment under the 1951 Convention was both impractical and untimely. This paper focuses on the wider and more controversial changes in the use of temporary protection mechanisms that were to follow with the introduction of the TPV in 1999, which offered substitute protection for individually assessed Convention refugees who had arrived onshore without valid travel documents. It examines the history and evolution of the TPV policy regime from 1999 to the announcement of its abolition in 2008, arguing that the introduction and subsequent development of the policy may be understood as a product of a conservative, exclusionist political climate in Australia, following the unprecedented impact of the populist One Nation party in 1998, and later, the impact of September 11th. It also examines later amendments to the regime as a response to growing domestic disquiet about the impacts of the policy, and the abolition of the TPV policy under a new Australian government elected in late 2007.

Cell

A 13-minute documentary film on the Woomera Detention Centre. The film,  was put together from the video scraps left over from Abe's trip to Woomera in Easter 2002.

Kurdungurlu got to drive Toyota : differential colonizing process among the Warlpiri

This thesis is based on fieldwork I carried out between December 1987 and June 1989 while living with the residents of a small Warlpiri Outstation Community situated ca. 75 km north-west of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory of Australia. Colonialism is a process whereby incommensurate gender regimes impact differently on women and men and this is reflected in the indigenous response which affects the socialization of Western things. The notion of the indigenous KIRDA-KURDUNGURLU reciprocity is shown to be consistent with a gender system and to articulate all exchange relations as pro-creative social relationships. This contrasts with the Western capitalist system of production and social reproduction of gendered individuals in that it does not ascribe gender to biological differences between women and men but is derived from a land based social division between Sister-Brother. Social relationships are put under great strain in an effort to socialize Western things for Warlpiri internal use, I argue that the colonization of Aboriginal societies is an ongoing process. Despite the historical shift from a physical all-male frontier to the present day cross-cultural negotiations between Aborigines and Non-Aborigines, men still privilege men. The negotiation process for ownership of a Community Toyota is the most recent phenomenon where this can be observed. Male privilege is established by linking control over the access to the Community Toyota with traditional rights to land. However, the Toyota as Western object has a Western gender identity as well. By pitting women against men it engages people in social conflict which is brought into existence through an organisation of Western concepts based on an alien gender regime. But Western things, especially the Community Toyota, resist socialization because the Warlpiri do not produce these things. Warlpiri people know this and, to satisfy their need for Western things, they engage them in a process of social differentiation. By this process they can be seen actively to maintain the Western system in an effort to maintain themselves as Warlpiri and to secure the production of Western things. This investigation of the cultural response to Western influences shows that indigenous gender relations are only maintained through a socially stressful process of socializing Western things.

Beyond mimesis : place, interpretation and response

My study examines the subjective nature of artistic interpretation through the notion of mimesis as process or transformation of material. Influential factors that mediate in the artistic process, such as memory, reflection and an awareness of cultural analogy and metaphor, are examined and related to a specific project in the studio, where the mediation process is further influenced by the materials used to produce the images. My studies of the concept of mimesis have revealed an intermediary realm that exists in the space between empirical reality and its interpretation. Throughout history the process of mimesis has been integral to all forms of the arts. In Plato's time the production of an image that simulated things as they appeared to the eye was considered a desired ideal. Aristotle later introduced developments which extended this concept to include a refiguring or reforming of material derived from the original source, making new connections between existing factors and in this transformation bringing new meanings to a symbolically constituted world. This discussion of the representation of reality, the influence of a dialogue between notions of imitation and the recreation of material continues throughout the exegesis. My study emphasises the interpretive stage of the mimetic process where a consideration of these themes is most relevant and some of the factors that can influence its outcome. It is my opinion that the production of images in response to the particularities of place can be defined in three stages. Firstly, the experience of the place; secondly, the beginning and maturation of the idea or concept; where mimesis takes place, and thirdly, the production of the art work in response. This process is illustrated in Part 2 of the exegesis, where the development of the studio work is documented and linked with the themes discussed in Part 1. The geographic site or place I selected to study is adjacent to Mt. Noorat, a volcanic site in the Western district of Victoria; the surrounding plains are littered with scoria that has been thrown out of the volcano thousands of years ago. Early British, Scottish and Irish settlers to this region used the stone to construct fences reminiscent of their homeland, through this activity they cleared the land and confined and protected their stock. My interests are in factors that include - the material of the stone, notions of enclosure and safety, of boundaries and circumscribed space, and of the cultural reflection that has taken place in this reconstruction of Eurocentric vision. These walls also represent the means by which land was enclosed and property defined, moving from a situation of public access to notions of ownership and the annexation of land for individual gain. Around each point of eruption, the craggy volcanic scoria has been used to create a constructed landscape which both symbolises and mirrors the Anglo - Celtic origins of the people. I have used the legend of Narcissus to illustrate the self-reflective and introspective processes that the settlers invoked in their attempts to come to terms with a strange land. I consider that the story of Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection, finds a parellel in the creation of the walls. The re-creation of artifacts from their own cultural environment provided the settlers with a familiar 'face' in an alien world; a reassurance of the familiar in an unfamiliar terrain. Part of this study is an investigation of this notion of landscape as cultural reflection. Geographers have long known that landscape is a cultural construct, an historically evolving ideal manifested in painting, prints and drawings as well as poetry, gardens and parks. One can view these constructions as illustrations or images of meaning which constitute representations of cultural ideals. The neo-classical influence reflected in the paintings of artists who accompanied the early expeditions to Australia demonstrates these themes. The medium of the mirror provides the opportunity to suggest aspects of a cultural reflection and an awareness of identity that has relevance to contemporary Australian culture, therefore, I have allowed it to play a major role throughout this study. Its role in mimesis, firstly, as a reflection in an imitative sense is established, then in its refigurative role, in which the similarities between the original and the reformed rely more on correlative factors than representation. I have used examples from the history of art to illustrate this potential. The formation and development of a narrative involving reflection threads throughout the thesis, both in the visual presentation and in the exegesis. The production of a body of paintings, drawings and sculpture reflect my interpretation and response to the particular site. The correspondences between these works and my theoretical concerns is articulated in the exegesis. The metaphor implied by the use of the walls as agents of enclosure also refers to the capacity of the individual to be confined by notional boundaries and restrictive practices where totalising systems of thought dominate theoretical debate and restrict its freedom. I have used images where gaps in the walls represent the potential implicit to the concept of liminal space, where the spectator moves from one physical space to another and from one stage of development to another. The threshold of this opening in the walls becomes the site where transformation can take place, a metaphor for the mimetic process where the initial experience is translated and transformed into the final product. The paintings, drawings and other works in this series fulfil the role of marks on the surface of the mirror, separating the initial experience from the processes of memory, reflection and speculation. The works draw attention to the materiality that they represent and yet provide the opportunity for new insights and experiences, allowing the subjective nature of artistic activity to combine symbolic elements relating to the site, resulting in the production of meaning.

Insights from research on cross-cultural validation of health-related questionnaires : the role of bilingual project workers and lay participants

This article discusses the recruitment and training of bilingual project workers and their role in data gathering; the level of comprehension of the interviewees with regard to the nature of the task and its alien nature; the contribution of social customs and expectations; the vagaries of language; the researchers' level of comprehension of data collected across a range of languages; the feelings of loss of control by the researchers over the research process; and issues of communication with bilingual project workers. The authors draw on two studies designed to assess the adequacy of questionnaire translations from English into four ethnic minority languages: Cantonese, Punjabi, Urdu and Sylheti. Bilingual project workers were recruited to carry out interviews and focus groups with the lay communities and to feed back results in English to the researchers. The authors conclude that researchers should be aware of the influence of social and contextual factors when carrying out research with ethnic minority participants mediated by bilingual project workers.