Something like an emergency

‘Something like an emergency’, a sonic poem recorded on CD, investigates the hunger of writing as a desire, not for a return of the dead, but for a breakthrough of impasses in language, both in love and in the writer’s (frustrated) translation of vision. Proceeding from Bachelard’s phenomenological observation that the poetic image puts language in a state of emergence, this work argues, instead, that poetry puts language in a state of emergency. Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of music as a deterriorialization of the refrain; a rhythmic pattern which marks out a territory, is invoked in both the music performance and in the words. The writing uses a ‘matting’ (rhizomatic) effect in its verse fragments which echo and refract others. Reverberation is also explored in the piano and its sonic processing which provides elements of dissonance and consonance, refracting dialogues in the text. Voice and music sometimes argue, sometimes agree, and sometimes are indistinguishable. However, this dialectic is further disturbed: at times the piano and voice seem to pay no attention to each other, taking off on their own ‘lines of flight’, in subversion of ‘collaboration’. In its use of recorded improvisational techniques this work also challenges the ‘superiority’ of live improvisation.
It was first performed at Double Dialogues conference, ‘The Hunger Artist: Food and the Arts’, Toronto, 2010. The text and accompanying discursive article form a book chapter in 2012 Food and Appetites: The Hunger Artist and the Arts, Ann McCulloch and Pavlina Radia(eds). It has been broadcast on RRR, 3CR radios and is released on CD and Youtube. By invitation it was performed at the Midsumma Festival, 2014.

Love, politics, time

Featuring the musical compositional techniques of phase, repetition and pulse, with the sounds of New York recorded from a 16th floor hotel window, this sonic poem is a plea for the intimately spoken word. As cockatoos rise in the white siren sky, two lovers confront love and time in a halting conversation inside a placeless shelter.
This performance work is a poetic and musical experimentation with ideas from the philosopher Alain Badiou. The intersection of political and amorous truth procedures thought to form the subject matter of many novels is extended upon by presenting such an intersection via the crossing of genres of music, sound art, poetry, prose and theatre. This collaborative venture forms a continuing experiment with the idea that music does not simply form a corollary with words and their representation in sound, but rather explores ways in which music can form an antagonistic relationship to the spoken word.
'Conversation in an air raid shelter' was originally presented as a live performance at Double Dialogues Conference: 'The 21st century - The Event, The Subject, The Artwork', Fiji, 2012 and the audio recording appears in Double Dialogues Issue 16, Spring 2013 with an accompanying discursive article 'Love, Politics, Time'. It is available on CD and Youtube. It was also performed at the Torquay Literary Festival in 2013. A discussion of its process by Josephine Scicluna features on a video currently in production by Deakin University for a new unit on creativity in the Bachelor of Arts program.

Under the forest and Ladyswamp ( a radio play and a sonic poem)

'Under the Forest'  and 'Ladyswamp' are audio recordings created in collaboration with musician/ sound artist Tom Kazas. As the first outputs of the ongoing Lyrebird project (fully documented at writingfix.com.au) both works reinvent history in artistic form. At the same time they consider the aftermath of inappropriate farming techniques, representing the sense of disconnection the settlers immediately have from any historical continuity or indigenous relationship to land. In focussing on a regional area in Victoria and the stories that emerge from here, this practice-led research has implications for all other regional areas in countries throughout a world in a time of climate change. The two pieces, linked by the flow of water from the upper catchment of the Tarwin River, to the river flats near the South Gippsland coast, embody the presence of location via poetic means; the flow is from erosion to silt: of land becoming water, becoming land. In the sound design the locations are also represented poetically without losing the actuality of their haunting geography.
The two audio works were first presented at the Double Dialogues Conference: 'The 21st century - The Event, The Subject, The Artwork', Fiji, 2012, and are published in In/Stead, Issue 4, 2013 alongside a discursive article, ‘Under the forest & Ladyswamp: a radio play & a sonic poem’. Extracts of the audio appear on Youtube. The process of ‘Ladyswamp’ appears on an educational video currently in production by Deakin University.

The first time

'The First Time' employs performed research to investigate the 'firsts' of twelve first year teachers in Victorian schools. Based on interview data generated over the period of a year, the performance highlights 'firsts' as epiphanic or revelatory moments of professional identity transformation. The performance is crafted to reflect the fluid and unpredictable nature of teachers' professional identity. 'The First Time' uses only the words of the teachers, and is performed by teachers - including first year teachers. It reveals the destabilising effects of contextual factors on teachers' professional identity. Status and belonging are positioned within survival, liminal, and hegemonic discourses, and expressed through artefacts as symbols of belonging. The low status ascribed to contractual work underpins beginning teachers' commitment to the profession. The premier performance (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB1ED0FDEF2AA8836) was initially devised to analyse the interview data through the process of scripting, rehearsal, and performance. This version sees the addition of a concluding dance work, which reflects the results of the research. The voices of the participants from their interview recordings shape the dance work.Performed by: Melissa Learmonth, Beaux Glenn, Arna Pletes, Krystal Holzer, Ashlea Thompson, Tom Ellis, Lauren Wallis, Fiona McGrath, and Claire Hesse.

Social media conflict: platforms for racial vilification, or acts of provocation and citizenship?

Although racism remains an issue for social media sites such as YouTube, this focus often overshadows the site’s productive capacity to generate ‘agonistic publics’ from which expressions of cultural citizenship and solidarity might emerge. This paper examines these issues through two case studies: the recent proliferation of mobile phone video recordings of racist rants on public transport, and racist interactions surrounding the performance of a Maori ‘flash mob’ haka in New Zealand that was recorded and uploaded to YouTube. We contrast these incidents as they are played out primarily through social media, with the case of Australian Football League player Adam Goodes and the broadcast media reaction to a racial slur aimed against him by a crowd member during the AFL’s Indigenous Round. We discuss the prevalence of vitriolic exchange and racial bigotry, but also, and more importantly, the productive and equally aggressive defence of more inclusive and tolerant forms of cultural identification that play out across these different media forms. Drawing on theories of cultural citizenship along with the political theory of Chantal Mouffe, we point to the capacities of YouTube as ‘platform’, and to social media practices, in facilitating ground-up antiracism and generating dynamic, contested and confronting micropublics.

I me mine: artistic self/artistic persona

This work comprises of a series of video portraits and sound recordings that explore the connections between gesture, gaze and voice in video portraiture. Most of the subjects are artists represented in the current exhibition, but the disjunction between sound and image makes it difficult to categorically identify the authors of the sound bites on the work’s soundtrack. Designed to function as an introduction to the themes and issues generated by the Self/Persona relationship in the nascent field of Persona Studies, the work is also concerned with the presentation of the artistic self, and the ‘loss of self’ that may or may not occur as a consequence of artistic practice. Formally, the piece plays with the repetition and symmetry to underscore the vulnerability and mutability of the self within contemporary culture.

Pan & zoom

PAN & ZOOM take the effects inscribe in the global language of cinema and turn them into performative and participatory image-making apparatuses. Jondi Keane & Kaya Barry’s installation invites visitors to collaborate in the construction of the images in order to re-explore relations between media technologies and embodied experience. The result is an expanded, amplified and dilated experience of the performative power of image-making and image-viewing. .. PAN activates an accumulating collection of moving panoramic images – provided by Kaya Barry and PSi Fluid States participants from around the world – that one may interactively inhabit. The visitor manipulates relationships between an image projector mounted upon a dolly-track and a ‘trackpad’ that scrolls the projected panorama. The live event of constructing-perceiving panoramic tracking shots open up in ways that expand sensory experience beyond usual peripheries. ZOOM co-opts the ‘dolly-zoom’ effect in cinema, wherein the camera zooms in while moving backwards, or zooms out while moving forwards, resulting in the image expanding to amplify an intense moment of realisation. Keane pulls apart the double movement of the camera effect by himself performing the pulling back and forth of a moving wall as backdrop. Moments of realisation are created between visitors who take up camera operation and as an improvising actor’s role, to accompany Keane’s durational wall moving. An updating collection of short videos were made over the exhibition period shown on one of the installation screen

There will be no more night

Exploring how the body and light are connected in interdisciplinary practice, in this work I make sound design and moving image re inscribing physical yet out of body experiences of light in near death – recorded from youtube. The image of fading light is in real time and constitutes a symbolic interpretation of eternity mirroring the audio. This work has been curated into a group exhibition at ‘Strange Neighbour’ alongside internationally recognised artists such as Peter Booth and Sam Shmith. The work has also been curated in my solo exhibition by Conny Dietzschold and is the subject of the essay in the catalogue by Sean Redmond and was presented in my paper ‘Motion and stillness: a bodily approach to photography.’ and is mentioned in the journal article to be published titled ‘Technology as Collaborator in Somatic Photographic Practice.’ Intellect Books

Bootstrapping mobile app development

Modern IDEs provide limited support for developers when starting a new data-driven mobile app. App developers are currently required to write copious amounts of boilerplate code, scripts, organise complex directories, and author actual functionality. Although this scenario is ripe for automation, current tools are yet to address it adequately. In this paper we present RAPPT, a tool that generates the scaffolding of a mobile app based on a high level description specified in a Domain Specific Language (DSL). We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach by an example case study and feedback from a professional development team. Demo at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffquVgBYpLM.

StressCloud: a tool for analysing performance and energy consumption of cloud applications

Finding the best deployment configuration that maximises energy efficiency while guaranteeing system performance of cloud applications is an extremely challenging task. It requires the evaluation of system performance and energy consumption under a wide variety of realistic workloads and deployment configurations. This paper demonstrates StressCloud, an automatic performance and energy consumption analysis tool for cloud applications in real-world cloud environments. StressCloud supports 1) the modelling of realistic cloud application workloads, 2) the automatic generation and running of load tests, and 3) the profiling of system performance and energy consumption. A demonstration video can be accessed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l4-a-CNtVQ.

Neo- jihadist prosumers and Al Qaeda single narrative: the case study of Giuliano Delnevo

Scholars in the field of terrorism and violent extremism often refer to the so-called Al Qaeda single narrative. This article suggests that the Internet challenges the existence of a “single narrative,” by arguing that neo-jihadist prosumers may reinterpret Al Qaeda’s narrative and create hybrid symbols and identities. The article discusses the case study of an Italian neo-jihadist allegedly killed in Syria, Giuliano Delnevo, presenting research on his YouTube and Facebook production. Delnevo’s narrative, which emerges from the diverse messages circulating on the Internet, recasts the Al Qaeda narrative by hybridizing it with other cultural backgrounds and political symbols.