Precision milled flow-cells for chemiluminescence detection

Novel flow-cells with integrated confluence points and reaction channels designed for efficient mixing of fast chemiluminescence systems were constructed by machining opposing sides of a polymer chip and sealing the channels with transparent epoxy-acetate films. A hole drilled through the chip provided the conduit from the confluence point on one side to the centre of the reaction zone on the other side, allowing rapid presentation of the reacting mixture to the photodetector. The effectiveness of each flow-cell was evaluated by comparing the chemiluminescence intensity using flow injection analysis methodology, and examining the distribution of light emanating from the reaction zone (captured by photography in a dark room) when the reactants were continuously merged. Although previously reported chemiluminescence detectors constructed by machining channels into polymers have almost exclusively been prepared using transparent materials, we obtained far greater emission intensities using an opaque white chip with a thin transparent seal, which minimised the loss of light through surfaces not exposed to the photomultiplier tube. Furthermore, this approach enabled the exploration of reactor designs that could not be incorporated in traditional coiled-tubing flow-cells.

Just like home : suburban realities and the art of Lisa Hilli

This article profiles the work of Australian-based Tolai artist Lisa Hilli and her photographic, video, installation and performance-based arts practice. Hilli's work deals with contemporary Pacific diasporic identity in Australia.

Representing Fijian bodies and the economy of war

This paper traces representations of the black body, which I have related to contemporary masculine identities in Fiji. I have linked historical representations to what I perceive as the ongoing commodification of the Fijian body and argue that opportunities that have arisen from conflict in the Middle East have had a significant impact on employment opportunities for Fijians. I have framed the discussion around a description and analysis of my own photographic and installation artworks produced between 2007 and 2009.

Kristeva reframed : interpreting key thinkers for the arts

For Kristeva, in a world immersed in readymade images, art or aesthetic experience is a practice that constitutes both a subject (a sense of self) and an object that is able to transform meaning and consciousness.Kristeva Reframed examines key ideas in Kristeva's work to show how they are most relevant to artists, and how they can be applied in interpreting artworks. With examples from the paintings of Van Gogh and Picasso, the work of contemporary feminist painters, the photography of Bill Henson and the film and animation work of Van Sowerine, Estelle Barrett demonstrates how Kristeva can illuminate the relationships between artist and art object, between artists, artworks and audiences, and between art and knowledge. Through these relationships she explores what Kristeva's work reveals about the role and function of art in society and offers a smooth passage through Kristeva's ideas and her relevance to visual culture.

Export quality : representing Fijian bodies and the economy of war

Fijian bodies have become a valuable commodity in the economy of war. Remittances from workers overseas are Fiji’s largest income – exceeding that of tourism and sugar export. This essay examines historical and contemporary representations of the black male body that perpetuate the exploitation of Fijians by inscribing the Fijian male body as warrior, criminal and protector. Taking a multidisciplinary approach informed by sociology, cultural theory, Pacific studies, visual culture, feminist and post-colonial theory, my practice is the vehicle through which I address issues of neocolonial commodification of Fijian bodies. Through an analysis of my own staged photographs and vernacular images taken by Fijians working for private security military companies and British and US armies, I hope to challenge audiences to consider their own perceptions of Fijian agency and subjectivity. By theorising the politicisation of the black body and interrogating colonial representations of blackness, I argue that we can begin to create links between the historical and contemporary exploitation of Fijians and that at the essence of both is an underlying racial hierarchy and economic requirement for cheap and, arguably, expendable labour.

Duplicating road patterns in South African informal settlements using procedural techniques

The formation of informal settlements in and around urban complexes has largely been ignored in the context of procedural city modeling. However, many cities in South Africa and globally can attest to the presence of such settlements. This paper analyses the phenomenon of informal settlements from a procedural modeling perspective. Aerial photography from two South African urban complexes, namely Johannesburg and Cape Town is used as a basis for the extraction of various features that distinguish different types of settlements. In particular, the road patterns which have formed within such settlements are analysed, and various procedural techniques proposed (including Voronoi diagrams, subdivision and L-systems) to replicate the identified features. A qualitative assessment of the procedural techniques is provided, and the most suitable combination of techniques identified for unstructured and structured settlements. In particular it is found that a combination of Voronoi diagrams and subdivision provides the closest match to unstructured informal settlements. A combination of L-systems, Voronoi diagrams and subdivision is found to produce the closest pattern to a structured informal settlement.

To occupy: panoramic interiors of concrete fortifications

This series of images began with an investigation into the notion of inhabitation as a negotiated process. Through practice-based research, the series has become focused on the interiors of concrete fortifications along the east and south coasts of Australia. I am interested in the ‘shudder’ one experiences when encountering a room that has resonance; that has duration; where past, present and future collapse.

Cavity

This series of photographs focuses on caves in Western Victoria that have a layer of colonial occupation; caves said to be inhabited by bush rangers, escaped convicts, shipwreck survivors and hermits. The photographer was drawn to a rich vein of sites associated with colonial myths of inhabitation. These include the escaped convict William Buckley; Miss Carmichael, survivor of the wreck of the Lochard in 1878; Bushranger Captain Melville, and elusive enigmatic Black Ranges hermit David Ross. The resulting photographs explore the sensory and psychological resonance of these extraordinary places, what they feel like and how they feed the imagination, the need to feel rooted, to feel at home. Her approach embraces the paradoxical ambivalence of this need and the complex process of negotiating our presence in the land.

Picture words : toward an art-critical methodology

“Phiction: Lies, Illusion and the Phantasm in Australian Photography” is a curatorial experiment in assembling a survey exhibition from a significant collection. Its formulation, presentation and the outcomes of its tour of eleven regional and metropolitan Victorian galleries provide a case study for this paper. The exhibition Phiction (the title amalgamates photography and fiction) challenges audiences’ reading of photographs, and confronts some curatorial assumptions, by juxtaposing the images with extracts of Australian fiction instead of the usual gallery fact sheet, list of provenance or expert gloss. In this way the exhibition forces a confrontation between ‘dumb’ image and ‘blind’ text and while examples are examined, a review of the exhibition is not the purpose of this paper. A consideration its process and effect is discussed in the paper to propose a comparative tool in the study, investigation and evaluation of art. It is offered to visual art school researchers, lecturers and students contemplating the most appropriate and effective, or alternative, methodologies to employ. With reference to the dominant systems of critique which have come to us from other disciplines, the paper considers the art practitioner’s perspective by drawing on the example of Phiction to pose the open question; “How might we use one artform to explore another?”.

Doubling and convergence : novel models of vision and sense of space

Re-photography is considered in this paper as a synthesis of the processes of seeing, to develop an aesthetic of space.

This practice deals with being (noun and verb) in space and the perception of space and depiction of space; space at the intersection of landscape and human. A key to the conundrum of the figure and the ground arises out of practical photographic investigations to convey the very human sensations of being on the ground, in the confounding landscape of the Central Victorian (Australian) ironbark forests and goldfields.

What is revealed is that what we see, what we attend to, actually appears concentrated at the nodes of a series of vortices. Each vortex is a moiré interference of converging views of the same scene. Attention is a convergence on particulars. Like a magnetic field, the vortex remains invisible in our everyday vision, but it appears in these images. It is imprinted from individual perspectives at particular places; a new perspective with a point of apparition rather than of vanishing.

Maternity

Fruiting bodies represents human engagement with and consciousness of a corresponding presence in our landscape. ʻFruiting Bodiesʼ is an instance of the application of this practice employed to ask the viewer to consider how strange is the phenomenon of the fruiting tree. Is it promiscuous to offer your seed openly to the elements, to any who will take it. Is this forbidden? Is it profligate to hide your progeny inside gifts so tempting in their appeal to that most primitive desire, hunger? Is this wholly mere biological expedience evolved to ensure the widest migration of your offspring? Or does it derive from some boundless cosmic generosity? These images invite you to come close to the tree, where within its arms you will find shelter from the sun at its zenith and from the autumnal rains. Fruit is the focus of Jamesʼs lens as it circles deep into the embrace of limbs and leaves.

Luxe

Fruiting bodies represents human engagement with and consciousness of a corresponding presence in our landscape. ʻFruiting Bodiesʼ is an instance of the application of this practice employed to ask the viewer to consider how strange is the phenomenon of the fruiting tree. Is it promiscuous to offer your seed openly to the elements, to any who will take it. Is this forbidden? Is it profligate to hide your progeny inside gifts so tempting in their appeal to that most primitive desire, hunger? Is this wholly mere biological expedience evolved to ensure the widest migration of your offspring? Or does it derive from some boundless cosmic generosity? These images invite you to come close to the tree, where within its arms you will find shelter from the sun at its zenith and from the autumnal rains. Fruit is the focus of Jamesʼs lens as it circles deep into the embrace of limbs and leaves.

Lust

Fruiting bodies represents human engagement with and consciousness of a corresponding presence in our landscape. ʻFruiting Bodiesʼ is an instance of the application of this practice employed to ask the viewer to consider how strange is the phenomenon of the fruiting tree. Is it promiscuous to offer your seed openly to the elements, to any who will take it. Is this forbidden? Is it profligate to hide your progeny inside gifts so tempting in their appeal to that most primitive desire, hunger? Is this wholly mere biological expedience evolved to ensure the widest migration of your offspring? Or does it derive from some boundless cosmic generosity? These images invite you to come close to the tree, where within its arms you will find shelter from the sun at its zenith and from the autumnal rains. Fruit is the focus of Jamesʼs lens as it circles deep into the embrace of limbs and leaves.