Blank page : the location of creativity

Whether one writes in the field of literary studies or that of creative writing, one begins with the 'blank page'. The field of interest I am calling the 'blank page' has implications for the discipline of creative writing, and can be useful to theorising creativity, writing practice, and pedagogy. One creates out of, or into, the 'blank page '; one's practice is partly determined by how one theorises, however subconsciously, this blank page (how does one start? how blank is the page? how have others figured the blank page); and one teaches students who have to face literal blank pages. ln this paper I will consider how the theorisation of the blank page in literary studies addresses such creative-writing issues. I will then engage D.W. Winnicott's psychoanalytic theory on 'the location of play' to consider the implications of conceptualising the blank page as 'the location of writing'. A Winnicottian approach to the blank page, as a space akin to the potential space of play, allows various insights into the process of writing, especially as a proccss involving paradox.

Direct current electric potential in an anisotropic half-space with vertical contact containing a conductive 3D body

Detailed studies of anomalous conductors in otherwise homogeneous media have been modelled. Vertical contacts form common geometries in galvanic studies when describing geological formations with different electrical conductivities on either side. However, previous studies of vertical discontinuities have been mainly concerned with isotropic environments. In this paper, we deal with the effect on the electric potentials, such as mise-`a-la-masse anomalies, due to a conductor near a vertical contact between two anisotropic regions. We also demonstrate the interactive effects when the conductive body is placed across the vertical contact. This problem is normally very difficult to solve by the traditional numerical methods. The integral equations for the electric potential in anisotropic half-spaces are established. Green’s function is obtained using the reflection and transmission image method in which five images are needed to fit the boundary conditions on the vertical interface and the air-earth surface. The effects of the anisotropy of the environments and the conductive body on the electric potential are illustrated with the aid of several numerical examples.

'Energetic space' : literary experience and learning

This essay is part of an interdisciplinary research project into literary aesthetics and its relationship with pedagogy. The paper brings cognitive and evolutionary scientific perspectives to bear on literary and cultural theory to address the aesthetic effect (defined as the transporting and transformative power of the literary text) and its potential personal or civic benefits. The paper offers non-transcendentalist explanations for the aesthetic experience, viewing it less as a privileged category of feeling than as an experience available to all symbolic beings. The paper also proposes an original thesis about the virtual and transformative space of reading as one that ultimately epitomises intellectual freedom. The inquiry is lent urgency by the current cultural and political climate in which not only literature but also literary studies, despite its long association with education and its prominent place in the Culture Wars, is in institutional decline.

A state space based approach in non-linear hemodynamic response modeling with fMRI data

In this paper we use the modified and integrated version of the balloon model in the analysis of fMRI data. We propose a new state space model realization for this balloon model and represent it with the standard A,B,C and D matrices widely used in system theory. A second order Padé approximation with equal numerator and denominator degree is used for the time delay approximation in the modeling of the cerebral blood flow. The results obtained through numerical solutions showed that the new state space model realization is in close agreement to the actual modified and integrated version of the balloon model. This new system theoretic formulation is likely to open doors to a novel way of analyzing fMRI data with real time robust estimators. With further development and validation, the new model has the potential to devise a generalized measure to make a significant contribution to improve the diagnosis and treatment of clinical scenarios where the brain functioning get altered. Concepts from system theory can readily be used in the analysis of fMRI data and the subsequent synthesis of filters and estimators.

Placing space/time through photography’s old and new technologies

The discovery that an impressively strong 3-dimensional effect in a 2-dimensional photographic representation of natural outdoor scenes occurs when a single camera is directed around one point in the scene, thus drawing into relief the subject of attention and blurring the surrounding space, has important implications for understanding basic processes in 3-dimensional vision. For the development of new ways for generating 3D effects in motion and static representations of scenes we might well learn from photography’s old technologies, as well as digital technologies of the static print, which have yet to release the full impact of their potential in the representation of motion and space.

Predatory vision : 3D imaging and the transformation of screen-space

Despite Wheatstone’s academic interests in the device, the stereoscope languished somewhat as an optical toy. Yet the advent of 3D screen-spaces for home and mass entertainment suggests today’s consumers and practitioners of screen culture hold the view that screen culture will be ‘improved’ through 3D imaging technologies. Like cinema and photography, stereoscopic 3D imaging has the potential to transform visual culture. But what is transformed, as optics and electronic imaging techniques deliver Alice in Wonderland in 3D? This paper links the advent of 3D cinema and TV to the notion that vision is itself a ‘technology of the visual’. As such, our innate binocular stereoacuity is ripe for exploitation by developers of 3D imaging technologies. I argue that contemporary 3D imaging marks an epistemological visual-perceptual shift: toward screenspaces becoming spaces for potential action. Such a shift entails seeing as doing rather than seeing as thinking. 3D imaging exploits binocular vision’s spatial acuity (stereopsis), but is effective only for objects within near distal space. The 3D effect tapers off dramatically for objects only some metres away, because the two retinal images lack significant lateral disparity (difference) to trigger stereopsis: the imagery flattens out and becomes ‘monoscopic’. Information available from conventional 2D media entails a peculiarly unspecified spatiality. Perceptually, the contents of a conventional cinematic screen are like those of a painting: they are situated neither near nor far, and constitute a shared and ambiguous visual space. Our own eyes are like those of a cat: frontally placed for predatory action. The visuality of 3D screen-spaces assumes a perceptuality of the near-by and close at hand, since this is the structure of the visible information to which stereopsis is adapted to respond. Noting the binocular acuity of predatory animals, as well as some etymological links, this paper examines the implications of perceptually ‘capturing’ the sensation of visually solid objects in one’s immediate space. Stereopsis is about decisive action within an immediate environment: but it also presupposes the single viewpoint of an active observer toward which the 3D imagery is targeted.

Home space : youth identification in the Greek diaspora

This article draws on a larger study on schooling and diaspora using the case of the Greek community of Melbourne, Australia to examine processes of identification of young people with access to minority cultures. The Melbourne Greek community is long-standing, diverse, and well-established. Because of this, the young people involved in this study provide insights into cultural processes not related in any direct sense to migration. In most cases, it was their grandparents or great-grandparents who migrated. Many have 1 parent with no ancestral link to Greece. In this context, the motivations for and ways of expressing Greekness have the potential to illustrate identification as ambivalent. This article explores the centrality of “home” in these young people's representations of self. Following de Certeau, the argument is made that their everyday experience can be interpreted as an act of “anti-discipline.” As “users” of the Greekness, they are bequeathed through family, community, and schooling; and they use “tactics” of cultural redeployment that allow creative resistance and reinterpretation of both “Greekness” and “Australianness.”

Critical Indigenous pedagogy meets transformative education in a third space learning experience

This paper explores the philosophical and theoretical foundations of a first year unit in Aboriginal Studies offered at the University of Notre Dame in Fremantle. It explains how the current approach is inclusive of transformative and critical Indigenous pedagogies and taught from an evolving ‘third space’. Each philosophical underpinning is considered briefly, with reference to informal feedback received from students in 2014. What is suggested is that AB100 is indeed transformational for students in ways that are potentially ongoing in both professional and personallives. Given the focus of the University of Notre Dame on training students for the professions this has implications for potential ways of teaching and learning that may require uncapping the usual teaching and learning frameworks to actively incorporate transformative and Indigenous pedagogies. Recommended is the need for further investigation and research into the impact of this approach to learning via an evaluation framework based upon the authors PhD outcomes

Distinct kinetics of molecular gelation in a confined space and its relation to the structure and property of thin gel films

Thin films of molecular gels formed in a confined space have potential applications in transdermal delivery, artificial skin, molecular electronics, etc. The microstructures and properties of thin gel films can be significantly different from those of their bulk counterparts. However, so far a comprehensive understanding of the effects of spatial confinement on the molecular gelation kinetics, fiber network structure and related mechanical properties is still lacking. In this work, using rheological techniques, we investigated the effect of one-dimensional confinement on the formation kinetics of fiber networks in the molecular gelation process. Fractal analyses of the kinetic information in terms of an extended Dickinson model enabled us to describe quantitatively the distinct kinetic signature of molecular gelation. The structural features derived from gelation kinetics support well the fractal patterns of the fiber networks acquired by optical and electron microscopy. With the kinetics-structure correlation, we can gain an in-depth understanding of the confinement-induced differences in the structure and consequently the mechanical properties of a model molecular gelling system. Particularly, the confinement induced structural transition, from a three-dimensional, dense and compact spherulitic network composed of highly branched fibers to a quasi-two-dimensional sparse spherulitic network composed of less branched fibers and entangled fibrils at the boundary areas, renders a gel film to become less stiff but more ductile. Our study suggests here a new strategy of engineering the fiber network microstructure to achieve functional gel films with unusual but useful properties.

Indelible shame? News reporting of non-convictions in digital space

This paper examines the role of media in publicising the names of people who receive a non-conviction for a minor crime. It positions the news media’s ability to “name and shame” people who appear before the courts as a powerful cultural practice, rather than adopt a widely celebrated Fourth Estate view of the press as a watchdog on the judicial process. The research draws on interviews conducted in two regional centres of Victoria, Australia, with those involved in news coverage of very minor crimes where non-convictions were imposed. Their spoken words reveal a range of tensions linked to reporting non-convictions in the digital age. In the eyes of the law, a non-conviction means that an offender has an opportunity to rehabilitate away from the public gaze. However, the news media ‘s ability to name such offenders online has the potential to impose a lasting “mark of shame” in digital space that can prevent them gaining employment or housing, and damage their social standing and relationships. We live in a media-saturated culture in which the vast majority of people rely on news media for information about judicial proceedings and in turn, the news media constructs public understanding of the law through the way it represents crime and court processes. This paper argues that traditional understanding of the nexus between the judicial system and the Fourth Estate fails to acknowledge the news media’s considerable power outside the officially recognised operation of the open justice relationship, and that this deserves attention in the digital age

The potential contribution of intermediary organizations for implementation of school mental health

Questions persist regarding implementation of mental health promotion, prevention, and early intervention initiatives in schools. To date, attention has targeted the ‘Whats’ and ‘Hows’ in design and implementation. Ongoing clarification of ‘Who’ the key proponents are working in this space receives less consideration. This paper presents outcomes from a national colloquium involving leaders from organizations committed to school-based mental health practice in Australia. The aim of the colloquium was to introduce the concept of Intermediary Organizations (IOs) examining this for its potential contribution to improved mental health and school improvement. The central challenge for IOs is implementation, that is, assisting in knowledge mobilization connecting research to policy and practice. The colloquium discussion was grounded in an understanding of public value as an organizing principle for improving public sector effectiveness. The participants evaluated the nature, role, and potential contribution of IOs. Three key issues emerged as being central to effective implementation: health promotion and prevention, relational ethics, and evidence-based practice.

Urban agriculture up-scaled: economically and socially productive public green space

'Space is fundamental in any form of commnunal Life; space is fundamental in any exercise of power' (Foucault & Rabinow, 1984: 252). Public green space has the potential to provide one our last remaining free sources of access to open land, clean air, vegetation, water and soil within the urban realm. In most developed countries, this space - due to complex, interconnected legacies of enclosure, privatisation, population growth, urbanisation and 'modernisation' - typically exists as controlled, contrived, scenic picturesque landscapes, unavailable for forms ofcivic, productive and generative activities at scale, such as public urban agriculture. Narrow assessment of green space's on-going financial and maintenance costs fail to recognise wider gains (such as physical and psychological wellness, increased property value , decreased crime rates) (Maller, 2002· Woolley, 2004; Sherer, 2006) and despite attempts, studies that present financial benefits of green spaces have not yet managed to stem the tide of budget cut and reduced spending. Perhaps more importantly, income-generating strategies within public green spaces have not been sufficiently explored. Such approaches could help to develop more convincing arguments analogous with the measurement metrics and quantitative language threatening green space's optimisation and survival. By 'up-scaling' public green space's productive capacity within an ethical framework, we have the potential to greatly enhance social and environmental performance - shifting the existing paradigm from passive to active, consumptive to generative and centralised to collective.