The fine art of conversation: the pragmatic skills of school-aged children with hearing loss

This chapter synthesizes the findings of a number of recent studies conducted by the authors. The focus will be on spoken interactions between school-aged students who are deaf and hard of hearing, and their hearing peers. Many of the participants in these studies have worn hearing aids and/or cochlear implants since infancy and have been educated in inclusive settings. The context of these studies includes face-to-face interactions during a question/answer game, in free conversation, and during an expository task. This chapter will examine the verbal and nonverbal conversational skills 'of these students within these different contexts. Using a range of quantitative and qualitative analyses, the development of pragmatic skills in students with hearing loss will be documented, and possible implications for language support and the development of social skills will be discussed.

Crafting organization

The recent shift in attention away from organization studies as science has allowed for consideration of new ways of thinking about both organization and organizing and has led to several recent attempts to 'bring down' organizational theorizing. In this paper, we extend calls for organization to be represented as a creative process by considering organization as craft. Organizational craft, we argue, is attractive, accessible, malleable, reproducible, and marketable. It is also a tangible way of considering organization studies with irreverence. We draw on the hierarchy of distinctions among fine art, decorative art, and craft to suggest that understanding the organization of craft assists in complicating our understanding of marginality. We illustrate our argument by drawing on the case of a contemporary Australian craftworks and marketplace known initially as the Meat Market Craft Centre ('MMCC') and then, until its recent closure, as Metro! ‡ Stella Minahan was a board member and then the Chief Executive Officer of the Metro! Craft Centre.

Organization, decoration

While organizational decoration has been of interest to those who study organizational artefacts, we suggest four ways in which decoration is worthy of fuller attention in organizational studies. First, decoration, ornament and embellishment are not only what we see, but also what we do as managers, consultants, writers and designers of both physical and project spaces. Second, and drawing on the art/craft debate, we note that decoration occupies contested and even liminal aesthetic position and that ‘decorative art’ lies betwixt and between fine art and craft. Neither fully accepted nor fully marginalized, decoration is ‘only applied’ and embodies shifting tensions between form and function. Third, we review the particular negotiations of these tensions at the Bauhaus, a controversial and highly influential aesthetic organization in early 20th century Germany. Fourth, we suggest that decoration, like disorganization, provides a source of complication for organizational studies that are neither pure nor parsimonious.

High culture, high context: online strategies of indigenous cultural enterprises

Indigenous Australians experience a great demand for their culture, but do not benefit sufficiently from its commercialization. Recent developments in digital and Internet technology have presented new commercial opportunities for mainstream enterprises and for greater interaction between global cultures. Indigenous Australians recognized these opportunities and have adopted Internet technology across a range of sectors. Very little is known about Indigenous -owned enterprises and their e-commerce practices, particularly in the lucrative cultural sector. This paper draws on a national online survey and enterprise case studies to examine approaches to, and perceptions of Internet commerce in Indigenous-owned culture sector enterprises. Cultural products (such as art, craft, dance, theatre and cultural tours) are not traditionally aligned with e-commerce which favours intangible and standardised, easily comparable products. However some Indigenous enterprises have been highly successful at increasing income and viability through the online medium. Because of the complex preconditions for selling Indigenous culture, transactions are rarely conducted fully on the Web. The research found that in examples of successful Indigenous e-commerce, cultural enterprises first establish social and cultural contexts before achieving economic gains. Social contexts are built online through relationships and communication, which underscore reputation, and transactions as 'experiences'. Online construction of a product's cultural context is used to ensure 'authenticity', which can act as a subtle alternative to online branding and trust.

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.

Glance

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.

Gyration

European Renaissance and Romantic landscape appeared in vistas. The conditions of the industrial revolution and, according to Patrick Maynard and Jonathon Crary, the film camera especially, led to a Modernist re-vision vividly recorded in Xavier Herbert’s contrary Modernist vision, prompted by seeing the Australian bush, its ‘... stunted trees, the mulga and the wilga and the gimlet gum, doing a kind of dance, spinning past, seeming to swing away from the train to the horizon and race ahead, to come back...the same set of trees in endless gyration’.

Global positioning systems : altered representations of place

Global Positioning Systems: altered representations of place, presents an exegesis from the practice led research submitted for the degree of Master of Fine Art at the Victorian College of the Arts. The thesis proposes a particular understanding of altered states of consciousness that is relevant to my practice.  This is outlined by Charles Tart and supported by the Altered States of Consciousness Consortium and explores a psycho-aesthetic experiences and does not involved transcendental states or spiritual associations. These experiences are transformed by an exhaustive application of digital technologies, where mosaic-like complexity emerges that induces sustained disorientation and surrounds a viewer in an immersive space.

Global positioning systems: altered representations of place

Solo exhibition of Master of Fine Art practice

Technology as collaborator in somatic photographic practice

This article will address several areas of research. Firstly it will propose that a dance experience can translate into another discipline such as visual art. In my visual art practice I combine both photography, which is traditionally seen as a still medium, and performance in order to create a new form of embodiment. By acknowledging the inter-relationship between the body and the camera my project seeks to challenge a perceived separation between the disciplines. Fly Rhythm, an exhibition of 13 photographs and one video projection was conceived through a performative somatic process. I have developed the term ‘somatic photography’ to articulate subjective experiences in the context of my process of imaging movement in stillness. My thinking has been informed by visual art practice exploring movement and meaning using video and an older history of performance as a dancer and choreographer. I am primarily interested in movement initiated by a bodily response to light through still rather than moving imagery although artists such as Maya Deren whose films explore themes of time and space have influenced me. In my practice the term ‘somatic photography’ helps articulate the act of taking photographs, which is how meaning is being created rather than purely in the finished art works. The term somatic photography puts emphasis on the action of taking the image. Through using a custom made camera I was able to negotiate time and space as a dancer and create a visual drawing that talked to both choreography and fine art practice. This article engages with the following ideas: somatic photography, photography as choreography, body memory, ageing body, technology as collaborator, gallery interface, screen interface and movement.

Technology as collaborator in somatic photographic practice

This visual essay will address several areas of research. First, it will propose that a dance experience can translate into another discipline such as visual art. In my visual art practice I combine both photography, which is traditionally seen as a still medium, and performance in order to create a new form of embodiment. By acknowledging the interrelationship between the body and the camera my project seeks to challenge a perceived separation between the disciplines. The following images were conceived through a performative somatic process, which I define in the course of this article. Through using a custom made camera I was able to negotiate time and space to create visual drawings that talk to both choreography and fine art practice.