Come together : forging publics in Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art

The Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) in Brisbane, Australia’s third largest city, recently staged ‘21st Century: Art of the First Decade’. The gallery spaces were replete with a commissioned slide by Carsten Höller, an installation of Rivane Neuenschwande’s I Wish Your Wish (2003), a table of white Legos, a room of purple balloons and other participatory or interactive artworks designed to engage multiple publics and encourage audience participation in a variety of ways. Many of the featured projects used day-to-day experiences and offered new conceptions about art practice and what they can elicit in their public – raise awareness about local issues, help audiences imagine different ways of negotiating their environs or experi-ence a museum in a new way. At times, the bottom floor galleries resembled a theme park – adults and children playing with Legos and using Höller’s slide. This article examines the benefits and limitations of such artistic interventions by relating the GoMA exhibition to Brisbane City Council’s campaign of ‘Together Brisbane’ (featuring images of Neunenschwande’s ribbons); a response to the devastation brought to the city and its surrounds in January 2011. During the Brisbane floods, GoMA’s basement was damaged, the museum closed and upon reopening, visitor numbers soared. In this context, GoMA’s use of engaged art practice – always verging on the ephemeral and ‘fun’ – has been used to project a wider notion of a collective urban public. What questions does this raise, not only regarding the cultural politics around the social and participatory ‘turn’ in art practice, but its use to address a much wider urban public in a moment of crisis.

Cutting on action : interference strategies in contemporary art practice

The domestication of creative software and hardware has been a significant factor in the recent proliferation of still and moving image creation. Booming numbers of amateur image-makers have the resources, skills and ambitions to create and distribute their work on a mass scale. At the same time, contemporary art seems increasingly dominated by ‘post-medium’ practices that adopt and adapt the representational techniques of mass culture, rather than overtly reject or oppose them. As a consequence of this network of forces, the field of image and video production is no longer the exclusive specialty of art and the mass media, and art may no longer be the most prominent watchdog of mass image culture. Intuitively and intentionally, contemporary artists are responding to these shifting conditions. From the position of a creative practitioner and researcher, this paper examines the strategies that contemporary artists use to engage with the changing relationships between image culture, lived experience and artistic practice. By examining the intersections between W.J.T. Mitchell’s detailed understanding of visual literacy and Jacques Derrida’s philosophical models of reading and writing, I identify ‘editing’ as a broad methodology that describes how practitioners creatively and critically engage with the field of still and moving images. My contention is that by emphasising the intersections of looking and making, ‘reading’ and ‘writing’, artists provide crucial jump cuts, pauses and distortions in the medley of our mediated experiences.

Destination know-where : a road map of a PhD journey in theatre for young people

Within contemporary performance arenas young people are fast becoming part of the vanguard of contemporary performance. Performativity, convergence and openness of form are key animating concepts in the landscape of Theatre for Young People (TYP). To ignore what is taking place in the making of performance for and by young people is to ignore the new possibilities in meaning-making and theatrical form. This thesis investigates the contemporary practice within the field of Theatre for Young People. Pivotal to the study are three hallmarks of contemporary performance – shifting notions of performativity; convergence articulated in the use of technology and theatrical genres; and Umberto Eco’s realisation of openness in form and authorship. The thesis draws from theatre and performance studies, globalisation theory and youth studies. Using interviews of Theatre for Young People practitioners and observation of thirty-nine performances, this thesis argues that young people and Theatre for Young People companies are among the leaders of a paradigm shift in developing and delivering performance works. In this period of rapid technological change young people are embracing and manipulating technology (sound, image, music) to represent whom they are and what they want to say. Positioned as ‘cultural catalysts’ (McRobbie, 1999), ‘the new pioneers’ (Mackay, 1993) and ‘first navigators’ (Rushkoff, 1996) young people are using mediatised culture and digital technologies with ease, placing them at the forefront of a shift in cultural production. The processes of deterritorialisation allows for the synthesis of new cultural and performance genres by fragmenting and hybridising traditional cultural categories and forms including the use of new media technologies. Almost half of all TYP performances now incorporate the technologies of reproduction. The relationship between live and mediatised forms, the visceral and the virtual is allowing young people to navigate and make meaning of cultural codes and cultural forms as well as to engage in an open dialogue with their audiences. This thesis examines the way young people are using elements of deterritorialisation to become producers of new performance genres. The thesis considers the contemporary situation in relation to issues of performance making and performance delivery within a global, networked and technology-driven society.

Contemporary Australia : women, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane 21 April–22 July 2012

'Contemporary Australia: Women' is the second in a series of triennial exhibitions at the Gallery of Modern Art in Queensland, providing a survey of contemporary art practices across the country. This exhibition's focus on women artists comes in the wake of a number of high profile international exhibitions looking at women artists in both contemporary and historical contexts. This review situates the exhibition within this field and considers its significance.

"What is contemporary art? A review of two books by Terry Smith'

What is contemporary art and what are the key components of contemporary culture? This review demonstrates where Terry Smith provides important answers to this question. The books thus help to improve understanding of how art has changed in recent decades and how a global culture now shapes its parameters. This review does not however concur that Smith provides a convincing case for a complete cultural paradigm transformation.

Wherefore art thou, inclusion? Analysing the development of inclusive education in New South Wales, Finland and Alberta

Over the last two decades, moves toward “inclusion” have prompted change in the formation of education policies, schooling structures and pedagogical practice. Yet, exclusion through the categorisation and segregation of students with diverse abilities has grown; particularly for students with challenging behaviour. This paper considers what has happened to inclusive education by focusing on three educational jurisdictions known to be experiencing different rates of growth in the identification of special educational needs: New South Wales (Australia), Alberta (Canada) and Finland (Europe). In our analysis, we consider the effects of competing policy forces that appear to thwart the development of inclusive schools in two of our case-study regions.

Affect and inarticulacy : the silent voice of the artist

This paper is based on a practice-led research project I conducted into the artist’s ‘voice’ as part of my PhD. The artist’s ‘voice’ is, I argue, comprised of a dual motivation—'articulate' representation and ‘inarticulate’ affect—two things which do not necessarily derive from the artist; two things that are in effect, trans-subjective. Within this paper I will explore the ‘inarticulate’ through the later Lyotard’s affect-phrase, in conjunction with the example of my own painting and digital arts practice, to show just how this unknown can be mapped and understood as generative. As a visual artist my primary interest is in abstraction; I am curious about the emergence of pictorial significance and content from affect’s seemingly unknowable space. My studio practice occasions a sense of borderlessness, and uncertainty where each work or body of work ‘leaks’ into the next, exploring the unfamiliar through the powerful and restless discursive silence of affect. It is within this silence that is performed the disturbing yet generative disconnect that is the affect-phrase. This I contend is apparent in art’s manifest materiality that is, its degree of abstraction and muteness. For the later Lyotard, affect disrupts articulation by injuring or violating the rules of the genres of discourse. For this to be evident one needs to attend to the subtleties of how affect may ‘animate’ discourse. In other words how affect’s discursive disruption activates art’s resistance to definitive interpretation generating even demanding diverse ‘meaning’ creation for art, the abstract, and critical discourse.

The state-of-the-art in personalized recommender systems for social networking

With the explosion of Web 2.0 application such as blogs, social and professional networks, and various other types of social media, the rich online information and various new sources of knowledge flood users and hence pose a great challenge in terms of information overload. It is critical to use intelligent agent software systems to assist users in finding the right information from an abundance of Web data. Recommender systems can help users deal with information overload problem efficiently by suggesting items (e.g., information and products) that match users’ personal interests. The recommender technology has been successfully employed in many applications such as recommending films, music, books, etc. The purpose of this report is to give an overview of existing technologies for building personalized recommender systems in social networking environment, to propose a research direction for addressing user profiling and cold start problems by exploiting user-generated content newly available in Web 2.0.

Macrophonics

Artists: Donna Hewitt, Julian Knowles, Wade Marynowsky, Tim Bruniges, Avril Huddy Macrophonics presents new Australian work emerging from the leading edge of where performance interface research is taking place. The program addresses the emerging dialogue between traditional media and emerging digital media, as well as the dialogue across a broad range of musical traditions. Due to recent technological developments, we have reached a point artistically where the relationships between media and genres are being completely re-evaluated. This program presents a cross-section of responses to this condition. Each of the works in the program foregrounds an approach to performance that integrates sensors and novel performance control devices and/or examine how machines can be made musical in performance. Containing works for voice, electronics, video, movement and sensor based gestural controllers, it critically surveys the interface between humans and machines in performance. From sensor based microphones and guitars, performance a/v, to post-rock dronescapes and experimental electronica; Macrophonics provides a broad and engaging survey of new performance approaches in mediatised environments.

Alter/Asians : Asian-Australian Identities in Art, Media and Popular Culture

Exploration of how Australia and Asia are intertwined in everyday culture, and in the imagined worlds of Australians of all backgrounds. Investigates Asian cultural production of art, literature, media and performance that embody Asian social and cultural experiences. Includes endnotes, bibliography and index. Ang and Chalmers work in the School of Cultural Studies at University of Western Sydney. Law and Thomas are Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellows at Australian National University and the Research Centre in Inter-communal Studies respectively.

The power of art, the power of entertainment

The question of the relationship between culture and power continues to exercise researchers. In this paper I argue that it is useful to consider the differences between ‘art’ and ‘entertainment’ as systems of culture, each involving a distinct set of power relationships between producers and audiences. Art wants to change audiences; entertainment wants to be changed by audiences. From these different starting points a series of differences unfold in the power possessed by producers and audiences. Artists pride themselves in not involving the audience in the process of making art. By contrast, entertainment wants audiences to contribute to the making of texts. As to the question of who controls the range of what forms of culture are available, it seems that entertainment consumers – unlike art consumers – are ill-disciplined. Historical evidence demonstrates that if legal corporate providers do not offer the kinds of entertainment they want, they will turn to illegal sources. The different ways in which ‘art’ and ‘entertainment’ function as cultural systems suggest that we must rethink our positions on ‘media power’.

Pieces of a city : the art of making speculative cities, bodies, & texts

This practice-led doctorate involved the development of a collection – a bricolage – of interwoven fragments of literary texts and visual imagery explor-ing questions of speculative fiction, urban space and embodiment. As a sup-plement to the creative work, I also developed an exegesis, using a combina-tion of theoretical and contextual analysis combined with critical reflections on my creative process and outputs. An emphasis on issues of creative practice and a sustained investigation into an aesthetics of fragmentation and assem-blage is organised around the concept and methodology of bricolage, the eve-ryday art of ‘making do’. The exegesis also addresses my interest in the city and urban forms of subjectivity and embodiment through the use of a range of theorists, including Michel de Certeau and Elizabeth Grosz.

The naturally imperfect form : investigations of the application of digital sculpting methods - extracted art : incorporating and translating ‘found art’ into the medium of digital sculpture

This dissertation analyses how physical objects are translated into digital artworks using techniques which can lead to ‘imperfections’ in the resulting digital artwork that are typically removed to arrive at a ‘perfect’ final representation. The dissertation discusses the adaptation of existing techniques into an artistic workflow that acknowledges and incorporates the imperfections of translation into the final pieces. It presents an exploration of the relationship between physical and digital artefacts and the processes used to move between the two. The work explores the 'craft' of digital sculpting and the technology used in producing what the artist terms ‘a naturally imperfect form’, incorporating knowledge of traditional sculpture, an understanding of anatomy and an interest in the study of bones (Osteology). The outcomes of the research are presented as a series of digital sculptural works, exhibited as a collection of curiosities in multiple mediums, including interactive game spaces, augmented reality (AR), rapid prototype prints (RP) and video displays.

The politics and poetics of coexistence : experiments at the intersection of art and environmental engineering

This research project explores how interdisciplinary art practices can provide ways for questioning and envisaging alternative modes of coexistence between humans and the non-humans who together, make up the environment. As a practiceled project, it combines a body of creative work (50%) and this exegesis (50%). My interdisciplinary artistic practice appropriates methods and processes from science and engineering and merges them into artistic contexts for critical and poetic ends. By blending pseudo-scientific experimentation with creative strategies like visual fiction, humour, absurd public performance and scripted audience participation, my work engages with a range of debates around ecology. This exegesis details the interplay between critical theory relating to these debates, the work of other creative practitioners and my own evolving artistic practice. Through utilising methods and processes drawn from my prior career in water engineering, I present an interdisciplinary synthesis that seeks to promote improved understandings of the causes and consequences of our ecological actions and inactions.

Carbon dioxide reforming of methane to produce synthesis gas over metal-supported catalysts: State of the art

Carbon dioxide reforming of methane produces synthesis gas with a low hydrogen to carbon monoxide ratio, which is desirable for many industrial synthesis processes. This reaction also has very important environmental implications since both methane and carbon dioxide contribute to the greenhouse effect. Converting these gases into a valuable feedstock may significantly reduce the atmospheric emissions of CO2 and CH4. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review on the thermodynamics, catalyst selection and activity, reaction mechanism, and kinetics of this important reaction. Recently, research has centered on the development of catalysts and the feasible applications of this reaction in industry. Group VIII metals supported on oxides are found to be effective for this reason. However, carbon deposition causing catalyst deactivation is the major problem inhibiting the industrial application of the CO2/CH4 reaction. Ni-based catalysts impregnated on certain supports show carbon-free operation and thus attract much attention. To develop an effective catalyst for CO2 reforming of CH4 and accelerate the commercial application of the reaction, the following are identified to be the most important areas for future work: (1) selection of metal and support and studying the effect of their interaction on catalyst activity; (2) the effect of different promoter on catalyst activity; (3) the reaction mechanism and kinetics; and (4) pilot reactor performance and scale-up operation.