The culture of contemporary writers' festivals

This thesis examines the culture of contemporary writers’ festivals in an international context. In the last five decades writers’ festivals have emerged in cities across the world, and during this time they have expanded their literary discussions and debates to include numerous other topics of broad interest to society. To examine the expanded popularity and function of writers’ festivals, this thesis establishes a new vantage point for theorising the content now typically generated by these events using concepts in urban festivals and public culture research. Importantly, the new vantage point addresses the limitations of current commentary on writers’ festivals which routinely claim they trivialize literature, and more generally, contribute to the decline of public culture. The thesis presents two case studies: one on the Brisbane Writers Festival in Australia and the other on the International Festival of Authors in Toronto, Canada. The first case study, which focuses on the 2007 Brisbane Writers Festival, illustrates the many overlapping and often conflicting discourses as well as opinions productively discussed and debated at writers’ festivals. Key topic discussed and debated at the Festival include local topics about the host city—its history, literature and politics, as well as broader literary, political and celebrity culture topics. The diversity of topics discussed at the 2007 Brisbane Writers Festival is typical of the majority of writers’ festivals similarly located outside the largest geographic centres of global literary production and circulation, and designated as ‘peripheral’ festivals in this research. The second case study on Toronto’s International Festival of Authors examines the ways in which the 2006 Festival almost exclusively focussed on literary and celebrity culture discourses, and promoted itself on these terms. The 2006 International Festival of Authors’ discussion and debate of a narrow range of topics is typical of the few writers’ festivals located in global centres of literary production and circulation, and unlike ‘peripheral’ festivals they are not experiencing the same growth in number or popularity. The aim of these ‘international’ Festivals is not to democratise their elite literary beginnings, but rather to promote ‘literature’ as a niche brand for quality writing that is valid on a global scale. This thesis will assert that while all writers’ festivals are influenced by the marketing desires of publishing companies, the aim of international writers’ festivals in marketing to a virtually and globally connected elite literary audience makes them more susceptible to experiencing declines in audience and author participation.

Artful determination : "state of the art" and PCME Ltd v. Goyen COntrols Co. UK Ltd

In a recent decision by Mr Justice Laddie, a patent was held anticipated by, inter alia, prior use of a device which fell within the claims of the patent in suit, even though its circuitry was enclosed in resin. The anticipating invention had been "made available to the public" within the terms of section 2 (2) of the Patents Act 1977 because its essential integers would have been revealed by an interesting character, the "skilled forensic engineer".

V2V/V2I augmented maps : state-of-the-art and contribution to real-time crash risk assessment

A number of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) are currently being released on the market, providing safety functions to the drivers such as collision avoidance, adaptive cruise control or enhanced night-vision. These systems however are inherently limited by their sensory range: they cannot gather information from outside this range, also called their “perceptive horizon”. Cooperative systems are a developing research avenue that aims at providing extended safety and comfort functionalities by introducing vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) wireless communications to the road actors. This paper presents the problematic of cooperative systems, their advantages and contributions to road safety and exposes some limitations related to market penetration, sensors accuracy and communications scalability. It explains the issues of how to implement extended perception, a central contribution of cooperative systems. The initial steps of an evaluation of data fusion architectures for extended perception are exposed.

Customers behaving badly : a state of the art review, research agenda and implications for practitioners

The purpose of this paper is to highlight important issues in the study of dysfunctional customer behavior and to provide a research agenda to inspire, guide, and enthuse. Through a critical evaluation of existing research, the aim is to highlight key issues and to present potentially worthy avenues for future study.

Project alliancing at National Museum of Australia : the collaborative process

Project alliancing is a new alternative to traditional project delivery systems, especially in the commercial building sector. The Collaborative Process is a theoretical model of people and systems characteristics that are required to reduce the adversarial nature of most construction projects. Although developed separately, both are responses to the same pressures. Project alliancing was just used successfully to complete the National Museum of Australia. This project was analyzed as a case study to determine the extent to which it could be classified as a “collaborative project”. Five key elements of The Collaborative Process were reviewed and numerous examples from the management of this project were cited that support the theoretical recommendations of this model. In the case of this project, significant added value was delivered to the client and many innovations resulted from the collective work of the parties to the contract. It was concluded that project alliances for commercial buildings offer many advantages over traditional project delivery systems, which are related to increasing the levels of collaboration among a project management team.

An example of developing a business model for information and communication technologies (ICT) adoption on construction projects – the National Museum of Australia project

Effective use of information and communication technologies (ICT) is necessary for delivering efficiency and improved project delivery in the construction industry. Convincing clients or contracting organisations to embrace ICT is a difficult task, there are few templates of an ICT business model for the industry to use. ICT application in the construction industry is relatively low compared to automotive and aerospace industries. The National Museum of Australia project provides a unique opportunity for investigating and reporting on this deficiency in publicly available knowledge. Concentrates on the business model content and objectives, briefly indicates the evaluation framework that was used to evaluate ICT effectiveness.

The symbiosis of improvised and rehearsed elements in the creation of contemporary jazz ensemble music

This research investigates the symbiotic relationship between composition and improvisation and the notion of improvisation itself. With a specific interest in developing, extending and experimenting with the relationship of improvisation within predetermined structures, the creative work component of this research involved composing six new works with varying approaches for The Andrea Keller Quartet and guest improvisers, for performance on a National Australian tour. This is documented in the CD recording Galumphing Round the Nation - Collaborations Tour 2009. The exegesis component is intended to run alongside the creative work and discusses the central issues surrounding improvisation in an ensemble context and the subject of composing for improvisers. Specifically, it questions the notion that when music emphasises a higher ratio of spontaneous to pre-determined elements, and is exposed to the many variables of a performance context, particularly through its incorporation of visitant improvisers, the resultant music should potentially be measurably altered with each performance. This practice-led research demonstrates the effect of concepts such as individuality, variability within context, and the interactive qualities of contemporary jazz ensemble music. Through the analysis and comparison of the treatment of the six pieces over thirteen performances with varying personnel, this exegesis proposes that, despite the expected potential for spontaneity in contemporary jazz music, the presence of established patterns, the desire for familiarity and the intuitive tendency towards accepted protocols ensure that the music which emerges is not as mutable as initially anticipated.

State of the art and future challenges for information literacy research

This short paper focuses on strategic issues and important research questions.

Jams, jelly beans and the fruits of passion - art book (26 Pages)

Statement: Jams, Jelly Beans and the Fruits of Passion Let us search, instead, for an epistemology of practice implicit in the artistic, intuitive processes which some practitioners do bring to situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness, and value conflict. (Schön 1983, p40) Game On was born out of the idea of creative community; finding, networking, supporting and inspiring the people behind the face of an industry, those in the mist of the machine and those intending to join. We understood this moment to be a pivotal opportunity to nurture a new emerging form of game making, in an era of change, where the old industry models were proving to be unsustainable. As soon as we started putting people into a room under pressure, to make something in 48hrs, a whole pile of evolutionary creative responses emerged. People refashioned their craft in a moment of intense creativity that demanded different ways of working, an adaptive approach to the craft of making games – small – fast – indie. An event like the 48hrs forces participants’ attention onto the process as much as the outcome. As one game industry professional taking part in a challenge for the first time observed: there are three paths in the genesis from idea to finished work: the path that focuses on mechanics; the path that focuses on team structure and roles, and the path that focuses on the idea, the spirit – and the more successful teams put the spirit of the work first and foremost. The spirit drives the adaptation, it becomes improvisation. As Schön says: “Improvisation consists on varying, combining and recombining a set of figures within the schema which bounds and gives coherence to the performance.” (1983, p55). This improvisational approach is all about those making the games: the people and the principles of their creative process. This documentation evidences the intensity of their passion, determination and the shit that they are prepared to put themselves through to achieve their goal – to win a cup full of jellybeans and make a working game in 48hrs. 48hr is a project where, on all levels, analogue meets digital. This concept was further explored through the documentation process. All of these pictures were taken with a 1945 Leica III camera. The use of this classic, film-based camera, gives the images a granularity and depth, this older slower technology exposes the very human moments of digital creativity. ____________________________ Schön, D. A. 1983, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, Basic Books, New York