Exploring sustainability in literature for the Australian curriculum : an annotated guide

The Australian Curriculum: English (AC:E) is being implemented in Queensland and asks teachers and curriculum designers to incorporate the cross curriculum priority of Sustainability. This paper examines some texts suitable for inclusion in classroom study and suggests some companion texts that may be studied alongside them, including online resources by the ABC and those developed online for the Australian Curriculum. We also suggest some formative and summative assessment possibilities for responding to the selected works in this guide. We have endeavoured to investigate literature that enable students to explore and produce text types across the three AC:E categories: persuasive, imaginative and informative. The selected texts cover traditional novels, novellas, Sci-fi and speculative fiction, non-fiction, documentary, feature film and animation. Some of the texts reviewed here also cover the other cross curriculum priorities including texts by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers and some which also include Asian representations. We have also indicated which of the AC:E the general capabilities are addressed in each text.

Australian animated feature films

Building on and bringing up to date the material presented in the first installment of Directory of World Cinema : Australia and New Zealand, this volume continues the exploration of the cinema produced in Australia and New Zealand since the beginning of the twentieth century. Among the additions to this volume are in-depth treatments of the locations that feature prominently in the countries' cinema. Essays by leading critics and film scholars consider the significance in films of the outback and the beach, which is evoked as a liminal space in Long Weekend and a symbol of death in Heaven's Burning, among other films. Other contributions turn the spotlight on previously unexplored genres and key filmmakers, including Jane Campion, Rolf de Heer, Charles Chauvel, and Gillian Armstrong.

Contours in Motion

My practice-led research explores and maps workflows for generating experimental creative work involving inertia based motion capture technology. Motion capture has often been used as a way to bridge animation and dance resulting in abstracted visuals outcomes. In early works this process was largely done by rotoscoping, reference footage and mechanical forms of motion capture. With the evolution of technology, optical and inertial forms of motion capture are now more accessible and able to accurately capture a larger range of complex movements. The creative work titled “Contours in Motion” was the first in a series of studies on captured motion data used to generating experimental visual forms that reverberate in space and time. With the source or ‘seed’ comes from using an Xsens MVN - Inertial Motion Capture system to capture spontaneous dance movements, with the visual generation conducted through a customised dynamics simulation. The aim of the creative work was to diverge way from a standard practice of using particle system and/or a simple re-targeting of the motion data to drive a 3d character as a means to produce abstracted visual forms. To facilitate this divergence a virtual dynamic object was tether to a selection of data points from a captured performance. The proprieties of the dynamic object were then adjusted to balance the influences from the human movement data with the influence of computer based randomization. The resulting outcome was a visual form that surpassed simple data visualization to project the intent of the performer’s movements into a visual shape itself. The reported outcomes from this investigation have contributed to a larger study on the use of motion capture in the generative arts, furthering the understanding of and generating theories on practice.

Adopting virtual production for animated filmaking

Virtual Production is a rapidly growing approach to filmmaking that utilises 3D software, virtual camera systems and motion capture technology to visually interact with a real-time virtual environment. The use of these technologies has continued to increase, however, little has been done to document the various approaches for incorporating this new film making technique into a production. This practice-led research project outlines the development of virtual production in the entertainment industry and explores possible strategies for adopting aspects of this new film making technique into the production of short animated films. The outcome is an improved understanding of possible strategies that could be utilised to assist producers and directors with the transition into this new film making technique. - See more at: http://dl4.globalstf.org/?wpsc-product=adopting-virtual-production-for-animated-filmaking#sthash.DLzRph4Z.dpuf

Medium and mode : relationships between visual experience and perception in an installation arts practice

Working primarily within the natural landscape, this practice-led research project explored connections between the artist's visual and perceptual experience of a journey or place while simultaneously emphasizing the capacity for digital media to create a perceptual dissonance. By exploring concepts of time, viewpoint, duration of sequences and the manipulation of traditional constructs of stop-frame animation, the practical work created a cognitive awareness of the elements of the journey through optical sensations. The work allowed an opportunity to reflect on the nature of visual experience and its mediation through images. The project recontextualized the selected mediums of still photography, animation and projection within contemporary display modes of multiple screen installations by analysing relationships between the experienced and the perceived. The resulting works added to current discourse on the interstices between still and moving imagery in a digital world.

Managing creativity on the margins : a comparative study of Beijing’s Songzhuang Art District and Hangzhou’s White Horse Lake Creative Eco-City

In the past decade the ‘creative cluster’ has become a driver of urban renewal in China. Many cluster developments attract human capital and investment to post-industrial spaces. This paper looks at two developments which are more post-agricultural than post-industrial: the first is Songzhuang, a large scale contemporary art community situated on the eastern fringe of Beijing, the second is Hangzhou’s White Horse Lake Creative Eco-City, a ‘mixed variety’ cluster model which integrates elements of art, fashion, design and animation. The common factor in both cases is how they came into existence. In both districts urban creative workers moved into a rural environment. Drawing on interviews with planners, officials, and residents we investigate the challenges of sustaining such fringe clusters.

The cooling steam of the Polar Express : historical origins, properties and implications of performance capture

As the first academically rigorous interrogation of the generation of performance within the global frame of the motion capture volume, this research presents a historical contextualisation and develops and tests a set of first principles through an original series of theoretically informed, practical exercises to guide those working in the emergent space of performance capture. It contributes a new understanding of the framing of performance in The Omniscient Frame, and initiates and positions performance capture as a new and distinct interdisciplinary discourse in the fields of theatre, animation, performance studies and film.

Bluebird AR

"What is Bluebird AR? Bluebird AR was the ABC's alternate reality drama set around the leak of Bluebird, a clandestine geoengineering initiative created by eco-billionaire Harrison Wyld. Proposing a fictional scenario set against a backdrop of real world possibilities, Bluebird AR took some of the conventions of the well-established alternate reality game (ARG) genre and pulled them into the relatively new area of online drama, to create a hybrid entertainment form best described as 'participatory drama'. With Bluebird AR's interactive narrative centred on the experimental science of geoengineering, the deliberate manipulation of the Earth's atmosphere to counteract global warming, the events and characters in the Bluebird story were entirely fictional but fused with reality online. Inhabiting a mixture of third party social media spaces and websites created by the ABC, the story incorporated real online articles, scientific journals, media and debate around geoengineering. In an Australian first, ABC Innovation launched Bluebird AR on 27 April 2010, with a 6 week live phase. Audience members were invited to play collectively to help 'unlock the drama' and push forward the emerging narrative, or passively watch the story unfold in real-time across the internet. Bluebird AR subverted ARG conventions with the high quality of its production and assets, and raised the stakes for online drama with its level of audience participation." © 2014 ABC "Introduction One of the most exciting creative challenges of producing Bluebird AR was formulating the broad array of visual styles and treatments required for the project's diverse range of content. Many assets also needed to translate well not only online but across other media, including television and print. With the project's producers keen to create a visually rich narrative with high production values from the outset, inspiration for the production design for various aspects of the Bluebird story began in the earliest pitching phase in September 2008. Particular visual treatments and styles for Bluebird's characters, their web spaces and real world possessions were formulated concurrently with the creation of their profiles. Ideas around how various clues and gameplay spaces might look and feel were also explored at this early stage. Bluebird AR's small but tight creative team produced 7 website designs and brands, motion graphics for title sequences and logo animations, rotoscope animation, 3D compositing and animation, 3D wireframes and schematics, countless Photoshop composites, and a vast array of character assets for the DC (including Kyle's Bluebird Labs security pass and resignation letter, Kruger's American and Russia passports and birth certificate, Harrison's divorce papers, and more)…" © 2014 ABC

Future perfect

"Future Perfect" is a solo artist exhibition featuring a 9 channel video installation, which is comprised of looped computer animation projections. In the first room, the big one, there are nine projections of looped computer animations. Many of these look like representations of gallery spaces containing sculptures, including rotating interpenetrating discs, bouncing coloured coffins, and jostling cardboard cubes (the cubes are blank, then covered in drawings, then covered in photographic imagery). In one video, a man and a woman walk towards one another but never get together. In the second room, an animated video on a flatscreen suggests an origin story. The subtitles tell how, in Russia, my great-grandfather made a joke about Stalin's child bride that cost him his life. That one isn’t a loop; it has a beginning, middle, and end. Lying on the floor, in front of the video, are two slightly crumpled mural prints of photographs of the ocean. There's also a clear Perspex cloud shape on a wall. Viewers will see themselves reflected in it, as if it were a distant hovering mirage. The first room of the exhibition, where objects are set in perpetual motion, is about departure. The second room registers some sense of arrival. The future perfect implies looking back on something that hasn't happened yet; future and past are conflated and the present is somehow deferred. The future perfect combines anticipation and reflection, and it relates to my interest in combining 3-D animation with other mediums like drawing, painting, and shot video. In my work, the virtual and actual coexist in tension, just like experience and expectation in the future perfect.

Thought balloon : Dr Christy Dena

In this interview, we discuss the basics of transmedia storytelling and lessons for creatives considering making the jump to a transmedia project.

Turning event logs into process movies: animating what has really happened

Today’s information systems log vast amounts of data. These collections of data (implicitly) describe events (e.g. placing an order or taking a blood test) and, hence, provide information on the actual execution of business processes. The analysis of such data provides an excellent starting point for business process improvement. This is the realm of process mining, an area which has provided a repertoire of many analysis techniques. Despite the impressive capabilities of existing process mining algorithms, dealing with the abundance of data recorded by contemporary systems and devices remains a challenge. Of particular importance is the capability to guide the meaningful interpretation of “oceans of data” by process analysts. To this end, insights from the field of visual analytics can be leveraged. This article proposes an approach where process states are reconstructed from event logs and visualised in succession, leading to an animated history of a process. This approach is customisable in how a process state, partially defined through a collection of activity instances, is visualised: one can select a map and specify a projection of events on this map based on the properties of the events. This paper describes a comprehensive implementation of the proposal. It was realised using the open-source process mining framework ProM. Moreover, this paper also reports on an evaluation of the approach conducted with Suncorp, one of Australia’s largest insurance companies.

Picture Books and Beyond

Picture books and beyond examines a wide selection of picture books, graphics novels, films, e-picture books and apps that reflects the diversity of these evolving cultural artefacts, and their opportunities for education and delight. Picture books and beyond aligns closely with the goals and directions of the Australian Curriculum: English, and considers the potential of texts for enabling students to respond critically and creatively. It also highlights links to other curricula, general capabilities, and cross-curriculum priorities.

Burley! (sound design)

A young tetra fish, one of a million in her school, just wants some attention. Feeling lonely and bored, she is attracted by the manic antics of a gang of older fish who spend the hours inventing new extreme sports. She begins a quest to gain their acceptance, but at what cost?

Strolls project and website

The Strolls project was originally devised for a colleague in Finland and a cross cultural event event called AU goes to FI – the core concept is both re-experience of and presentation of the ‘everyday’ experience of life rather than the usual cultural icons. The project grew and was presented as a mash-up site with google maps (truna aka j.turner & David Browning). The site is now cob-webbed but some of the participant made strolls are archived here. The emphasis on the walk and taking of image stills (as opposed to the straightforward video) is based on a notion of partaking of the environment with technology. The process involves a strange and distinct embodiment as the maker must stop and choose each subsequent shot in order to build up the final animated sequence. The viewer becomes subtly involved in the maker’s decisions.

Festival focus : Brisbane International Film Festival

In 2012, the Brisbane International Film Festival officially came of age, celebrating its twenty-first birthday. The festival has emerged from a tumultuous adolescence and redefined its position on the Australian festival circuit as an advocate of locally made films and documentary filmmaking in particular. Brisbane’s International Film Festival opened in 1992 and has since been attended by more than 400,000 filmgoers. The festival is held annually and showcases a diverse range of feature films, documentaries, short films, animation and experimental work, children’s films and retrospectives.