Review of "Christoph Schlingensief : art without borders" edited by Tara Forrest and Anna Teresa Scheer

Christoph Schlingensief: Art Without Borders, edited by Tara Forrest and Anna Teresa Scheer, is the first English-language collection of essays about this extraordinary German artist. As Forrest and Scheer suggest in their introduction, ‘access to Schlingensief’s highly challenging productions has been hampered by the fact that very little has been published on his oeuvre in the English-speaking world’. This collection aims to introduce English-speaking artists, scholars and academics to Schlingensief’s extensive, experimental, and at times highly controversial body of work across film, theatre, television, live art and activism...

New maps of learning for quality art education : what pre-service teachers should learn and be able to do

It would be a rare thing to visit an early years setting or classroom in Australia that does not display examples of young children’s artworks. This practice serves to give schools a particular ‘look’, but is no guarantee of quality art education. The Australian National Review of Visual Arts Education (NRVE) (2009) has called for changes to visual art education in schools. The planned new National Curriculum includes the arts (music, dance, drama, media and visual arts) as one of the five learning areas. Research shows that it is the classroom teacher that makes the difference, and teacher education has a large part to play in reforms to art education. This paper provides an account of one foundation unit of study (Unit 1) for first year university students enrolled in a 4-year Bachelor degree program who are preparing to teach in the early years (0–8 years). To prepare pre-service teachers to meet the needs of children in the 21st century, Unit 1 blends old and new ways of seeing art, child and pedagogy. Claims for the effectiveness of this model are supported with evidence-based research, conducted over the six years of iterations and ongoing development of Unit 1.

Entrepreneurship : from denial to discovery in nonprofit art museums?

This research explores the function of entrepreneurship in nonprofit art museums. Traditionally, entrepreneurship literature features debates on customer orientation and innovation. This paper reviews a tension in entrepreneurship: the relationship between limited funding and the need to innovate in nonprofit art museums. The paper develops a construct by which to explain the structure of entrepreneurship in nonprofit art museums in Australia and New Zealand since 1975. From this discussion, different strategies and tensions are highlighted that nonprofit art museum directors have used. The dynamics are explored in ten large art museums and the managerial implications are developed.

New evaluation methodologies for public art programs in cultural instiutions

I put my abstract in for this conference back in March, based on some evaluation work I had been doing in 2010 with my colleague Professor Greg Hearn for the 3C Regional Writing NeoGreography Project. I had been swapping notes with a colleague from the Smithsonian’s Centre for Folklife and Cultural Heritage about their evaluation work, and stuck inside during the rains of January, I decided to apply for a Qld Smithsonian fellowship based on the quandary of evaluation-particular in public histories (oral histories) and digital storytelling. In July I was awarded the fellowship, so I have tweaked my presentation to talk about what we hope to do with this collaboration, to propel the importance placed on evaluation in public arts programs in Qld and beyond.

Concept combination and the origins of complex cognition

At the core of our uniquely human cognitive abilities is the capacity to see things from different perspectives, or to place them in a new context. We propose that this was made possible by two cognitive transitions. First, the large brain of Homo erectus facilitated the onset of recursive recall: the ability to string thoughts together into a stream of potentially abstract or imaginative thought. This hypothesis is sup-ported by a set of computational models where an artificial society of agents evolved to generate more diverse and valuable cultural outputs under conditions of recursive recall. We propose that the capacity to see things in context arose much later, following the appearance of anatomically modern humans. This second transition was brought on by the onset of contextual focus: the capacity to shift between a minimally contextual analytic mode of thought, and a highly contextual associative mode of thought, conducive to combining concepts in new ways and ‘breaking out of a rut’. When contextual focus is implemented in an art-generating computer program, the resulting artworks are seen as more creative and appealing. We summarize how both transitions can be modeled using a theory of concepts which high-lights the manner in which different contexts can lead to modern humans attributing very different meanings to the interpretation of one concept.

Semantic service discovery in the service ecosystem

Electronic services are a leitmotif in ‘hot’ topics like Software as a Service, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Service oriented Computing, Cloud Computing, application markets and smart devices. We propose to consider these in what has been termed the Service Ecosystem (SES). The SES encompasses all levels of electronic services and their interaction, with human consumption and initiation on its periphery in much the same way the ‘Web’ describes a plethora of technologies that eventuate to connect information and expose it to humans. Presently, the SES is heterogeneous, fragmented and confined to semi-closed systems. A key issue hampering the emergence of an integrated SES is Service Discovery (SD). A SES will be dynamic with areas of structured and unstructured information within which service providers and ‘lay’ human consumers interact; until now the two are disjointed, e.g., SOA-enabled organisations, industries and domains are choreographed by domain experts or ‘hard-wired’ to smart device application markets and web applications. In a SES, services are accessible, comparable and exchangeable to human consumers closing the gap to the providers. This requires a new SD with which humans can discover services transparently and effectively without special knowledge or training. We propose two modes of discovery, directed search following an agenda and explorative search, which speculatively expands knowledge of an area of interest by means of categories. Inspired by conceptual space theory from cognitive science, we propose to implement the modes of discovery using concepts to map a lay consumer’s service need to terminologically sophisticated descriptions of services. To this end, we reframe SD as an information retrieval task on the information attached to services, such as, descriptions, reviews, documentation and web sites - the Service Information Shadow. The Semantic Space model transforms the shadow's unstructured semantic information into a geometric, concept-like representation. We introduce an improved and extended Semantic Space including categorization calling it the Semantic Service Discovery model. We evaluate our model with a highly relevant, service related corpus simulating a Service Information Shadow including manually constructed complex service agendas, as well as manual groupings of services. We compare our model against state-of-the-art information retrieval systems and clustering algorithms. By means of an extensive series of empirical evaluations, we establish optimal parameter settings for the semantic space model. The evaluations demonstrate the model’s effectiveness for SD in terms of retrieval precision over state-of-the-art information retrieval models (directed search) and the meaningful, automatic categorization of service related information, which shows potential to form the basis of a useful, cognitively motivated map of the SES for exploratory search.

Reclaiming the art of teaching

This paper explores the art and craft of teaching in higher education. It presents a model of the relationship between art and craft drawn from the author’s theoretical and empirical work, and provides examples from the higher education context to illustrate the model. It discusses the characteristics of teaching as art and craft and critiques the move towards standardisation and conformity in favour of originality, creativity and innovation. It suggests that to see teaching as art is more holistic, satisfying and transformative than to see it as craft. It argues for reclaiming the art of teaching and provides strategies for encouraging and supporting artistic teaching.

Beyond here-and-now : extending shared physical experiences to shared conceptual experiences

For robots to use language effectively, they need to refer to combinations of existing concepts, as well as concepts that have been directly experienced. In this paper, we introduce the term generative grounding to refer to the establishment of shared meaning for concepts referred to using relational terms. We investigated a spatial domain, which is both experienced and constructed using mobile robots with cognitive maps. The robots, called Lingodroids, established lexicons for locations, distances, and directions through structured conversations called where-are-we, how-far, what-direction, and where-is-there conversations. Distributed concept construction methods were used to create flexible concepts, based on a data structure called a distributed lexicon table. The lexicon was extended from words for locations, termed toponyms, to words for the relational terms of distances and directions. New toponyms were then learned using these relational operators. Effective grounding was tested by using the new toponyms as targets for go-to games, in which the robots independently navigated to named locations. The studies demonstrate how meanings can be extended from grounding in shared physical experiences to grounding in constructed cognitive experiences, giving the robots a language that refers to their direct experiences, and to constructed worlds that are beyond the here-and-now.

Art unions legislation in Queensland

In Queensland, the legislation governing the conduct of art unions such as bingo, raffles and lucky envelopes is the Art Unions Act 1992 (ΑAct≅). The Act is administered by the Queensland Office of Gaming Regulation (ΑQOGR≅) which is part of the Queensland Treasury portfolio. The Act and other legislation such as the Criminal Code, Vagrants Gaming and Other Offences Act, generally makes it unlawful for a person to conduct art unions unless they are authorised to do so. The Art Unions Act allows Αeligible≅ nonprofit associations such as charities, schools, sporting and community groups to raise funds for their stated objects. Art unions were legalised in the early part of this century primarily to assist charities and other approved associations to raise funds for worthwhile causes. This principle is continued in the 1992 Act. The Queensland art union industry had a turnover of over$190M in 1996/97 and our Queensland art unions continue to attract not just sales from Queensland residents but also interstate and overseas buyers. Art unions continue to be an attractive form of fundraising for many nonprofit associations.

Building prosperous knowledge cities : policies, plans and metrics

This unique book reveals the procedural aspects of knowledge-based urban planning, development and assessment. Concentrating on major knowledge city building processes, and providing state-of-the-art experiences and perspectives, this important compendium explores innovative models, approaches and lessons learnt from a number of key case studies across the world. Many cities worldwide, in order to brand themselves as knowledge cities, have undergone major transformations in the 21st century. This book provides a thorough understanding of these transformations and the key issues in building prosperous knowledge cities by focusing particularly on the policy-making, planning process and performance assessment aspects. The contributors reveal theoretical and conceptual foundations of knowledge cities and their development approach of knowledge-based urban development. They present best-practice examples from a number of key case studies across the globe. This important book provides readers with a thorough understanding of the key issues in planning and developing prosperous knowledge cities of the knowledge economy era, which will prove invaluable to national, state/regional and city governments’ planning and development departments. Academics, postgraduate and undergraduate students of regional and urban studies will also find this path-breaking book an intriguing read.

The Art of disappearing

Poem

Organisational knowledge integration: towards a conceptual framework

This study analyses organisational knowledge integration processes from a multi-level and systemic perspective, with particular reference to the case of Fujitsu. A conceptual framework for knowledge integration is suggested focusing on team-building capability, capturing and utilising individual tacit knowledge, and communication networks for integrating dispersed specialist knowledge required in the development of new products and services. The research highlights that knowledge integration occurring in the innovation process is a result of knowledge exposure, its distribution and embodiment and finally its transfer, which leads to innovation capability and competitive advantage in firm.

Strategic aesthetics in advertising campaigns : implications for art direction education

For over half a century art directors within the advertising industry have been adapting to the changes occurring in media, culture and the corporate sector, toward enhancing professional performance and competitiveness. These professionals seldom offer explicit justification about the role images play in effective communication. It is uncertain how this situation affects advertising performance, because advertising has, nevertheless, evolved in parallel to this as an industry able to fabricate new opportunities for itself. However, uncertainties in the formalization of art direction knowledge restrict the possibilities of knowledge transfer in higher education. The theoretical knowledge supporting advertising art direction has been adapted spontaneously from disciplines that rarely focus on specific aspects related to the production of advertising content, like, for example: marketing communication, design, visual communication, or visual art. Meanwhile, in scholarly research, vast empirical knowledge has been generated about advertising images, but often with limited insight into production expertise. Because art direction is understood as an industry practice and not as an academic discipline, an art direction perspective in scholarly contributions is rare. Scholarly research that is relevant to art direction seldom offers viewpoints to help understand how it is that research outputs may specifically contribute to art direction practices. This thesis is dedicated to formally understanding the knowledge underlying art direction and using it to explore models for visual analysis and knowledge transfer in higher education. The first three chapters of this thesis offer, firstly, a review of practical and contextual aspects that help define art direction, as a profession and as a component in higher education; secondly, a discussion about visual knowledge; and thirdly, a literature review of theoretical and analytic aspects relevant to art direction knowledge. Drawing on these three chapters, this thesis establishes explicit structures to help in the development of an art direction curriculum in higher education programs. Following these chapters, this thesis explores a theoretical combination of the terms ‘aesthetics’ and ‘strategy’ as foundational notions for the study of art direction. The theoretical exploration of the term ‘strategic aesthetics’ unveils the potential for furthering knowledge in visual commercial practices in general. The empirical part of this research explores ways in which strategic aesthetics notions can extend to methodologies of visual analysis. Using a combination of content analysis and of structures of interpretive analysis offered in visual anthropology, this research discusses issues of methodological appropriation as it shifts aspects of conventional methodologies to take into consideration paradigms of research that are producer-centred. Sampled out of 2759 still ads from the online databases of Cannes Lions Festival, this study uses an instrumental case study of love-related advertising to facilitate the analysis of content. This part of the research helps understand the limitations and functionality of the theoretical and methodological framework explored in the thesis. In light of the findings and discussions produced throughout the thesis, this project aims to provide directions for higher education in relation to art direction and highlights potential pathways for further investigation of strategic aesthetics.