Whisper our futures

Whisper Our Futures was an invited design proposal to produce a major public artwork for the State of Queensland’s 150th Anniversary Celebrations. It involved a network of 100 individual scrolling digital text boxes each with individual audio systems arranged together in a tessellated format. This form (specified by the originating brief) both mimicked the soaring gothic arches typical of Queensland cathedrals and was also suggestive of their stained glass windows. Each text module presented a message in both visual and audible forms for Queenslanders living 150 years hence - spoken both by the general public aw well as prominent figures. In this way the work was designed as a focus of future hope, historical reflection and inspiration to visitors to Queensland cathedrals throughout the entire year of celebrations (2009). The work was planned to premiere at Brisbane’s main Anglican Cathedral and then tour to nine other state cathedrals throughout 2009.---- Two staged proposals and budgets were invited throughout 2007. After the second successful proposal stage the State Premier and cabinet changed, ultimately leading the public art components to be dropped from the program. The proposal currently remains on file at the Queensland Premiers Office.

e. Menura superba

e. Menura superba is an illuminated, interactive, computational, sculptural work, but in comparison it is much smaller in scale. The work explores the paradox between our fascination with the exotic and our potentially dystopic future devoid of many animal species. The work was selected for inclusion in the Juried Exhibition at the 2009 International Symposium on Electronic Arts held in Belfast.

Suzumushi : a silent future

This paper introduces the creative work Suzumushi: the silent swarm, produced by Kuuki. The paper provides an outline of the work and draws together the ideas that influenced the works form, the conceptual material and interaction design, including acoustic ecology and emergence.

Gestural, emergent and expressive : three research themes for haptic interaction

Drawing on three case studies of work in the fields of participatory design, interaction design and electronic arts, we reflect on the implications of these studies for haptic interface research. We propose three themes: gestural; emergent; and expressive; as signposts for a program of research into haptic interaction that could point the way towards novel approaches to haptic interaction and move us from optic to haptic ways of seeing.

Night Rage/ Night Fall

A new form of media installation combining image, multi-channel sound and internally lit objects into a mysterious, deep image plane. Staged on the very edge of spectrum blackout, and moving into the deep of night, Version 1 (Night Rage) for ISEA 2013 examined the many shades of 'nocturnal', threats to night biodiversity and the myriad myths and stories that have shaped our cultural understandings of life after light. Barely recognisable images float within landscapes of media, noise and sound as the work asserts a profound resistance to today's all consuming media mesh. Version 2 (Night Fall) for the Queensland State Museum examined contemporary ideas around the ‘night’ and the 'nocturnal'. Beginning with the dark myths and stories that have long shaped our cultural understandings of life after light, NIGHT FALL considers how fearful ideas have often underpinned actions that continue to reduce Australia’s extraordinary night biodiversity. Today’s growing hostility towards Australia’s ancient, iconic flying foxes - who have been quietly pollinating our forests for millennia - hints at just how far we have yet to travel in our thinking. Enter the darkened tunnel to experience mysterious, edge-of-perception 3D forms, enhanced by a range of cinematic, illusionary and animatronic techniques, and become immersed in a strangely familiar sound track based upon seasonal field recordings made after dark, sourced from across the eastern coast of Queensland.

Dirty theory: philosophical enactments after metaphysics

Modern forms of speculative philosophy continue to creep ‘unsuspectingly’ into our understanding of contemporary media/electronic arts, despite (or perhaps even because of) the attempts by Latour, Badiou, or Agamben especially when addressing the zero/one as if a contradictory ‘binary’ rather than as a kind of 'slice’ or (to use Deleuze and Guattari) an immanent plane of immanence. We argue that by playing with and against Neitzsche, Einstein, Godel, and Deleuze, a rather different story of art, not to mention philosophy, can be told. [From conference programme]

To tremble the zero: art in the age of algorithmic reproduction

'To Tremble the Zero: Art in the Age of Algorithmic Reproduction' is a philosophic, political and sensuous journey playing with (and against) Benjamin's 'Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'. In an age inundated by the 'post-': postmodernity, posthuman, post art, postsexual, post-feminist, post-society, post-nation, etc, 'To Tremble the Zero' sets out to re/present the nature of what it means to do or make 'art', as well as what it means to be or have 'human/ity' when the ground is nothing other than the fractal, and algorithmically infinite, combinations of zero and one. The work will address also the unfortunate way in which modern forms of metaphysics continue to creep 'unsuspectingly' into our understanding of contemporary media/electronic arts, despite (or perhaps even because of) the attempts by Latour, Badiou, or Agamben especially when addressing the zero/one as if a contradictory 'binary' rather than as a kind of 'slice' or (to use Deleuze and Guattari) an immanent plane of immanence. This work argues that by retrieving Benjamin, Einstein, Gödel, and Haraway, a rather different story of art can be told.

Innovación en tecnologías digitales

Los videojuegos ya no deberían ser vistos como el dominio exclusivo de adolescentes, sino más bien como parte de una corriente comercial, de hecho su impacto en la sociedad es de gran alcance. Por ejemplo, las innovaciones líderes en el área de diseño de procesadores, gráficos y la inteligencia artificial están siendo impulsados por la industria de los videojuegos, de esta manera es posible que en la actualidad el software del juego se utilice para entrenar a los soldados para la batalla, y entrenar a los pilotos en los controles de vuelo y de navegación. (Wesley & Balzac, 2010)

Videojuegos en el instituto : ocio digital como estímulo en la enseñanza : informe de investigación.

Este informe identifica prácticas educativas innovadoras utilizando los videojuegos comerciales, combinados con otras tecnologías nuevas o consolidadas. Se pretende conocer cómo los videojuegos comerciales pueden favorecer el desarrollo de un pensamiento creativo. Se presentan los resultados de una investigación desarrollada durante el curso 2008 - 2009, con 300 alumnos de entre 11 y 16 años y sus profesores, en el Centro Público Manuel de Educación Secundaria Manuel de Falla de Coslada. Se pretende generar nuevos conocimientos que contribuyan a formar una ciudadanía responsable y crítica ante los nuevos medios de comunicación.

Shoot first, ask questions later: Ethnographic research in an online computer gaming community

For researchers investigating online communities, the existence of the internet has made the activities and opinions of community members visible in a public domain. FPS gaming culture is a highly literate culture - members communicate and represent themselves in textual forms online, and the culture makes use of a wide variety of communication and publishing technologies. While a significant amount of insider knowledge is required to understand and interpret such online content, a large body of material is available to researchers online, and sometimes provides more reliable and enlightening information than that generated by more traditional research methods. While the abundance of data available online in some ways makes research far easier, it also creates new dilemmas and challenges for researchers. What extra knowledge is required of the researcher? How can one ensure that one's interpretations of member statements are made with an understanding of meaning within that culture? What responsibilities does the researcher have in their representation of the culture under examination? What ethical issues must be considered?

Theoretical frameworks for analysing turn-based computer strategy games

This paper argues for a more specific formal methodology for the textual analysis of individual game genres. In doing so, it advances a set of formal analytical tools and a theoretical framework for the analysis of turn-based computer strategy games. The analytical tools extend the useful work of Steven Poole, who suggests a Peircian semiotic approach to the study of games as formal systems. The theoretical framework draws upon postmodern cultural theory to analyse and explain the representation of space and the organisation of knowledge in these games. The methodology and theoretical framework is supported by a textual analysis of Civilization II, a significant and influential turn-based computer strategy game. Finally, this paper suggests possibilities for future extensions of this work.

Graphic satire and public life in the age of terror

This paper investigates media representations of international insecurity through a selection of newspaper cartoons from some of the major daily Australian broadsheets. Since 2001, cartoonists such as Bruce Petty, John Spooner and Bill Leak (in The Age and The Australian) have provided an ongoing and vehement critique of the Australian government’s policies of ‘border protection’, the ‘war on terror’ and the words of mass distraction associated with Australia joining the war in Iraq. Cartoonists are often said to represent the ‘citizen’s perspective’ of public life through their graphic satire on the editorial pages of our daily newspapers. Increasingly, they can also be seen to be fulfilling the role of public intellectuals, defined by Richard A. Posner as ‘someone whose place it is publicly to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma, to be someone who cannot easily be co-opted by governments and corporations’. Cartoonists enjoy an independence and freedom from censorship that is rarely extended to their journalistic colleagues in the print media and it is this independence that is the vital component in their being categorised as public intellectuals. Their role is to ‘question over and over again what is postulated as self-evident, to disturb people’s mental habits, to dissipate what is familiar and accepted, to re-examine rules and institutions’ (Posner, 2003: 31). With this useful — if generalised — definition in mind, the paper considers how cartoonists have contributed to debates concerning international insecurity in public life since 2001.