Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Metropolis In Black And White - The Art Of Percy Benison, Michael K. Organ

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

In April 1928 the Australian release of Fritz Lang's Metropolis was marked by a media campaign which included the black and white drawings of Sydney-based artist Percy Benison. The paper comments on selected works and presents a brief outline of the artist's life.

Simmel, Ninotchka And The Revolving Door, Jon Cockburn

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

In this paper, Jon Cockburn examines the device of the revolving door employed by Ernst Lubitsch in the opening scene to the film "Ninotchka" (1939), in which the operation of this architectural mechanism metaphorically prefigures several key themes in the film. Specifically, these themes are first, the complementary necessity of coupling efficiency with desire and second, that firmly held principles should be balanced with mutual pleasure. In the late 1930s, in articulating these contrasting attributes the film described the balancing act that confronted self-sufficient modern women, who faced expectations that they be industrially efficient yet noticeably sensual. However, while recognising …

A Re-Examination Of Graphic Design Pedagogy, And Its Application At The University Of Wollongong: Towards A Phd Study In Design Education, Grant Ellmers

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

The pedagogical approach in the Graphic Design discipline at the University of Wollongong, as in other design institutions (Kvan 2001), is informed at a fundamental level by the studio-based learning framework. The ever-present challenges in the higher education sector, such as increasing student to teacher ratios and resourcing issues, lead educators to constantly evaluate their pedagogical approach. With the current advances in computer-aided design, and the emergence of alternative learning frameworks, it is timely to re-evaluate the role and effectiveness of studio-based learning in graphic design education. Problem-based learning and Schön's reflective practitioner framework have parallels with studio-based learning, however …

Pocket Gamelan: A Blueprint For Performance Using Wireless Devices, Greg Schiemer, Mark Havryliv

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

Mobile phone handsets have introduced new possibilities for musical interaction between multiple performers, as we reported in previous papers. Wireless communication between handsets now extends these possibilities even further. This paper describes development and implementation of a new performance scenario that involves remote instrument control using a Bluetooth connection. The paper proposes a low-level functional control protocol designed primarily around the current state of the mobile phone handset. The protocol makes provision for extended musical functionalities developed around tuning systems that are not adequately served by existing musical performance interfaces based on twelve equal divisions of the octave. Development is …

Opening Speech – Pontoon : Stephanie Monteith, Jon Cockburn

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

Pontoon Exhibition Opening Address on behalf of Stephanie Monteith: 2004
Resident Artist. Wollongong City Art Gallery, Friday 24 June 2005, 7pm.

Clothing The Soviet Mechanical-Flâneuse, Jon Cockburn

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

Jon Cockburn looks at fashion trends on both sides of the Atlantic to examine images of and ideals for the modern woman. At the center of his analysis is a history of the Soviet “mechanical-flâneuse,” a distinctive twentieth-century variation upon the nineteenth-century European metropolitan “flâneuse” (or intelligent idler), that emerged through Soviet interpretations of the American efficiency movement. Cockburn traces the efforts of three avant-garde designers who tried to realize the mechanical-flâneuse in the Soviet Union, but shows that as Stalin rose to power, production of the mechanical-flâneuse was restricted to an increasingly theoretical realm. Politics eventually trumped the efficient …

Pocket Gamelan: A Pure Data Interface For Mobile Phones, Greg Schiemer, Mark Havryliv Mh675@Uow.Edu.Au

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

This paper describes software tools used to create java applications for performing music using mobile phones. The tools provide a means for composers working in the Pure Data composition environment to design and audition performances using ensembles of mobile phones. These tools were developed as part of a larger project motivated by the desire to allow large groups of non-expert players to perform music based on just intonation using ubiquitous technology. The paper discusses the process that replicates a Pure Data patch so that it will operate within the hardware and software constraints of the Java 2 Micro Edition. It …

Pocket Gamelan: An Extensible Set Of Microtonal Instruments, Greg Schiemer, Mark Havryliv Mh675@Uow.Edu.Au

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

This paper describes the prototype for a set of mobile instruments in which java phone technology has been adapted for performing microtonal music. The prototype was developed using widely available mobile phone handsets instead of building new hardware. The paper discusses aspects of j2me development together with limitations of the mobile platform used for the project. Development issues such as real-time audio, microtonal MIDI implementation and control using Bluetooth communication are discussed. The paper also describes tools developed so existing algorithmic composition and tuning software can be used to compose music for mobile devices. It concludes with discussion of various …

Sunflowers [Musical Score], Wendy Suiter

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

[Cover page of score available here]

Long Distance Composing For Computer Controlled Microtonal Acoustic Instruments, Warren A. Burt

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

From mid 2004 until early 2005, I was involved in a project to compose works for a series of computercontrolled acoustic instruments, some of which are microtonal, built by Godfried Willem Raes and associates at the Logos Foundation in Gent, Belgium. However, I was in Wollongong. I composed for these works by long distance, using the internet, in a slow, non-real time manner. Further, I composed the music for these instruments using a series of over two dozen mathematical functions that I implemented for John Dunns ArtWonk and SoftStep Windows algorithmic composing environments. The pieces then, are the product of …

Love Goes To Market, Anthony Macris

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

When, in the mid 1990s, I started writing my second novel, Great Western Highway (Capital, Volume One, Part Two), I knew I wanted to deal with two things: love and capitalism. Neither is easy to write about, the first because it has been written about so much, the second because 'capitalism' is such a polarising term, and one that belongs more to economics and politics than literature. But I persevered, mainly because I had no choice. Most writers don't choose what they want to write about: it chooses them. What starts as an unconscious preoccupation soon becomes a full-blown obsession, …

The Art Of Others: Nolde, Preston & Views Of Indigenous Art, Friederike Krishnabhakdi-Vasilakis

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

The emergence of Australian Aboriginal art in post-colonial Australia reflects a history of cultural separation between European and Aboriginal art. Up to late 20th Century—Aboriginal culture was 'invisible' within the wider 'nation-building' identity. The definition, role and status of Aboriginal art has changed dramatically in Australia over the past thirty years, but in Europe no similar shift into a postcolonial ideology is evident.

Filipino Journalists Speak Out And Pay The Price, Eric Loo

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

There's the shepherd, the flock and the sacristan. Together they drive the media machine with their paymaster, in the back seat brazenly directing the way through the back alleys of Philippine politics.' The 'shepherds' are former journalists turned media publicists. 'Shepherds' take care of reporters covering the election campaign trails - from arranging accommodation to providing food and 'night' entertainment. This can rake in as much as 40,000 pesos monthly (about US$729) for 'shepherding' a presidential election. That's equivalent to how much a broadsheet senior reporter earns in three months. Another story tells of editors pocketing P20,000 to P50,000 a …

Artwork Exhibited In The Exhibition "Bleak Epiphanies.", Julius G. Van Den Berg

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

The artistic director of Australia's biggest ever contemporary art exhibition (the 1982 Sydney Biennale) creates a special show for Sydney's smallest art venue, the Virginia Art office on Darley Street in Darlinghurst. Virginia Wilson asked William Wright to curate an end of year show tor her small space in Darlinghurst, a request he responded to with alacrity.

A Speculative Venture: Contemporary Art, History And Hill End, Amanda Lawson

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

Writing in his diary on 2 January 1949, Australian artist, Donald Friend (1915- 1989), describes the events of the night before: Last night there was an impromptu dance - I should say a drunken Breughel peasant romp - at the hall to celebrate the New Year. It was improvised suddenly on the spot by those who had not been invited, and were furious at being left out, to a dance in Sofala, to which the lucky ones went in a bus. Later they went round the village gate-stealing .. .. (Friend 633) Friend writes from Hill End, an old gold-mining …

It's A Small World After All: Susan Norrie's Enola, Su Ballard

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

This essay explores the movements of cinema as it is refashioned within an art gallery space. In addition it charts a number of research ideas as they find themselves manifest alongside Australian artist Susan Norrie’s digital video installation ‘ENOLA’ (2004). The essay engages with a current argument in new media theory surrounding the influence and relevance of the cinematic apparatus for analysis of new media, and suggests that although both cinema and new media can be understood through shared aspects of movement, duration, and sound, to reference cinema directly in a digital gallery installation also introduces a number of problematic …

Kuninjku Modernism: New Perspectives On Western Arnhem Land Art, Ian Mclean

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

Many of Australia's most interesting artists are not based in the few large metropolitan centres in which other countries focus their cultural effort. The wellspring of the Indigenous art movement is the numerous small communities and outstations in remote Australia. Further, the tiny fraction of Australians who live in these settlements outperform other Australian artists, no matter what measure is used. In this respect Australia lives up to its Antipodean legend; here everything is back to front: the centre is the periphery and the periphery the centre. However there is another way of looking at it. Australia might be a …

Teaching And Learning As Improvisational Performance In The Creative Writing Classroom, Shady E. Cosgrove

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

In this essay I will argue that the teacher-as-performer metaphor is too simplistic. Instead, I will make a case for R. Keith Sawyer’s notion of the classroom as a site of improvisational performance, especially in regards to creative writing. Then I will discuss three aspects critical to the improvisational performance within this context, drawing on my own experiences in the classroom: establishing workshop structures, ascertaining shared language skills, and encouraging student participation.

Camarilla, Vanessa Badham

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

Camarilla is a play by V. Badham. Her first UK production, Kitchen, was produced at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2002, and was followed there by Bedtime for Bastards and Camarilla (both 2003) and Waitin' 4 Da G and Nikolina (both 2004). Badham's work has been staged in London at the King's Head and Theatre503, and at The Belt and the East Village Festival in New York and by Living Theatre in Reykjavik.

Today. London. A terrorist bomb. A leftist academic finds herself and her daughter injured in the wreckage of an incomprehensible blast and its unimaginable consequences. As Maggy …

Empowering J-Students To Think And Write In A 'Flat' World, Eric Loo

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

Australian journalism education has progressed from its vocational model. predominant in the '70s and '80s. to a somewhat hybridised form where theoretical explications sit comfortably with skills training. The past decade or so has seen a distinct body of Australian journalism practice-led research emerging, with applied journalism texts authored by local educators used widely in undergraduate and postgraduate classes. The journalism education paradigm may well soon shift, with the useful features retained and less useful ones discarded. This commentary explores some of the useful features.

Developing Multi-Literacies In Technology-Enhanced Environments, Natalie Cooper, Lori Lockyer, Ian M. Brown, David R. Blackall, Barry M. Harper

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

Our lives are constantly being transformed by new technologies, global economies and cultures (Anstey, 2002). Educators in the 21st century are faced with the task of preparing students to function successfully in this ever changing and increasingly technological, globalised society. This has important implications for current practices in literacy education and it has been argued that new types of literacies need to be cultivated to ensure education is relevant in today’s society (Kellner, 2000). In fact, having a degree of mastery over a wide range of 21st century literacies may mean the difference between “a fully functioning life and one …

Jacky Redgate - Survey 1980-2003, Jacky Redgate

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

Startling, sophisticated, elegant and subtle are just some of the terms used to describe the work of Sydney-based, Australian artist, Jacky Redgate. This survey exhibition, initially developed as three shows by the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia will be shown in its entirety for the first time as part of the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts' 2005 exhibition program. Redgate's innovative and experimental work operates on a number of different registers and at the intersection of different fields including photography, sculpture, installation and optical art. Engaging with art history and contemporary theory, Redgate's ongoing interest in mathematical systems, logic, …

Entropy And Digital Installation, Su Ballard

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

What would it mean if communication were exact? That, in spite of the real, material, spaces of message, channel, format, filters, modulations, mediation, and plain old error, it might be possible to exclude all noise and see through to some pure space of connection and transmission. Despite my curiosity, I suspect the result would be disappointingly dull, or simply redundant. The search for perfect communication is as pointless as trying to find an audio space not infected with electromagnetic waves, or a gallery space where only one work is apprehended at a time. Our communications spaces are always already determined …

D>Art05 Distributed Art And Mobile Journeys, Su Ballard

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

There is time for the work to be examined, experimented with, and opened up to a visiting public. This kind of exhibition model has for a long time been problematic for works that do not exist within a defined 3D space, or a comfortably measured duration. D>Art05 and Mobile Journeys address the temporal and spatial restrictions of the exhibition model by making the work available for download both during and post-exhibition. Visitors to the exhibition could bring their mobiles and download any of the fourteen works in Mobile Journeys, in effect, mobilising the work.

Artwork Exhibited In "Bleak Epiphanies: An Exhibition Of Small Black Things.", Jacky Redgate

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

The artistic director of Australia's biggest ever contemporary art exhibition (the 1982 Sydney Biennale) curates a special show for Sydney's smallest art venue, the Virginia Wilson Art office on Darley Street in Darlinghurst. Virginia Wilson asked William Wright to curate an end of year show for her small space in Darlinghurst, a request he responded to with alacrity. Up to 30 artists have agreed to produce a work for the exhibition, adhering to Bill's criteria of black and no more than 10" in any dimension. Artists include Rodney Pople, Jacky Redgate, Matthys Gerber, John Nicholsons and Moana Nepia. Bill has …

Dlux Media Arts - D>Art05: Distributed Art And Mobile Journeys, Su Ballard

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

Exhibitions are often about product rather than process. Like a trade show demo, the curated exhibition is the opportunity for artists to showcase their research, innovation, and general creative endeavour alongside that of their peers. There is time for the work to be examined, experimented with, and opened up to a visiting public. This kind of exhibition model has for a long time been problematic for works that do not exist within a defined 3D space, or a comfortably measured duration. D>Art05 and Mobile Journeys address the temporal and spatial restrictions of the exhibition model by making the work …

The Limits Of Art History: Towards An Ecological History Of Landscape Art, A. Gaynor, Ian A. Mclean

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

An ecological art history primarily concerns the relationship between the aesthetic and representational functions of landscape art, the environment it depicts and the ecology of this environment. Such investigation should enable us to determine whether particular aesthetic sensibilities or styles are more or less conducive to providing accurate ecological (Le. scientific) information, and what the limits of this information might be. An ecological art history would therefore, of necessity, engage with the science of ecology. Hence it requires an alliance with environmental and ecological historians as well as appropriate scientists. There are few examples of scholars drawing connections between the …

For Nothing, Ian A. Mclean

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

n the seventies, it is widely believed, Western art lost faith in its own originality and got caught in an endless retro-vision. There was nevertheless something terribly original about the art they produced. These thoughts went through my head when Domenico de Clario showed me the premise of an exhibition he was curating called For Nothing. It read like a manifesto from the seventies: Is it possible to make a work whose raison d'etre is not dependent on critiquing another artist? Is it possible to make a work that does not cost anything to make, that does not aspire to …