Screen and Media Studies

November 30, 2004 at 9:46 pm · Filed under media

\\ Screen & Media Studies - Homepage //

This school at the University of Waikato in New Zealand (where Sean Cubitt used to work) does some fine reseach within Media Studies (he is now moving to the Media and Communications program at the University of Melbourne).

The media are a central fact of life in the new millennium. The Department of Screen and Media Studies, in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, is New Zealand’s leading research-based department in this vital area. Our research interests include: New Zealand in the global media economy, media education and media democracy, media and religion, digital gaming, and audience studies, including the investigation of the international reception of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. We have a research specialisation in the intersection of creative practice and the marketplace, which is served by work on the creative industries and on marketing the arts, and by practical research undertaken through Big TV the campus-based community television station.

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Evaluating Quality Hypermedia

November 30, 2004 at 10:38 am · Filed under media

George Landow is one of the pioneers of scholarly hypertext. Here is an essay by him titled “Evaluating Quality Hypermedia”.

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Noah Wardrin-Fruin

November 30, 2004 at 10:31 am · Filed under media

Noah Wardrin-fruin is the author of the New Media ‘history’ book “The New Media Reader”

His web log can be found at:

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1st Internetional Conference on Scholarly Hypertext

November 30, 2004 at 10:23 am · Filed under media

Scholarly Hypertext at ACM
Pitty that I missed this one. I have never been to a hypertext conference. Maybe next time.

This workshop will be a forum to bring together researchers and practitioners interested in how hypertext - with its affordances for connection, non-linearity, multiple narratives and flexible navigation - can assist the intellectual work involved in scholarly research. Other forms of intellectual work overlap strongly with ‘academic scholarship’ and are legitimate domains to draw on. Likewise, there is active research in related fields such as information retrieval, digital libraries and domain visualization - work in these areas is relevant if there is a strong hypertext element.

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Inter-Disciplinary Angst and ‘Distributed Authorship’.

November 29, 2004 at 3:31 pm · Filed under media

(A list that I contribute to (called fibreculture) is entering the post-cyberspace age (or second-wave Internet research) and there are some interesting conversations. Here is my reply to a ‘Position Statement’ on distributed authorship).

Dear Fibreculture,

I wish to comment on a couple of the important themes that Mr Adrian Miles raised in this position statement (2). Whilst in principle I agree with much of what Adrian Miles has to say, there are still some troublesome institutional prejudices about broader academic practices that should be addressed (if we are to move towards ‘distributed’ anything). I will attempt to provide some more academic reference points in the hope that we can foster a more inclusive conversation and thus provide some forward movement in terms of discussing the specific benefits ‘distributed authorship’ might provide for us.

One is that being an academic is not just about a communication process. It is not just about the process of writing a book nor is it just about the process of building a web site. The craft (or process) of communication for a humanities academic is an important part of the picture, but it is not the whole picture. Being able to write well doesn’t necessarily make you a good humanities academic any more the ability to make a good web site accords you the status of being a competent humanities researcher.

And whilst innovation in academic communication processes are an important component of the broader humanities, they are just a small part of our many disciplinary components. There are many other innovations within the humanities that are thrusting forward, not just applied communication techniques and processes.

Whilst ‘the humanities’ may welcome specific innovation in academic communication, the humanities won’t be dictated to by these innovations. The humanities have a choice of what communication innovations that they embrace within their various institutional settings, disciplines, study areas and practices, and these choices are based on what they think is important to them and the duties that they have to the communities that they represent. Technology is not neutral and we can make an informed choice to ignore ‘innovation’ just as much as we can make a choice to embrace it. Technology (ICT) in the humanities, as in the rest of our society, has a ‘voice’ as well as an ‘opinion’ and it is only one of many voices that we can choose to ignore or listen to.

As an historian, I have made an inordinate effort to advance notions of hypertextuality within the study of history (because I think that it is important). But these communication innovations are only useful to communicate certain historical questions (I know this through trial and error). And just because I have made numerous innovations in how history is communicated, doesn’t mean that they are applicable to the rest of the discipline (and history is just one discipline within the humanities). For most of how history is researched and communicated the academic codex provides the most advanced solution.

And as a ‘communication historiographer’ there are certain responsibilities that I am not willing to take on board. I know nothing about Philosophy, I have resisted cultural studies throughout my education, I know nothing about Archeology, I know nothing about Greek history, I know nothing about pre-Federation Australia, I know very little about Queensland history, I know nothing about education policy, I know nothing about the History and Philosophy of Science, I know nothing about 19th Century Hapsburg Art, I know nothing about India under the Raj. I can’t speak Chinese nor do I know anything about the Aboriginal tribes of Northern NSW. I know very little about the history of Feminism, I don’t understand how the senate voting system works, I don’t understand what a QC does, I don’t understand the College voting system in the US, I don’t understand the history of mining not do I understand 19th Century German Philosophy. And I don’t understand how the local council voting system works in Melbourne (and I forgot to vote).

The point is that I have difficulty speaking for the rest of the humanities because I don’t understand what they do. And just because I am an expert in my field, doesn’t mean that I can speak for other fields that I know nothing about. Despite its claims, communication studies (applied and theoretical) has discernable boundaries and it is just one constituent within the broader humanities polity. It is a contingent form of communication, not a universal one.

That said let me make a comparative statement to some of the statements that I hear coming from the technical disciplines. What if I said to the Universities of Technology that its’ academics cannot practice Communication studies within Australia unless they have an honours degree in history. I could argue that unless you understand the nuances and contradictions of the history of the society in which you practice your craft (and the literacy/s of its many historical conversations) then you cannot possibly provide communication innovations for the use within the broader humanities.

It’s never going to happen huh? And also what is never going to happen is that communication professionals are never ever going to make a universally applicable technological ‘cooky mould’ that dictates how this society engages with and advances its vast cultural heritage. The humanities are a lot bigger than ICT, a lot bigger than the Universities of Technology, a lot bigger than the present political administration and a lot bigger than me.

And beyond my own contextual ‘cooky moulds’ here, where I do strongly agree with Adrian is that there is a place for ‘distributed authorship’ and other innovations in academic communication and this is within one of the very fields that studies these innovations. And the irony is (as I have often pointed out on this list), is that the eclectic study areas of Media Studies and Cultural Studies (beyond their often monolithic canards) have actually made far few tangible innovations in new media than have a number of other humanities disciplines. The (non University of Technologies) humanities disciplines of archeology, history, linguistics and philosophy are actually far more advanced in ‘practice based new media’ than most Australian Media Studies, Cultural Studies and Communication Studies centres. Individuals from the newer academic traditions are in no position to demonise and pre-judge the rest of the humanities unless then can provide them with some tangible evidence that what they claim to be true (about the capabilities of ICTs) is actually true.

Again this said, I welcome Fibreculture’s innovations in new media and I agree with Adrian Miles’ assertions that there are too many academics in the field of new media who have not invested enough energy into technically understanding and advancing the medium they talk about (and there was a time in Australia when you could score an academic position in a university as an Historian of China without learning Chinese!) Fibreculture is ripe to address this problem and also assist in building some healthy and respectful bridges between the Universities of Technology (RMIT, Swinburne, QUT etc) and the other decent and hard working humanities scholars in the broader education system (Griffith, La Trobe, Melbourne, ANU etc.)

And sorry but ‘distributed authorship’ doesn’t cut through deeply ingrained communities of practice, institutional cultures, cities, states, suburbs, class, gender, sexuality, institutional status and competing academic cultures etc. Just because I walk sideways for 1 hour per day, doesn’t mean that I can walk sideways for 300 years. Get it?

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Energy Bulletin/ Peak oil

November 27, 2004 at 5:16 pm · Filed under politics

EnergyBulletin.net | Newswire | Energy and Peak Oil News

This site produced in Melbourne by the imfamous ‘Secret Adam’ gets an enormous amounts of hits per month (so I am told). Secret Adam is a legend of the Internet here in Melbourne as he has been involved in some of the city’s most famous political sites (and note the high calibre of the content and content management of this site.

This site is about ‘Peak Oil’ or the discussion around when crude oil will peak in its production then go into decline.

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ICT Rights

November 27, 2004 at 5:01 pm · Filed under media

apc.au ICT Rights Monitor
Yes ICT (Internet and Communication Technologies) have rights too! Or at least, we as citizens have rights in relation to these technologies. Here is a web portal built by Andrew Garton and Justina Curtis for the Association for Progressive Communication (APC) that documents the politics of ICT.

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Phil Agre: Networking on the Network

November 27, 2004 at 3:49 pm · Filed under media

Networking on the Network:
A Guide to Professional Skills for PhD Students

This article by the ’socio-technical’ researcher Phil Agre has quickly become a classic of the Internet.

http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/network.html

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Matthew Kirschenbaum’s Web Log

November 27, 2004 at 1:49 pm · Filed under media

http://www.otal.umd.edu/~mgk/blog/
Mathew Kirschenbaum completed one of the first online PhD’s anywhere in the world (at IATH at the University of Virginia)

In general, his research focus is English and computer mediated text (more on his weblog). He is also centred within the field of Humanities Computing.

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Graduate Screenings for Animation and Interactive Media at RMIT

November 27, 2004 at 11:17 am · Filed under media

http://www.rmit.edu.au/aim/
The Centre for Animation and Interactive Media (AIM) at RMIT University had its graduate screenings on Thursday night. The centre is chiefly concerned with teaching Animation (and the screenings were for their postgraduate diplomas), but the centre also has a number of Masters and PhD students. The Masters and Ph.D students primarily focus upon the question of how digital technologies can be employed in the generation of creative works.

The centre is reasonably young (at about 15 years old) and has been an innovator in the use of digital technologies in creative works since its inception. In fact when I first made contact with the centre way back in 1996, it was pretty much the only place in the country that offered a project based higher degree in digital technologies (how times change because the education system is now littered with degrees in digital technologies).

What sets the centre apart from other schools is that it has a focus upon ideas and not just the dictates of technique. And having a focus upon ideas often means that its intake of students come from a cacophony of backgrounds with an array of competing ambitions that miraculously all come together within the rubric of art and technology. The centre had a substantial peak around the time of the fin de cercle technology boom, with the likes of Sherry Turkle, William Mitchell, Ross Gibson et.al. having an interest in the centre. But the centre?s rudder has always been the postgraduate diploma in Animation which has retained its currency throughout the peaks and troughs of market-based technology.

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Fibreculture and Elections

November 24, 2004 at 10:38 am · Filed under politics

The question of governance has come up recently on a list that I contribute to called fibreculture. There is (perhaps predictably) a reluctance by the present moderators (in which there are 14) to embrace a more representative democratic model. This is for a number of reasons; most notably because the list comes from the dot com Libertarian era in which stucture was seen as bad (even the structures that the Libertarians exploited). But initiating and maintaining democratic structures can also be alot of work so we will see what happends. However, I don’t see a future for the list unless the list moderators explore some sort of practical democratic sustainablity beyond the present Libertarian form.

Here is how another list’s governence works (H-Net but we are in a seriously different league with this organisation).

Constitution

H-Net Elections

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Ian Woodward: Griffith University

November 23, 2004 at 11:58 am · Filed under media

School of Arts, Media and Culture staff pages

Dr Ian Woodward does research into the local effects of Globalisation in the Australian context. He is presenting a paper on his preliminary findings (from focus group research) at the TASA conference (Sociology) this year. http://www.tasa.org.au/

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Jean Burgess Weblog

November 22, 2004 at 9:31 pm · Filed under media

creativity/machine

Wow! This is about as good as they get in the weblog land. Here is a weblog by Jean Burgess of QUT who is a ‘culture and technology’ researcher.

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Protest and Online Activism

November 22, 2004 at 8:50 pm · Filed under politics

M/C Reviews

Here is a review by Guy Redden of a recent book about Cyberactivism.
Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice, Martha McCaughey and Michael D. Ayers (eds.). Routledge, New York and London, 2003, 310 pp. inc. index. ISBN 0-415-94319-1 (hardback), ISBN 0-415-94320-5 (paperback).

Trying to ascertain the social significance of new media is a task perhaps most successfully undertaken with the benefit of hindsight. Nonetheless, such speculation is inevitable in communities living through periods of rapid media change, even if the ?situated? critic is not always ideally located to see the wood for the trees. During its ascendancy, every medium of the modern age has been proclaimed a saviour of democratic communication (Benjamin?s contention that ?letters to the editor? could transform democracy springs to mind). The Internet is no different. A recent macroanalysis found that its democratic potential was the second most prevalent theoretical concern in the secondary literature (the first being general uses and gratifications).

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The Culture of Protest in the 21st Century

November 22, 2004 at 8:40 pm · Filed under politics

M/C Reviews

The MC Review has a special feature on “Protest in the 21st Century” that may help for the proposed site protest.org.au

The articles in the feature issue can be found here:
http://reviews.media-culture.org.au/sections.php?op=listarticles&secid=24

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