JULY 2006
FIBRE
CULTURE NEWS:
UPDATE, July24TH 2006:
The Media Studies Program at La
Trobe University presents a public
lecture by:
GRAEME SAMUEL, AO
Chairman, Australian Competition & Consumer
Commission, Canberra
This lecture is particularly very timely in view of the
new media landscape being proposed by the
government as the ACCC will be one of the
regulators.
Monday, 14th August @ 6pm, Theatrette, Victorian State
Library (Content: 40 min presentation plus time to take
questions from the floor)
Mr Samuel is Chairman of the Australian Competition &
Consumer Commission. He took up this position
in July 2003. Until then he was President of
the National Competition Council, Chairman of the
Melbourne & Olympic Parks Trust, a Commissioner of
the Australian Football League, a member of the
Board of the Docklands Authority, and a Director of
Thakral Holdings Limited. He relinquished all these
offices to assume his position with the ACCC. He is a
past President of the Australian Chamber of Commerce
and Industry, a past Chairman of Playbox Theatre
Company and Opera Australia, a former Trustee of
the Melbourne Cricket Ground Trust and former
Chairman of the Inner & Eastern Health Care Network.
Until the early 1990s he pursued a professional career in
law and investment banking, from which he retired
to assume a number of roles in public service and
company directorships. Mr Samuel was a
Partner of the law firm Phillips Fox & Masel
from 1972 to 1980, Executive Director of Hill
Samuel Australia Limited and subsequently Macquarie
Bank Limited from 1981 to 1986 and co-founder of Grant
Samuel & Associates in 1988. Mr Samuel holds a
Bachelor of Laws (Melbourne) and Master of Laws
(Monash). In 1995 he was elected a Life Member of
the Australian Football League. In 1998 Mr
Samuel was appointed an Officer in the General
Division of the Order of Australia. In 2000 he was
awarded the Australian Sports Medal, for services
to sport. In the same year he was appointed
an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Institute of
Company Directors. In 2003 he was awarded the
Centenary Medal in recognition of his service as
President of the National Competition
Council. In the same year he was appointed an
Honorary Life Trustee of the Committee for Economic
Development of Australia (CEDA).
Website on education in Australia
http://www.thehindu.com/edu/2006/06/05/stories/2006060500460800.htm
A new website launched by an Indian who studied in
Australia may be helpful to those who plan to pursue
higher education in that continent. Personal experience
can always give much better insight into any aspect.
Particularly, when it comes to educational aspects in
foreign countries it can add more value to the official
information available.
A new website, www.student2australia.com,
has been launched Sujit Bayya, an Indian now settled in
Australia after completing his higher education.
The site is an informative portal providing comprehensive
information to prospective international students. The
information available is tailored to assist students in
pursuing education, visa guidelines, departure
information, arrival checklist, accommodation, Australian
culture, lifestyle, careers and Immigration
opportunities.
Sujit Bayya, the principal architect of this portal, who
came to Australia eight years back, says he has used his
personal experiences to explain various aspects to the
students. It caters to the needs of other stakeholders in
the education sector such as colleges and universities
and the intermediary service providers to students.
The portal also web casts periodic interviews with
experts in fields, which students can relate to.
Newsletters are also sent to registered members with the
latest in Australia education.
R. RAVIKANTH REDDY
http://www.realtimearts.net/rt73/gye.html
Lisa Gye reports on the Hard Copy forum
Transdisciplinary publishing
At exactly 5pm on March 13, 2006, the computers in the
State Library of South Australia shut down. No advance
warning, just a blank screen. The person taking notes for
the final session of the Hard Copy workshop sat bolt
upright as the data projector defaulted to blue.
"Errr... we've been continually saving this I
hope." Vain hope as it turned out. Given the day's
discussions with regards to the important role of the
library in the process of archiving this seemed like just
a little too
much irony.
Hard Copy was organised by Lizzie Muller and Melinda
Rackham as part of ANAT's [Media State] program run in
association with the 2006 Adelaide Festival of the Arts.
The workshop was facilitated by Roger Malina, editor of
the US periodical Leonardo, and its aims were to provide
an
overview of the state of interdisciplinary publishing in
Australia and to provide participants with an opportunity
to contribute to a dialogue about new models. It also
aimed to develop new partnerships between organisations
and individuals active in the field. The workshop was
preceded by a discussion on the Fibreculture list led by
Malina and the other facilitators; Lizzie Muller, Keith
Gallasch, Linda Carroli and myself. An ongoing report on
the outcomes of the workshop will be developed on the
wiki on the Fibreculture site and it is hoped that a
permanent resource will emerge from this (http://wiki.fibreculture.org/index.php/
Hard_Copy_Workshop_2006).
The workshop itself was divided into 3 themes that looked
at interdisciplinary publishing from the point of view of
archiving and distribution, research, scholarship and
their dissemination, criticism and readerships. Given the
breadth of the themes, it's not surprising that the day's
discussions were far ranging and detailed. Rather than
attempt their faithful reproduction, I'll focus on a few
salient
points.
>From the outset, the question of language and the
definition of terms occupied both the discussants on the
list prior to the event and those present at the workshop
in Adelaide. Andrew Murphie asked whether the use of the
term 'transdisiplinarity' was more appropriate than
'interdisciplinarity.' "Put simply", he wrote,
"if interdisciplinarity allows an impossibly smooth
communication between different disciplines, often by
imposing some kind of recognition metrics across the
whole, transdisciplinarity is about how things cut across
disciplines and transform them, moment by moment. Of
course, their processes-including legitimation and so
on-are constantly transformed as well. This would include
publishing." Although not explicitly addressed at
the workshop, Andrew's point could have framed many of
the discussions that took place on the day.
How, for example, do we allow for the transformation of
academic writing by new technologies rather than trying
to make new modes of writing fit into outdated but
recognisable academic constructs? Even further to this,
how do we then get the academy and those who fund
research to recognise these new modes of writing as
legitimate? As many of the workshop participants noted,
new technologies for publishing not only allow for
different outcomes in terms of writing but can in fact
also produce new ways of thinking about writing. Writing
is not always about something, as Linda Marie Walker put
it. An instrumentalist approach to writing fails to
recognise writing as research rather than writing about
research. This was a point also made by Ross Gibson when
he talked about the need for a more immersed critical
writing to balance out the over-emphasis on critical
distance in academic writing that has emerged in the last
150 years. He argued that the kind of writing called for
in interdisciplinary publishing is reflective, active and
immersed writing that helps the reader to think rather
than telling the reader what to think. For Gibson,
however, new technologies for publishing can actually
hinder this kind of writing because they emphasise speed
rather than reflection and development.
Questions about the potentials created by the use of
digital technologies in research and publishing, however,
did generate a good deal of discussion on the day. These
discussions ranged from the
appropriate use of terms such as 'hard' and 'soft' to
describe off and online forms of publishing (does the
term 'soft' devalue online publishing, for example)
through to questions of authentication and reputation in
online and collaborative publishing environments. And, of
course, the archive is critical to the entire project of
online publishing. Katie Cavanagh warned that we are
living in a digital 'dark age' where the amount of
content published is exceeding already its ability to be
stored and retrieved effectively. How we address this
problem is crucial if what we create now is to survive
into the future.
Following on from this, questions about how we sustain
publications, and in particular specialised, academic or
niche publications, in a rapidly contracting funding
environment were also addressed. As both Sam de Silva and
Andrew Murphie pointed out, we are approaching a time
when we may have to imagine a world where there is no
funding or institutional support. As an adjunct to this,
the development and maintenance of readerships/audiences
is crucial if interdisciplinary research is to develop an
interface with the broader community. As Lizzie Muller
pointed out, there is a need for a public discourse that
is still thoughtful and not merely popular. How all of
this will transform Keith Gallasch's publishing
"ecology"-"the patterns of mutualism,
dependency, fuelling, parasitism ... in a system and
between overlapping systems" (Fibreculture list,
11.03.2006) is anyone's guess. As his post also notes,
it's a challenge that this very publication is facing as
it continues to work to "bring audiences into the
loop of critical engagement" in the face of new
models and methods of delivery.
Hard Copy, the event, was an intensive and inspiring day.
The issues that were raised both on the day and on the
Fibreculture list need to continue to be addressed.
Hopefully this is just the beginning of an ongoing
engagement with these critical issues and ideas.
Hard Copy, organisers, Lizzie Muller and Melinda Rackham,
ANAT's [Media State] program, 2006 Adelaide Festival of
the Arts with support from Creativity and Cognition
Studios, University of Technology, Sydney, the
Fibreculture network and Smart Internet CRC.
Lisa Gye teaches Applied Media at Swinburne University in
Melbourne and is a facilitator of the Fibreculture
network, www.fibreculture.org.