A one-day symposium presented by the Centre for Cultural Research at the University of Western Sydney

10am-4pm, Tuesday 2 September 2008

The Gallery, Female Orphan School (building EZ), Parramatta campus, UWS

Program:

Professor Willard McCarty, Kings College, London, ‘Stepping off the edge of the world or into it: The Dictionary of Words in the Wild as research?’

Dr Paul Arthur, Australia Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology,  ’Historical GIS: Showcasing Western Australia’s Past, Present and Future’

Professor Ien Ang and Dr Nayantara Pothen, Centre for Cultural Research, ‘diverCities: Challenges of doing a digital humanities project’

Associate Professor Andrew Murphie, School of English, Media and Performing Arts, University of New South Wales,  ’Open? Access? Publishing?: a new world for humanities publishing is a new world for the humanities’

Dr John Byron, The Australian Academy of the Humanities, ‘Roadmaps and beltways: Digital humanities policy developments’

Discussion: The Possible Futures of Digital Humanities.

Tea/coffee available from 9.30am, morning tea, lunch and refreshments provided. No cost for registration, but capacity is strictly limited so please RSVP to the convenor, Dr Elaine Lally, e.lally@uws.edu.au.

Parramatta Campus Map and Directions <http://www.uws.edu.au/about/locations/maps/parramattamap>http://www.uws.edu.au/about/locations/maps/parramattamap

http://www.ehum.edu.au/ – Australian e-Humanities Gateway

http://www.apsr.edu.au/ — Australian Partnership for Sustainable
Repositories

http://www.ncris.dest.gov.au/ – National Collaborative Research
Infrastructure Strategy (see also
http://www.fibreculture.org/myspinach/fibreculture/2005-October/004706.h
tml, submission on Humanities disciplinary needs sent to the
subcommittee for Collaborative Research Infrastructure of the NCRIS
process in October 2005). A Roadmap was produced in February 2006 and is
currently being reviewed
(http://www.ncris.dest.gov.au/development_ffolder/roadmap_review_2008.ht
m).

http://www.eresearch.edu.au/ — eResearch Australia conference (29
September-1 October 2008, Melbourne)

http://www.ahrcict.rdg.ac.uk/ictmap/ — UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council ICT map

http://www.ahds.ac.uk/ – UK Arts and Humanities Data Service (defunded
from April 2008 but still in operation for the present)

http://www.acls.org/programs/Default.aspx?id=644 — American Council for
Learned Societies Commission on Cyberinfrastructure (including the final
report of the Commission _Our Cultural Commonwealth_
(http://www.acls.org/uploadedFiles/Publications/Programs/Our_Cultural_Co
mmonwealth.pdf)

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Image: Digital collage JewelBOX, BLACKBOX by Tatiana Pentes 2008

“It is inscribed as on Pandora’s Box…do not open…passions…escape in all directions from a box that lies open…” from Bruno Latour’s “Opening Pandora’s Box”, in Science in Action: How To Follow Scientists & Engineers Through Society, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1987, p1-17. Abstract

This work investigates and records the production of a digital media artwork blackBOX: Painting A Digital Picture of Documented Memory, generated through the media technologies of interactive multimedia, exploiting the creative potentials of digitally produced music, sound, image and text relationships in a disc based & online (Internet) environment. The artwork evolves from an imaginary electronic landscape that can be uniquely explored/ played in a non-sequential manner. The artwork/ game is a search for the protagonist Nina’s hybrid cultural identity. This is mirrored in the exploration of random, fragmentary and non-linear experiences designed for the player engaged with the artwork. The subjective intervention of the player/ participant in the electronic artwork is metaphoric of the improvisational tendencies that have evolved in the Greek Blues (Rembetika), Jazz, and Hindustani musical and performative dance forms. The protagonist Nina�s discovery of these musical forms reveal her cultural/ spiritual origins. As a musical composer arranges notes, melodies and harmonies, and sections of instruments, so too, the multimedia producer designs a ensemble of audio-visual fragments to be navigated. Dance also becomes a driving metaphor, analogous to the players movement in and through these passages of image/ sound/ text and as a movement between theories and ideas explored in the content of the program. The central concern is to playfully reverse, obscure, distort the look of the dominating/colonialist gaze, in the production of an interactive game and allow the girl to picture herself.

URL:

A second workshop will be held in August to develop a selected number of the projects for potential e-publication, utilising interactivity available in Web 2.0 technologies.

A third workshop will then be held to prepare the final articles/projects for publication through the TFC ejournal.

The workshop is the first in a series being developed in conjunction with the Transforming Cultures Research Centre and the University Library e-Press.

Attendance is limited so please contact CCS ccs@uts.edu.au to book a place.

Thursday May 29 2008

Building

CB02.05.30

Program

Tea coffee and sandwiches available – short breaks only between sessions

Open 9.45 for coffee etc and time to get lost and be found

Kickoff 10am

Context

1. Intro – digital media and ethnographic research in the humanities and social sciences Andrew Jakubowicz 15 min

2. Digital Humanities – Elaine Lally UWS Centre for Cultural Research

Q and A 15 min

Applications and projects

4. Making Multicultural Australia: local ethnographies Andrew Jakubowicz 15 min

5. Black Box Tatiana Pentes 15 min

6. Aboriginal Sydney Peter Read 15 min

7. Indian seaman and Australia Heather Goodall 15 min

8. Technology and techniques – Thumb Candy Chris Caines 15 min

9.Tagged – Kay Donovan 15 mins
See clips: Tony at the farm, Tony: birthday party

10. Commentary: Digital ethnography as method – Jon Marshall 15 min

Q and A 30 min

10. Developing projects for TFC eJournal – discussion, selection and drafting of proposals for a second “working” workshop in August 1 hr

Close 2pm approx