School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications

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    Ambient culture: Making sense of everyday participation in open, public space
    Papastergiadis, N ; Hannon, S ; McQuire, S ; Wyatt, D ; Carter, P ; de Dios, A ; Kong, L (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020-09-25)
    Unlike art and performance within interior spaces like the museum or gallery, the experience of culture in an urban and networked public space presents new challenges for cultural interpretation and evaluation. In this chapter, we draw on research conducted at Melbourne’s Federation Square to discuss how the concept of ambience helps make sense of both the production and experience of public culture. The first section introduces the changing settings for culture: from an almost exclusively interior presentation to an increasingly mediated, networked and outdoor experience. The second section situates this exteriorization of culture in terms of a shifting urban environment that is increasingly interwoven with media networks. The third section describes different forms of engagement and problematizes traditional expectations of cultural experience. Finally, we conclude with a reflection on these findings and draw out implications for the theorization, cultural programming and evaluation of cultural participation in public space.
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    Arts and Cultural Precincts in the Age of Participation
    PAPASTERGIADIS, N ; Carter, P ; McQuire, S ; Yue, A ; Wee, K ; Chia, J (Asian Urban Lab, 2016)
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    Ambient Aesthetics: Altered Subjectivities in the New Museum
    Radywyl, N ; Barikin, A ; Papastergiadis, N ; McQuire, S ; Message, K ; Witcomb, A (John Wiley & Sons, 2015-07-20)
    This chapter focuses on the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) as a case study for the emergence of hybrid subjectivities within the new museum. Fueled by an optimistic idealism about how technology might transform everyday life, ACMI was conceived as a catalyst for new forms of cultural consciousness. The chapter casts ACMI's initial willingness to experiment with innovative representational technology as a strategic attempt to position itself as a pioneering new media institution, and to engage in alternative forms of cultural citizenship. Its early public exhibitions, for example, often eschewed chronological histories of the moving image in favor of phenomenological displays of visual knowledge and embodied new media “experiences.” In tracking ACMI's changing curatorial, architectural, and experiential directives, this chapter foregrounds the significance of the museum as a producer rather than distributor of stories, experiences, and objects. The argument proceeds with close reference to empirical audience experience research data collected from ACMI visitors, and is situated in relation to historical transformations of pedagogy as a driver for museological display. The concept of “ambient aesthetics” is, finally, proposed as a key conceptual framework for evaluating how contemporary museums might articulate a new kind of “flexible” citizenship in a transnational public sphere.
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    Planning for Urban Media: Large Public Screens and Urban Communication
    McQuire, S ; PAPASTERGIADIS, N ; Vetere, F ; Gibbs, M ; Downs, J ; Pedell, S ; Silva, CN (IGI Global, 2015-02-28)
    At the same time, these changes created new challenges for city governments, citizens, and other stakeholders, namely risks associated with the digital divide, which tended to reinforce social exclusion along other social divides. As several  ...