School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications
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ItemMornings with Radio 774: can John Howard’s medium of choice enhance public sphere activity?( 2007)This paper addresses the necessity for program-specific analysis in radio research by focussing on Jon Faine’s Morning Program on ABC Radio 774 (Melbourne). After establishing the present Prime Minister’s preference for radio appearances over all other types of media, I examine the extent to which Faine’s particular iteration of talkback has the capacity to enhance public sphere activity, given the view that this medium is being strategically utilised by politicians to gain virtually uncontested access to listeners. My examination occurs principally through a morning’s observation of Faine’s program, supported by information from recordings of a constructed week of the program from the previous two months. My findings suggest that while a certain amount of ‘top-down’ flow of information is unavoidable, some contestation of ideas often occurs, mitigating politicians’ exploitation of at least this particular program. Faine’s program does, moreover, seem to give the impression of an acceptance of listeners calls on topics that affect their daily lives, even though only a small number of ‘ordinary’ callers are featured each day. My observations suggest this program does offer processes that enhance public sphere activity, although with some qualifications.
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ItemObservations on the history and uses of animation occasioned by the exhibition Eyes Lies and Illusions selected from works in the Werner Nekes Collection( 2008)The exhibition Eyes, Lies and Illusions held at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne and the Hayward gallery in London was a selection from the 20,000 optical toys, scientific instruments, antiquarian books and visual entertainments in the collection of Werner Nekes, the German experimental film maker. This essay begins with a consideration of the historical trajectory of belief in the afterlife in relation to ‘animation’, the imputation of a soul to anything that appeared to move itself. The second section suggests that animation techniques bear witness to the persistence of atavistic beliefs in modernity. The third addresses the proximity of technology and magic in animation, and proposes a more extended use of the term ‘animation’.
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ItemCodecs and capability(Institute of Network Cultures, 2008)What makes a YouTube video good? Maybe it is the political tenor, or perhaps you like the ethics. Perhaps it looks nice. Or it’s funny. Perhaps a YouTube video is good when it reaches a lot of people. But the great thing about the internet is that it allows every minor interest, every academic specialism, every rare and refined hobby a place, so the numbers really don’t matter in the same way as the old media. Everyone has had that lovely serendipitous moment when you find exactly the right piece of data, exactly the right image, on the site dedicated to collecting photos of old street lights or the history of dye-transfer techniques. Popularity isn’t in question. Looking nice, being funny, politics, even ethics are pretty much personal opinion in the globally connected, rapid and fragmentary culture of the internet post-2002. It may be better to ask what makes a YouTube video bad. Then we have some answers. Slow download. Too much fuzz in the image or the soundtrack. Stutter. Technical qualities are what make a bad video. Things that go wrong, like using a pine green title on a black background. There is always a workaround, an optimal way of using the tool that’s available, but the tool has to be available, and a network tool has to be as nearly universally available as it can if it is to permit the serendipitous discovery of the lone like soul to yours among the billion pages.
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ItemFor a history of black( 2008)In 'For a History of Black' Sean Cubitt investigates the physiological, technological and cultural problems associated with the (non-) colour black. As the complete absence of colour, black is an ideal that is never actualised, says Cubitt. The representation of black operates differently in different media. In many contexts, such as low-light cinema, early television and new media art, artists have made creative use of the limitations and artefacts of how production technologies handle black. Cubitt's detailed media history connects questions of aesthetics with the physiology of perception and industrial changes.
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ItemMuscles, hybrids and new bad futures( 1994)Since Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone made their respective debuts onto the cinematic screen the muscle phenomenon has become a dominant factor in the cinema of the 1980s and 1990s. Muscle, in all its hard and sweaty glory, has found a market especially in the big budget extravaganzas whose narratives centre around the spectacle of the built bodies of male stars such as Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Lundgren, Van Damme, Snipes and Seagal, and the more padded forms of actors such as Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson. This new brand of cinema whilst harking back in part to an American tradition of genre cinema (the Western, Detective films, War Films etc.) appears to owe more to genres that emerged outside America: the Italian `gladiator' pictures of the 1950s and 1960s which retold the adventures of Hercules and other mythic heroes via the forms of bodybuilding stars such as Steve Reeves and Reg Park; and the martial arts action films popularized by Hong Kong Cinema and which found a very profitable market in the West ‐ and which also saw the migration of the genre into American cinema starring a series of martial arts experts including Chuck Norris, Bruce Lee and Jean‐Claude van Damme. Both genres revealed an unabashed display of the spectacle of action and the spectacle of the male body in action. The camera found any excuse to unapolegetically caress the bodies of the stars with pans, tracks and close‐ups of various fragmented body parts in ways that always denoted strength, agility and power.
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ItemMuscle, excess and rupture: female bodybuilding and gender construction( 1995-02)In recent years bodybuilding culture has provided the backdrop to a series of debates centering around issues surrounding representations of gender and in particular the potential inherent in bodybuilding bodies to rupture preconceived notions regarding 'norms' of masculinity and femininity; for the meticulously controlled, predetermined construction and definition of mass and muscle on the bodybuilding figure has shifted the body from an arena dominated by assumptions centering around the natural to a sphere which exposes the body itself - and with it the power structures that impose meaning onto it - as informed by culture. The bodybuilding physique reveals the body as a socially determined construct, or to cite Kuhn, with the willed construction of bodies in bodybuilding, 'nature becomes culture'. (Kuhn 1988, 5) The question of marketability has, over the years, emerged as a key concern in bodybuilding. Of all sports, due to its tendency towards things excessive, bodybuilding tends to stand outside the mainstream appealing primarily to a select, cult following. There have been some exceptions of bodybuilders who successfully escaped the margins and entered mainstream culture, the most successful being Arnold Schwarzenegger (seven time Mr. Olympia) who opened the doors to big-time muscle in action cinema. More recently, female muscle has also started to make itself felt in the popular sphere, with Cory Everson (six time winner of the Ms. Olympia) appearing in films such as Double Impact alongside Jean Claude van Damme, and professional bodybuilders Raye Hollitt, Shelley Beattie and Tonya Knight starring in the successful U.S. television show American Gladiators. Despite breaking through to mainstream culture, however, these bodybuilders have served as examples of 'freaks' in a world of 'norms'; they signal a moment of excess allowed to seep through into the dominant, but these moments are always about controlled forms of excess - they, in a sense, constitute an orderly disruption.
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ItemLibrary(Sage, 2006)The modern library derives from a vision of public service developed in the 19th century. At various times in the past a commercial service, an educational resource, a religious domain and a political institution, the library today exists in various forms, including all these but in addition the professional libraries held by law firms and scientific or technological associations, multimedia lending libraries and certain areas of the world-wide web.
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ItemNo Future: Democracy in the Age of Neoliberal Speed(Routledge, 2008)
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ItemTheorising narratives of exile and belonging: the importance of biography and ethno-mimesis in "understanding" asylum( 2006)The article explores the use and importance of taking a biographical approach to conducting participatory action research (PAR) with asylum seekers and refugees in order to: better understand lived experiences of exile and belonging; contribute to the important field of Biographical Sociology; provide a safe space for stories to be told; and in turn for these stories to feed in to policy and praxis. The authors’ combined work on the asylum-migration nexus, the politics of representation and participatory action research methodology (PAR) as ethno-mimesis(i) argues for the use of biography to contribute to cultural politics at the level of theory, experience and praxis, and is constitutive of critical theory in praxis. PAR research undertaken with Bosnian refugees in the East Midlands and Afghan refugees in London will be the focus around which our analysis develops. We develop a case for theory building based upon lived experience using biographical materials, both narrative and visual, as critical theory in practice towards a vision of social justice that challenges the dominant knowledge/power axis embedded in current governance and media policy relating to forced migration. The dominant power/knowledge axis related to forced migration is embedded in current (New Labour) governance and re-presented in some media texts as identified below. New Labour governance is symbolised in the competing discourses of a) strong centralised control and b) more open systems, network and partnership based governance (Newman, 2003: 17-23; Clarke, 2004; Lewis, 2000). Open systems are made up of partnerships and networks – “joined up government”, “that transcends the vertical, departmental structures of government itself” (Newman, 2003: 20) to develop or foster a consensual style of governing. Progressive governance is defined by Newman (2003:15) as involving a significant shift from governance through hierarchy and competition to governance through networks and partnerships with an emphasis upon inclusion. Progressive governance involves the production of techniques and strategies of responsibilisation of citizens operationalised through the development of networks, alliances, and partnerships, with a strong focus upon active citizenship. Thus, spreading responsibility for social control to non state agencies and “communities” (Garland, 2001). In relation to forced migration/asylum discourses around the exclusion of the “other” (involving criminalisation, detention and deportation) and the maintenance and control of borders (developing ever more tighter controls on entry and asylum applications) exist in tension with discourses that speak of human rights, responsibilities and possibilities for multi-cultural citizenship especially in the community cohesion literature. There is a conflict at the heart of New Labour’s approach to asylum policy linked to the “alterity” of the asylum seeker that promulgates hegemonic ideologies and discourses around rights to belonging and citizenship, perceived access to resources (redistribution) and misrecognition fostering suspicion of the “stranger”. Alongside discourses of fairness and rights to enter and seek refuge, there exist regressive discourses that water down the vitally important actual and symbolic 1951 UN convention, and foster a split between “bogus” and “genuine” refugees, making it extremely hard to seek asylum in the UK.
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