School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 74
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    Capturing ambient participation: Indian Independence Day at Federation Square
    Wyatt, D ; Papastergiadis, N ; Weber, M ; McQuire, S ; WEI, S (Routledge, 2020)
    This chapter uses the concept of ambience as an analytical tool to explore the qualities of cultural participation in the outdoor public spaces of contemporary cultural precincts, and as a metaphor that speaks to a wider process of cultural transformation in communicative cities. Media-rich cultural precincts are now a common feature of urban developments and inform the major policy shifts in creativity-led urban regeneration. The ambient experiences afforded by outdoor cultural precincts resonate with significant shifts in artistic practice. Ambient participation is particularly difficult to account for in the instrumental frameworks and methods routinely used by cultural funders and stakeholders to evaluate the impact of cultural infrastructure. Frameworks designed to measure visitation numbers at a museum, the satisfaction surveys of audiences, or the segmentation and brand recognition indicators tested by market research frame cultural participation as an aggregation of individual experiences. Media-saturated environments make qualitative changes to the experience of being-together-in-public.
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    Architecture, media and spaces of urban communication
    McQuire, S ; McQuire, S ; Sun, W (Routledge, 2020)
    This chapter provides with buildings and material urban structures as symbolic resources that themselves “communicate” certain values, or about urban space as a “space of appearance” in which fundamental communicative processes of speaking and acting in public take place. The location of key buildings and their relation to each other gave material form to political hierarchy and social relations. The capacity for particular urban structures and material settings to endure over time has served to anchor social practices and political processes across generations, underpinning the assertion by architect Aldo Rossi that the built environment is a critical dimension of a society’s collective memory. The rise of urban planning as a profession, alongside the blunt force of developments in infrastructure engineering, transport and communication technologies, and, above all, the gravitational pull of profit-based urban development settings, all worked to reduce the capacity of architects to shape the modern city in practice.
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    Spaces of Communication
    McQuire, S ; Sun, W ; McQuire, S ; Sun, W (Routledge, 2020)
    This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores theoretical grounds of the “communicative city”. Gumpert and Drucker reconsider their formative definition and raise a series of questions and provocations concerning future research directions and approaches. The book focuses on the growing implication of digital media in contemporary practices of placemaking. Sun Wei explores the entanglement of embodiment and mediation in her account of the redevelopment of Sinan Mansions, while Christiane Brosius reflects on the complex urban ecology of Delhi through the work of two contemporary artists. The book focuses specifically on the communicative possibilities of a distinctive aspect of the contemporary media city, namely large video screens situated in urban public spaces. It also focuses more directly on the different ways that digital media platforms have become a new infrastructure shaping the contemporary communicative city.
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    Creating Ground : Making Spaces for Art and Ambient Participation in Australia’s Cultural Capital
    Wyatt, D ; Trevena, B ; Andrews, J ; La Ware, M (Peter Lang, 2022)
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    Liquid Polis and Ambient Aesthetics of Communicative Cities: An Afterword
    Papastergiadis, N ; Andrews, J ; La Ware, M (Peter Lang, 2022)
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    Going Out: Rights to the City and the Cosmos
    Papastergiadis, N ; Andrews, J ; La Ware, M (Peter Lang, 2022)
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    From Plan to Process: The Language of Public Space Evaluation
    Armstrong, O ; Andrews, J ; La Ware, M (Peter Lang, 2022)
    Performance appraisal is a fact of public life, a fact which is particularly relevant to the emergence of contemporary public spaces. Urban design is assessed, reviewed, measured, and evaluated throughout the lifetime of a project. However, most performance appraisal relies on a limited measure, the criteria of value or economic measures of performance, which fail to account for a fuller understanding of the social and cultural appeal and success of the project sites.
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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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    The Surveillant Power of the [A]Temporal Cameo: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
    Sumner, T ; DIXON, I ; Black, B (Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2022-07-14)
    The first collection dedicated to David Bowie's acting career shows that his film characterisations and performance styles shift and reform as decoratively as his musical personas.