School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications
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ItemThe potential role of citizen conservation in re-shaping approaches to murals in an urban context(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2016)Public visual spaces, populated by a blend of community murals, unauthorised street art, and historic painted mercantile signs, are often the mark of an urban environment that is both progressive and eclectic. Changes in the aesthetic and cultural value of these urban mural forms have led to an increase in the appreciation and, in some instances, promotion of their artistic merit and cultural significance as examples of public art. However, examining the significance of these works, with a view to implementing a conservation approach is problematic. This is due to a number of practical and theoretical considerations that are primarily a result of the ephemeral existence of urban murals outside conventional exhibition spaces, and issues associated with their often fragmented ownership and uncertain authorship. Consequently, larger thinking on the interpretation, conservation assessment, and advocacy for the conservation of urban murals are required. Key to defining and implementing such strategies is contextualising the public visual spaces that these murals occupy and, as part of this, the local and wider communities’ perception of these murals as culturally significant objects as well as fostering awareness and understanding of appropriate measures aimed at their conservation. This paper examines the role of citizen science, or crowd-sourcing, of local community members in establishing a conservation dialogue and generating conservation- relevant data on urban murals. It looks specifically at a project involving a collection of in situ historic painted mercantile signs — also known as ghost signs — in the City of Port Phillip, Melbourne, Australia. The project fostered the establishment of an informed and open dialogue between conservation specialists and participants from the local community on the significance of local ghost signs whilst transferring knowledge on conservation processes and assessment methods. Working directly with community members, a programme was designed in which conservation and community knowledge of these urban art forms, could be collected and exchanged across digital platforms. This enabled researchers to examine how citizen science can be utilised as a research tool as well as a means to advocate for the conservation of collections of urban murals. It created the opportunity to consider the role of non-specialists and shared authorities in the collection and collation of conservation- relevant data and how information generated from what we call citizen conservation projects, can inform the way in which conservators evaluate and prioritize the conservation of urban cultural heritage. The data gathered and interpreted proved to be the most effective means of ‘conserving’ these often ephemeral forms of cultural material.
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ItemInterviewing artists exhibited in The Field (1968): The use of acrylic paints in a seminal exhibition of Australian colour field painting(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2016-01-01)Artist's interviews are a timely and important historical record of the technical significance of Australian colour field painting. The findings correlate and corroborate ongoing conservation research into the works featured in The Field, providing evidence to support the take-up and distribution of early acrylic paints in Australia. Overall, the artists' responses demonstrate a range of working methods and choice of materials. Col Jordan and Alun Leach-Jones were found to be fairly consistent with their choice of acrylic brands and technique, while other artists, like Ron Robertson-Swann, were more flexible and experimental in their approach. PVAC (polyvinyl acetate) paints were used along with, or in place of, acrylic emulsion paints for practical and economic reasons, revealing the challenges involved with investigating acrylic paints which emerged alongside a variety of other synthetic paints. These interviews reinforce the value of conservation enquiry to the field of art history and exhibition development.
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ItemArtists’ interviews and their use in conservation: reflections on issues and practices(Routledge - Taylor & Francis, 2016-12-21)Artists’ interviews are widely used in the conservation of contemporary art. Best practice is detailed in recent publications, conferences and workshops, however, there is little information on how to analyse the data collected, and the issues related to the dissemination and future access to the content. This article examines various techniques of analysis appropriated from qualitative research in the social sciences, and relates them to the intended uses of interviews in conservation. Drawing on a case study that involved interaction with an artist over several years, including interviews and informal conversations, this article argues that a conservators’ specific skills set has the capacity to interpret the findings and to understand the creative processes. It also highlights the importance of reflexivity and the public circulation of this interpretation, which is essential for the development of a sustainable practice of artists’ interviews in conservation.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableEditorial(Informa UK Limited, 2015-06-01)
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ItemKnowing what would happen: The epistemic strategies in Galileo's thought experiments(ELSEVIER SCI LTD, 2015-12)While philosophers have subjected Galileo's classic thought experiments to critical analysis, they have tended to largely ignored the historical and intellectual context in which they were deployed, and the specific role they played in Galileo's overall vision of science. In this paper I investigate Galileo's use of thought experiments, by focusing on the epistemic and rhetorical strategies that he employed in attempting to answer the question of how one can know what would happen in an imaginary scenario. Here I argue we can find three different answers to this question in Galileo later dialogues, which reflect the changing meanings of 'experience' and 'knowledge' (scientia) in the early modern period. Once we recognise that Galileo's thought experiments sometimes drew on the power of memory and the explicit appeal to 'common experience', while at other times, they took the form of demonstrative arguments intended to have the status of necessary truths; and on still other occasions, they were extrapolations, or probable guesses, drawn from a carefully planned series of controlled experiments, it becomes evident that no single account of the epistemological relationship between thought experiment, experience and experiment can adequately capture the epistemic variety we find Galileo's use of imaginary scenarios. To this extent, we cannot neatly classify Galileo's use of thought experiments as either 'medieval' or 'early modern', but we should see them as indicative of the complex epistemological transformations of the early seventeenth century.
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ItemIntroduction(University of Melbourne Library, 2016-12-01)This introduction outlines the content of the cultural collections at the University of Melbourne, and the importance of conservation in protecting these valuable resources.
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ItemBlood antiquities and the role of the Conservator(AICCM, 2016)Objects of great historical, cultural and financial value are being looted from sites of conflict and sold to finance wars and regional conflicts. These socalled 'blood antiquities' are being sold in the great centres of antiquities trading in Europe and around the world, but are they making it as far as Australia? And what ethical and legal obligations does an Australian conservator have if she should suspect she is dealing with an illegally looted object? I asked Professor Robyn Sloggett of the Grimwade Centre for the Conservation of Cultural Materials for her expert opinion on the issue.
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ItemCharacterization of Phenotypic and Transcriptional Differences in Human Pluripotent Stem Cells under 2D and 3D Culture Conditions(WILEY, 2016-11-23)Human pluripotent stem cells hold great promise for applications in drug discovery and regenerative medicine. Microfluidic technology is a promising approach for creating artificial microenvironments; however, although a proper 3D microenvironment is required to achieve robust control of cellular phenotypes, most current microfluidic devices provide only 2D cell culture and do not allow tuning of physical and chemical environmental cues simultaneously. Here, the authors report a 3D cellular microenvironment plate (3D-CEP), which consists of a microfluidic device filled with thermoresponsive poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)-β-poly(ethylene glycol) hydrogel (HG), which enables systematic tuning of both chemical and physical environmental cues as well as in situ cell monitoring. The authors show that H9 human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and 253G1 human induced pluripotent stem cells in the HG/3D-CEP system maintain their pluripotent marker expression under HG/3D-CEP self-renewing conditions. Additionally, global gene expression analyses are used to elucidate small variations among different test environments. Interestingly, the authors find that treatment of H9 hESCs under HG/3D-CEP self-renewing conditions results in initiation of entry into the neural differentiation process by induction of PAX3 and OTX1 expression. The authors believe that this HG/3D-CEP system will serve as a versatile platform for developing targeted functional cell lines and facilitate advances in drug screening and regenerative medicine.
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ItemBIOMEDICAL ENHANCEMENT AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT: A CONSERVATIVE TECHNO-FIX(WILEY, 2016-11)Allen Buchanan has argued for a linking of the ethics of human enhancement to the ethics of development more generally. The promise of the 'enhancement enterprise' is that it may help develop society, just as other technological advances have in the past. He proposes a framework of intellectual property rights, government action to ensure the poor can access the enhancements, an international organization to administer the diffusion of new enhancement technologies from the West to poor countries, and the diffusion within countries to the poorer populations. I take seriously his proposal of discussing biomedical enhancement in terms of the ethics of development. On these grounds of assessment, I argue that his proposal is politically conservative. To make the case, I distinguish conservatism in ethics from conservatism in politics; and I contextualize the proposal against the background of development economics and the neoliberal approach to development.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableWaringarri Aboriginal Arts: Rethinking practices in conservation documentation through assessing the needs of a community arts centre(Routledge, 2013-12)The conservation profession has well established methods and practices for addressing preservation needs. The practicality of these, however, can be called into question when they are applied outside an institutional environment, particularly in a different cultural context. This paper explores the conservation needs of an Aboriginal community art centre. Over several years a partnership between the Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation at The University of Melbourne and Waringarri Aboriginal Arts, Kununurra, Western Australia, has seen the development of a method for the assessment and care of Waringarri’s permanent community collections. The deterioration factors impacting the preservation of cultural material in the East Kimberley region were considered. Limited documentation arising from a lack of infrastructure, resources and funding was found to be one of the key conservation issues. A strategy is recommended that seeks a national approach to conservation documentation of Indigenous art. This paper suggests that members of the Australian Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Material (AICCM) form a Special Interest Group, much like the Archives Society of Australia’s Indigenous Issues Special Interest Group, to collaborate with representatives from art centres and to work towards a framework for training, resources and funding to support the preservation of Aboriginal cultural material.