Archive for March, 2004
Everyday Transformations
Mar 25th
Everyday Transformations: The Twenty-First Century Quotidian
Annual conference of the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia,
Perth / Fremantle, 9-11 December 2004
Call for Papers
New technologies, increasing work pressures, changing gender roles and family structures, increasing flows of refugees and asylum seekers, concerns about security, environmental risks, the escalating speed and complexity of social transactions – everyday life is today a terrain of rapid and unsettling change. Yet it retains associations also with pattern, order, routine – the familiarity of a favourite soap opera or talk show, the ordinary pleasures and irritations of shopping, cooking, negotiating traffic, managing domestic life.
How should cultural studies address questions of everyday life in the twenty-first century? The field can claim a rich tradition of work in the area, from ethnographies of street subcultures and shopping centres to writing on television and popular magazines. But everyday life has been transformed in significant ways since the time of many of the founding contributions. What remains relevant today in the study of everyday life? To what extent do we need new concepts and categories?
Transformations have also occurred in cultural studies’ motivations for engaging with everyday life. The everyday is a major point of intersection for many of its intellectual tributaries, including British cultural studies, feminism, semiotics, European surrealism, situationism, psychoanalysis and ethnomethodology. Yet the context for all of these has been affected by major shifts in the location of cultural studies, the nature and priorities of higher education, by the increasing market orientation of mainstream institutions and by conservative attempts to lay claim to the ‘ordinary’ and ‘mainstream’. What do we seek now in engaging with the everyday? What understanding of this engagement is most appropriate for the times?
Possible sessions/themes:
- New technologies
- Suburbia
- Television
- Food
- Magazine journalism
- Everyday spirituality
- Ordinariness
- Shopping
- Civility and manners
- Creativity
- Homes and gardens
- Risk and stress
- Globalisation
- Political activism in everyday life
- Speed and time
- Everyday sexualities
- Collections and archives
- Popular media
- Cultural geographies
- Sport
- Music
- Tourism
- Documentary
- Sustainability
- The apocalyptic and the everyday
- Dance
Abstracts of no more than 250 words for single papers, or suggestions for panel sessions, should be sent to:
Mark Gibson – mgibson@central.murdoch.edu.au
or : School of Media, Communication and Culture
Murdoch University
South St, Murdoch
WA 6150
Panel proposals are particularly welcome.
Refereed Publication Option: As an innovation on past CSAA conferences, ‘Everyday Transformations’ will also be offering the option of refereed publication in electronic conference proceedings. To be considered for this stream, full papers must be received by 27 August 2004.
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 30 July 2004
Art of the Mix
Mar 24th
The Art of the Mix is a website dedicated to mix tapes, mixed cds and mp3 playlists. Am loving the titles, cover art (some NSFW), and taxonomy of the mixed tape.
M/C: The “Porn” Issue
Mar 24th
CALL FOR PAPERS
M/C: THE “PORN” ISSUE: An upcoming issue of M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture
Much media and cultural studies work on, and media coverage of, pornography focuses on the politics of sexual representation on the one hand, and arguments for or against censorship on the other.
This issue of M/C aims to provide a space for alternative perspectives on pornography. We are especially interested in publishing articles that engage critically with the consumption of pornography, pornography as a creative industry, and the intertextual relationships between pornography and other media genres. How does pornography work as a field of cultural production? How is it integrated into everyday life? How does it influence, appropriate, or otherwise connect to other media genres?
Possible topics include, but are certainly not limited to:
-Pornography and intertextuality
-The pornographic mode/porn iconography in “mainstream” media
-Hybrid genres: sci-fi/porn, fantasy/porn, anime/porn, adventure/porn
-The social functions of pornography
-Pornographic professions
-Amateur pornography
-Pornography and creativity
-The aesthetics of pornography
-Pornography as a driver/early adopter of technological innovation
-Pornography and cultural consumption/consumers of pornography
Article length: 1500-2000 words
Article deadline: 26 April 2004
Release date: 16 June 2004
Editors: Jean Burgess and Andrew King
Send complete articles to porn@journal.media-culture.org.au (see submission guidelines). Please note that we do not require formal abstracts, but are more than happy to respond to general enquiries.
Other Upcoming Issues: http://www.media-culture.org.au/upcoming.html
Submission guidelines: http://www.media-culture.org.au/submission.html
Another Aust PhD Blog
Mar 22nd
Found another Australian PhD weblog. it’s called emanations and it belongs to a melbourne uni philosophy student called Matt Carter who I’m pretty sure is the same Matt Carter (and this is so Brisbane) who was a buddy of mine in first year linguistics at the University of Queensland, and who actually lived across the road from me at one stage.
Full Steam Ahead for the Music Commons
Mar 20th
New on the Opsound site: open source audio, i.e. many Opsound artists have offered to provide uncompressed source material for remixing.
And Creative Commons has released their new Music Sharing License and the Get Content search engine, which allows you to search for remix-ready, sharable, or downloadable music.
Now this is retro chic
Mar 20th
Found via Dan Hill (the man has taste), Kempa.com has the best show-and-tell blog post I’ve seen in ages (including pics):
One strategy that major record companies have been employing lately to deter downloading is adding bonus computer content to new CD releases. I recently discovered that this technique is not unique to CD’s, but had in fact been practiced in the vinyl era as well. That’s right: there were a handful of records released in the late 70’s and early 80’s that contained computer programs as part of the audio. This is totally insane, and totally great.Most of these programs were written for the Sinclair Spectrum home computer series. The Sinclair Spectrum was a relatively cheap home computer system that used a television set as a monitor and loaded programs from tapes. It thrived in England in the early 80’s [...]
In the case of these programs on vinyl, the user would have to play back the proper portion of the record, record the resultant chatter to tape, and load the tape into the spectrum. Some users have mentioned playing certain games so much that they could recognise the loading sounds.
This is so fabulous — any Australians know if there was any such thing here? I certainly don’t remember it, but then I only saw computers on Dr. Who and I Dream of Jeannie.
Creative Commons launched in Australia
Mar 19th
The Australian affiliate of Creative Commons, a new international movement to address issues of balance, compromise and moderation over copyright issues will be launched at the University of Melbourne under the auspices of IPRIA next week.
Woo-hoo!
Uncollectables and Urban (Un)Regeneration
Mar 19th
The Network of Un-Collectable Artists (NUCA) is preparing for the Limited Edition release of a set of BubbleGum Collector cards documenting the activities of Australia’s 50 Most Uncollectable Artists.
NUCA is a brand new nation-wide affiliation connecting those who gravitate towards ephemeral projects, participatory experiences, illegal art actions, and activities that oddify everyday life. Some members make unwieldy installation projects, while others alter billboards, project images in abandoned spaces at night, or exchange ideas rather than objects. Some simply make dead ugly paintings that would never sell. Because such artworks are often fiendishly tricky to document, they seldom grace the columns of “recognised” publications. NUCA is building a publicity machine of its own, so artists may exchange essential info about their activities, collaborate on new projects, and connect with Un-Collectable others
It’s actually funny that this should pop into my inbox (via fibreculture), because I’ve continued to be intrigued by the practice of writing, painting, and photographing the dark underground of the city.
Which reminds me, the other day QUT hosted a (promotional) talk by Richard Florida. I’d read the book, and thought some of it was pretty true, and some of it makes for more of the kinds of urban planning I’d like to see. Encouraging, rather than discouraging, neo-bohemias (his term, not mine) seems all very good to me. But when I left the talk, I just felt that the ideal city being described and desired (by the suits in the front row) was too clean and shiny. My exact words were, “I feel like going home to the country and playing under the house” – a cool, dark, unpopulated place where all country kids love to play imaginative games. Which led me to thinking about sleepy city again, and how too much urban regeneration may not be such a good thing. Which is why the Powerhouse is generally not detested by even the most cranky lovers of urban decay – keeping the graffiti, the roughness, the rusted things, is what has given it a kind of creative tension and a productive continuity with the past that is loved by locals and artists alike.
A Non-blogger’s lament
Mar 11th
In The Village Voice:a non-blogger’s lament (i.e. blogging is threatening hip NY society – hmmm…must be a violin around here somewhere). Thanks to Jill for the link.
Magnatune blog and Creative Commons comp
Mar 11th
John Buckman, who runs Creative Commons’ favourite “online music label” magnatune, now has a blog. I liked the transcription of a cute exchange between Buckman and a major label exec, who apparently doesn’t like being called evil.
Speaking of CC, Seb’s Open Research points us to the winning video in the Creative Commons Moving Image Contest: Building on the Past (.mov), created by Justin Cone. NIce use of old footage, still images, text and sound, and explains the creative commons licensing system very clearly. I especially agree with Seb that the concluding bit is good:
Creativity always builds on the past and you’re building the past right now.
Share now.
Shape tomorrow.
Couldn’t be clearer, and couldn’t be more right.