creativity/machine

…and they tend to use it. One Free Minute is “a mobile sculpture designed to allow for instances of anonymous public speech. When you call the cellphone inside One Free Minute, you get connected for exactly a minute to a 200 watt amplifier and speaker. The speech produced by the speaker can be heard clearly more than 150 feet away from the sculpture.” Listen to some of it at the website. Thanks to the cook for the tip.

hello, blog.

I don’t want to sound defensive, because I’m not, but I’m a bit busy with life at the moment, you know, things, and stuff. I’ve been keeping up a bit of socialising for you though, reading other people’s blogs and leaving comments, and I’ve been adding some new del.icio.us links pretty much every day, to keep you company. I know it seems disloyal, but once I’ve finished marking all my students’ blogs I promise to put in some quality time. Hope you understand. And please stop looking at me like that

love
Jean

The Art Association of Australia & New Zealand [NSW Chapter] in association with the Art Gallery of NSW and the Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics, UNSW present the 2005 Conference
Transforming Aesthetics

7-9 July 2005, Art Gallery of New South Wales Sydney, Australia.

Transforming Aesthetics explores the response of aesthetic theory to new forms of art and exhibition practice, emerging in relation to post-9/11 politics, globalisation, post-colonialism and the demise of Euro-centrism.

The entanglement of art with politics frequently prompts art theorists to import concepts from cultural/political theory. But art is not simply a field of application for theory; rather, concepts and theories may be understood to emerge from the visual. For this reason it is crucial to attend to the specifics of visual or aesthetic languages. New forms of political and post-colonial practice call for a new set of critical terms - for an expansion and re-evaluation of the field of aesthetic theory. Thus this conference maps the ongoing transformation of aesthetics.

Key Speakers

* Nicolas Bourriaud
* Ernst van Alphen
* Andrew Benjamin
* Jane Taylor
* Sean Cubitt

Registrations open now

THE CENTRE FOR CRITICAL AND CULTURAL STUDIES PRESENTS

Dr Graham St John
Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, The University of Queensland

Making a Noise˜Making a Difference: From Techno-Punk to “Punk-Hop”

Date: Thursday 16th June 2005
Place: Seminar Room 402, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, 4th Floor Forgan Smith Tower, St Lucia Campus, The University of Queensland

Time: 2.00pm ˆ 3.30pm

Members of the university community and the general public are invited to attend this free seminar with refreshments to follow.

ABSTRACT
The seminar maps the ground out of which “punk-hop” outfit Combat Wombat arose, exploring in the process, how punk became implicated in the cultural politics of a settler society. Charting the contours of Sydney’s early 1990s techno-punk emergence, and tracking the mobile and media savvy exploits of Combat Wombat (and their sound system Labrats) from the late 1990s, I will cast light on the counter-colonial trajectory of post-punk.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER
Graham is a cultural anthropologist with an interdisciplinary research interest in contemporary youth cultures, techno culture, counter cultures and performance. He is currently based at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies as a postdoctoral fellow.

Current projects include: ‘Performing the Country’, a study of contemporary performative contexts for the (re)production of ‘Australianness’ in the wake of recent historical and ecological re-evaluations; ‘Dance Tribalism and the Global Party’, which explores the local character and international flows of rave and post-rave dance music culture; and ‘Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance’, which critically investigates the relevance of the theory and approach of Victor Turner in the study of contemporary cultural performance.

For further information, please contact:
Ms Rebecca Ralph, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies
Ph. (07) 3346 9764 Fax (07) 3365 7184
Email: admin{dot}cccs{at}uq{dot}edu{dot}au

Or visit the website.