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dawn of the organised networks?
From the introduction to what Geert Lovink et al call ‘new network theory’, presented as part of the first call for papers for a conference next year under the same name. This passage, under the heading ‘Dawn of the Organised Networks’, stood out for me among many other interesting and provocative ideas: Community is an…
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just (describe) it
Someone in our AoIR panel on Friday asked me if I was ‘using’ Bruno Latour and/or ANT, and I more or less denied it, probably misinterpreting the question slightly, under the influence of adrenaline. Anyway, afterwards I realised that I was far too flippant in my response. Because of course, at least implicitly I kind…
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post-conference highs
Last week was super-intense, what with presenting the paper on Everyday Creativity as Civic Engagement, which I co-authored with Marcus Foth and Helen Klaebe at the Communications Policy and Research Forum in Sydney, then zooming back to Brisbane to get my AoIR paper happening and throwing myself into conference mode for the rest of the…
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spaces of vernacular creativity
It seems the concept of vernacular creativity has legs that carry it into various disciplinary territories. Interestingly, this Call for Papers for a panel at the American Association of Geographers conference in San Francisco next year uses it in almost exactly the same way as I do. Every day that passes, there’s more stuff to…
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Cultural Studies’ Affective Voices: Out Now!
My friend and colleague Melissa Gregg’s book Cultural Studies’ Affective Voices is out now. Having already read it, I can tell you it’s a seriously significant contribution to cultural studies scholarship, and it’s got a beautiful cover to boot. Blurb: In a series of encounters with key figures in the field of cultural studies, this…
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RIP Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter
Someone around the office told me just now, in exceedingly poor taste mind you, that Steve Irwin’s last words were ‘crikey, that hurt’. Update: I’ve just heard that this story was leaked to the media before Steve’s wife could be located and notified. That’s crappy if it’s true.
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flickr & relational aesthetics
First decent new sentence I’ve added to my PhD draft for a couple of weeks: Flickr can be viewed as the site of a vernacular ‘relational aesthetics’ (Bourriaud, 2002), where the object of the aesthetic is no longer the image itself, but the ‘modes of social connection’ (McQuire, 2006, pp. 263) that are both made…
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Inside a story there are no mistakes, only the living through of mistakes: Berger on Grass
In response to the recent controversy around Günther Grass‘s membership of the Waffen SS as a young man, John Berger writes on ethics and experience in The Guardian: The denial of true reflection […] These thoughts come to my mind as I read the macabre denunciations being levelled today against Günter Grass. About him as…