155 research outputs found
Time and Tide: The Life of Norman Creek
No full textBACKGROUND: This is the signature documentary of a broader creative research project on the history and ecology of Norman Creek in inner city Brisbane, funded by Brisbane City Council. It forms part of the emerging field of exhibition-focused documentary, consistent with Andrea Witcomb's (2004) argument that digital media are central to the proliferation of exhibiting institutions in the 21st Century. It contributes to the field of environmentally focused social history and asks what the history of an urban place looks like when viewed from the perspective of waterways rather than land. It demonstrates Yi Fu Tuan's classic aphorism (1977) that Space plus History equals Place and in its various screening contexts demonstrates Bourriaud's (1998) relational aesthetics.
CONTRIBUTION: As personal documentary disappears from Australian public television and history gets taught to dwindling cohorts in formal education, this work innovatively finds new audiences and venues for audio-visual histories and documentaries. This work is based on substantial primary research, in a context where extant local histories ignore creek industries, inhabitants and stories. Alongside its companion work/s it explores new forms of parallel narrative.
SIGNIFICANCE: Its major sites of exhibition have been at events at the State Library of Queensland (Talking Water 2013); at Crane Arts, Philadelphia US; at the International River Symposium 2013 and online (Waterwheel 2013 - International Symposium on Water and Water arts) and the website of the Norman Creek Catchment Coordination Committee. This documentary's success at connecting with various public - both community and professional - underpinned a successful pitch to the Museum of Brisbane for a substantial in situ exhibition season (forthcoming June 2015).Full Tex
Renewal in the Ranks: A proposal for Australian Documentary
No full textWith the ageing of a generation of Australian documentary makers, a dearth of young filmmakers are emerging to replace them. Surveying the changing scene, Trish FitzSimons outlines a plan to nurture new talent. A version of this proposal was submitted to the federal government's National Cutlural Policy public call for submissions and it has been sent to the ABC, SBS and Screen QueenslandArts, Education & Law Group, Queensland College of ArtFull Tex
Fabric of War: Why Wool?
No full textThis video, produced with funding from Australian Wool Innovation, is part of the Fabric of War creative Research Project, which is shared by Trish FitzSimons and Madelyn Shaw.
Fabric of War is a transnational commodity history that explores the strategic dimensions of wool. For 150 years wool was Australia's main export commodity and it continues to be the world's largest wool producer.
Fabric of War: Why Wool explores the history of how wool as a fibre became so strategically important and the chemistry of why its properties made it peculiarly suited for this task.
This history becomes a vital complement to the story of Australia as the nation that 'rode on the sheep's back' by providing an account of why so much wool was necessary, how this was a crucial underpinning to the growth of mass cold climate warfare in the twentieth century and how this relates to diplomatic and economic histories of Australia and other nations.Full Tex
Book review: Contemporary Scottish plays, edited by Trish Reid
Get PDFBook review: Contemporary Scottish plays, edited by Trish Reid. London:
Bloomsbury, 2014; ISBN: 9781472574435 (£17.99)Publisher PD
Time and Tide: The Boat Builders of Norman Creek
No full textRESEARCH BACKGROUND: This video forms part of the Time and Tide Creative Research Project. It is underpinned by the question of how an urban history looks different when approached from the point of view of water and catchment rather than land.
RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: This video represents a visually and aurally rich exploration of an important Norman Creek industry that is almost entirely missing from the local histories of the suburbs in which the boat building occurred. It adds considerable historical context, biographical and industrial process detail to the coverage of this history in Harper (2009)'s 'Classic Moreton Bay Cruisers' and Helen Gregory's (2003) 'The Brisbane River Story - Meanders through Time'. It links this maritime history to broader social and ecological histories of the environment, and to knowledge of this Brisbane industry and to specific histories of working in wood.
RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: This was screened at the State Library of Queensland's Talking Water Symposium in March 2013. It has the capacity to exemplify Bourriaud’s (2002) relational aesthetics and Somerville’s (2008) place based pedagogy. It bears out Pierre Nora’s (1980) argument in ‘Lieux de Memoire’ that only as communities risk losing parts of their material culture does the urge to memorialize typically arise. Underpinning this short documentary is substantial material culture that may form the fabric of a future exhibition, and a detailed history of work and a largely archaic industrial process.Full Tex
Channels of History - A Social History Exhibition of the Women, Land and History of the Channel Country
No full textResearch Background: Channels of History is part of a recent international trend to explore intersections of documentary film and digital technologies to create media rich exhibitions as part of the 'new museology' (Witcomb 2003). It is 'relational art' (Bourriaud 2002) where the artwork comprises all its associated events and elements and the cultural connections it facilitated. It is also an example of 'shared history' (Goodall 2002), bringing Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians into the same frame through 'place'. It explores the question of how an exhibition form can realize the 'braided channels' of a regional history.
Research Contribution: The Channels of History social history exhibition is constructed from some 70 hours of oral history interviews with women of Australia's Channel Country, together with archival film & photos, music and artwork. It explores the capacities of digital technologies to facilitate new versions of the 'documentary project' and uses visual metaphors to give local and personal stories a wider resonance.
Research Significance: It was exhibited at 9 venues nationally including the South Australian Museum and Queensland State Library, presented at 3 international conferences and placed in relation to documentary theory and history in refereed journal articles. Marsha Kinder, Professor of Critical Theory at USC/LA, described this exhibition as 'remarkable groundbreaking work in documentary'', 'extremely well received by the international documentary scholarly community'. Favourably reviewed in academe (including ASPERA rating of 4.5) and in the mainstream press, its underlying research has been quoted in native title claims and rural sociology papers. Film Aust and Screen Qld have supported its broadcast documentary development. The work can be evaluated for innovation in both documentary and social history and for its capacity to speak to widely disparate audiences.No Full Tex
Braided Channels Archive, a part of the Australian National Corpus, Linguistics, sole focus of a Lingua Franca program on Radio National
No full textThis broadcast focused on my work as a documentary practitioner whose underlying data has continuing relevance for the wider community and specifically for linguistics scholars exploring Australian English.
Research Background: The Braided Channels archive of some seventy hours videoed, transcribed and cross referenced oral history with the women of Queensland's Channel Country talking about their relationship to land and their history was recorded in 2000, with funding from the Centenary of Federation. Its highlights constituted Channels of History, a travelling social history exhibition (2002-05) with funding from Arts Queensland. Across 2011/12 this archive was re-purposed for online access via the AusNC linguistics data base of Australian English. In turn I was invited by Radio National's Lingua Franca program to be the featured guest discussing this archive as an example of the broader data base. This work contributes to the fields of Australian social history, the 'Digital Humanities',linguistics and media studies. The underlying research question considers the way in which Bourriaud's (2002) notion of a 'relational aesthetic' might be constituted in online space.
Research Contribution: The Braided Channels archive as whole contributes to Australian social history, specifically the ways in which gender and race have combined in a remote area. The collection is an example of what Goodall (2002) calls 'shared history' and contributes to ongoing debates on 'documentary voice' following Nichols(1983). Its combination of an accessible and multimodal collection of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal English also contributes to the field of Australian linguistics, as demonstrated by the Lingua Franca programme invitation.
Research Significance: Channels was a featured example at the AusNC national launch in March 2012, and the sole example discussed on Lingua Franca, a linguistics program on Radio National. I have been invited to provide an account of its creation as part of a specialist publication on AusNC to be edited by Professor Pam Peters and Dr Michael Haugh.No Full Tex
Recent Australian Broadcasting Cultures and Documentary Practice
No full textIn contemporary Australia long form documentary is fundamentally a tele-visual medium, recent efforts by the Australian Film Commission - now Screen Australia - to reinvigorate cinematic documentary notwithstanding. While commercial free to air stations broadcast a legislated minimum of first run documentary each year under 'Australian Content' regulations most documentaries go to air under the auspices of public broadcasters. The ABC and the SBS have taken diverse approaches to documentary, reflecting varying charters, budgets and institutional cultures. This paper looks at in-house production and the broadcasters' organization of independent commissioning,, especially tradition and innovation in the ABC's Documentary Department (1988-1996) and arrangements since; the recent influence of executive producers and other key roles; the organization of commissioning strategies for independent work through the ABC and SBS Independent and SBS's recent moves to fold documentary production into a broader 'factual' category. Examples and case studies will include selected works such as Cop It Sweet (1992) and Frontier (TV series and online program, 1997) and Australia by Numbers (2003). Comparisons are made with commercial broadcasters' responses to funding and regulatory systems, including 'Australian content'. Through this paper, questions of the individual and institutional voices of documentary will be interrogated. Comparisons will be made with earlier eras when most documentary was produced 'in-house' and with contemporary independent documentary production to understand the way that in-house production allows for particular kinds of intervention in the public domain. Ien Ang, Gay Hawkings, Lamia Dabboussy, 2008 The SBS Story: the challenge of cultural diversity, UNSW Press.?Glynn Davis, 1987, The ABC and SBS, ANU and Royal Australian Institute of Public Administration?FitzSimons, T., 2002. 'Accords, Slots, Slates and Series: Australian Television Takes on Documentary.' Metro 132/2: pp.63 -73.?Trevor Graham, 2009, 'Hula Girls: A cocktail for International Co Production', Written component, Doctorate of Creative Arts, University of Technology, Sydney.?Ken Inglis, 2006, Whose ABC??Ken Inglis, 1983, This is the ABC: The Australian Broadcasting Corporation 1932 -1983.Arts, Education & Law Group, Queensland College of ArtFull Tex
Wool, paper, dye: 1917 and the roots of the synthetic fibre revolution
No full textIn the Great War, wool was as essential to success as steel and gunpowder. All combatant nations tried to ensure continuing supplies of this vital resource, but none so successfully as Britain, whose Australian and New Zealand dominions were key sources of the apparel wools sought after for military uniforms and blankets. Wool was a lynchpin in Allied planning in 1917 and the subject of negotiation, intrigue, and anxiety: how could the United States possibly send its troops—suitably attired for Europe’s trenches—as soon as they were needed, in the face of raw materials shortages, including wool?
This article first addresses the complexities of British control of the Australasian wool clip during the First World War. It then looks at how this led the American and German textile industries to seek substitutes—shoddy (recycled wool), Peruvian cotton, paper yarns, regenerated cellulose, silk, and jute—and eventually, synthesised fibres. Next examined is why and how research and development in fibre technology was rooted in the field of dye chemistry, then largely controlled by Germany. Deprived of German dyes for a wide range of products, United States’ companies, notably the DuPont Corporation, entered the field in 1917, setting the stage for later breakthroughs in synthetic fibre technology. It took several decades for wool to lose its primacy in war and peace, but the First World War hastened that end. 1917 was a pivotal year: its challenges, opportunities, and actions affected global textiles in ways that still resonate today.Full Tex
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