2010 Voicing the Unseen: Just write it!

Deepti Ruth Azariah

Curtin University

Whose Blog is it Anyway? Seeking the Author in the Formal Features of Travel Blogs

Amateur travel blogs hosted on advertising-sponsored websites are generally viewed as credible sources of information about tourist behaviour and destination image, particularly as the content is user-generated. Little is said, however, about the webhost-created content. It is generally assumed that the content and features of a blog reveal a good deal about its author. In the case of travel blogs, however, this can be problematic as both webhosts and authors create content. This paper examines formal and paratextual features of amateur travel blogs to analyse the extent of the contribution made by the webhost and its influence on authorial voice. In particular, it considers titles, links, and advertising in travel blogs hosted on Travelpod, Travelblog, and Bootsnall. It finds that the webhost plays a significant part in positioning the text as a narrative about a particular destination. Furthermore, not all the features of these blogs transfer a sense of who has authored them.

Shaphan Cox

Curtin University

Voicing the Unseen in Fremantle’s Kings Square: Re-instating Fremantle’s ‘Civic-heart’ and the Exclusion of Aboriginal Groups

The theme of the conference, Voicing the Unseen, is particularly fitting for my paper on Kings Square. As part of the fieldwork for my doctoral thesis, I read through ten years of the local Fremantle Herald newspaper. I did this tucked up in a corner of Fremantle’s local history library, which coincidentally, looks out onto Kings Square. Interestingly, the windows in this section of the library provide an opportunity for those inside, to survey the ‘happenings’ outside, where the people in the square are generally oblivious to the ‘peering eyes’. The situation allowed me to observe my study area, whilst simultaneously reading about it. In this paper, I seek to explore the ways power is represented and articulated within the square. The power to construct a ‘problem’, and therefore design a subsequent ‘solution’, I argue, is demonstrative of the power to essentially own and control the future use of that space.

Robyn Creagh

Curtin University

Fragments of a Scene: Voicing Urban Memories Through Postcards

In this paper I develop a postcard metaphor as an aid to a deep and personal enquiry into the construction of urban place within a constantly shifting global context. Such an approach is significant to the discourse of urban development in cities like Perth where, due to the highly mobile population, the city plan cannot of itself carry the history of much of the population. Through Clifford and Massey I locate a position from which to explore the intimate meanings generated between people and the built environment which actively includes their personal travel histories and relationships to locations around the world.The auto-ethnographic and creative practice component of this paper takes the form of constructed postcards through which I examined my relationship to the city of Perth and several external sites of related experiences. The postcard as both metaphor and guiding rule for creative enquiry seems rich with potential as a way into interurban stories of place meaning.

Seth Merlo

Murdoch University

Where Story Resides: New Applications of Enduring Concepts

This paper argues that by re-thinking our conception of story and narrative, particularly in light of emerging transmedia practices, we can better understand what it is that happens when we create or engage with a work. The emergence of such practices has created new opportunities for original research, allowing us to revisit and challenge previously held notions of story and narrative as fixed and determined concepts. Far from being ‘the lowest and simplest of literary organisms,’ 1 I argue that story is not found within the narrative structure of a work, but is instead its vital aesthetic function: the result of a user engaging with a narrative. With examples from The Wire and The Matrix, I will demonstrate how ‘drillability’ and ‘spreadability’ (concepts from the broader praxis of transmedia) can enhance the story experience, and how a cross-disciplinary approach is best suited to enhancing scholarly knowledge in this field.

Lindsay Neill

Auckland University of Technology

Image, Illusion Reality: You Decide

This paper discusses the subjective and reflexive research processes the author encountered in selecting four photo images of pie carts for a retail publication within The Great New Zealand Pie Cart (Neill, Bell and Bryant, 2008). While the combination of image and text within narrative can both complement and contrast it, image plays a key role within the presentation of retail books, and their consequent sale. This position may be at variance to more academic forms of publishing that are often deemed ‘text-heavy’. The prevalence of image within retail text raises the question of how true are the images to the text within which they are presented. From one academic position, the marriage of descriptive text and image is deemed problematic, as academics including Hammond (1998); Ball and Smith (1992); and Gold (2007) suggest that text that explains image is to be avoided. However, the combination of descriptive text and image within retail texts is more positively perceived. This paper therefore blends the needs of the retail publishing requirement within an academic overview of images juxtaposed by the authors’ reflexive inputs.

Mona Omar

Curtin University

Muslim Built Forms in Perth: Fulfilling (or not) Community Socio-cultural Needs

Australia has a considerable Muslim population and Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in the West. Consequently, the demand for a variety of Muslim built forms in Australia is increasing and therefore, knowledge of Australian Muslims’ way of life and built forms is vital and integral to studies of culture and built environment. Social inclusion and the strengthening of Australia’s socio-cultural fabric also demands good intercultural and interfaith understanding. There are a large number of Islamic organisations, schools and mosques in Australia however, only a very few of them provide socio-cultural and recreational services to the growing number of Australian Muslims. To date, there has been a lack of research on the types or variety of Muslim built forms in Australia. This paper studies and analyses Australian Muslim built forms focussing on Western Australia. It aims to answer questions on whether Muslim organisations and their built forms in Perth fulfil their communities socio-cultural needs, and to what extent they help promote mutual understanding and harmony between Muslim and non-Muslim Australians.

Markela Panegyres

Curtin University

Passing a thought from one to another Unseen strategies of a performative practice: The background and development of the video work, Clutch, clasp, grip, hold, hug, embrace, press, squash, squeeze… (2010, 4’41’’)

This paper is based on a series of artworks produced as part of a project entitled From one to another… Working across the mediums of performance, video art, sound and installation, this project aimed to explore the nature of intersubjective experience. Each artwork involved the physical participation of other people and used performative actions to explore and illuminate the subtleties of physical and emotional exchanges ranging from the poetic, intimate or loving to the ambiguous, disturbing or violent.

During the process of collaboration, an additional intersubjective space was formed between participants and artist (myself). This new intersubjective space became a place of exchange; of passing a thought from one to another, a give and take between the artist and participant that remained ‘unseen’ in the final outcome of the work. My paper details the nature of these exchanges and highlights the way in which collaboration can prompt an exciting reframing and transformation of ideas. Furthermore, I outline the theoretical and historical context of this project by discussing how my exploration of intersubjectivity is informed by the writings of Emmanuel Levinas and Rosie Braidotti. I examine the art-historical precedents to my work from the 1970s onwards.

Nick Pendergrast

Curtin University

Veganism, Organisational Considerations and Animal Advocacy Campaigns

This paper will investigate animal advocacy campaigns, which can either be anti-systemic (working to oppose the system that leads to inequality) or integrationist (striving for gains within the existing system). The animal rights ideology fundamentally challenges the property status of non-human animals, instrumentalism, and speciesism. In contrast, animal welfare is a more conservative and widely accepted ideology that attempts to minimise the harm caused by these forms of inequality. A case study will use the theory of resource mobilisation to demonstrate the manner in which integrationist campaigns promoting animal welfare or focussing on less accepted forms of non-human animal exploitation are more consistent with creating and maintaining large animal advocacy organisations than antisystemic campaigns promoting veganism.

Christine Pflaumbaum

Curtin University

Shock Advertising – How Does the Acceptance of Shock Advertising by the Consumer Influence the Advertiser’s Designs?

Advertising has developed past being simply the publicising, promotion and selling of products and services. It has saturated the market, public places and media. Shock advertising that startles and offends its audience has become a popular tool in advertising, especially since the 1980s. As it has developed over the years, it has hit the consumer and cut through the clutter of advertising to gain attention. However, research indicates shock advertising campaigns push the boundaries of what is morally acceptable further than other advertisements do.

This paper will look at the idea of two different kinds of shock advertising, social advertising and profit-based advertising. The Montana Meth Project will serve as an example for social advertising and Benetton will be used as the profit-oriented fashion brand. The research is driven by the question: “how were the advertisers influenced in their designs by the acceptance of shock advertising by the consumer, depending on whether it is a profit-based or not-for-profit campaign?” The acceptance of shock advertising by the consumer can be different depending on the goal of profit or not-for-profit. This research question will be investigated through interviews with three advertising professionals.

Naomi Shajahan Sharin

Curtin University

When the Interference and the Guidance in Research Come from Lord Buddha

The paper will unfold my personal realisation as a researcher and a traveller on the spiritual path. The background of the paper will be set in a transitional point in my life when my previous research for the legal aid of BRAC, Bangladesh (NGO) and the future plan for a Masters dissertation encountered a question of validity due to my growing interest in Tibetan Buddhism. At this point, my understanding of the words ‘empowerment’ and ‘liberation’ from a Buddhist perspective brought an introspective question: ‘am I working to create more delusions for women by providing a false and transient hope for empowerment and liberation?’ The paper will reveal this paradox in a creative way. I will focus on my recent experience in the Kopan monastery of Nepal, and the inspiration from a highly realised Tibetan monk, who has reincarnated as a Spanish guy. Using an innovative method named ‘ficto criticism’, an in between writing of fiction, critique and auto ethnography, I will try to mediate between my inner conflicts. Through a spiritual journey of a researcher, this endeavour intends to invite a new way of formulating knowledge for the academic world.

Nicola Smith

Curtin University

Capturing the Conversational Space at Home: Participants as Friends and Collaborators

Capturing and documenting data from the field is a major challenge faced in research; especially where the subjects are friends, family, a group or couple, or in a sensitive situation; such as where a disagreement between a couple occurs during the interview, or someone is asked to remember time spent with a loved one lost to them. With a heightened sensitivity to the gestures and intonations of people we know, how do we document what is known and relevant but not actually said. When informally interviewing participants how can we provide the full picture we understand from their body movements, their choice of words from a different cultural context, their hints, sarcasm, moments of humour reflecting on situations past but not mentioned? This paper will explore some of the issues arising from capturing the ‘conversational space’ when the participants are known to the interviewer, and frequently to each other, selected to be an interconnected web of contributors to a picture. We can be seen as a co-conspirator in a family complaint, can be the butt of a joke from childhood foolery, can be the shoulder for a friend. How do we separate our roles as we write? Should we?

Jennifer Tran

Curtin University

Static Illusions: Architectural Identity, Meaning and History

The meaning and value, or identity, of architecture is often conceptualised and portrayed as a historically timeless entity. Persisting within certain areas of building design, heritage preservation, architectural history and literature, such traditional notions of the built environment assume that architectural meaning is prescribed by built form; that architectural identity is essentially defined by the intentions of the designer; and that architecture possesses a definitive identity as it historically progresses toward a single, ‘perfect’ state over time. However, when considering concepts on the cultural formation and historical discontinuity of meaning, discussed by theorists such as Bourdieu, Foucault and Barthes, the basis of existing conventional ideas which promote the permanence of architectural identity become dislodged and questioned. This paper explores this question by drawing on cultural, historical concepts of meaning as a theoretical framework to investigate the transformative nature of architecture and the identity of built examples, in order to critically evaluate present essentialist notions of architectural identity.

Provoking Texts: New Postgraduate Research from the Edge: Voicing the Unseen: Just Write It!

These online proceedings have been double blind refereed and were published on the 21 October 2011.

Whose Blog is it Anyway? Seeking the Author in the Formal Features of Travel Blogs

Deepti Ruth Azariah

Voicing the Unseen in Fremantle’s Kings Square: Re-instating Fremantle’s ‘Civic-Heart’ and the Exclusion of Aboriginal Groups

Shaphan Cox

Fragments of a Scene: Voicing Urban Memories Through Postcards

Robyn Creagh

Where Story Resides: New Applications of Enduring Concepts

Seth Merlo

Image, Illusion Reality: You Decide

Lindsay Neill

Muslim Built Forms in Perth: Fulfilling (or not) Community Socio-cultural Needs

Mona Omar

Passing a thought from one to another Unseen strategies of a performative practice: The background and development of the video work, Clutch, clasp, grip, hold, hug, embrace, press, squash, squeeze… (2010, 4’41’’)

Markela Panegyres

Veganism, Organisational Considerations and Animal Advocacy Campaigns

Nick Pendegrast

Shock Advertising – How does the acceptance of shock advertising by the consumer influence the advertiser’s designs?

Christine Pflaumbaum

When the Interference and the Guidance in Research Come from Lord Buddha

Naomi Shajahan Sharin

Capturing the conversational space at home: Participants as friends and collaborators

Nicola Smith

Static Illusions: Architectural Identity, Meaning and History

Jennifer Tran

Publication Editor

Julie Lunn is a historical researcher who has worked on Municipal Heritage Inventories, Conservation Plans and commissioned histories. She was the historical researcher on a Curtin University and ARC linkage project; Remembering the Wars: The community meanings of war memorials in Western Australia. In 2011, Julie started a PhD titled “The Changing Meanings of Anzac Day in Western Australia Since 1916.” She is also one of two Humanities Graduate Studies Research Officers, who are responsible for organising Curtin University’s Humanities Research and Graduate Studies workshops and annual conference.

Paper Editors

Shama Adams is a PhD Candidate at the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts. Her Doctoral thesis focuses on the historiography of the concept of progress, and its centrality to the development of modern understandings of history. Her research and teaching interests include cultural history, Enlightenment philosophy, postcolonial theory and disaporic studies. Shama has served as an editor for the Australian Edition of the United Nation’s Public Policy and Society Youth Journal, Perspectives. She has presented her research at numerous graduate and professional conferences, most recently in Leiden, Berlin, and Melbourne. She is currently working on her dissertion, and several articles for peer-reviewed publication.

Catherine Gomersall is a visual artist, practice-led researcher and lecturer in photography at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University.  Catherine’s PhD project entitled ‘On Fate and Fatalism: Photography and Fatal Theories’ examines, through practice-based research methodologies, the notions of fate, fatalism and the fatal with relevance to contemporary consumer and popular culture.  Her current research interests are in subjectivity and the sustainable practices of knowledge transfer and research commercialization in the creative industries.

Christine Pflaumbaum is a doctoral candidate at Curtin University, where she is working on her thesis “Shock Advertising – and the system of self-regulation”, after finishing her Honours degree. She has conducted her research on an international basis allowing much room for interesting new ideas triggered from some of the leading advertising agencies nationally and internationally. She occasionally works at Curtin University as a sessional tutor as well as working as a graphic design freelancer.

John Ryan is a sessional lecturer and doctoral candidate at Edith Cowan University where he has been working on a thesis called “Plants, People and Place: Cultural Botany and the Southwest Australian Flora.” Some of his PhD research has been published in Australian Humanities Review (2009), Continuum (2010) and Nature and Culture (2011). His poetry has appeared in Bukker Tillibul, dotdotdash, Yellow Field, Landscapes and ekleksographia. In 2012, he will be included in the collection Fremantle Poets 3: Performance Poets.

Alice Yeow is a doctoral candidate at Curtin University, where she is working on her thesis, “Cosmetic Surgery and Ethnic Hybridity in the Age of Globalisation.” In 2011, she presented her research, about feminist aesthetics and cosmetic surgery, at Images of Whiteness (Oxford) and The Asian Conference on Cultural Studies (Osaka). Alice is also a freelance artist; her paintings, “Into the Trees” and “Thoughts of a Girl Dressed as a Boy” were commissioned in 2009, and the latter was featured on the cover of Real Magazine. In 2010, she exhibited a number of paintings, “Mispent Youth Series,” at Cottesloe Beach.