Media research activities
Live Audio-Visual Performance in Australia
SCU Recruitment Grant 2011-12
Research Project
The aim of this project is to contribute to knowledge regarding the status and practices of live audio-visual performance in Australia; to explore the ideas and assumptions underpinning these practices, and to tease out both the history and uniqueness of live audio-visual performance in Australia, and the limitations facing this practice in this country. Filmed interviews are being conducted with practitioners of live a/v performance, with a view to publishing analyses of the interviews in appropriate public fora, in print and online.
View the online documentary via this Link
Outback and Beyond: A Live Australian WesternSCU Recruitment Grant 2011-12
Research Project
"Outback and Beyond" is a collaboration between Rome-based sound artist Mike Cooper, and Grayson Cooke. To Mike's soundtrack of deconstructed Blues, lap-steel guitar and processed electronics, Grayson performs a live re-mix of archival footage of the Australian outback, from titles held by the National Film and Sound Archive. Mike recites a libretto that meditates on the adventures and misadventures of Charles Todd, the engineer who built the Trans-Australian telegraph in 1871. The unique result is a live "Australian Western," a meditation on Australian iconography and mythography, the dusty, hard-bitten DNA of national identity. With an outback road-movie soundtrack, and footage from docu-dramas, documentaries and feature films from the 1920s to the 1950s, "Outback and Beyond" presents the audience with a series of micro-narratives reminiscent of the themes and aesthetics of the Western film genre, but crucially, it is a Western set in Australia's outback, reflecting Australia's own relationship to its land, its history and its peoples. This project has so far been performed at the Byron Bay Film Festival and the Griffith Conservatorium in Brisbane.
Contact
Dr Grayson Cooke
e: grayson.cooke@scu.edu.au
Personal Researcher Page
Kellerman: EXPANDED - A Live Audio-Visual Performance
Research Project
"Kellerman: EXPANDED" is a live audio-visual performance produced for and performed at the 2011 SICRI Conference in the Whitsunday Islands region of Queensland, Australia. It has also been performed in Lismore at the NORPA "Experiments in the Dark" event and the "Jurassic Lounge" performance series at the Australian Museum, Sydney. The performance is a live remix of film footage by or about Australian champion swimmer and silent film star Annette Kellerman. In this performance, undersea footage is mixed in with the Kellerman films to produce an undersea fantasia, a meditation on the expanded temporality and fantasy of the island paradise. Audience members are invited to interact live with the performance, by submitting silent-film inter-titles as blog comments, which were mixed into the performance via RSS feeds. As well as being a meditation on the temporality of the underwater experience, the performance, and the research around it, represents an enquiry into audience interactivity and narrativity in live a/v performance.
Contact
Dr Grayson Cooke
e: grayson.cooke@scu.edu.au
Personal Researcher Page
Music Production and Technology in Australian Film: Enabling Australian Film to Embrace Innovation
ARC Discovery Project Grant: 2007 - 2011
Research Project
In Australia, as elsewhere, music has become increasingly important to cinema's creative practice and income generation. Despite this, music remains a peripheral and often awkwardly integrated aspect of Australian feature film production. This hampers the industry's opportunity to engage with the "innovation economy" in a manner that fully exploits its creative and commercial potential. This project will research recent Australian film music history, focusing on production technologies and processes, budgets and music styles. Its findings will facilitate an analysis of major industrial tendencies that will generate debate, inform policy-making and impact on production practices and the vitality of the overall sector.
The project draws on a cross-institutional and cross-disciplinary team covering media, popular and contemporary music, cultural industries, and musicology. The research is being undertaken by Dr Rebecca Coyle (Media program) and Prof. Michael Hannan (Music program) from Southern Cross University, in association with Prof Philip Hayward, Music Dept. Macquarie University, Sydney.
Dr Rebecca Coyle
Personal Researcher Page
Prof. Michael Hannan
michael.hannan@scu.edu.au
Personal Researcher Page
Labour biography on screen: the case of Freda Brown
Research Project
The written biographies and memoirs of activists and leaders have long been core components of labour history. But biography is not only a literary genre – it is also a type of audio-visual production. Whilst scholars have analysed the representation of workers in Australian films, the interpretation and the implications of screen productions as biography, for Australian labour history, have been to date relatively unexplored. This research analyses the 1995 episode of the documentary series Australian Biography () which focused on communist and women's activist Freda Brown (1919-2009). It explores how this particular production deals with biography, notably with the collaborative, networking aspects of Brown's career highlights. This research is associated with the commissioning of Dr Milner to write Brown's biography.
Contact
Dr Lisa Milner
e: lisa.milner@scu.edu.au
Personal Researcher Page
Dr Rosemary Webb
e: rosemary.webb@scu.edu.au
Personal Researcher Page
Telling Tales on the Weekend: Converged Delivery of Production Units
Research Project
One of the promises held by the role of new media technologies in education is to promote "converged delivery" learning, in part to collapse divisions between external and internal enrolments, but also to strengthen student engagement with emerging online and collaborative technologies. In 2009 a pilot project to remodel a core media unit in converged delivery mode was undertaken at Southern Cross University. The unit, titled "Telling Tales: Introduction to Digital Storytelling," was designed to introduce students to audio-visual production processes and technologies within the context of narrative design and storytelling. This research investigates the collaborative process of unit development, notes the technological and human impacts of the project, and assesses the effectiveness and student experience of the first rollout. It analyses the impact of developing digital technologies on the learning and teaching experience in this pilot project, and reflects on the curriculum design, learning outcomes, and pedagogical opportunities that such a project can offer.
Contact
Dr Lisa Milner
e: lisa.milner@scu.edu.au
Personal Researcher Page
Dr Grayson Cooke
e: grayson.cooke@scu.edu.au
Personal Researcher Page
Innovative Models for Regional Creative Industries
Research Project
Study Leave Project 2011-2012
This project will involve undertaking specific field work in regional creative industries and innovation in British Columbia (BC) and conducting a comparative study of policies and practices in Australia and Canada in relation to regional creative industries, with particular emphasis on screen production. It will enable an investigation of how policies can translate into sustainable practices in creative industries operating in regional contexts. A case-study of screen production networks in BC will provide a focused component of a broader investigation of creative industries. A network of relevant research collaborators will build a team for future projects.
Associate Professor Rebecca Coyle
Federal Election Media: Australia Votes
Research Project
Since the 1920s and the days of valve radios and silent film, election campaign media has set the agenda for pre- and post-election debate, helped to define the experience of citizenship for the voter, and reflected carefully selected images of the voting nation to themselves. Lisa Milner has been awarded a Fellowship at the National Film and Sound Archive's Scholars and Artists in Residence program, to compile and analyse a history of Australian screen election advertisements. This project has a number of anticipated research outcomes connected with the holdings of the NFSA. The postfellowship research will detail the ways in which the development of narratives and stylistic tropes in these campaigns provide a unique window into exploring the changing relationship between the representational powers of media and citizenship, and how popular media has informed Australians' engagement in the democratic process.
Contact
Dr Lisa Milner
e: lisa.milner@scu.edu.au
Personal Researcher Page
nfsa.gov.au/blog/2011/10/28/pre-television-election-media-australia-votes/
Framing the Unions: The Changing Images of Unionists on Screen
Research Project
Since the adaption of filmmaking to this country, Australian screen producers have depicted strikes and other actions of trade union members on film, television and now on the internet. This research project examines the ways that industrial disputes have been represented to their audiences, and discusses how they provide a unique window into exploring the relationships between media and identity. It considers how various screen discourses of unionist representation reflect changing national values, identities, and socio-economic trends.
Contact
Dr Lisa Milner
e: lisa.milner@scu.edu.au
Personal Researcher Page
Laying your cards on the table: representations of gambling in the media
Research Project
This research project investigates how gambling is portrayed in the Australian media. Taking a survey approach, it describes the ways in which one day's exposure to multiple forms of Australian media present gambling from a polarised and often contradictory number of perspectives. Learning from the media studies field, researchers in the gambling field can benefit from new insights into media's potential to realistically, or otherwise, represent a wide spectrum of gambling behaviours. Recognising the value of media for their strength of effects and relevance for the treatment and policy allows for a sustained and critical engagement with their functions.
Contact
Dr Lisa Milner
e: lisa.milner@scu.edu.au
Personal Researcher Page
Dr Elaine Nuske
e: elaine_nuske@scu.edu.au
From Bananas to Bollywood: the marketing of Coffs Harbour Foodways and the Woolgoolga Curry Festival
Research Project
From the end of World War II, a Punjabi Sikh subculture has been a part of the Coffs Harbour community of NSW, beginning with immigration to farm bananas. In an area with a growing regional population and an economy largely centred on services and tourism, the town of the Big Banana now looks to expand its tourism and culinary experiences. In 2006 the first Woolgoolga Curry Festival was held, an event that was established by the Woolgoolga Chamber of Commerce. Six years on, the festival attracts an increasing amount of locals and visitors to the area. This research considers the festival as a case study in the expansion of regional food cultures, marketing and tourism.
Contact
Dr Lisa Milner
e: lisa.milner@scu.edu.au
Personal Researcher Page
Drawn To Sound: Animation Film Music and Sonicity, edited by Rebecca Coyle
Research Project
Animation films are produced around the world and attract sizeable audiences and much critical acclaim. No longer marginalized in genres such as children's or propaganda films, they are increasingly the subject of academic study. At the same time, attention has turned to the music and sound, which contribute to both the emotional impact and the narrative drive, as well as the marketing appeal, of such films. This ground-breaking volume bridges these two fields and also positions animation-film sound and music in the context of the screen and music industries. Drawn to Sound focuses on feature-length, widely distributed films released in the period since World War II, from producers in the USA, UK, Japan and France. It spotlights important studios, including Disney, DreamWorks, Aardman Animation and Studio Ghibli, and composers, both those who collaborate personally with directors and those whose music is used to provide period or mood atmospheres.
Contact
Associate Professor Rebecca Coyle
Updated: 27 May 2013