Player violence or violent players? Vicarious liability for sports participants

This article analyses two recent English cases concerning the law on vicarious liability for acts of violence and considers their significance in respect of on-field acts of violence in contact sports. It provides an overview of how the law of negligence has developed in the specific context of sports injuries (including the application of the defence of volenti) and critiques the application of vicarious liability to sports cases. This is followed by a consideration of the wider law on vicarious liability for violent employees through a review of Lister v Hesley Hall Ltd [2001] UKHL 22 and a deeper consideration of Mattis v Pollock [2003] EWCA Civ 887. The article continues with an analysis of how those decisions have changed the legal landscape in respect of violent sports participants, looking in particular at reported cases from three jurisdictions in which that issue has been raised

Photography at the chiasm

 This paper works across a number of theories from phenomenology, \u27ecological perception\u27 and psychogeography to demonstrate from recent experiments how contemporary photomedia qua the static image, deals with being (noun and verb), and moving, in space. The author presents research findings from inviestigations into photography employing slow shutter speeds and axial panning to render 2D images of 3D spatial effects to show how with one-eyed viewing the images effectively restore the spatial relationships and observer location of the photographed situation

Placing space/time through photography’s old and new technologies

The discovery that an impressively strong 3-dimensional effect in a 2-dimensional photographic representation of natural outdoor scenes occurs when a single camera is directed around one point in the scene, thus drawing into relief the subject of attention and blurring the surrounding space, has important implications for understanding basic processes in 3-dimensional vision. For the development of new ways for generating 3D effects in motion and static representations of scenes we might well learn from photography’s old technologies, as well as digital technologies of the static print, which have yet to release the full impact of their potential in the representation of motion and space

Picture words : toward an art-critical methodology

“Phiction: Lies, Illusion and the Phantasm in Australian Photography” is a curatorial experiment in assembling a survey exhibition from a significant collection. Its formulation, presentation and the outcomes of its tour of eleven regional and metropolitan Victorian galleries provide a case study for this paper. The exhibition Phiction (the title amalgamates photography and fiction) challenges audiences’ reading of photographs, and confronts some curatorial assumptions, by juxtaposing the images with extracts of Australian fiction instead of the usual gallery fact sheet, list of provenance or expert gloss. In this way the exhibition forces a confrontation between ‘dumb’ image and ‘blind’ text and while examples are examined, a review of the exhibition is not the purpose of this paper. A consideration its process and effect is discussed in the paper to propose a comparative tool in the study, investigation and evaluation of art. It is offered to visual art school researchers, lecturers and students contemplating the most appropriate and effective, or alternative, methodologies to employ. With reference to the dominant systems of critique which have come to us from other disciplines, the paper considers the art practitioner’s perspective by drawing on the example of Phiction to pose the open question; “How might we use one artform to explore another?”

Double horizons : shifting figure and ground in some Australian photography

Photography, normally considered a prosaic medium, is considered in this paper as a synthesises of the processes of human seeing, to develop an aesthetic, a poetics of space. The initial element of invention in my investigation was to devise the means by which the process of binocular perception might be depicted. Once the vortex form emerged from that experimentation, and I had the experience to predict the generation of affect, it became possible to manipulate it purposefully in seeking a solution to the problem of the portrait in the landscape.This paper outlines a practice as research investigation into the construction and representation of the figure and the ground in photography through overlapping multiple temporal and spatial renderings of the same subject within single photographic images.This included a critical investigation of the representation of time, perspective, and location in historical and contemporary photography with particular attention to the synthesis, imitation, and distinction of characteristics of human vision in this medium especially where they are indicative of consciousness and attention.This investigation informed a re-evaluation of the premises of the genre of the photographic portrait and it&rsquo;s setting, especially within the unstructured environment of the Central Victorian ironbark forests and goldfields. Analogue and digital photographic experiments were conducted in superimposed shifts in camera position and their convergence on significant points of focus through repeated exposures across different time scales. The images correspond to a stage in human stereo perception before fusion, to represent the attention of the viewer, where, in these images, the &lsquo;portrait&rsquo; is located. The findings were applied to the large format camera production of high-definition images that extended the range and effectiveness of selected pictorial structures such as selective focus, relative scale, superimposition, multiple exposures and interference patterns. The outcome was an exhibition at Smrynios Gallery in Melbourne in April 2004. This presentation includes a discussion of relevant work by Australian practitioners Daniel Crooks and David Stephenson.</div