‘Rolling Thunder’: Changing communication and the Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjara public sphere

Tom O'Regan and Philip Batty in Australian Television Culture, identify a problematic confrontation between westernised concepts of 'publicness' and the notions of that 'publicness' found within Aboriginal cultural practices. O'Regan and Batty acknowledge the role that tradition plays in mediating the integration of indigenous communities within contemporary Australia. They suggest an array of issues that very among communities. Some variables include proximity to European settlement, the traditional food sources, and the distance from the ocean

Techno / natural interfacing: walking and mapping in the age of climate change.

The techno / natural interface examines a series of World-Wide-Walks projects from the 1970s to the present. The inquiry extends our work on The Techno / Cultural Interface: tracking the boundaries of high-tech and traditional cultures presented at TISEA, Sydney, 1992, and published in Media Information Australia, August, 1993. Originally inspired by Gregory Bateson's 'dialogues' and 'metalogues', concepts of mind and nature as 'sacred and necessary unities,' the techno / cultural ideas evolve from theories of interfacing, identities, and consciousness to techno / natural concepts examined through the sensuous kinesthetic experience of walking and its mapping

Drawing Spirits in the Sand: Performative Storytelling in the Digital Age

For First Nations people living in the central desert of Australia, the performance of oral storytelling drawing in the sand drives new agency in the cultural metamorphosis of communication practices accelerated by the proliferation of portable digital devices. Drawing on the ground sustains the proxemic and kinesthetic aspects of performative storytelling as a sign gesture system. When rendering this drawing supra-language, the people negotiate and ride the ontological divide symbolized by traditional elders in First Nations communities and digital engineers who program and code. In particular, storytelling’s chronemic encounter offsets the estrangement of the recorded event and maintains every participants’ ability to shape identity and navigate space-time relationships. Drawing storytelling demonstrates a concomitant capacity to mediate changes in tradition and spiritual systems. While the digital portals of the global arena remain open and luring, the force enabled by the chiasmic entwinement of speech, gesture and sand continues to map the frontier of First Nations identity formation and reformation

From Receiver to Remote Control : The TV Set

Investigating the impact of the television set through a multi-disciplinary approach, 16 essayists address the "symbiotic relationship of so-called "high" art and "popular" culture". Circa 65 bibl. ref