from bramilo.weblogs.com
The Ozeculture: Getting it Online Conference was held at the Sofitel, Melbourne, on 13-14 June 2001. It was hosted by the Commonwealth Department of Communication, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA). I attended as a Northern Territory Delegate.
Sessions
Papers delivered at the Conference will be published on the Conference web site (http://www.acn.net.au/conference/). Below are brief descriptions of presentations.
13 June, Morning Presentations
Welcome
The Hon. Peter McGauran, Minister for the Arts and the Centenary of Federation, gave the welcome address and launched the Culture and Recreation Portal (http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au).
Beyond Borders - the digital challenge.
Jennifer Condon, National Informatics Director, Enterprise Ireland, spoke about a “Silicon Alley” project planned for the centre of Dublin — in the old Guiness Factory — that will house the most advanced information technology and new media enterprises, seeking to capitalise on Ireland’s content industries.
Kim Machan, Director, Multimedia Art Asia Pacific, provided artists’ perspectives on new media, including artists from the Asia-Pacific region. She played a Flash movie made by a Korean artist that questioned notions of interactivity and other supposed requirements for new media. She stressed that the artist should be central.
There’s no business like ebusiness
Gary Brennan, Policy Consultant, NSW Film and Television Office, talked about the “commodification of arts administration”; he showed the database application that several film organisations commonly utilised for project management as an example of this.
Vicky Sowry, Director, Media Resource Centre, and Chair of the Australian Network for Art and Technology, demonstrated members’ online databases as examples of how new technologies assist in arts management.
Brett Leavy, Director, Cyberdreaming, talked about how new media can benefit Indigenous communities and showed some projects of Cyberdreaming as examples.
13 June, Afternoon Discussion Groups
I attended the following discussion groups in the afternoon:
Interactive online music demonstration, by Seb Chan and Peter Mahony. A network “jamming” application was demonstrated at the session. The allows several users to build music tracks in real time by sequencing audio samples. The application has been developed for the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney and will be targeted to secondary schools in NSW. It will be launched in October.
Talent Quest — what’s happening in the computer games industry in Australia, with: John DeMarghetti, CEO of Microforte; Julianne Lawson, Program Manager, Arts Queensland; Adam Lancman, President, Games Developers Association of Australia. The speakers gave an overview of the games industry and identified issues, particularly the different requirements for designing games and the lack of graphic artists in Australia who have those skills. A related issue was that of the trend of importing talent from overseas to fill the local gaps.
Keeping an even keel, by David Walker, producer, Lighthouse on the web. David Walker has been active over the years in deflating hype about the Internet. He still recommends “traditional” business models of starting small and building up from there. He also provided information on consumer behaviour and the characteristics of the Internet that militate against an “arts internet” or “entertainment internet”.
14 June, Morning Presentations
Exposure v Exploitation — intellectual property issues raised by digital technologies.
Liz O’Shea of DCITA gave an overview of the developments in the IP area, particularly what Government and the Department have been doing (e.g. Moral Rights legislation).
Robin Wright, Manager, Copyright and Digital Projects, Swinburne University, talked about changes in managing IP brought about by digital technologies, issues to do with balancing public interest and economic exploitation.
Vanessa Rouse, former Executive Director, Arena Theatre, talked about Arena’s experiences in digitising live performance product and issues to do with royalty management and different rights in theatre production.
Vivien Johnson, Senior Research Council Fellow, ANU, talked about the House of Aboriginality project and about the movement against violations of indigenous rights (intellectual property, as well as cultural).
Delia Browne, Executive Director of Arts Law Centre Australia, talked about the activities and services offered by Arts Law Centre as well as some of the issues to do with IP and digital media, including the lack of industry standards so far for determining fees for use of material.
Homegrown - building local cultural content in the era of the international electronic marketplace
John Rimmer, Chief Executive Officer, National Office for the Information Economy, discussed aspects of “Creative Industries”. He cited cultural issues for creative industries, including new employment models, skills deficits, and branding to the world. He also discussed factors for success in creative industries, including exploiting network effects, linking theory and practice, going beyond high art and low art. Also presented were factors for success in the digital economy, including moving from value-chain to value-network, and questioning if there is indeed a “digital content industry”. He outlined challenges facing creative industries, including the convergence of information, communications and broadband technologies. He then mapped out the way forward, including ways to gain competitive advantage, valuing different capabilities in value networks, developing infrastructure, and government’s role as an intelligent purchaser from creative industries.
Getting to know you - partnerships and relationships
The session was chaired by Cliff Smith, Regional Director, South Asia, Novell Inc, and Councillor, Australian Business Arts Foundation (ABAF). He described the good relationship Novell has built with the arts sector and described the role and benefits of ABAF in forging partnerships between the corporate sector and arts organisations.
Lynne Spender, Director, Australian Interactive Multimedia Industry Association, emphasised that there is a digital content industry (in response to John Rimmer’s assertion that these are only extensions of “root” industries).
Carolyn Guerin, former Director, Projects, Sausage Interactive, discussed experiences of artists working in software companies and emphasised the need for collaboration between artists and technical workers in producing digital content.
Will Berryman, Head of New Media, SBS, outlined SBS’s experiences in adopting new media and forging partnerships with the corporate sector, stressing that benefits from partnerships are not necessarily measured in monetary terms and that partnerships must serve arts/organisations purposes rather than being a way to service corporate needs alone.
14 June, Afternoon Discussion Groups
I attended the following discussion groups in the afternoon:
Two plus two equals five - success stories of collaboration between artists and information technology companies.
Dr. Nigel Helyer, new media artist and member of the New Media Arts Board, Australia Council, talked about his residency with Lake, a high tech company in Sydney specialising in audio equipment and products. He worked on a virtual reality system that was sound-based (three-dimensional sound) using Lake’s facilities, equipment, and working with their engineers. He wrote several patents arising from his residency.
Teresa Crea, Artistic Director, Doppio Parallelo, talked about Doppio’s partnership with Motorola (its Research and Development arm specifically). She described one of Doppio’s contributions to the partnership as being an observer of life and lifestyle (as this is what arts organisations are good at) which would then inform Motorola’s research and development activities.
The new venues - interactive spaces.
John McCormick, Director , Company in Space, talked about and demonstrated their work using digital technologies — specifically video conferencing and an application that animates graphics onscreen in real-time through a body suit that digitises motion and controls the animated characters.
Ross Gibson, Creative Director, Cinemedia’s Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), described the vision and plans for ACMI and presented historical insights into how the moving image. He also had an intriguing statement about navigation and hypertext: he claimed that 19th century arcades were the original hyperlinks.
David Stonier, Manager, Ticketed Events, Museum of Melbourne, talked about the “immersion cinema” system at the Museum; this system, one of few in the world, provides an interactive cinematic experience where viewers can determine the outcome of the story. The initial offerings at the Museum will be about a sci-fi like movie about journeying into the human body.
14 June, Concluding Session: How well is your website?
The concluding session had Steven Smith of United Focus, Will Berryman of SBS, a nd Kevin Sumption of AMOL putting up some websites — e.g. Australian Ballet, Arts Law Centre — on the screen and giving critiques of these sites.
New Media Samples
The Conference program has new media samples as transition or intermission devices. One sample was the famous Turbulence by John McCormack. There was no discussion about these samples.
New Media Exhibition
The Conference featured an exhibition of 18 new media products — film/computer animation, cd-roms, net art, and VR installations — curated by Cinemedia. The exhibition was in a dedicated space beside the main auditorium; delegates were able to view/use/test the various offerings. One highlight of the exhibition was “The WEDGE”, a “low-cost, walk-in Virtual Reality Theatre” developed at the ANU.
My Highlights
The following are things in the conference that were most memorable or significant for me:
I was inspired and envious of what Enterprise Ireland is planning for its own Silicon Alley. I thought it was admirable for the Irish government to invest millions of pounds in new media to take full advantage of its own as well as the world’s content. I was hoping there would be similar initiatives in Australia soon.
I enjoyed the workshop on Interactive music as I am (or would like to be) mainly a musician. The system demonstrated at the workshop was a beta version but it displayed a good framework for interactive electronic musicmaking. It is not the first such system; Rocketnetwork and Resrocket (a MIDI-version of Rocketnetwork) have virtual studios and facilities for online collaboration among musicians writing tracks (Resrocket may be hosted as part of the Powerhouse system because of its MIDI capabilities).
David Walker’s presentation was a big dose of reality. He emphasised that we will not have an Arts Internet or Entertainment Internet because it is not the nature of the medium (which is a “lean-forward, do things” medium rather than a “lie back, consume things” medium as television and other mass media are). He cites statistics on consumer behaviour that have been unchanged over several years: the Net is used mainly for email and searching for and getting information — this trend, he believes is not about to change. Walker also cited a study that there is no direct relationship between spending on IT and productivity; a few of us liked this statement of reality, partly because it reminds us that we were able to survive without much IT in the past and that IT will not solve all our problems.
Critique
I came to the Conference with too many expectations, perhaps, as I came away disappointed.
I thought the Conference promised a lot in terms of a wide range of topics and opportunities to discuss issues. There was indeed a range of topics but the themes of ecommerce and websites dominated and there was not much discussion at all (I felt being talked at for two days as there was not much time for substantial discussion and debate).
The Conference was supposed to be about Ozecuture (Australian e-culture), and getting it online. Most of the presentations had to be with the commercial aspects of cultural issues, and particularly some aspects of ecommerce such as marketing and selling artistic product online, and using online databases for membership management and other administrative purposes. Even assuming that the emphasis on business was justified (and it is not, but more about that later), I thought the conference did not provide an adequate representation of ebusiness. Ecommerce is only one aspect of ebusiness; others are customer relations management, business planning, enterprise management, supply chain management. I had expected discussions about ebusiness to go beyond ecommerce.
I also thought the the emphasis on websites as the main venue for ecommerce or as spaces for arts organisations was a bit narrow. There is more to the Internet, more to online culture than the web. While other online and new media technologies were demonstrated and discussed (particularly in the Exhibition space and in some presentations), I though that beginning the conference with launching a web site and ending it with a session on web sites, and having websites flashed so often within the main program, gave me the impression that web sites are the main vehicle for getting culture online. This is not necessarily true.
The most disappointing aspect, however, was the lack of spaces to discuss Australian culture online, to discuss the creation and development of Australian culture on the Internet — rather than representing the Internet as a repository of “content” and a market place. I would have enjoyed discussing how the Internet can, if at all, be a space to create art, or what the culture (or cultures) are of its cybercitizens (that is, what is the culture of virtual communities, for instance). I felt that the Internet was represented at the conference mainly as just another marketing and commercial vehicle, or a storage and exhibition area for art created in the real world — cyberspace has unique characteristics which determine the creation and development of culture within it, and this was not really discussed at the conference.
Acknowledgment
I attended the Conference with support from:
the Commonwealth Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts for my airfare;
artsNT, the Cultural Development Division of the NT Department of Arts and Museums, for funding my Conference registration and accommodation costs;
Brown’s Mart Community Arts for facilitating and administering support from DCITA and artsNT; and
the Community Cultural Development Board of the Australia Council, for my Fellowship, which covered my wages and other conference-related expenses
