#Australian Science Fiction Foundation

[ma-tsu-the-male-goddess]

Hey! if you like Humans are Weird, sci-fi, coming of age stories, alien oc art, dnd campaigns, extreme world-building, and/or ducks, give me a follow on my writing blog!

This blog is specifically for my original book currently in progress. All art is by myself, and all lore has already been fleshed out on my end. I'm currently just re-writing/organizing to make it more understandable/accessible to you.

6 years in the making - hope y'all enjoy!

Universal Foundations - What you just have to accept about the universe & setting.

(Humanity, I'sola, Luck, Species History)

See the Google Doc with additional formatting Here.

Humanity

Humanity has advanced to the point of space travel.

Wormholes exist but are not well documented.

I’sola

An alien species called I’sola exist in a far off place in the universe.

They live on one planet of a binary (twin) planet system, which rotate around each other. 

The system is in locked rotation with the sun, with one planet (Hoset), always being closest to the sun.

The I’sola live on the planet furthest from the sun (Ma’al). 

The two planets share both an atmosphere and a glass ring of melted meteors.

When their orbit takes them close to the sun, Hoset ignites.

The planet burns constantly for half the year, split into 2 burning seasons. 

The I’sola are plant-like creatures.

They breathe in Carbon Dioxide and breathe out Oxygen.

The I’sola have 2 genders of seed-bearers and fertilizers, though there are no romantic pairings.

The ‘female’ will leave behind two seeds that have grown within her body when she dies.

The ���male’  will separate the two seeds far enough apart that they will have room to take root, sprout, grow through a plant stage, and eventually into fully mobile creatures before they also die.

Side Note: The ‘male’ is not technically the fertilizer of the eggs. All ‘males’ give off the equivalent of pollen through the air constantly, collected by the ‘antennae’ at the top of the mother’s head.  The DNA of the seeds take in various parts of DNA and mutate throughout the mother’s life. With both parents dead, the seedlings are raised by the elders of the community.

Because of this method of altruistic reproduction, the population of the I’sola never changes.

The I’sola believe in reincarnation, and that they are simply a reimagining of the same set of souls for all of conceivable time. 

Luck

‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ luck are fundamental (aspects) like north and south poles.

Another term/way of thinking about it is the tendency of an object to dissolve/fall apart in certain ways (i.e. entropy).

Luck can therefore be ‘balanced’.

Humanity as a species is ‘bad’ luck, and the I’sola are ‘good’ luck.

The main characters in the story represent ‘good’ luck for the humans and ‘bad’ luck for the I’sola. Hoset, the burning planet, is ‘bad’ luck, and Ma’al, the planet with life, is ‘good’ luck.

Species History

The I’sola can control the direction of entropy or ‘luck’.

The prior sentient species, (a race similar to ducks), could also control entropy.

They used it to collect a large amount of ‘bad’ luck in one place for the sake of a scientific experiment. 

The ‘bad’ luck conglomeration exploded, killing the entirety of the planet but for the plant ancestors of the I’sola buried deep in the ground. 

The I’sola are now the only living creatures on the planet.

[akajustmerry]

Ocean Girl really was my earliest introduction to the Australian science fiction and speculative fiction genres. Twenty years later, I am a published author of Australian speculative fiction (check out This All Come Back Now). Growing up watching distinctly Australian science fiction series like Ocean Girl, Silversun and Parallax not only inspired a love of the genre, but empowered me to imagine strange new Australian futures. Sadly though, it seems mine may be the last generation to grow up with such stories. According to a new report by the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF), Aussie kids TV is in crisis, with production of original Australian kids content on free-to-air TV dropping 84% between 2019-2022. In 2020, the government lifted regulations requiring free-to-air networks to produce quotas of homegrown kids content. The result? Next to no new shows for kids.

Remembering ‘Ocean Girl’ And The Aussie Kids TV Boom Of The ’90s | Merryana Salem

[allthingslinguistic]

All Things Linguistic - 2022 Highlights

2022 was a year of opening up again and laying foundations for future projects. I spent the final 3 months of it on an extended trip to Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand, which is a delightful reason to have a delay in writing this year in review post. 

Interesting new projects this year included my first piece in The Atlantic, why we have so much confusion on writing the short form of "usual" and 103 languages reading project: inspired by a paper by Evan Kidd and Rowena Garcia. 

Continuations of existing projects: 

Return of LingComm Grants

A survey for those using Because Internet for teaching

10 year Blogiversary of All Things Linguistic: highlights from the past year and highlights from the past decade

6 years of Lingthusiasm

Conferences/Talks

LSA 2022 and judging Five Minute Linguist

I was on panels about swearing in SFF and the Steerswoman books at a local literary speculative fiction con, Scintillation

I was on panels at WorldCon (ChiCon 8) in Chicago: Ask A Scientist, That's Not How That Works!, and Using SFF for Science Communication

I was a contestant for the second time in Webster's War of the Words, a virtual game show fundraiser for the Noah Webster House.

I attended the Australian Linguistics Society annual meeting in Melbourne and the New Zealand Linguistics Society annual meeting in Dunedin, where I gave a talk co-authored with Lauren Gawne called Using lingcomm to design meaningful stories about linguistics

Lingthusiasm

In our sixth year of Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics which I make with Lauren Gawne and our production team, we did a redesign of how the International Phonetic Alphabet symbols are layed out in a chart, in order to correspond more closely with the principle that the location of a symbol is a key to how it's articulated. This involved much digging into the history of IPA layouts and back-and-forths with our artist, Lucy Maddox, and we were very pleased to make our aesthetic IPA design available on a special one-time edition of lens cloths for patrons as well as our general range of posters, tote bags, notebooks, and other all-time merch. 

We also did our first Lingthusiasm audience survey and Spotify for some reason gave us end-of-year stats only in French, which I guess is on brand, but we were pleased to see notebooks, and Lingthusiasm is one of Spotify's top 50 Science podcastsF/href.li/?https:/www.redbubble.com%2Fi%2Fmouse-pad%2FAesthetic-IPA-Chart-Square-by-Lingthusiasm%2F129215087.G1FH6&t=OTkxYjYxYjNmMzA1M2VhNGViOGIxZWIxOGI0NDRjYjE2YTIzYTE2NCw2YTgzNDQyZTM3MzY0YjRkNjc3NGJkNzhhYzJhMzk3ZjA2Y2NkYzIz&ts=1684794278">other all-time merch!

Main episodes from this year

Making speech visible with spectrograms

Knowledge is power, copulas are fun.

Word order, we love 

What it means for a language to be official

Tea and skyscrapers - When words get borrowed across languages

What we can, must, and should say about modals

Language in the brain - Interview with Ev Fedorenko

Various vocal fold vibes

What If Linguistics

The linguistic map is not the linguistic territory

Who questions the questions?

Love and fury at the linguistics of emotions

Bonus Episodes

We interview each other! Seasons, word games, Unicode, and more

Emoji, Mongolian, and Multiocular O ꙮ - Dispatches from the Unicode Conference

Behind the scenes on how linguists come up with research topics

Approaching word games like a linguist - Interview with Nicole Holliday and Ben Zimmer of Spectacular Vernacular

What makes a swear word feel sweary? A &⩐#⦫&

There’s like, so much to like about “like”

Language inside an MRI machine - Interview with Saima Malik-Moraleda

Using a rabbit to get kids chatting for science

Behind the scenes on making an aesthetic IPA chart - Interview with Lucy Maddox

Linguistics and science communication - Interview with Liz McCullough

103 ways for kids to learn languages

Speakest Thou Ye Olde English?

Selected Tweets

Linguistics Fun

aunt and niece languages

Swedish chef captions

IPA wordle

wordle vs kiki

creative use of emoji and space

resume glottal stop

dialects in a trenchcoat

which of these starter Pokemon is bouba and which is kiki

(for no author would use, because of the known rendolence of onions, onions)

acoustic bike

An extremely charming study by Bill Labov featuring a rabbit named Vincent

Rabbit Meme

Cheering on linguistics effects (Stroup and Kiki/Bouba) in a vote on the cutest scientific effect name

Old English Hrickroll

The word you get assigned with your linguistics degree

Sanskrit two-dimensional alphabet

Cognate Objects

Linguist Meetup in Linguaglossa?

baɪ ði eɪdʒ ʌv θɚti

j- prefixing

"But clerk, I am Bill Labov" (pagliacci meme)

Usual winner

Because Internet Tumblr vernacular

Linguist "Human" Costume

Cursed kiki/bouba

dot ellipsis vs comma ellipsis

intersection of signed languages and synesthesia?

Antipodean linguistic milestone

Selected Blog Posts:

Linguistic Jobs

Online Linguistics Teacher

Impact Lead

Customer Success Manager

Hawaiian and Tahitian language Instructor, Translator & Radio Host

Language Engineer

Data Manager & Digital Archivist

Linguistics fun

xkcd: neoteny recapitulated phylogeny

Eeyore Linguistic Facts

Lingthusiasm HQ: Frown Thing!

xkcd is making a vowel hypertrapezoid

Title: Ships and Ice Picks: An Ethnographic Excavation of alt.goncharov

Missed out on previous years? Here are the summary posts from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. If you’d like to get a much shorter monthly highlights newsletter via email, with all sorts of interesting internet linguistics news, you can sign up for that at gretchenmcc.substack.com.

[moviehow]

Crash Zone is an Australian children's science fiction television series which aired on the Seven Network from 13 February 1999 to 25 August 2001. It was produced by Australian Children's Television Foundation, in association with the Disney Channel, and ran for 26 episodes. The series stars five high school students, "high-tech whiz kids" of varied backgrounds, who are hired by the president of the Catalyst software company to save her failing business. The premise of the series was unique in that it was one of the first series to examine the early use of the internet as well as the video game industry and artificial intelligence. Here are the short video about the crash zone tv show cast then and now !!

[laurenmitchellwrites]

Awards and Accolades

Australian Science Fiction Foundation Amateur Short Story Competition 2014: won with ‘Latency’ (published in Continuum X conbook)

Bisexual Book Awards 2015, Erotic Fiction category: finalist with The Triad Trial, Less Than Three Press.

Ditmar Awards 2017, Best Collected Work category: co-winner with ‘Tea Party’ in Defying Doomsday, eds Tsana Dolichva and Holly Kench, Twelfth Planet Press.

The Norma K Hemming Award 2018: nominated with ‘Tea Party’ in Defying Doomsday, eds Tsana Dolichva and Holly Kench, Twelfth Planet Press.

Mitchell reminds us that anxiety and depression are also disabilities, and create complications for those trying to survive the apocalypse. [Their] story trades the general pessimism of this genre for bright optimism and reminds us that, though humans might die, humanity will survive.

The James Tiptree, Jr. Award 2018: Honor List: ‘Island, Ocean’ in Capricious Magazine: The Gender Diverse Pronouns Issue, ed. A. C. Buchanan

[tessatechaitea]

Wonder Twins #5

Jayna just punched straight through her brother's butthole.

If you're a being who turns into water, your dick and butthole don't just disappear, right? They just become part of the water! So I'm almost certainly correct in my comment on the cover. Hopefully Mark Russell will explore this topic in a future issue. Until then, I'll be certain to tell everybody I know that Jayna basically fisted Zan. Luckily for the Wonder Twins, I don't know many people and also they are fictional characters. This issue is called "Magic and Games." I think. It will probably take me less time to read this entire comic book than it took me to puzzle out the word "Games" in the font used for the title.

Sure, you can see it now that I already told you what it was! But it was difficult before I worked it out! Although I still wouldn't be surprised to learn the title is "Magic and Galljes" or "Magic and "Gaines" and that the second word is somebody's name.

Usually I don't comment on Mark Russell comic books because to comment on a Mark Russell comic book, you should probably be smart and serious. Sure, he's having fun and writing an entertaining book that I can easily use to make jokes about fisting incest! But he also writes sensitive stories about social justice and systemic bias and ethical dilemmas in changing times and, well, other stuff that I'm too dumb to even discuss in the most general terms! He's a smart guy which is why I hate him with a burning passion! But it's a good hate! It's the kind of envious hate that pushes me to my own Emerald Twilight! I probably won't wind up destroying an entire town and ruining my reputation and becoming the most vilified hero in our universe but I almost certainly will eventually become the avenging spirit of God judging everybody around me! Wait, I think I already am that! Whatever my point is, it's that Mark Russell writes good and I'm too weak to not despise him for it. Polly Math has just won first prize at the science fair because her last name is Math. I guess Sandra Science didn't compete this year so Polly was the obvious next choice. Jayna wins second place because her project on fucking hot guys while being a nerd in high school fell apart when the guy she attempted to science fair fuck turned out to be a villain. It's also possible I'm confusing story lines but you have to expect that kind of thing! I'm not spring chicken! Remembering details between chapters that come out a full month apart has been nearly impossible for the last twenty years! I shouldn't make fun of Polly Math's name because I have a name that people always try to make jokes about too. It's not Grunion Guy! You can probably find it if you do even the smallest amount of Internet research! I'm not going to help you though because I don't want to get called a Deaf Chef anymore! Polly is upset that her father is working with Lex Luthor and the League of Annoyance. But Jayna has a plan to fix things! I bet her plan is to turn into a giant tortoise while Zan turns into an ice dildo and...wait a second! Why am I giving out good ideas that Mark Russell will just steal in a few issues?! Better to not speculate on things! Also, I mean, the cover shows Jayna going with the shark plan.

Okay fine! I'm finally interested in Fox News!

The most disturbing thing about people who watch Fox News is that they ignore five hundred other channels that are showing entertaining things on their television at the same time! Who chooses that shit over Comedy Central or the Game Show Network?! I haven't had cable for nearly twenty years and whenever I'm staying somewhere with cable, it's locked on the Game Show Network 24/7! Who the fuck chooses to watch state propaganda over old game shows?! Fucking psychopaths, that's who!

Polly Math's father wound up working with Lex Industries because only Lex Luthor hired African Americans, I guess? Hadn't he heard of STAR Labs?! Maybe Silas Stone and Sarah Charles fulfilled their quota?

I might be misreading this scene but I don't think I am because the white guys with white guys playing golf pictures behind them seem interested in Filo Math if he's Norwegian (so, you know, totally white!) and then when they meet him, they don't want to hire him. It could be that they really are concerned with his specialty! What could that be?! I mean, it can't be any worse than Silas Stone's specialty of turning his son into a cybernetic example of the castration of the black male in America! That's a really terrible specialty! Although Sarah Charles seemed to be pretty into it. See?! This is why I can't review a Mark Russell book! He's making a great point about the systemic bias inherent in corporate hiring practices and I'm not taking it seriously! I mean, he isn't either, really? He's being light-hearted while still making a good point. Which is what I've done, I think, in my comment about Cyborg's lack of a penis! The Scrambler wants to play a trick on society. He's a magician that believes people are frightened of magic and only like the part where everything is normal again. Magician: "Is this your card?" Audience Member: "Why yes! Thank God you picked my card! I was worried I was going to have to live in a world where my card wasn't picked!" Maybe I'm not comprehending his point. Anyway, The Scrambler wants to do a trick where things don't ever go back to normal! He's a monster! Imagine picking the Three of Clubs and nobody ever showing you the Three of Clubs ever again! Ugh, I'm feeling faint. To save Polly's Dad from definite prison time (or possibly, if Superman shows up, an eternity in the Phantom Zone. As if Superman can be bothered with Earth's judicial system! Pshaw!), Jan has challenged the League of Annoyance to a duel at the zoo. I guess if she wants to stress out all of the animals there with a big battle, who am I to judge? I mean other than being the real life version of Hal Jordan's Spectre, of course! At the zoo, Jayna recruits a bunch of Australian animals to help fight which goes as spectacularly as you can imagine it would. And what I mean by that is that a koala is blown to bits. But I guess that's worth it in the grand scheme of getting Polly Math's father to stop working with the League of Annoyance. It's like that philosophical conundrum about an ant that sacrifices its life for even the tiniest amount to better the world. It's just an ant! It practically owes it to the universe to die for nearly nothing! What does this koala bear expect? It should get to live in luxurious confinement at the zoo and not die for a trivial reason? Stupid koala bear. Go fuck yourself, you selfish bastard. The Wonder Twins defeat two out of three of the League of Annoyance members at the expense of just one koala's life and the bruised jaw of an innocent kangaroo. The third member, some woman with a Kryptonian cell phone whose name maybe I should remember, gets away to go regroup. Sylvia is a racist that joined the League because she didn't like the demographics of her small town changing. She's startled by Filo entering the League's headquarters to pack up his stuff and winds up zapping him like she zapped the koala. Okay, I guess the koala isn't as dead as I first thought. I should have realize a Kryptonian phone is probably sending everything to the Phantom Zone. So once again, I, the Grandmaster Comic Book Reader, was correct when I speculated that the worst that could happen to Filo was prison or the Phantom Zone! I'm the smarterest! Sylvia is caught on camera zapping Filo Math and then messes up in an interview when she kind of admits to having maybe zapped more than one black person with her phone off-camera? It's a real public relations nightmare!

But Lex can fix it! His greatest strength is turning public relations nightmares into public relations wet dreams!

Lex News turns Cell Phone Sylvia into a national hero. Because anything is excusable if you just say how scared you were! I mean, as long as you're white! It's scary being white! Sometimes you have to kill people with your legal gun while standing your own ground after confronting somebody for the most inconsequential reasons! It's just the way the world works! At least in America! Happy 4th of July! Just in case some readers weren't smart enough to get that everybody blasted by Sylvia's phone went to the Phantom Zone, Mark Russell supplies us with an image of Filo and the koala and a bunch of Sylvia's other victims (hmm, all black! But that's probably just a coincidence!) in the Phantom Zone. Polly, at the end of her rope with doing the right thing in an unjust world, decides to contact The Scrambler. I can't wait for her big magic trick to fix the world! The Scrambler's big trick to fix the world is to threaten to scramble everybody's identity. Everybody's minds will switch around so that they're now in different bodies. That means the powerful might wind up being the poorest people in the worst poverty. And the only way he won't do it is if the powerful fix the world in thirty days. Seems like a good plan! Except I'm curious to see how they fix it. Most people's ideas of fixing the world rely on the current world still existing somehow. So the fix is handicapped from the beginning by needing to be built on the ruins of the old system. To truly make a new system that works, the old system must be completely razed to the ground. But nobody has the stomach for that. So we make exceptions and compromises, building the new structure on top of a rotting foundation. It's why DC's Universe fixes always fail. They rely on making things new and better but need to remain rooted in the past. Crisis on Infinite Earths was built on a world that still contained members of Infinity Inc. who suddenly didn't fit in the world anymore. So DC then had to do Zero Hour which told new origin stories but still refused to throw out everything that came before to simply start again. Even The New 52, which people hated because they felt it did exactly what I suggested (razing the shit to the ground), didn't work because, I believe, it didn't go far enough! It still accepted Superman had died. It still accepted all of Green Lantern's past. It still contained a Batgirl who was shot by Joker and became Oracle. It was still the DC Universe but with arbitrary and subtle changes that made no real difference except the jettisoning of a ton of history. So it didn't work for anybody! Um, anyway, my initial point was that real life political structures and social dynamics and economic systems can never really be restructured in a meaningful way because they have to kowtow to older ways of thinking and doing things. The comic book stuff was just easier to write about! I'm sure Mark Russell will figure it out! Or he'll just have The Scrambler and Polly Math arrested and nothing will work out like it should and it will just be the punctuation on the idea that everything fucking sucks. Yay! Wonder Twins #5 Rating: A+. Come on! Everything Mark Russell writes gets an A+! It shows how smart I am!

[scifigeneration]

Marvel meets Mesopotamia: how modern comics preserve ancient myths

by Louise Pryke

Ancient Mesopotamia, the region roughly encompassing modern-day Iraq, Kuwait and parts of Syria, Iran and Turkey, gave us what we could consider some of the earliest known literary “superheroes”.

One was the hero Lugalbanda, whose kindness to animals resulted in the gift of super speed, perhaps making him the literary great-grandparent of the comic hero The Flash.

But unlike the classical heroes (Theseus, Herakles, and Egyptian deities such as Horus), which have continued to be important cultural symbols in modern pop culture, Mesopotamian deities have largely fallen into obscurity.

An exception to this is the representation of Mesopotamian culture in science fiction, fantasy, and especially comics. Marvel and DC comics have added Mesopotamian deities, such as Inanna, goddess of love, Netherworld deities Nergal and Ereshkigal, and Gilgamesh, the heroic king of the city of Uruk.

Gilgamesh the Avenger

The Marvel comic book hero of Gilgamesh was created by Jack Kirby, although the character has been employed by numerous authors, notably Roy Thomas. Gilgamesh the superhero is a member of the Avengers, Marvel comics’ fictional team of superheroes now the subject of a major movie franchise, including Captain America, Thor, and the Hulk. His character has a close connection with Captain America, who assists Gilgamesh in numerous battles.

Gilgamesh and Captain America are both characters who stand apart from their own time and culture. For Captain America, this is the United States during the 1940s, and for Gilgamesh, ancient Mesopotamia. A core aspect of their personal narratives is their struggle to navigate the modern world while still engaging with traditions from the past.

In the 1992 comic Captain America Annual #11, Cap is transported to ancient Mesopotamia. Marvel Database

Gilgamesh’s first appearance as an Avenger was in 1989 in the comic series Avengers 1, issue #300, Inferno Squared. In the comic, Gilgamesh is known, rather aptly, as the “Forgotten One”. The “forgetting” of Gilgamesh the hero is also referenced in his first appearance in Marvel comics in 1976, where the character Sprite remarks that the hero “lives like an ancient myth, no longer remembered”.

In Avengers #304, …Yearning to Breathe Free!, Gilgamesh travels to Ellis Island with Captain America and Thor. The setting of Ellis Island allows for the heroes’ thoughtful consideration of their shared past as immigrants. Like Gilgamesh, Thor is also from foreign lands, in this case the Norse kingdom of Asgard.

In the 1992 comic Captain America Annual #11, the battle against the villainous Kang sends Captain America time-travelling back to Uruk in 2700 BCE. Captain America realises that the his royal companion is Gilgamesh, and accompanies the king on adventures from the legendary Epic of Gilgamesh.

Conan the Barbarian, featuring the goddess Inanna. Marvel Database

In the original legend, Gilgamesh finds the key to eternal youth, a heartbeat plant, and then promptly loses it to a snake. In the comic adaptation, the snake is an angry sea serpent, who Captain America must fight to save Gilgamesh. The Mesopotamian hero’s famous fixation on acquiring immortality is reflected in his Marvel counterpart’s choice to leave Captain America fighting the serpent in order to collect the heartbeat plant. This leads Cap to observe his ancient friend has “a few millennia” of catching up to do on the concept of team-work!

Gilgamesh is not the only hero to feature. Marvel’s 1974 comic, Conan the Barbarian #40, The Fiend from the Forgotten City, features the Mesopotamian goddess of love, Inanna. In the comic, the barbarian hero is assisted by the goddess while fighting against looters in an ancient “forgotten city.” Marvel’s Inanna holds similar powers to her mythical counterpart, including the ability to heal. It is interesting to note the prominence of the theme of “forgetting” in comic books involving Mesopotamian myths, perhaps alluding to the present day obscurity of ancient Mesopotamian culture.

Myth literacy

A possible image of Gilgamesh from 700BC in Iraq. Wikimedia

It’s tempting to think that Captain America’s 1992 journey back to Ancient Mesopotamia was a comment on the political context at the time, particularly the Gulf War. But Roy Thomas, creator of this comic, told me via email his portrayal of Gilgamesh reflected his interest in the legend from his university days, and teaching students ancient myths at a high school.

Thomas’ belief in the benefits of learning myths is well founded. Story-telling has been recognised since ancient times as a powerful tool for imparting wisdom. Myths teach empathy and the ability to consider problems from different perspectives.

The combination of social and analytical skills developed through engaging with mythology can provide the foundation for a life-long love of learning. A recent study has shown that packaging stories in comics makes them more memorable, a finding with particular significance for preserving Mesopotamia’s cultural heritage.

The myth literacy of science fiction and fantasy audiences allows for the representation in these works of more obscure ancient figures. Marvel comics see virtually the entire pantheons of Greece, Rome, and Asgard represented. But beyond these more familiar ancient worlds, Marvel has also featured deities of the Mayan, Hawaiian, Celtic religions, and Australian Aboriginal divinities, and many others.

The use of Mesopotamian myth in comic books shows the continued capacity of ancient legends to find new audiences and modern relevance. In the comic multiverse, an appreciation of storytelling bridges a cultural gap of 4,000 years, making old stories new again, and hopefully preserving them for the future.

About The Author:

Louise Pryke is a Lecturer in Languages and Literature of Ancient Israel at Macquarie University

This article was originally published on The Conversation,  a Sci Fi Generation content partner.

[penurnbra]

here’s the fuckton of articles from the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts that I obsessively gathered + organized during last night’s sleep deprived, caffeine driven, depressive episode

Vol. 1

No. 1 (1988)

ARTICLES

JOURNAL OF THE FANTASTIC IN THE ARTS (JFA): Purpose

EDITORIAL COMMENTS

Was Zilla Right?: Fantasy and Truth

Children of a Darker God: A Taxonomy of Deep Horror Fiction and Film and Their Mass Popularity

The Artifact as Icon in Science Fiction

The Birth of a Fantastic World: C. S. Lewis's "The Magician's Nephew"

Fantasy's Reconstruction of Narrative Conventions

Postmodern Narrative and the Limits of Fantasy

No. 2 (1988)

ARTICLES

CRITICS IN THE GULAG

Decadence and Anguish: Edgar Allan Poe's Influence On Réjean Ducharme

Mervyn Peake: The Relativity of Perception

Nature's Nightmare: The Inner World Of Hauptmann's "Flagman Thiel"

"Tel art plus divin que humain": The Reality of Fantasy In Ronsard's Poetic Practice

Transvestites and Transformations, Or Take It Off and Get Real: Queneau's "Zazie dans le métro"

Structural and Psychological Aspects Of the Spider Woman Symbol In "Kiss of the Spider Woman"

REVIEWS

Snobbery, Seasoned with Bile, Clute Is (Strokes: Essays and Reviews 1966-1986, John Clute, Thomas M. Disch)

No. 3 (1988)

ARTICLES

Introduction: Beagle and Ellison: A Special Issue

The Wind Took Your Answer Away

The Fractured Whole: The Fictional World Of Harlan Ellison

The Ellison Personae: Author, Storyteller, Narrator

Symbolic Settings In Science Fiction: H. G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, and Harlan Ellison

Humankind and Reality: Illusion and Self-Deception In Peter S. Beagle's Fiction

Two Forms of Metafantasy

The Alchemy of Love In "A Fine and Private Place"

Fantastic Tropes In "The Folk of the Air"

No. 4 (1988)

ARTICLES

Overture: What Was Postmodernism?

The Decentered Absolute: Significance in the Postmodern Fantastic

Putting a Red Nose on the Text: Play and Performance In the Postmodern Fantastic

Theater for the Fin-du-Millennium: Playing (at) the End

De/Reconstructing the "I": PostFANTASTICmodernist Poetry

There's No Place Like Home: Simulating Postmodern America in "The Wizard of Oz" and "Blue Velvet"

Fictional Cultures in Postmodern Art

Deconstructing Deconstruction: Chimeras of Form and Content in Samuel R. Delany

Millhauser, Süskind, and the Postmodern Promise

Coda: Criticism in the Age of Borges

Vol. 2

No. 1 (1989)

ARTICLES

Phoenix Rising: Like Dracula from the Grave

The Vampire

Rising Like Old Corpses: Stephen King and the Horrors of Time-Past

Tanith Lee's Werewolves Within: Reversals of Gothic Traditions

Loving Death: The Meaning of Male Sexual Impotence in Vampire Literature

From Pathos To Tragedy: The Two Versions of The Fly

An Appreciation: Virgil Finlay

Courteous, Humble and Helpful: Sam as Squire in Lord of the Rings

Genetic Experimentation: Mad Scientists and The Beast

Native Sons: Regionalism in the Work of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Stephen King

The Femivore: An Unnamed Archetype

No. 2 (1989)

ARTICLES

From Trickery to Discovery: Old, New, and Nonexistent Trajectories of Science Fiction Film

The JFA Forum on SF Film

The Cybernetic (City) State: Terminal Space Becomes Phenomenal

Murray Tinkleman: An Appreciation

Video, Science Fiction, and the Cinema of Surveillance

Science-Fiction and Fantasy Film Criticism: The Case of Lucas and Spielberg

But Not the Blackness of Space: "The Brother From Another Planet" as Icon from the Underground

REVIEWS

'Weirdies' Point the Way (Teenagers and Teenpics: The Juvenilization of American Movies in the 1950s, Thomas Doherty)

Nirvana for Sleaze-lovers (Revenge of the Creature Features Movie Guide, revised by John Stanley)

Vol. 4

No. 2 (1992)

ARTICLES

"Poof! Now You See Me, Now You Don't"

Interpolation and Invisibility: From Herodotus to Cervantes's Don Quixote

Rings, Belts, and a Bird's Nest: Invisibility in German Literature

"Spells of Darkness": Invisibility in The White Witch of Rosehall

"Seeing" Invisibility: Or Invisibility as Metaphor in Thomas Berger's Being Invisible

Vol. 5

No. 1 (1992)

ARTICLES

The Craving for Meaning: Explicit Allegory in the Non-Implicit Age

Recent Trends in the Contemporary American Fairy Tale

The New Age Mage: Merlin as Contemporary Occult Icon

Dualism and Mirror Imagery in Anglo-Saxon Riddles

Vol. 6

No. 1 (1993; Special Issue: Richard Adams' "Watership Down")

ARTICLES

Introduction

The Significance of Myth in "Watership Down"

Shaping Self Through Spontaneous Oral Narration in Richard Adams' "Watership Down"

Shamanistic Mythmaking: From Civilization to Wilderness in "Watership Down"

Saturnalia and Sanctuary: The Role of the Tale in "Watership Down"

"Watership Down": A Genre Study

The Efrafan Hunt for Immortality in Richard Adam's "Watership Down"

No. 4 (1995)

ARTICLES

The Artisan in Modern Fantasy

The Symbolic versus the Fantastic: The Example of an Hungarian Painter

1920's Yellow Peril Science Fiction: Political Appropriations of the Asian Racial "Alien"

Religious Satire in Rushdie's "Satanic Verses"

Magic or Make-believe? Acquiring The COnventions of Witches and Witchcraft

REVIEWS

Encyclopedia Worth Waiting For (The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, John Clute, Peter Nicholls)

Fresh Approach to Nineteenth Century Science Fiction (Science Fiction Before 1900: Imagination Discovers Technology, Paul K. Alkon)

The Play of the Critic (Staging the Impossible: The Fantastic Mode in Modern Drama, Patrick D. Murphy)

Vol. 10

No. 1 (1998)

ARTICLES

Editor's Introduction

Stasis and Chaos: Some Dynamics of Popular Genres

Lois McMaster Bujold: Feminism and "The Gernsback Continuum" In Recent Woman's SF

"Who Am I, Really?" Myths of Maturation in Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Series

Asimov's Crusade Against Bigotry: The Persistence of Prejudice as a Fractal Motif in the Robot/Empire/Foundation Metaseries

When Coyote Leaves the Res: Incarnations of the Trickster from Wile E. to Le Guin

Kurt Vonnegut's Fantastic Faces

Celtic Myth and English-Language Fantasy Literature: Possible New Directions

No. 2 (1999; A Century of Draculas)  

ARTICLES

Introduction

A Century of Draculas

High Duty and Savage Delight: The Ambiguous Nature of Violence in "Dracula"

Bram Stoker and the London Stage

"If I had to write with a pen": Readership and Bram Stoker's Diary Narrative

Closure and Power in "Salem's Lot"

The Image of the Vampire in the Struggle for Societal Power: Dan Simmons' "Children of the Night"

Not All Fangs Are Phallic: Female Film Vampires

Madame Dracula: The Life of Emily Gerard

Back to the Basics: Re-Examining Stoker's Sources for "Dracula"

No. 4 (2000)

ARTICLES

Muggling On

Grail, Groundhog, Godgame: Or, Doing Fantasy

Something Hungry This Way Comes: Terrestrial and Ex-Terrestrial Feline Feeding Patterns and Behavior

Technology, Technophobia and Gynophobia in Gonzalo Torrente Ballesteas "Quizá nos lleve el viento al infinito"

Ready or Not, Here We Come: Metaphors of the Martian Megatext from Wells to Robinson

Bringing Chaos to Order. Vonnegut Criticism at Century's End

Resources for the Study of American Fantasy Literature Through 1998

REVIEWS

Strange Constellations: A History of Australian Science Fiction, Russell Blackford, Russell Van Ikin, Sean McMullen

Edgar Allan Poe: Comprehensive Research and Study Guide, Harold Bloom

Warlocks and Warpdrive: Contemporary Fantasy Entertainments with Interactive and Virtual Environments, Kurt Lancaster

Nursery Realms: Children in the Worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, Gary Westfahl, George Slusser

Science Fiction Writers: Critical Studies of the Major Authors from the Early Nineteenth Century to the Present Day, Richard Bleiler

Vol. 11

No. 4 (2001)

ARTICLES

When the Hungarian Literary Theorist, Györgyi Lukács Met The American Science Fiction Writer, Wayne Mark Chapman

Cultural Negotiation in Science Fiction Literature and Film

Episteme-ology of Science Fiction

Orchids in A Cage: Political Myths and Social Reality in East German Science Fiction (1949-1989)

Virtual Poltergeists and Memory: The Question of Ahistorcism in William Gibson's Neuromoncer(1984)

The Search for a Quantum Ethics: Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen" and Other Recent British Science Plays

Leakings: Reappropriating Science Fiction--The Case of Kurt Vonnegut

REVIEWS

Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot, and Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Gillian Beer

Space and Beyond: The Frontier Theme in Science Fiction, Gary Westfahl

The Rise of Supernatural Fiction: 1762-1800. Cambridge Studies in Romanticism, E.J. Clery

Thrillers. "Genres in American Cinema" series, Martin Rubin

Othermindedness: The Emergence of Network Culture, Michael Joyce

A Century of Welsh Myth in Children's Literature, Donna White

That Other World. (The Princess Grace Irish Library), Bruce Stewart

Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Exhaustive Scholar's and Collector's Descriptive Bibliography of American Periodical, Hardcover, Paperback, and Reprint Editions, Robert B. Zeuschner, Philip José Farmer; The Burroughs Cyclopaedia: Characters, Places, Fauna, Flora, Technologies, Languages, Ideas and Terminologies Found in the Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Clark A. Brady

Italian Horror Films of the 1960s: A Critical Catalog of 62 Chillers, Lawrence McCallum

Vol. 14

No. 4 (2004)

ARTICLES

On Editing a Journal

"Hiro" of the Platonic: Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash"

Suicide and the Absurd: The Influence of Jean-Paul Sartre's and Albert Camus's Existentiafism on Stephen R. Donaldson's "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever"

The Monomyth in Daniel Keyes's "Flowers for Algernon": Keyes, Campbell and Plato

Writing the Possessed Child in British Culture: James Herbert's "Shrine"

Disney World: A Plastic Monument to Death: From Rabelais to Disney

REVIEWS

Uncharted Territory: An Unofficial and Unauthorized Guide to Farscape, Scott Andrews

The Artist as Monster: The Cinema of David Cronenberg, William Beard; The Modern Fantastic: The Films of David Cronenberg, Michael Grant

Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years, Bruce Sterling

Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and the Cold War: American Science Fiction and the Roots of Postmodernism, 1946-1964, M. Keith Booker

Harlan Ellison: The Edge of Forever, Gary K. Wolfe, Ellen Weil

One Ring to Bind them All: Tolkien's Mythology, Anne C. Petty; Tolkien's Ordinary Virtues: Exploring the Spitirtual Virtues of Lord of the Rings, Mark Eddy Smith; Frodo's Quest: Living the Myth in The Lord of the Rings, Robert Ellwood

Chaos Theory, Asimov's Foundations and Robots, and Herbert's Dune: The Fractal Aesthetic of Epic Science Fiction, Donald E. Palumbo

The Classic Era of American Pulp Magazines, Peter Haining

Vol. 25

No. 1 (2014)

ARTICLES

Introduction: Reinhabiting Fantasy

Reading Tolkien in Chinese

Convention Un-done: Un Lun Dun's Unchosen Heroine and Narrative (Re)Vision

"But what does it all mean?" Religious Reality as a Political Call in the Chronicles of Narnia

Telepathy and Cosmic Horror in Olaf Stapledon's "The Flames"

"I was a Ghetto Nerd Supreme": Science Fiction, Fantasy and Latina/o Futurity in Junot Díaz's "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao"

REVIEWS

St. Lovecraft (The Classic Horror Stories, Roger Luckhurst, H. P. Lovecraft; Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy, Graham Harman; Slime Dynamics: Generation, Mutation, and the Creep of Life, Ben Woodard; New Critical Essays on H.P. Lovecraft, David Simmons; H. P. Lovecraft's Dark Arcadia: The Satire, Symbology and Contradiction, Gavin Callaghan)

The Hobbit and Philosophy: For When You've Lost Your Dwarves, Your Wizard, And Your Way, Gregory Basham, Eric Bronson

Collision of Realities. Establishing Research on the Fantastic in Europe, Lars Schmeink, Astrid Böger (X)(X)

Hermione Granger Saves the World: Essays on the Feminist Heroine of Hogwarts, Christopher E. Bell

Horror Noir: Where Cinema's Dark Sisters Meet, Paul Meehan

The Mummy's Curse: The True History of a Dark Fantasy, Roger Luckhurst

Scottish Women's Gothic and Fantastic Writing: Fiction since 1978, Monica Germaná

The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social History of a Genre, Jack Zipes

Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal, Jeffrey J. Kripal

Philip K. Dick and Philosophy: Do Androids Have Kindred Spirits?, D. E. Wittkower

Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal, Sherryl Vint

Anime's Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan, Marc Steinberg

The Ghost Story 1840-1920: A Cultural History, Andrew Smith

Fairy Tales Framed: Early Forewords, Afterwords, and Critical Words, Ruth B. Bottigheimer

The Time Ship: A Chrononautical Journey, Enrique Gaspar, Yolanda Molina-Gavilán, Andrea L. Bell

Future Wars: The Anticipations and the Fears, David Seed

The Horror Sensorium: Media and the Senses, Angela Ndalianis

Inception and Philosophy: Ideas to Die For, Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

Antarctica in Fiction: Imaginative Narratives of the Far South, Elizabeth Leane

Green Suns and Faërie: Essays on Tolkien, Verlyn Flieger

No. 2 & 3 (2014)

ARTICLES

Elegy

Introduction: AfterLives: What's Next for Humanity

"Only We Have Perished": Karel Čapek's R.U.R. and the Catastrophe of Humankind

"From Zoo. to Bot.": (De)Composition in Jim Crace's "Being Dead"

Terminal Films

Living as a Zombie in Media is the Only Way to Survive

Zombie Republic: Property and the Propertyless Multitude in Romero's Dead Films and Kirkman's "The Walking Dead"

Thinking Blind

The Loveliness of Decay: Rotting Flesh, Literary Matter, and Dead Media

Post-Vampire: The Politics of Drinking Humans and Animals in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twilight", and "True Blood"

REVIEWS

Cyberpunk Women, Feminism and Science Fiction: A Critical Study, Carlen Lavigne

Under the Shadow: The Atomic Bomb and Cold War Narratives, David Seed

Undead in the West: Vampires, Zombies, Mummies, and Ghosts on the Cinematic Frontier, Cynthia J. Miller, A. Bowdoin Van Riper

Spanish Horror Film, Antonio Lázaro-Reboll

John Brunner, Jad Smith

The Irish Fairy Tale: A Narrative Tradition from the Middle Ages to Yeats and Stephens, Vito Carrassi

Fanged Fan Fiction: Variations on Twilight, True Blood, and The Vampire Diaries, Maria Lindgren Leavenworth, Malin Isaksson

Welsh Gothic, Jane Aaron

Puppet. An Essay on Uncanny Life, Kenneth Gross

The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Occult, Tatiana Kontou, Sarah Willburn

Mechademia 7: Lines of Sight, Frenchy Lunning

Approaching The Hunger Games Trilogy: A Literary and Cultural Analysis, Tom Henthorne; Of Bread, Blood, and The Hunger Games: Critical Essays on the Suzanne Collins Trilogy, Mary F. Pharr, Leisa A. Clark

Dawn of an Evil Millennium: Horror/Kultur im neuen Jahrtausend, Jörg van Bebber

Solar Flares: Science Fiction in the 1970s, Andrew M. Butler

Becoming Ray Bradbury, Jonathan R. Eller

Beyond His Dark Materials: Innocence and Experience in the Fiction of Philip Pullman, Susan Redington Bobby

Postapocalyptic Fiction and the Social Contract: "We'll Not Go Home Again.", Claire P. Curtis

English Catholics and the Supernatural, 1553-1829, Francis Young

The Late Victorian Gothic: Mental Science, the Uncanny, and Scenes of Writing, Hilary Grimes

Bewitched Again: Supernaturally Powerful Women on Television, 1996-2011, Julie D. O'Reilly

A Hobbit Journey: Discovering the Enchantment of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth, Matthew Dickerson

Fear and Learning: Essays on the Pedagogy of Horror, Aalya Ahmad, Sean Moreland

Maps of Utopia: H. G. Wells, Modernity, and the End of Culture, Simon J. James

Dancing the Tao: Le Guin and Moral Development, Sandra J. Lindow

The Subversive Harry Potter: Adolescent Rebellion and Containment in the J.K. Rowling Novels, Vandana Saxena

As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality, Michael Saler

Enchanting: Beyond Disenchantment, Stephen David Ross

Ces français qui ont écrit demain. Utopie, anticipation et science-fiction au XXe siècle [Those Frenchmen Who Wrote Tomorrow: Utopia, Anticipation and Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century], Natacha Vas-Deyres

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, James Rose; The Descent, James Marriott

Teaching with Harry Potter, Valerie Estelle Frankel

William Gibson, Gary Westfahl

The Wizard of Oz as American Myth: A Critical Study of Six Versions of the Story, 1900-2007, Alissa Burger

Saw, Benjamin Poole

Scotland as Science Fiction, Caroline McCracken-Flesher

Gothic Music: The Sounds of the Uncanny, Isabella van Elferen

New Directions in the European Fantastic, Sabine Coelsch-Foisner, Sarah Herbe

Fantasy, Art and Life: Essays on George MacDonald, Robert Louis Stevenson and Other Fantasy Writers, William Gray

Extraterrestrials and the American Zeitgeist: Alien Contact Tales Since the 1950s, Aaron John Gulyas

To See the Saw Movies: Essays on Torture Porn and Post-9/11 Horror,  James Aston, John Walliss

Science Fiction, Mark Bould

[architectnews]

University of Sydney presents 10 architectural projects

A digital platform designed to support victims of abuse and an app that aims to help older people socialise online more easily are included in Dezeen's latest school show from students at the University of Sydney.

Also featured is a project that imagines an architectural response to the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami, and a library designed to reference Despina, a city from Italo Calvino's book Invisible Cities.

University of Sydney

School: University of Sydney, School of Architecture, Design and Planning Courses:  Master of Architecture, Bachelor of Design in Architecture, Bachelor of Architecture and Environments, Master of Interaction Design and Electronic Arts, Master of Design, Bachelor of Design Computing, Master of Urban Design, Master of Urbanism, Master of Urban and Regional Planning Tutors: Sebastian Tsang, Simon Weir, Mano Ponnambalam, Christian Williams, Thomas Stromberg, Matthew Mindrup, Abhiruchi Chhikara, Luke Hespanhol, Emily Hatton, and Phillip Gough

School statement:

"Ranked first in Australia for Architecture/Built Environment in the QS World University Rankings 2021, the Sydney School of Architecture, Design, and Planning sits proudly on Gadigal land.

"For a School dedicated to the study of place, space and their relationships with people, it is fitting that the traditions of knowledge sharing and community feature intrinsically in the life of the School.

"The School is committed to a sustainable future for Sydney and the world, emphasising and celebrating creativity in our ideas, actions, and interactions.

"With foundational expertise across the humanities, sciences, and social sciences, students are nurtured to be experimental, imaginative, critical, and engaged.

"The School's distinctly Australian identity is informed by global perspectives and a growing awareness of Indigenous knowledge systems, underpinned by a commitment to social justice and equity.

"Odyssey, the School's 2021 Graduate Show, celebrates the exceptional work of our graduating students in architecture, design, and urban planning.

"Catch the exhibition at home or in person with our website, followed by the physical exhibition in Sydney from 31 January 2022."

Finding Home, with the Tōkohu Manor by Serena Bomze and Alex Zeng

"This project investigates the rebuilding of identities and moments of the people affected by the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami.

"The culminating architectural response imagines an animated and dynamic dwelling that traverses the coasts of the Japanese landscape.

"This assists the displaced in order to physically, spatially, culturally, and emotionally rebuild and rekindle their lost 'webs' of spatial memories and qualities that uniquely define their home.

"The project culminates in the physical form of a highly unique dwelling – its architecture takes on specific elements from each town it passes through, shrinking and growing along the journey.

"It is tailored to its people, both spatially temporal and permanent, and is inspired by Japanese cultural customs and living. The dwelling seeks to give hope, and ultimately, towards refinding home."

Student: Serena Bomze and Alex Zeng Course: Master of Architecture Tutor: Sebastian Tsang Email: sbomze97[at]gmail.com and alex.zeng.arch[at]gmail.com

The Flux by Anirudha Agara

"The Flux is a 2050 proposal for the Theatre-Museum of Atmospheric Art as an extension of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. The museum oscillates between reality and illusion, leaving the audience to distinguish between fact and fiction.

"The project uses new design techniques and methodologies as vehicles for the discovery of new ways of integrating theory and technology.

"It tries to address fundamental questions of how we perceive art and objects. Inspirations are drawn from works of Archigram, Superstudio and tied with the theory of Object-Oriented Ontology.

"As a process, machine learning (GANs) are deployed to generate unique textures, tectonics, and imagery; based on a dataset containing hundreds of aboriginal artworks cross-pollinated with modern forms of art.

"While the project extensively uses pragmatic technology and approaches, it still eludes conventions and provokes speculative desires."

Student: Anirudha Agara Course: Master of Architecture Tutor: Simon Weir and Mano Ponnambalam Email: aniruddh.agara[at]gmail.com

The Spectral Theatre by Chris Hamblin

"The Spectral Theatre at the Coal Loader, Sydney, is an adaptable, semi-outdoor space, emphasising innovative staging in contemporary performance.

"By demolishing the existing dilapidated wharf and restoring that which can be salvaged, the venue will draw attention to the site's past and embedded history from both pre and post-contact, while also providing a space for renewed, restored, and reclaimed ideas.

"The theatre takes its name from a hypothesis that within the layers of our history lie the ghosts of our past.

"By manipulating the proscenium and emphasising technology and staging techniques, the Spectral Theatre aims to pull apart those layers of history. It intends to find stories not tethered by traditional techniques or well-trodden narratives.

"An expanded space where ghosts of the past are observed but ultimately move on, allowing room for new inspiration and tales to be told."

Student: Chris Hamblin Course: Bachelor of Design in Architecture Tutor: Christian Williams Email: chrisjhamblin[at]gmail.com

Monument Valley – A Dystopian Escape by Delos He

"The clock has been rewound 95 years at St James Station. Deep under the Archibald Fountain of Sydney's Hyde Park lies a secretive war-time treasure – a converging twin-tunnel running over 200 metres that once served as air-raid shelters and planned city railway additions that never came to fruition.

"The concept deals with the question of permanence, by a sequence of architectural moments conceived as non-enduring relics scattered underneath the ever-changing city, orchestrating a space as theatrical as a behind-the-curtain performance on the urban stage.

"The design reawakens the sleeping ruins with radical and theatricalised architectural interventions, centred on the thematic brief of an Oral History Library. Blurred-boundary program spaces are defined by industrious structures, raw finishes and intersecting planes.

"Alternating threshold moments are inserted to enact story-telling journeys between observers and performers, listeners and presenters, artefacts and minds, monadic and plural, lights and shadows.

"These interactive gestures open up the tunnel beyond its innate exclusivity, rather, reconciling its position with the public realm."

Student: Delos He Course: Bachelor of Architecture and Environments Tutor: Mano Ponnambalam Email: dihe8423[at]uni.sydney.edu.au

Sydney Oral History Library by Russell Li

"Sydney Oral History Library's design is inspired by the city Despina from Italo Calvino's book, Invisible Cities.

"It is a city between the ocean and desert, with Calvino describing the city as being perceived as a ship when approaching from the desert, and a camel when approaching from the sea.

"This project aims to create a bridge between the land and water as a metaphor of oral history – the bridge between past and present. The site is Sydney's Cockatoo Island, a slipway between land and water.

"The building consists of a timber frame structure and a series of opening precast concrete boxes sitting within the frame.

"The boxes transit from front to the rear, above to below as visitors get closer to the water, engaging the visitors with a series of rotated vessels with a haptic emphasis of light."

Student: Russell Li Course: Bachelor of Architecture and Environments Tutor: Matthew Mindrup Email: russ1946722282[at]gmail.com

MyConnect: Making Australian Healthcare More Accessible by Hugo Dowd, Erin Topfer and Zihe (Zoe) Lu

"We were tasked to create a digital product that enabled Australian citizens to access day-to-day healthcare during a pandemic/lockdown. We were recommended to consider systems that could be adapted and used even after pandemic life.

"MyHealth is an existing $2 billion investment in Telehealth. MyHealth Records is an online summary of a person's key health information. It's accessible by any Australian medical practitioner and allied health services.

"We propose developing the MyConnect app to allow users to upload remote data to their MyHealth Record. Their doctor can access this data through their MyHealth portal.

"The app has many benefits. These include establishing reliable communication between doctors and patients, improving diagnostics and patient monitoring, facilitating better healthcare for remote patients, generating usable patient data to fill MyHealth Records, and helping patients to take control of their health."

Student: Hugo Dowd, Erin Topfer and Zihe (Zoe) Lu Course: Master of Interaction Design and Electronic Arts Tutor: Abhiruchi Chhikara Email: hugo.dowd10[at]gmail.com, topfererin[at]gmail.com and zihelu[at]gmail.com

Towards Country-Centred Interaction Design: A Case Study on Audio Augmented Reality on Awabakal Country by Siena White

"Awareness about the destructive effects of colonisation on sustainable pre-colonial ways of living that thrived for millennia has gained increasing momentum in recent years.

"That has led to growing movements in the industry and academia towards understanding Indigenous ways of relating to the country and raises questions about culturally and environmentally appropriate approaches to design.

"This research project, motivated by the challenge of designing an audio augmented reality storytelling application for and with the Awabakal people of New South Wales, Australia, proposes an innovative approach which identifies and consolidates design methods, principles and precepts, mapped to a sustainable design process timeline."

Student: Siena White Course: Master of Interaction Design and Electronic Arts Tutor: Luke Hespanhol Email: sienawhite[at]gmail.com

Confidante by Claire Say, Cyrilla Lowas, Monica Tsui, and Wiryawan Onggo

"Domestic and family violence is one of the most under-reported crimes around the world for reasons such as fear of leaving and psychological abuse.

"The issue has become even more complex and severe as the impact of Covid-19 and social isolation exacerbates acts of violence when victims are restricted to their homes.

"To help victims of domestic violence who have left an abusive relationship, we have created a digital platform designed to support their recovery journey in regaining their independence emotionally, socially, and financially.

"Confidante is a one-stop-shop that provides victim-survivors with a safe online community as well as resources for professional services, job opportunities, and accommodation.

"Our current prototype is the result of constant iteration and refinement. We have tested our concept, security measures and usability with victim-survivors and experts in the DV sector who have praised Confidante for its viability time and time again."

Student: Claire Say, Cyrilla Lowas, Monica Tsui and Wiryawan Onggo Course: Bachelor of Design Computing Tutor: Emily Hatton Email: clairesay13[at]gmail.com, cyrilla.lws[at]gmail.com, monicatsui1[at]gmail.com and wiryawaneo[at]gmail.com

Social Bunch by Margaux Thwaites, Bianca Laycock, Katia Moors and Gabrielle Hong

"While younger generations may find it easy to adapt to the world of social isolation, some older people may find online socialisation more difficult.

"Due to the pandemic, many social and community groups that are important to their wellbeing have been interrupted. How can we move these activities online in a non-intimidating way for people who aren't as accustomed to interacting online?

"Social Bunch alleviates the complexity of traditional social media by creating a space for groups to interact on their own terms, by combining tricky apps and sites like group message boards, video calling, and group scheduling, into one easy-to-access platform.

"We have considered the needs and wants of older adults, building an accessible and approachable app that provides a space for group activities.

"This is all without bombarding the user with options and fancy features, drawing inspiration from familiar technologies to ease the learning curve."

Student: Margaux Thwaites, Bianca Laycock, Katia Moors and Gabrielle Hong Course: Bachelor of Design Computing Tutor: Phillip Gough Email: thwaitesmargaux[at]gmail.com, kmoors47[at]gmail.com, biancalaycock017[at]gmail.com and gabrielle.hong2[at]gmail.com

Behind the Masks by Greta He

"Theatre is a projection of the stories of life. Audiences and performers gather to experience the life stories of characters. What if the play they witness is actually about the story of their own lives?

"Engaging with self-referentiality, this project is an apparatus that dissolves the illusionary boundaries between real-world and theatre and between audiences and characters.

"Thalia and Melpomene, the masks of theatre, draw the connection between the theatre and the real-life – the theatre and life are both never-ending oscillations between comedy and tragedy, and the project intends to articulate the nothingness behind the unending masks.

"The project concretise the intangible Absurdity in life, enabling the audiences to explore the multilayered logic in architecture. It intends to break the repetition of everydayness, questioning the meaning of life.

"The project is designed for the absurd theatre – Waiting for Godot, informed by overlayed stories on the thread of existentialism, that is, The Crystal World, The Myths of Sisyphus and Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog."

Student: Greta He Course: Bachelor of Design in Architecture Tutor: Thomas Stromberg Email: jihe0798[at]uni.sydney.edu.au

Partnership content

This school show is a partnership between Dezeen and the University of Sdyney. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

The post University of Sydney presents 10 architectural projects appeared first on Dezeen.

[deniscollins]

As Climate Disasters Pile Up, a Radical Proposal Gains Traction

If you were on a Congressional advisory committee, would you recommend that the government invest millions of dollars to study solar climate intervention or solar geoengineering, which entails reflecting more of the sun’s energy back into space — abruptly reducing global temperatures in a way that mimics the effects of ash clouds spewed by volcanic eruptions: (1) Yes, (2) No? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

As the effects of climate change become more devastating, prominent research institutions and government agencies are focusing new money and attention on an idea once dismissed as science fiction: Artificially cooling the planet, in the hopes of buying humanity more time to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

That strategy, called solar climate intervention or solar geoengineering, entails reflecting more of the sun’s energy back into space — abruptly reducing global temperatures in a way that mimics the effects of ash clouds spewed by volcanic eruptions. The idea has been derided as a dangerous and illusory fix, one that would encourage people to keep burning fossil fuels while exposing the planet to unexpected and potentially menacing side effects.

But as global warming continues, producing more destructive hurricanes, wildfires, floods and other disasters, some researchers and policy experts say that concerns about geoengineering should be outweighed by the imperative to better understand it, in case the consequences of climate change become so dire that the world can’t wait for better solutions.

“We’re facing an existential threat, and we need to look at all the options,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at the Columbia Law School and editor of a book on the technology and its legal implications. “I liken geoengineering to chemotherapy for the planet: If all else is failing, you try it.”

On Wednesday, a nonprofit organization called SilverLining announced $3 million in research grants to Cornell University, the University of Washington, Rutgers University, the National Center for Atmospheric Research and others. The work will focus on practical questions, such as how high in the atmosphere to inject sunlight-reflecting aerosols, how to shoot the right size particles into clouds to make them brighter, and the effect on the world’s food supply.

Kelly Wanser, SilverLining’s executive director, said the world is running out of time, and protecting people requires trying to understand the consequences of climate intervention. She said the goal of the work, called the Safe Climate Research Initiative, was “to try to bring the highest-caliber people to look at these questions.”

The research announced Wednesday adds to a growing body of work already underway. In December, Congress gave the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration $4 million to research the technology. NOAA will also start gathering data that will let it detect whether other countries start using geoengineering secretly. And Australia is funding experiments to determine whether and how the technology can save the Great Barrier Reef.

“Decarbonizing is necessary but going to take 20 years or more,” Chris Sacca, co-founder of Lowercarbon Capital, an investment group that is one of SilverLining’s funders, said in a statement. “If we don’t explore climate interventions like sunlight reflection now, we are surrendering countless lives, species, and ecosystems to heat.”

One way to cool the earth is by injecting aerosols into the upper layer of the atmosphere, where those particles reflect sunlight away from the earth. That process works, according to Douglas MacMartin, a researcher in mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell University whose team received funding. “We know with 100 percent certainty that we can cool the planet,” Dr. MacMartin said in an interview.

What’s still unclear, he added, is what happens next.

Temperature, Dr. MacMartin said, is a proxy for a lot of climate effects. “What does it do to the strength of hurricanes? What does it do to agriculture yields? What does it do to the risk of forest fires?”

To help answer those questions, Dr. MacMartin will model the specific weather effects of injecting aerosols into the atmosphere above different parts of the globe, and also at different altitudes. “Depending on where you put it, you will have different effects on the monsoon in Asia,” he said. “You will have different effects on Arctic sea ice.”

Another institution getting money as part of the new initiative is the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., which is funded by the National Science Foundation and has what its researchers call the world’s most sophisticated earth system model.

The grant from SilverLining will pay for the center to run and analyze hundreds of simulations of aerosol injection, testing the effects on weather extremes around the world. One goal of the research is to look for a sweet spot — the amount of artificial cooling that can reduce extreme weather events, without causing broader changes in regional precipitation patterns or similar impacts.

“Is there a way, in our model world at least, to see if we can achieve one without triggering too much of the other?” said Jean-Francois Lamarque, director of the center’s Climate and Global Dynamics laboratory.

NOAA is starting its own research into solar geoengineering. And in August, the agency announced that it would begin measuring aerosol levels in the stratosphere, creating a baseline so the agency can tell if those levels change later.

One of the advantages of having that information, according to Troy Thornberry, a research scientist at NOAA who studies atmospheric composition and chemical processes, is that it would let NOAA determine if aerosol levels increase — a sign that some other country may be intentionally injecting aerosol without announcing it.

Injecting aerosol into the stratosphere isn’t the only way to bounce more of the sun’s rays back into space. The Australian government is funding research into what’s called “marine cloud brightening,” which is meant to make clouds more reflective by spraying saltwater into the air. The goal is to get salt particles to act as nuclei in those clouds, encouraging the formation of many small water droplets, which will increase the brightness of the clouds.

Australian researchers say they hope the technique can save the Great Barrier Reef. Rising water temperatures during so-called marine heat waves are accelerating the die-off of the reef, and making marine clouds more reflective may be able to cool water temperatures enough to slow or stop that decline.

In March, Daniel Harrison, a biological oceanographer at Southern Cross University in Australia, tested the technology by using 100 nozzles to spray water into the air.

“The results were quite encouraging,” Dr. Harrison said in a phone interview. One of the challenges, he said, will be using the technology on a large enough scale to make a difference. He estimated it would probably take 500 to 1,000 stations such as barges or platforms spraying water, or a smaller number of moving vessels, to cover the entire reef.

The University of Washington is also working on marine cloud brightening and was another recipient of a SilverLining grant. Sarah Doherty, program manager for the university’s Marine Cloud Brightening project, said the challenge would be building spray nozzles that consistently produce the right size particles. between 30 and 100 nanometers, and finding ways to prevent them from sticking together.

The project aims to understand how the clouds respond, and also predict the regional and global climate response. Dr. Doherty said her team hoped to field-test the spray system in the next 12 to 18 months.

“The whole idea of the research we’re doing,” she said, “is to make sure you don’t go out and inadvertently change things in a way that’s going to cause damage.”

[katewalton]

Books I read in 2017

In 2017, I finally reached my book goal! I’ve been aiming to read 75 books a year for the past few years but have never quite made it.

I read 79 books in 2017, including 55 by women and 33 by people of colour (I think). I try to read diversely so I hear from a wide range of viewpoints that I may not encounter in my day-to-day life.

Overall favourite fiction book was Han Kang’s Human Acts, and favourite non-fiction book was Janine di Giovanni’s The Morning They Came for Us. The book I enjoyed the least was Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, which I found basically useless and even offensive.

As always, favourites are bolded.

Jodi Picoult - Small Great Things Deborah Levy - Hot Milk Susan Faludi - Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women Nathan Hill - The Nix Louise Doughty - Black Water Audre Lorde - Sister Outsider Laura Jane Grace - Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout Elizabeth Strout - My Name is Lucy Barton Roxane Gay - Difficult Women Benjamin Law - Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East Ottessa Moshfegh - Eileen Colson Whitehead - Underground Railroad Manjula Martin - Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living Jhumpa Lahiri - In Other Words Janine di Giovanni - The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria Stan Grant - The Australian Dream: Blood, History and Becoming (Quarterly Essay #64) Ali Smith - Autumn Oka Rusmini - Earth Dance Han Kang - Human Acts Tim Crothers - The Queen of Katwe: A Story of Life, Chess, and One Extraordinary Girl's Dream of Becoming a Grandmaster Margaret Atwood - The Heart Goes Last Anand Gopal - No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes Andi Zeisler - We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement Matt Taibbi - Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus Alyssa Mastromonaco - Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?: And Other Questions You Should Have Answers to When You Work in the White House Balli Kaur Jaswal - Inheritance Brit Bennett - The Mothers Emily Ruskovich - Idaho Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay - Panty Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash V.E. Schwab - A Darker Shade of Magic Mina Holland - The Edible Atlas: Around the World in Thirty-Nine Cuisines Ann Ang - Bang My Car Prabda Yoon - The Sad Part Was Julia Baird - Victoria: The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire Laura Bates - Everyday Sexism Ayobami Adebayo - Stay With Me Mahita Vas - Rain Tree Naomi Alderman - The Power Ta-Nehisi Coates - Between the World and Me Mohsin Hamid - Exit West Angie Thomas - The Hate U Give V.E. Schwab - A Gathering of Shadows Max Lane - Indonesia and Not, Poems and Otherwise: Anecdotes Scattered Angela Y. Davis - Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement Wesley Lowery - They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement Jill Filipovic - The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness Lijia Zhang - Lotus Lynsey Addario - It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War Granta - 112: Betrayal Irena Cristalis - Independent Women: The Story of Women's Activism in East Timor Chandra Talpade Mohanty - Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity Amanda McClelland - Emergencies Only: An Australian nurse's journey through natural disasters, extreme poverty, civil wars and general chaos Gary Younge - Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives Benjamin Law - Moral Panic 101: Equality, Acceptance and the Safe Schools Scandal (Quarterly Essay #67) Elena Ferrante - My Brilliant Friend Jane Harper - Force of Nature Mark Manson - The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life Michael Vatikiotis - Blood and Silk: Power and Conflict in Modern Southeast Asia Sofie Laguna - The Choke Hwang Jungeun - One Hundred Shadows Rebecca Solnit - The Mother of All Questions Bandi - The Accusation Angela Saini - Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong—and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story Jesmyn Ward - Sing, Unburied, Sing Geordie Williamson (ed.) - The Best Australian Essays 2016 Celeste Ng - Everything I Never Told You Fuchsia Dunlop - Shark's Fin And Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China Balli Kaur Jaswal - Sugarbread Han Kang - The White Book Marwa al-Sabouni - The Battle for Home: The Vision of a Young Architect in Syria Dina Nayeri - Refuge Svetlana Alexievich - Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

[imran16829]

Who is Nxivm Sex Cult Leader: Keith Raniere Bio, Wiki, Age, Married, Net Worth, Twitter, Instagram, Fast Facts You Need to Know

Keith Raniere Bio

Keith Raniere is the founder of NXIVM, a multi-level marketing organization that has been described as a cult. On June 19, 2019, Raniere was convicted of federal crimes including sex trafficking, conspiracy, and conspiracy to commit forced labor, all related to DOS (a "secret sisterhood" within NXIVM). Raniere is scheduled to be sentenced early 2020. He faces a mandatory minimum prison term of 15 years and a possible life sentence. Keith Raniere Age He is 59 years old. Keith Raniere Early life, Wife, Parents and education Keith Allen Raniere was born in 1960 to James Raniere, a New York City advertiser, and his wife Vera, a ballroom dancing instructor.James recalls that Vera 'drank more than she should have', and in adulthood, Keith Raniere privately described his mother as an alcoholic. At age five, the family relocated from Brooklyn to Suffern, New York. When he was around eight years old, his parents separated. From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, Raniere attended a Waldorf school, before leaving for a public junior high school. One classmate recalled an incident in which she had unwittingly shared "compromising" information about one of her sisters in front of a 9- or 10-year-old Raniere. According to her recollection, Raniere had told her: "You know, it’s like I have this little bottle of poison I can hold over your head ... I just don’t think your parents or your sister would be very happy if I told them." She claims Raniere "would call me sometimes and say, 'Little bottles, little bottles'". Beginning at age 12, Raniere attended Rockland Country Day School in Suffern; he graduated in June 1978, two months prior to his 18th birthday. As an adult, Raniere reported that he read the Isaac Asimov mind-control-themed work Second Foundation at age 12 and credited the science-fiction novel with inspiring his work in NXIVM. Raniere's former partner has shared stories about Raniere's childhood which she claimed to have been told by his father, James. According to Barbara Bouchey, James had said: "What we did is we told Keith about how gifted and how intelligent he was. And he said it was almost like a switch went off. And suddenly overnight he turned into like Jesus Christ. And that he was superior and better than everybody like he was a deity. He said it was that dramatic and that profound he said it went right to his head. Bouchey likewise recalled a story about a 13-year-old Raniere's relationships with girls: "dozens of young girls were calling the house and  was overhearing his conversations with them where he was telling every single girl the same thing: I love you. You're the special one. You’re important. You are the only one in my life and I love you.’ And she says, he's saying this to all these girls. He's clearly lying ‘cause all of them are not special!" In 1978, Raniere's mother died. In 1982, Raneire graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a 2.26 GPA. During his time at RPI, Raniere met Karen Unterreiner; she would remain among his inner circle for the next four decades. Early adulthood According to reporting by the Times Union, in 1984, the 24-year-old Raniere became sexually involved with 15-year-old Gina Melita after the two met in a theater group. According to Heidi Hutchinson, Raniere was also sexually involved with her sister, Gina Hutchinson, in 1984, when Gina was 15 years of age. She later died from suicide. Raniere worked as computer programmer for the state Division of Parole. In June 1988, the Times Union profiled Raniere, reporting on his membership in the Mega Society after having achieved a high score on founder Ronald K. Hoeflin's MEGA test, a 48-question unsupervised test which had been published in the April 1985 issue of Omni magazine. Although the MEGA test has been widely criticized as not having been properly validated, Raniere's name was listed in a 1989 Australian edition of the Guinness Book of World Records. Women killed in Mexican cartel killings had alleged links to the sexual cult Nxivm The nine women and children massacred in Mexico on Monday were part of a Mormon community linked to the alleged sexual cult Nxivm. The advanced Mormon community in Mexico is where Nxivm leader's subordinates, Keith Raniere, recruited young women to work as nannies in a complex in northern New York state run by the accused cult, suggesting at least in part that jobs would take girls away from the region of their home. drug violence, according to a man hired by Raniere to produce a documentary about the group. Who is Keith Raniere? Facts about NXIVM’s Founder After completing his studies in 1998, he founded NXIVM with Nancy Salzman. NXIVM is a multilevel marketing company that offers executive success programs. According to "The Times," former NXIVM coaches have filed charges against Keith that the students fall prey to him to satisfy his sexual desire and play. As the company's conceptual founder, Keith has been involved in controversies for many years. In fact, he was arrested in Mexico by the US federal government. UU., Where he lives in an apartment with a woman. In his company there are secret rituals for women where they are blindfolded bent and naked. Then, an initial of KR (Keith Raniere) has marked on his body. Read the full article

[nielsvanpoecke]

We have art in order not to die from the truth.”

Nietzsche F. (1901, posthumous), Will to Power; Section 822. 

The concept of “tragedy” is often only associated with Europe, however, it is also a significant element in the Australian Aboriginal culture and their Dreamtime stories. By referring to Nietzsche’s philosophy in The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings (1999) of the Dionysian and Apollonian forces we will explore what makes these Aboriginal Dreamtime stories and their traditional cultural practices ‘tragic’ art forms.

Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche by Edvard Munch, c. 1906; Munch-museet, Oslo, Norway; De Agostini Picture Library/Bridgeman Images.

German philosopher, Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy (1872) developed the idea of artistic creation as a synthesis of form and emotion, a reconciliation between the Apollonian and Dionysian impulses. Apollo and Dionysus are two Ancient Greek deities who stand for two opposite worlds of existence; the Apollonian, as the world of dream, embodies the idea of artist as a image-making, while the Dionysian, as the world of rapture, where the human being, overwhelmed by the ecstatic and chaotic force, loses his subjectivity. The Apollonian energy gives shape to the formless will of the Dionysian emotion, which is “an irrational driving force that originates the artist’s creative urge” (Van de Braembussche A., 2009). Human beings need the capability of dreaming to reconstruct the Dionysian into something less chaotic: only art has the ability to save men from the horrific nature of existence by creating Apollonian representations with which men can survive. The Attic tragedy was where the two sexes coexisted harmoniously; the Dionysian representation, such as music, dance and masks, is expressed in an Apollonian world of dreams and symbols. In the Dionysian state of existence men are capable of claiming back their freedom, cultivating their instincts and, finally, self-determining. Indeed in the Attic tragedy, the chorus was a place of liberation which created somewhat of a detachment between the tragedy and the outside real world. Thus the scene became a place free from society restrictions and moral rules and, in that way, the viewer identified himself in the chorus and, alienated from his own nature, he was transferred in a condition without space and time because he had become a servant of Dionysus. By watching a tragedy the observer can feel pity and fear but, being aware that it is an art form, he cleanses himself from any form of violence: that is the so-called catharsis. 

In Steiner’s opinion the staging of tragic events is not universal, but belongs to European as a continent (de Mul, 2014). The specific awareness of the tragic sense of life is mostly due to the Ancient Greeks who were the main creators of the ‘tragic’ and European countries developed different ways to perform it on stage throughout the centuries. However, Europe was not the only continent to express the sense of tragic in an art form and is also revealed in the Dreamtime stories of the Australian Aboriginal culture. For the Aboriginals, the Dreamtime stories express the origins of the universe and workings of nature and humanity. Dating back to around 65,000 years ago Dreamtime is one of the oldest continuing cultural beliefs and is the foundation of Aboriginal life. The Aboriginal stories and various expressions of art forms were motivated by their desire to understand the land and how life came to be. It is evident by comparing Nietzsche’s world of dreams, the Apollonian and the world of nature, the Dionysian with their ancient cultural practices and art forms that we can also recognise a sense of ‘tragedy’ other than the Western ideal. The Dreamtime stories are a reflection of both actual dreams and conscious beliefs of life and death. The themes of many Dreamtime stories embody Dionysian elements of chaos, representing the world of raptures, however also signify elements of the Apollonian through its fictional and ‘dream’ like qualities. For instance in the Dreamtime story of the ‘Rainbow Serpent’ it is evident that both Dionysian and Apollonian values exist through the destruction and creation of life. According to the Aboriginals, the earth was flat and barren, until one day the Rainbow Serpent awoke and travelled his way across the land creating the mountains and valleys with his winding body. The Serpent also controls the water in the land, “so he has the power of life and death in the desert” (Rainbow Serpent Dreamtime Story, 2019). This story has been depicted through rock paintings, some dating back to 6,000 to 8,000 years ago, showing varying images of rainbow arcs and the almighty and terrifying snake. The power and importance of the Serpent is his ability to create rain and water for the land, however if disrespected he can also cause drought, leading to the life of Aboriginals to be perished. Another rendition of this story is that of the Rainbow Lorikeet brothers. The Rainbow Serpent made laws that all animals had to obey, if followed, then the animals could be rewarded by becoming humans. However, those that did not obey would be turned into stone and make the mountains of the land. The story states that one day it started to rain heavily, and the Rainbow Lorikeet brothers went to the Rainbow Serpent to seek shelter. The Rainbow Serpent was rather hungry and decided to trick them by offering protection from the rain in his mouth, they climbed in and he closed it shut, swallowing them both! It is said, “now, every time, just after it rains, you can see the Rainbow Serpent sharing his beautiful colours with the people on the ground as his way of saying sorry for taking those Rainbow Lorikeet brothers” (The Rainbow Serpent, 2018). Being a symbol of both peace and life, but also devastation and demise it is evident in the rock paintings and stories of the Rainbow Serpent, that from tragedies such as drought present in the natural world (Dionysian), the Aboriginals transformed this “suffering into an aesthetic phenomenon” by use of the dream world (Apollonian).

Rainbow Serpent, cave painting in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia.

Ray, D. (2017). Australia's longest Rainbow Serpent Aboriginal Rock Art.

(Video, double-click to watch).https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g70hbibxUJI&fbclid=IwAR1x2W9VmpL_k4DnWXZOmD0aKL1jlJZLWHuhI4YbMrTPtVwnIXiiwfi1F7s

The Crocodile Dreaming Awurrapun story is another example of a tragic tale that evokes loss and life and the creation of how the saltwater crocodile got its skin. Sisters, Helen McCarthy Tyalmuty and Kerry Madawyn McCarthy express this sad story of their grandfather and fisherman, Harry Limen Morgan through their paintings and storytelling. Years ago, a man lived by a small creek that runs into the Daly River, and he was known by his tribe to be an excellent fisherman. Not only would he catch enough fish to provide for his family but also the rest of the tribe. He was highly admired by all the women, however overtime jealousy amongst the men started to grow. One night, two men from the tribe devised a plan to murder him and followed him to the river. While the man was fishing, the two men threw his fishing net over him. Trying to free himself from the net, the man rolled and struggled but this only further tightened the net around his body. Thrown into the river, he thrashed and swirled around and his spirit eventually left his body. Still entangled in the net, the two men hung him from a tree. The fisherman’s wife later discovered her husband's body and “overcome with grief, she wrapped herself in her own fishing net and rolled into the river” (Crocodile Dreaming Awurrapun, 2019). Her spirit also left her body and she could again be reunited with her husband. Once the tribe discovered her body, they hung her alongside her husband. From this tragedy, the saltwater crocodile was born, as neither the husband nor the wife died in spirit, but transformed into the crocodile. In Helen McCarthy Tyalmuty’s painting (below) it is evident from the square skin pattern created by the net that this is what formed the skin of the crocodile. The crocodile skin can be recognised through the natural element of the Dionysian and the Apollonian in its capacity to explain the power of nature through storytelling and painting. Therefore, the synthesis of the two forces is embodied in this tragic art form.

Helen McCarthy Tyalmuty painting of Awurrapun Crocodile.

Through the Dreaming stories, the Aboriginals consistently relate the world of nature (Dionysian) and the world of dreams (Apollonian). The significance of this culture and their Dreaming stories is that they are neither science nor religion based but creations of art, dance and tales which teach and enlighten their people of the origins of all living things and how to survive. Art is the most crucial element in Australian Aboriginal life, and although the Aboriginal Dreaming stories are much simpler than Ancient Greek mythology or Shakespeare, they also emphasise the ‘tragic’ in order to understand their reality. Australian Aborigines “have the longest continuous cultural history” on earth (Understanding Aboriginal Art, 2019) and to survive and thrive in such an incredibly harsh and unique environment such as Australia is a testament to their culture and endurance of many tragic fates, including the constant battle with drought, heatwaves and dangerous wildlife. Although the Dreamtime stories are not traditionally associated with ‘tragedy’ from a Western viewpoint, they were imperative in passing on knowledge about how to live and understand the ‘good and evils’ of life just like European tragedy. They translated their way of life into art through storytelling, ceremonial body painting, songs and dance, therefore creating a “synthesis of form and expression” (Van den Braembussche, 2009, p. 89).   

Fear of the unknown is an instinctive of all humans and is evident in the art of the Australian Aboriginals as they try to make sense of their world through stories, dances and painting.  By producing stories about creation, about a positive moment where everything takes form, the Apollonian force rationalizes and shapes the Dionysian formless fear. Dionysus is the essence of life but needs Apollo to represent it. This is why art is mimetic, it imitates the “primal forms of nature” (Van de Braembussche A., p. 90), and represents them. As we said, the synthesis of Apollonian and Dionysian, for Nietzsche, is encased in the Greek tragedy. The same mechanism happens here, the Dreamtime stories were narrated with dances, performances, music and art.

Traditional Aboriginal ceremonial dancing.

 From rock paintings to wood carving and ceremonial dances, the tribes figuratively represent the Dreamtime stories. Mircea Eliade, in his theory of ‘eternal return’, suggests that usually religions tend to associate moments of the year with mythical events, so that every year is a replication of a mythical era. The same Dreamtime occurrences are annually re-enacted by the Aboriginals. "In Kimberly the rock paintings, which have been painted by the Ancestors, are repainted in order to reactivate their creative force, as it was first manifested in the mythical times, at the beginning of the World." (“Myth and Reality”, pg. 43)

National Geographic. Rock Art | National Geographic.

(Video, double-click to watch.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSHKqX8_pqU&fbclid=IwAR0PMUFoDAeOXTITpzXATdR0yGwW0KFafGlsvF5MIg4-25NFWa0dxshrE5U

 Aboriginal ritual of body painting.

These rituals have been the same for centuries, but why is that? In Furore, Simbolo, Valore by De Martino (1962) he suggests that the ‘first man’, like the Australian Aboriginals, use symbolic repetition of rituals to create an Apollonian dream world, where he finds protection from reality. It gives him the idea that he can master nature, the Dionysian. This still occurs now, after thousands of years. The rituals and what they represent stand for the history of their people and culture, and will continue to live in the common subconscious of the group, preserving the indomitable energy that makes them indestructible.

Traditional aboriginal body painting during a ceremony.

Art transforms suffering into an aesthetic experience. As a tragic art, Aboriginal Dreamtime stories and rituals are a way of understanding and surviving the truth of reality. The Australian Aboriginal culture being such an incredibly rich and primordial tradition, still lives on today in various art forms of song, dance, story-telling and painting highlighting the significance of Nietzsche’s philosophy that there is no art for art’s sake, but that “we have art in order not to die from the truth.” (BrainyQuote, 2019) 

Radio Bardejov(2018) Aboriginal dance show – Australia

(Video, double-click to watch).https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhyKsEn6_So&fbclid=IwAR1x2W9VmpL_k4DnWXZOmD0aKL1jlJZLWHuhI4YbMrTPtVwnIXiiwfi1F7s

By Nina De Maria (550041) | Asia Benedetti (550092) | Iseult Taylor (547688)

 Referencing:

Books

Eliade M. (1975), Myth and Reality, London, England: George Allen & Unwin.

De Martino E. (1962),  Furore, Simbolo, Valore, Milano, Italy: Il Saggiatore.

Van de Braembussche A. (2009), Thinking Art, Berlin, Germany: Springer.

Nietzsche F. (1999), The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, Cambridge University Press.

 Websites

de Mul, J. 2014, Destiny Domesticated: The Rebirth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Technology, xiii-xiv. Retrieved October 10th, 2019 from:

https://books.google.nl/books?hl=it&lr=&id=Ym3EAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=de+mul+europe+as+the+tragic+continent+&ots=_431VOffVB&sig=pJz17vlatsUK7dRW2_04AKJexPc&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=de%20mul%20europe%20as%20the%20tragic%20continent&f=false 

(2019) Eternal return (Eliade) - Howling Pixel. Retrieved October 8th, 2019 from: https://howlingpixel.com/i-en/Eternal_return_(Eliade) 

(2009) Psycopaedìa, La società apollinea e il suo confronto con il dionisiaco. Retrieved October 8th, 2019 from http://www.psicopolis.com/psicopedia/eseIo.htm 

(2019) Understanding Aboriginal Dreamings, Artlandish Aboriginal Art Gallery. Retrieved October 11th 2019, from https://www.aboriginal-art-australia.com/aboriginal-art-library/understanding-aboriginal-dreaming-and-the-dreamtime/

“The Dreaming explains the origin of the universe and workings of nature and humanity.” - (2011) DNA confirms Aboriginal culture one of Earth’s oldest, Australian Geographic,  https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2011/09/dna-confirms-aboriginal-culture-one-of-earths-oldest/ 

(2019) Stories, Kakadu National Park. Retrieved October 18th 2019 from https://parksaustralia.gov.au/kakadu/discover/culture/stories/ 

(2018) The Rainbow Serpent, Dreamtime. Retrieved October 11th, 2019 from https://dreamtime.net.au/rainbow-serpent-story/ 

(2019) Rainbow Serpent Dreamtime Story, Japingka Aboringal Art. Retrieved October 11th, 2019 from https://japingkaaboriginalart.com/articles/rainbow-serpent/ 

(2019) Crocodile Dreaming Awurrapun, Japingka Aboringal Art. Retrieved October 11th, 2019 from https://japingkaaboriginalart.com/articles/awurrapun-crocodile-story/ 

(2019). Rainbow Serpent, Artlandish Aboriginal Art Gallery. Retrieved from https://www.aboriginal-art-australia.com/aboriginal-art-library/rainbow-serpent/

(2018) The Rainbow Serpent, Dreamtime.Retrieved October 11th, 2019 from  https://dreamtime.net.au/rainbow-serpent-story/  

Carli, R. (2015). Art as a stimulus to life. Daily Dialectic. Retrieved October 15th, 2019 from  http://dave.kinkead.com.au/dailydialectic/art-stimulates-life 

(2019) Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes, BrainyQuote. Retrieved October 20th, 2019 from https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/friedrich_nietzsche_159176 

Images

Pinterest (2019) Rainbow Serpent, cave painting, Arnhem Land, Australia. [image]. Retrieved from https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0f/27/1b/0f271bcf1f28bdc294fd16eb6bf44929.jpg 

Davis Alspaugh, L. (2014) Munch Paints Nietzsche, Ecce Hom. [image]. Retrieved from https://hedgehogreview.com/blog/thr/posts/ecce-homo-munch-paints-nietzsche 

Aboriginal Spirituality, The Religious World. Retrieved from https://religiousworldlcr.weebly.com/aboriginal-spirituality.html 

Pinterest (2019) Aboriginal Rituals. Retrieved from https://www.pinterest.ru/pin/535717318153960272/?nic=1a

(2019). Aboriginal ceremonies, Artlandish Aboriginal Art Gallery. Retrieved from

https://www.aboriginal-art-australia.com/aboriginal-art-library/aboriginal-ceremonial-dancing/

YouTube videos

Ray, D. (2017). Australia's longest Rainbow Serpent Aboriginal Rock Art. Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g70hbibxUJI&fbclid=IwAR1x2W9VmpL_k4DnWXZOmD0aKL1jlJZLWHuhI4YbMrTPtVwnIXiiwfi1F7s 

Radio Bardejov. (2018) Aboriginal dance show - Australia. Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhyKsEn6_So&fbclid=IwAR1x2W9VmpL_k4DnWXZOmD0aKL1jlJZLWHuhI4YbMrTPtVwnIXiiwfi1F7s

National Geographic. Rock Art | National Geographic. Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSHKqX8_pqU&fbclid=IwAR0PMUFoDAeOXTITpzXATdR0yGwW0KFafGlsvF5MIg4-25NFWa0dxshrE5U

[swancon]

Margaret ‘Mumfan’ Hughes and her son Warren Hughes at a Swancon dinner in the late 1980s.

(with thanks to Barb de la Hunty for access to the photo through the Fannish Archive.)

The Marge Hughes ‘Mumfan’ award is an award presented by the Western Australian Science Fiction Foundation (WASFF). While not presented every year, when presented it was given out during the Tin Duck awards ceremony during the Swacon convention. 

The Mumfan is named after Margaret, who was active in the 1970s and 80s and was well known for her support and counselling of other members of Australian fandom (hence her ‘Mumfan’ nickname). 

A list of past recipients is available here.

[geograph-hitje]

Reference List: In the case of urban planning, community engagement is a futile exercise.

Allmendinger , P. & Haughton, G., 2011. Post‐political spatial planning in England: a crisis of consensus?. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37(1), pp. 89-103, viewed 10 September 2018, <https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2011.00468.x>.

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[scifigeneration]

No sign of alien life 'so far' on the mystery visitor from space, but we're still looking

by Ray Norris

The mystery object discovered earlier this year travelling through our Solar system is showing no signs of any alien life, despite plenty of efforts to look and listen for a signal.

Perhaps it’s ironic that the object should arrive in a year when we celebrated the 100th anniversary (on December 16) of the birth of science fiction author Arthur C Clarke.

One of his most popular novels, the award-winning Rendezvous with Rama, describes the high-speed entry of a cylindrical object into the Solar system. It’s initially thought to be an asteroid but a subsequent exploration reveals it to be an alien spaceship.

Read more: A fleeting visit: an asteroid from another planetary system just shot past Earth

Exploring ‘Oumuamua

Astronomers named our Solar system visitor 'Oumuamua, which is Hawaiian for “scout” or “messenger” as it was fist detected by the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS1 telescope.

Tiny and very faint, this fast moving object (centre) was captured by astronomers as it passed through our Solar system. Queen's University Belfast

From our distant exploration of 'Oumuamua we know it’s a red-brown, cigar-shaped object, about 400 metres long, and is moving so fast that it must have started its journey in some distant stellar system.

But we still have no idea what it is.

We know it’s not a comet, because it has no halo, and we know it’s not a normal asteroid, because we’ve never seen one that is so elongated – about ten times longer than it is wide. And its speed (about 100,000km per hour) rules out an origin within the Solar system or the Oort cloud, where comets come from.

Aliens from another world?

As scientists, we have to keep an open mind. For example, could it be an alien spacecraft? This might seem the stuff of comic-book fiction. Yet we know there are other Earth-like planets out there, and some may host other civilisations. We must at least consider the possibility that it is an artificial object from one of these civilisations.

That would also be consistent with the cigar shape. We know that the best shape for a large interstellar spacecraft is not like the fictional Starship Enterprise of Star Trek fame, but more likely is elongated to minimise the damage from collisions with interstellar dust.

The USS Enterprise is a great shape for a Christmas tree decoration, not so great shape for a real spacecraft. Flickr/JD Hancock, CC BY

The only problem with this idea is that this object is not gliding smoothly through our Solar system, but is tumbling head over heels, about once every eight hours. So if it is an alien spacecraft, it’s in trouble.

How can we tell what it is? The best way would be to get a good photo of it, but it is so far away that even the Hubble Space Telescope just sees a speck of reddish-brown light. And it is moving too fast to mount a space mission to get closer. Already it is starting to head out of the Solar system.

Listening in for signals

If it is an alien spacecraft, perhaps we might detect some radio signals from it. And if it’s in trouble, we might expect to hear a distress signal. Over the past few weeks, radio telescopes around the world have been straining to catch some whiff of radio emission.

The telescopes are well equipped for this job, as they are already engaged in the Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). The first serious SETI search was made in 1960 by the radio astronomer Frank Drake, and SETI has continued on the world’s largest telescopes ever since.

The search continues methodically outwards from the Sun, with no detection so far, and yet SETI enthusiasts remain optimistic, pointing out that we have only searched a tiny fraction of the stars in our galaxy.

The first search for signals from 'Oumuamua was by the SETI Institute, using the Allen Telescope Array. They hoped they might detect some evidence of an artificial transmission - perhaps a series of pulses, or a narrow-bandwidth signal. But nothing was found.

A much larger search was made by the Breakthrough Foundation, which uses the Australian radio telescope (“The Dish”) operated by CSIRO at Parkes, New South Wales, and the Green Bank telescope in West Virginia, in the United States.

The passage of ‘Oumuamua through our Solar system.

Because 'Oumuamua is in the Northern sky, Green Bank can see it more easily than Parkes. Green Bank is still searching for signals from 'Oumuamua, but “so far” has drawn a blank.

All attempts so far to detect a signal have been unsuccessful. The observations are so sensitive that even a mobile phone on board 'Oumuamua would have been easily detected.

But so far, nothing. As 'Oumuamua heads back out into interstellar space, the attempts will wind down and the telescopes will return to their normal duties.

So what is 'Oumuamua?

One thing we know is that 'Oumuamua isn’t just a rock. It is the first interstellar object we’ve ever found in the Solar system, and its elongated shape means it is totally unlike a normal asteroid.

So it probably isn’t part of the natural process of planetary formation. The most likely explanation is that it is a giant shard of rock of unknown origin – perhaps debris from an interplanetary collision.

But we cannot discount the possibility that it really is a spacecraft – perhaps one that got into trouble a long time ago and its corpse continues to tumble for eternity through the vastness of interstellar space.

Searches for signals from it will continue until it leaves us for ever, and perhaps something may still turn up. But the chances are that it will forever be a mystery.

What has changed is that we now know that such interstellar interlopers exist. One estimate is that there could be 10,000 such objects passing through the Solar system at any time.

If this is correct, then the hunt is on for more interstellar objects, and it won’t be long before we find another. Then we will see a new field of study open up as astronomers seek to understand their properties and origin. Will we find debris from planetary collisions? Or will we eventually find space junk from other civilisations and begin our own Rendezvous with Rama?

Ray Norris is a Professor in the School of Computing, Engineering, & Maths at Western Sydney University.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.