Men, Music and Consumption - High Fidelity

Online Resource- Plastics Collection

Syracuse University Library has a "Plastics Collection" online. The collection includes approximately 3,000 objects with high-quality photographs, information about plastic materials and processes, and twice the previous number of biographies and company histories.  

It's very easy to search by:

•  "subject"
• "material"
• "material trade name" 
• or "manufacturer".
• Manuscripts are catalogued by "subject".
• There is a collection of short "essays".
• A time line.
• A catalogue of people, companies, materials and processes.

The links page includes "films", "industry resources", and other "sites" and "museums".

The films include "Le Chant du Styrene part 1 and part 2, a 1958, 19 minute French documentary film depicting plastics manufacture as industrial sublime. The film was directed by Alain Resnais who went on to direct Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), L'Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year in Marienbad) (1961) and Muriel (1963). The film was ordered by the French industrial group Pechiney. The commentary script, was written by French novelist Raymond Queneau. The script was all in Alexandrines, a very old kind of poetic meter comprising 12 syllables pre-dating Marlowe and Shakespeare. The script was narrated by French actor Pierre Dux.

Experimenta

Experimenta is thrilled to announce the 5th International Biennial of Media Art set to launch in Melbourne at RMIT Gallery September 14 to November 17, 2012. 

Experimenta Speak to Me is an invitation to consider what it means, at this time, to be together. Speak to Me: 3 Days, 3 Programs from 2 - 4 August. The program includes three individually curated events which will form a prelude to the launch of Experimenta Speak to Me in September. 

Three 'Soundwwwalks' will be hosted at West Space, Level one, 225 Bourke Street, Melbourne, on Thursday 2 August, a video art program including works by Ann Hirsch (US), Eugenia Lim (AUS), and Yu Cheng-Ta (TW) will be installed at street level on the ground floor of City Village, 225 Bourke Street, Melbourne on Friday 3 August, and Nobuhiro Shimura's Dress will be installed the following day, Saturday 5 August. http://www.experimenta.org/  

E-Research

E-Research, or "technologically enabled research" is an emergent area. It has received significant support from the Gillard Government.  Important in this regard is NeCTAR (National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources), an Australian Government project to build new infrastructure specifically for the needs of Australian researchers. 
E-Research is important in the context of Climate Change Research, choice modeling and Legal Research - including the Australian Legal Information Institute, AUSLII, which has compiled over 525 databases, all from from all Australasian jurisdictions. 
E-Research also plays an important role in humanities research and has seen the rise of the "Digital Humanities". Federal investment in the Digital Humanities in Australia has funded the Humanities Networked Infrastructure (HuNI). HuNI is NeCTAR funded and is one of the first large scale eResearch Infrastructure projects for the humanities in Australia. The project will integrate a number of important cultural data-sets in Australia and will also build what is termed a Virtual Research Environment’ (VRE). A VRE or ‘Virtual Lab’ is online environment of tools and services to allow specialist researchers to come together to perform certain computational research tasks with the possibility of uncovering new insights into Australia’s cultural landscape.
The Australasian Association for Digital Humanities (AADH) was formed in March 2011. The inaugural Secretary is Craig Bellamy. Their "Resources" page is useful.
Journals include The Fibreculture Journal, which recently published FCJ20, a special edition on "Network Utopias" edited by Su Ballard (Otago / University of Wollongong), Zita Joyce (Canterbury) and Lizzie Muller (UTS).
Other resources and events in Australia include:

• THATCamp (The Humanities and Technology Camp), an “unconference” that brings together the technologies and humanities. THATCamp Brisbane will take place on Saturday 25 August 2012.
• The Australian Media History Database, a portal for all aspects of research into the history of the media in Australia.
• The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC).
• Wragge Labs - Digital Tools for Historians
• The ANU Digital Humanities Hub - aims to critically engage with the use of digital technology.

International:

• Lev Manovich's work on Data Visualization. 
• Textvre (UK) aims to "support the complete lifecycle of research in e-Humanities textual studies.
• Project Bamboo (international- including ANU) is facilitating the collaborative curation of digital texts by building services and connecting tools.
• The Townsend Humanities Lab (berkeley) offers a community driven suite of digital tools to support interdisciplinary collaboration.
• MIT Media Lab: Applies an unorthodox research approach to envision the impact of emerging technologies on everyday life—technologies that promise to fundamentally transform our most basic notions of human capabilities.
• ALiVE, the Applied Laboratory for Interactive Visualization and Embodiment, is an interdisciplinary research initiative of the City University of Hong Kong School of Creative Media. It is an incubator and innovations showcase for new forms of creativity, whose challenge led programs are at the cutting edge of digital media in society.
• The Virginia Library's Scholars Lab.
• Department of Digital Humanities and the Centre for eResearch at Kings College London. The DDH is interested in the application of technology in the arts and humanities, and in the social sciences.

Visualizing Research

The UTS Library has been running some fantastic workshops on Visualizing Research.

The link for the workshop can be found here:

The workshop started out with this 5 minute video.

Some visualisations included: The "Billion Euro-Gram", a visualization of various global financial phenomenon, such as the cost of the global war on terror (€1047 billion) and the size of the global pharmaceutical market (€651 billion). 

Billion Euro-o-gram

And: An analysis of Gender differences on social networking sites, showing that women use facebook and twitter more than men, while men use soundcloud and youtube more than women. Overall women use social media more than men.

Chicks Rule

For more visualization projects see:

• Information is Beautiful.
• Digital Harlem.
• The Black Loyalists, a Sydney University Project run by Casaandra Pybus, Kit Candlin and Robin Petterd.
• The Mapping of the Republic of Letters at Stanford.
• Mr and Mrs Sparrow, visualizing ornotholigical surnames in Sydney, New South Wales
• Stanford's workshop series Humanities 3.0: Tooling Up for Digital Humanities provides an overview.

Bananas and Snackfoods

These advertisements were launched in August 2009 as the snackfood and advertising industries awaited the outcome of the National Preventative Health Taskforce's recommendations for addressing obesity.

The campaign was developed by David Chenu, domestic marketing manager for Horticulture Australia (HAL), an industry owned rural research and development corporation (RDC) for the Australian horticulture sector. HAL’s purpose is to be accountable for the efficient and effective investment of industry and government funds in R&D and industry investment in marketing. HAL’s funding is derived from a combination of statutory industry levies (from growers for R&D and marketing), voluntary contributions (from grower associations, commercial enterprises, researchers and individuals), and Australian Government matching funds for eligible R&D, as well as other sources such as royalties and investments.

Prior to working with Horticulture Australia Chenu worked with Beef & Lamb, Tasmanian Salmon and in the ‘90s he worked at CSR on the extremely successful, Natural Part of Life campaign for the Sugar Industry (1990s). Other progams he has contributed to include: Iron and Lean Beef for Meat Standards Australia MSA) and Trim Lamb. (See also MSA's Australia Day Lamb advertisements featuring Sam Kekovich).

The banana campaign was created by retail agency Eleven Communications. Director of creative strategy Jonathan McCauley said it was designed to leverage public concern over rising obesity levels.

Selling Hygiene to Men

For a commentary on the ad see the Sydney Morning Herald.