Author: Mechanical Dolphin

A Speaky Week

Mechanical Dolphin

On Tuesday, I’ll be over at the University of Southern Queensland, giving talks and workshops to staff and students across faculties. You can follow them online via this livestreaming link – the fun kicks off at 11am Australian Eastern Standard Time.

Then on Thursday I’m joining the Broadband for the Bush Conference on rural and regional access to digital technology and communications, running a presenterless workshop session on planning for the future. I’ll be drawing on science fiction, Afrofuturism, and comics alongside debates around copyright, government policy, and the presentation of financial data.

You can follow via the hashtag #BushBroadband on social media. I feel like non-Aussies are going to think that’s something far more salacious than it actually is…

The Library Ghost

Mechanical Dolphin

During #BlogJune, workers in galleries, libraries, and museums Down Under commit to writing daily blog posts about their work.

One of my favourites is The Library Ghost, written by Kyla Stephan of Gold Coast Libraries in Queensland.

The blog, which has run intermittently for several years now, records the correspondence left at a librarian’s desk by the ghost which haunts her building.

Library Ghost Episode 1

We only ever see the ghost’s side of the conversation, but follow the progress of their relationship over the months and years, as the icy spirit – “I could not, in all honesty, be described as benign” – develops a certain affection for the mortal whom they haunt.

I love that Kyla invites us into a tender and wryly mannered fiction, invoking library magic to share the world of her imagination. Go check out the Library Ghost this #Blogjune.

Curious, Mysterious, Marvellous, Electrical: Night of the Ibis

Mechanical Dolphin

This week’s Marvellous, Electrical explores the intersection of urban ecology and Brisbane burlesque.

Read ‘Night of the Ibis’ here.

On health and well-being

Mechanical Dolphin

Professor Martin Paul Eve of Birkbeck College, University of London writes today in the Times Higher Education Supplement about suffering a stroke in his twenties. You can read  ‘Coping with Illness’ here.

I’ve been working with medics and healthcare professionals as part of my 2016 creative residency in Queensland, Australia. I use Martin’s story as part of my workshops. It reminds practitioners that healthcare is about people as well as processes, and highlights how culture and access to information shape our experience of health and wellbeing.

When health organisations seek to deliver targeted community interventions, develop inclusive health systems, or improve their relationships with the populations they serve, there are overlaps with my field of creative work and community engagement.

Read more →

Marvellous, Electrical: Everything’s Coming Up Kransky

Mechanical Dolphin

What links country Queensland, Barbarella, Judge Judy, and Agnes Bernelle, the World War 2 broadcaster who convinced a U-Boat captain to surrender with nothing more than her seductive voice?

The Kransky Sisters.

On this week’s Marvellous, Electrical, I interview Australia’s greatest contemporary cabaret act.

 

Beyond Panels

Mechanical Dolphin

Here’s the ever-thoughtful Justin Hoenke on conference presentations:

We’re thinking about similar things down under…last month, the State Library of Queensland experimented with a Presenterless Workshop format, as part of a wider campaign by science communicator David Robertson, called Beyond Panels.

Read more →

USQ Salon: Our Powers Combined

Mechanical Dolphin

I’ll be visiting the University of Southern Queensland next month to speak at their USQ Salon series.

julian cope

If scholarship is a creative and critical conversation about the world, who are “we” having those conversations with?

What opportunities do institutions create for members of the public to have a go at what they do? And to fall in love with what they do?

From fringe scholarship to Fun Palaces, comic books and stone age megaliths to postcolonial controversy, we’ll be looking at what it means to share opportunities for learning, exploration, and adventure with the widest possible range of communities.

You can join me and the USQ team online from 11am AEST on Tuesday 7th June.

Sunday Read, Supplemental: Dancing Zombie Cops Can Only Be A Good Thing

Mechanical Dolphin

I just saw the Running Man Challenge video recorded by police in New Zealand Aotearoa this week.

The video is part of a drive by Kiwi cops to recruit more officers, especially from Maori, Asian, Middle Eastern, Pacific Island, and Indian backgrounds.

I did a double take, because the cop who closes out the routine is Sergeant Sonny Iosefo of South Auckland.

Sonny also starred in our 2013 zombie siege at Tupu Youth Library, as an officer who came in to protect a group of teens from an invasion of the living dead.

Read more →

Sunday Read: Beyond Secret Cinema

Mechanical Dolphin

My belated Sunday morning read is this piece from the Guardian on London’s Secret Cinema, which blends movie screenings with theatrical experiences and themed activities:

I’m a big fan of participatory live-action storytelling and I’m fascinated by opportunities to blur the line between fiction and “real” experience, creating events where attendees shape the outcome of a story.

I went to a Secret Cinema event a few years back and was pretty disappointed – the set design and costumes were fancy, but the opportunities to get involved in the storytelling were minimal. I’d gone to see Casablanca and while it was cool to sing La Marseillaise at a bunch of actors in Nazi uniform, the rest of the “immersive experience” consisted of overpriced snacks and a “casino” barely worthy of a student union’s James Bond night. The Guardian piece captures the extent to which Secret Cinema events are now more about taking your money than letting you step into the world of a story.

Read more →

Marvellous, Electrical: In The Doll Hospital

Mechanical Dolphin

I was expecting hokey gothic from my trip to Brisbane’s Doll Hospital.

Instead I got stories from the Greek Cypriot migration, and some thoughts on how Australian attitudes have changed.

Australian migration posters from the mid 20th century and early 21st century

Read more in this week’s Marvellous, Electrical.