This week’s Marvellous, Electrical brings us hardcore Brisbane punk, Hallowe’en summonings, and the tender power of a Tasmanian wombat sanctuary.
Tag: Australia
Marvellous, Electrical: Future Sea Punks
This week’s Marvellous, Electrical explores the Brisbane suburb of West End and its annual Kurilpa Derby, street art, social justice, censorship, and the ways communities get inside your head – for good and ill.
The Kinder Way To Enjoy Hacking
This morning I gave the opening address at the annual conference of ALIA Queensland. The theme this year was “Library Hacks”.
Hacking’s such a funny term, still threatening and techy and futuristic, and yet also so familiar; the stuff of cheesy mid-90s techno-thrillers as much as today’s headlines about Wikileaks and massive DNS attacks.
The New Yorker tells us that the word originates in the house slang of MIT, way back in the 1950s:
The minutes of an April, 1955, meeting of the Tech Model Railroad Club state that “Mr. Eccles requests that anyone working or hacking on the electrical system turn the power off to avoid fuse blowing.”
Taking “hack” to mean tinkering with machines and procedures, not following the manual, I wanted to both hack the keynote and offer attendees an opportunity that wouldn’t exist at M.I.T.
So, we gave them craft materials, tinfoil and paperclips, food decorating kits, a basic electronics set…
…and Kinder Surprise Eggs.
Marvellous, Electrical and the Black Prince
What does a man have to do to be accepted as a true Australian?
We took a walk through the suburbs to Brisbane’s Toowong Cemetery, exploring the legacy of the 19th century champion boxer – and adopted Aussie – Peter Jackson.
Revenge of the Model Railway Club
I’ll be speaking at ALIA Queensland‘s mini-conference “Library Hacks” in a couple of weeks.
American-style model railway. Photo by Graham Causer, used under a CC BY-SA 3.0 Licence
My keynote’s called Revenge of the Model Railway Club and it takes the form of a hands-on workshop. It should be fun – if you’re in the area, you should come!
Library Hacks runs 9am to 5pm at Brisbane Square Library on Wednesday 26th October.
International Harvester: The Ozofarm Game
Today sees the official release of the Ozofarm game and game development competition for Queensland’s public libraries.
As I discovered on my visit out to the cotton fields of the Darling Downs, digital technology is changing the way we farm. Cows are milked in robotic dairies. Drones are herding and surveying cattle from the skies. Self-driving machines are steering across Queensland’s fields, tending crops and baling cotton.
I worked with Eva Ruggiero and Tammy Morley of the State Library’s Regional and Public Libraries Team to devise a game which explored robotics in agriculture.
Queensland Fun Palaces 1-2 October
The long-awaited Fun Palaces weekend has arrived.
After months of planning and preparation, communities across Queensland are gearing up to celebrate the arts and sciences in all their forms, partnered with a range of libraries and other institutions.
From the islands of the Torres Strait to the cotton fields of the Darling Downs, plus every library in the city of Brisbane, and of course our own State Library on the city’s South Bank, the first weekend in October will see a swathe of venues open their doors for community-led events celebrating the Fun Palace motto “everyone an artist, everyone a scientist.”
We’ve come along way since Parkes Library hosted Australia’s first ever Fun Palace back in 2014.
I’ll be with the State Library team on Saturday, supporting events including our Scrub Turkey Sessions devised with urban ecologist Professor Darryl Jones of Griffith University.
Wherever you are in the world, check the Fun Palaces website for your nearest event, or join in online with the Comic Maker built for Fun Palaces by the State Library. (We’ve also put the code behind the site online, if you feel like a bit of digital tinkering).
Memory Squad!
What does it mean to have a creative relationship with the past?
How do 21st century institutions manage our cultural heritage?
I asked Jacinta Sutton, Gavin Bannerman, and Laura Daenke of the State Library of Queensland.
Call them the Memory Squad.
Banned Books Week: Love Illustrated, Rona’s War, and Hansard 37
I’m working in a library at the moment, so here’s three quick stories for Banned Books Week, the US-led celebration of our freedom to read what we want.
These all come from the research of the State Library of Queensland’s resident banned book specialist, Joan Bruce. Read more
Marvellous, Electrical: Eustress
“Dance, whatever you say, it’s mostly all about me: its own kind of hedonism. You look in the mirror and judge yourself. You entertain the audience, maybe you inspire one or two kids who’d like to be dancers themselves, but that’s about it. It can be overwhelming to focus on yourself that way.”
“What I do now, I don’t stop people getting sick, I don’t fix every problem, but at least I know I’ve helped.”
A classic Queensland amublance. Image from Queensland State Archives.
This week’s Marvellous, Electrical tells the story of a top-flight contemporary dancer turned Brisbane paramedic.
Read Curious, Mysterious, Marvellous, Electrical: Eustress here.
matt finch / mechanical dolphin 
