Understanding collaboration between the arts and sciences. This project aims to undertake a detailed examination of how the arts and sciences can work together to address the complex challenges of contemporary life. This will be addressed by undertaking the first cultural history of the experiment. Experimentation is common to the arts and sciences, and thinking about the long history of experimental practices in both fields will help build a bridge between them. This project will examine in de ....Understanding collaboration between the arts and sciences. This project aims to undertake a detailed examination of how the arts and sciences can work together to address the complex challenges of contemporary life. This will be addressed by undertaking the first cultural history of the experiment. Experimentation is common to the arts and sciences, and thinking about the long history of experimental practices in both fields will help build a bridge between them. This project will examine in detail past and present collaboration. An expected outcome is the development of models to support solving of complex contemporary problems. It will also raise awareness about the importance of the arts to knowledge-making practices.Read moreRead less
What is successful public art today?: exploring how contemporary public art and memorial design shapes public engagement, perceptions and behaviour. Much public money is invested in public art and memorials. The research explores critical questions of value: what the public enjoys about such artworks, if and how artworks contribute amenity to public spaces, and whether recent artworks engage effectively with social memory, identity and politics. The research situates local practice within intern ....What is successful public art today?: exploring how contemporary public art and memorial design shapes public engagement, perceptions and behaviour. Much public money is invested in public art and memorials. The research explores critical questions of value: what the public enjoys about such artworks, if and how artworks contribute amenity to public spaces, and whether recent artworks engage effectively with social memory, identity and politics. The research situates local practice within international trends, to inform Australian designers, policymakers, art patrons and public space managers about recent innovations in technology, craft, creativity and critique, so they can create and choose public artworks and memorials which engage with the potentials of contemporary arts practice, the complexities of contemporary culture, and the diversity of social behaviour in public spaces.Read moreRead less
Indigenous land claims in historical context. By enlightening the history of Indigenous legal opposition to dispossession from the beginning of colonisation, this project will provide a means of engaging with the political challenges and responses posed by legal conflicts with Indigenous peoples over the question of land.
Cinematic Ethics: Exploring Ethical Experience through Film. This project develops a new interdisciplinary framework for understanding cinema’s unique power to evoke ethical experience via audiovisual means. Combining philosophy with film analysis, it moves beyond the prevalent view that cinema merely illustrates moral situations, and challenges the long-held suspicion toward film’s manipulative aesthetic power. This project proposes instead a model of cinematic ethics: an investigation of how c ....Cinematic Ethics: Exploring Ethical Experience through Film. This project develops a new interdisciplinary framework for understanding cinema’s unique power to evoke ethical experience via audiovisual means. Combining philosophy with film analysis, it moves beyond the prevalent view that cinema merely illustrates moral situations, and challenges the long-held suspicion toward film’s manipulative aesthetic power. This project proposes instead a model of cinematic ethics: an investigation of how cinema evokes ethical experience through emotional, cognitive, and aesthetic engagement. This project will advance the emerging interdisciplinary field of film-philosophy by highlighting film’s under-recognised potential to enhance ethical understanding, and thus to promote greater social awareness and intercultural communication.Read moreRead less
The quest for the 'I': reaching a better understanding of the self through Hegel and Heidegger. The conception of the 'I' is central to our lives. The more multicultural a country is, the more pressing becomes the question of the conception of the self. Focusing on the thought of Hegel and Heidegger, this project aims to offer a richer account that avoids individualism and allows thinking of the formation of the self as a collective enterprise.
Migration and mobility: the question of childhood in Chinese and European cinema since 1945. This project will produce a comparative account of the migrant and mobile child in postwar film, researched in China and Europe. It will contribute deeper knowledge of how childhood has been valued in key societies since 1945, and will bring new energy to international and domestic debates on the status, image and experience of migrant children.
The nature and status of principles in early modern philosophy. One of the most contested issues in early modern thought was the nature of principles: what are the principles of reason, of nature, of morality, and why do we need them? This project will provide a comprehensive study of the nature and status of such principles in the 17th and 18th centuries charting the story of how their fortunes waxed and waned.
The reformulation of war art as a dialogical interactive narrative. This research uses visualisation technology to explore new ways to communicate and understand the collective experience and personal memories of war. It aims to strengthen Australia's leadership in media arts, facilitating the active participation of defence personnel in the creation of a world-first interactive archive of war stories.
Explorations in the Foundations of Quantum Gravity. Despite almost a century of struggle, gravitation (as described by Einstein's general theory of relativity) remains divided from the principles of quantum theory (the framework in which our best theories of particle physics are couched). Bringing them together constitutes one of the most urgent problems of physics. By exploring the foundations of the problem, and the various proposed resolutions, from both historical and philosophical perspecti ....Explorations in the Foundations of Quantum Gravity. Despite almost a century of struggle, gravitation (as described by Einstein's general theory of relativity) remains divided from the principles of quantum theory (the framework in which our best theories of particle physics are couched). Bringing them together constitutes one of the most urgent problems of physics. By exploring the foundations of the problem, and the various proposed resolutions, from both historical and philosophical perspectives, this project aims both to shed new light on why it so stubbornly resists a solution and to assist in its solution. It will map out the specific features of the various approaches to quantum gravity with a view to offering researchers a helpful tool to navigate and compare their virtues and vices.Read moreRead less
Visual cosmopolitanism, national identity and imperialist ambitions in garden spaces. Visual cosmopolitanism is an ideal created through the global movement of art forms. This project will contribute to current debates about the globalisation of art by tracing the concept back to artistic practices and aesthetic theories of the enlightenment through a focus on experience within the eighteenth-century garden.