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
The neuronal bases of consciousness and attention. Why and how do some electrical activities in the brain make us see, hear and feel pain? Why other neural activities remain non-conscious? This project will utilise visual illusions combined with a range of state-of-the-art neuroimaging techniques to understand what kind of neuronal mechanisms underlie attention and consciousness.
Perception: From Genes to Behaviour. Understanding how genes affect behaviour is inherently difficult because the human brain is extraordinarily complex. This project aims to map fundamental relationships between genes, brain, and behaviour by studying visual perception, where brain mechanisms can be characterised with high fidelity. The project expects to generate new knowledge in behavioural genetics using innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to integrate precise genetic, neural and psycho ....Perception: From Genes to Behaviour. Understanding how genes affect behaviour is inherently difficult because the human brain is extraordinarily complex. This project aims to map fundamental relationships between genes, brain, and behaviour by studying visual perception, where brain mechanisms can be characterised with high fidelity. The project expects to generate new knowledge in behavioural genetics using innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to integrate precise genetic, neural and psychophysical measurements. Expected outcomes of this project include a deeper understanding of our perceptual experience, and rich new experimental paradigms. This should provide significant benefits for future research attempting to disentangle complex gene–behaviour relationships.Read moreRead less
Neurobiological mechanisms of the interaction between pain and sleep. The project aims to reveal the brain mechanisms behind the interaction between such fundamental biological phenomena as sleep and pain. This highly interdisciplinary project expects to deliver significant insights into how poor sleep changes the brain to increase pain sensitivity in healthy adults, by combining novel lab-based mechanistic sleep and pain manipulations and naturalistic longitudinal observation. The rich multimod ....Neurobiological mechanisms of the interaction between pain and sleep. The project aims to reveal the brain mechanisms behind the interaction between such fundamental biological phenomena as sleep and pain. This highly interdisciplinary project expects to deliver significant insights into how poor sleep changes the brain to increase pain sensitivity in healthy adults, by combining novel lab-based mechanistic sleep and pain manipulations and naturalistic longitudinal observation. The rich multimodal dataset generated by the project will be made publicly available to enhance research transparency and international collaboration. This should provide significant benefits, ultimately opening up ways to improve quality of life and wellbeing of the Australian population.
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The brain in real-time: predicting the present, reconstructing the past. This proposal aims to understand how the brain compensates for its own internal delays to function in real-time. Because it takes time for information from the senses to reach the brain, it takes time for us to become aware of an event that occurs in the outside world. This project will use an innovative combination of techniques to study how prediction and reconstruction mechanisms work together in the brain. Expected outc ....The brain in real-time: predicting the present, reconstructing the past. This proposal aims to understand how the brain compensates for its own internal delays to function in real-time. Because it takes time for information from the senses to reach the brain, it takes time for us to become aware of an event that occurs in the outside world. This project will use an innovative combination of techniques to study how prediction and reconstruction mechanisms work together in the brain. Expected outcomes of this project include a fundamental understanding of how we function in the present. This should provide significant benefits, such as an important theoretical advance in our understanding of how conscious awareness is realised in the brain, placing Australia at the cutting edge.Read moreRead less
In Public / In Focus: Photography, Testimony and the Public Sphere. Photography plays an important but little understood role in the public sphere. Photographs invite viewers to identify with stories, events and others, and the ease with which photographs circulate in print and online makes them ideal for fostering discourse and debate. However, the increasing focus on testimony and witness in contemporary culture has recently altered the way that photography operates in public and raised some s ....In Public / In Focus: Photography, Testimony and the Public Sphere. Photography plays an important but little understood role in the public sphere. Photographs invite viewers to identify with stories, events and others, and the ease with which photographs circulate in print and online makes them ideal for fostering discourse and debate. However, the increasing focus on testimony and witness in contemporary culture has recently altered the way that photography operates in public and raised some significant problems for photography historians regarding the representation of events, others and the past. This project will respond to these problems, and produce a new understanding of the historical, social, cultural and political links between photography and the public sphere today.Read moreRead less
Resolving multi-sensory conflict as we age: audio-visual integration and the role of normal and abnormal sensory decline. Australia has an ageing population. Even the healthiest older individuals undergo some deterioration of vision and hearing, however, these senses are almost invariably studied in isolation. The real world is multisensory. This project will enhance our knowledge of how ageing impacts on the interpretation of visual and auditory information regarding the timing and location of ....Resolving multi-sensory conflict as we age: audio-visual integration and the role of normal and abnormal sensory decline. Australia has an ageing population. Even the healthiest older individuals undergo some deterioration of vision and hearing, however, these senses are almost invariably studied in isolation. The real world is multisensory. This project will enhance our knowledge of how ageing impacts on the interpretation of visual and auditory information regarding the timing and location of objects; essential precursors to many real world tasks, for example: driving, interpreting speech, and hazard avoidance. This knowledge is essential for the optimisation of audio-visual environments for the elderly, and for the development of tools to improve performance in the presence of sensory decline due to age-related eye disease.Read moreRead less
Graphic Encounters: Colonial Prints and the Inscription of Aboriginality. This project plans to collate the archive of prints depicting Indigenous Australians, from national and international collections, to ask how people's place in this newly encroached territory was inscribed by colonial prints. Before the 1890s, prints (engravings, etchings and lithographs) were the principal means of reproducing images. Prints disseminated imagery of Indigenous people and determined how they were 'put in th ....Graphic Encounters: Colonial Prints and the Inscription of Aboriginality. This project plans to collate the archive of prints depicting Indigenous Australians, from national and international collections, to ask how people's place in this newly encroached territory was inscribed by colonial prints. Before the 1890s, prints (engravings, etchings and lithographs) were the principal means of reproducing images. Prints disseminated imagery of Indigenous people and determined how they were 'put in the picture' of settlement. Our colonial-era cultural heritage includes many prints (engravings, etchings, lithographs, etcetera) of Aborigines, yet they have been overlooked and the story of their production, dissemination and consumption is untold. This project aims to collate and trace this visual archive of Indigenous Australians and present its imagery to all Australians, including descendants, in an exhibition and conference, catalogue, monograph and online database.Read moreRead less
From neuroscience to society: A multi-disciplinary study of human perception and cognition. This project aims to use a multi-disciplinary approach to investigate the factors influencing human perception and cognition - from the level of basic neuroscience, through to the wider impact felt by individuals and society when these functions are either impaired or enhanced. This will inform the basic research question of how the brain generates a conscious experience, identify the relationship between ....From neuroscience to society: A multi-disciplinary study of human perception and cognition. This project aims to use a multi-disciplinary approach to investigate the factors influencing human perception and cognition - from the level of basic neuroscience, through to the wider impact felt by individuals and society when these functions are either impaired or enhanced. This will inform the basic research question of how the brain generates a conscious experience, identify the relationship between altered visual cognitive function and clinical symptoms of psychosis, and determine the current prevalence and neuroethical issues associated with the non-medical use of drugs to enhance cognitive or perceptual function within Australia.Read moreRead less
Sensory orchestration for multimodal literacy learning in primary education. This project aims to advance new learning and pedagogical models of sensory orchestration for the enhanced multimodal and digital literacy learning of primary students. Multimodal literacy is increasingly important in the Australian curriculum and international research, yet research and education largely prioritise visual texts. This project will generate pedagogical and learning models to optimise students’ broadened ....Sensory orchestration for multimodal literacy learning in primary education. This project aims to advance new learning and pedagogical models of sensory orchestration for the enhanced multimodal and digital literacy learning of primary students. Multimodal literacy is increasingly important in the Australian curriculum and international research, yet research and education largely prioritise visual texts. This project will generate pedagogical and learning models to optimise students’ broadened use of the senses in multimodal and digital literacy learning. It will develop new sensory literacy programs with primary schools, community organisations, and art museums.
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