ISSN: 1329-878X

Museums and New Media No 89 November 1998 Order form Abstracts

Contents

Abstracts

Ecologies of meaning -- Gary Warner interviewed by Ross Gibson

Museums and 'interpreted' public spaces have become important sites for the deployment of new multimedia systems. Given that these locations are imbued with historical, architectural and aesthetic complexities, it is becoming ever more apparent that standard information technology approaches to data systems are inadequate to the tasks of evoking and interpreting such sites. For 20 years now, Gary Warner has worked to introduce lucidity and nuance into the public deployment of multimedia. His work at the Australian Film Commission, the Museum of Sydney, and more recently as Director of CDP Media has led him to understand that he is practising a kind of electronic ecology. He discusses this idea -- and many others -- with Ross Gibson.

Beyond the mausoleum: Museums and the media -- Andrea Witcomb

Much of the discussion of the impact of electronic technologies on museums suggests that electronic technologies have been important in displacing the traditional metaphor of museums as mausoleums. This paper supports the move away from this metaphor, but suggests that this is not a recent phenomenon or entirely attributable to the impact of electronic technologies. The rhetorics currently associated with electronic technologies in museums can be better understood as part of a longer history of the relation between museums and the media. This is a history which points to the role of the media in producing a public sphere in which more democratic social relations are possible.

Borrowing from libraries -- Maureen Burns

What can we learn from the experience of libraries in dealing with technological change? How can this help us to rethink communications futures?

This paper rehearses various histories of libraries. While tracing the shift from an emphasis on collection to an emphasis on dispersal, it explores the ways in which libraries operate as governmental technology. The experience of libraries in dealing with technological change has been continually to create another order from a new chaos. This is what we borrow.

The changing face and function of museums -- Robin Trotter

Museums are currently undergoing a number of changes as a repercussion of their histories and professional developments, and of new social and cultural contexts, not to mention as a result of pressure from competition and economic forces.

This article explores the current 'reinvention' of museums -- in particular, national museums -- by examining some of the factors of change -- some of the major internal pressures that have been the result of museological initiatives and also various exogenous influences. New museology and postcolonialism represent not only separate forces, but also a synthesis of pressures that are not only changing the face, but also the role, of museums, whilst also transforming relationships between museums and their users.

A concern of this study is to look at those museums which have a 'nationalising' function, and to determine whether changing policies and practices are inhibiting or advance a renegotiation of the relationships between museums and their constituencies.

In the last two decades, we have seen some trends confirmed. There has been a move from material culture studies to concern with the ideas contained in objects, whilst the older notion of the museum as a treasure house has given way to a stronger educative role and, more recently, an information centre and also a site of leisure, entertainment and identity-formation. These 'reinventive' processes, it is suggested, are closely allied to a postcolonial imperative.

Inside the meta-centre: A wonder cabinet -- Sarah Kenderdine

This paper is presented in three parts. The first part examines the emerging models of the on-line museum to demonstrate how traditional museums are seeking to extend and recreate themselves through the Internet. This section also notes the genesis of the information meta-centres as one way to encompass museum collections and processes. The second section of the paper will introduce Australian Museums On-Line (AMOL, http://amol.org.au) as one example of the information meta-centre, an integrated resource pool of digital museum information from distributed Australian museums and galleries communities. This section will examine salient aspects of this on-line community as offering a complimentary meeting place that is both virtual and real. The third section will look to the underlying design and architecture of the AMOL Website and introduce some of the projects that will be implemented at the site as a response to its users' needs.

Ethics and pragmatism: China's television producers confront the cultural market -- Michael Keane

Since its beginnings in 1958, television in China has been hailed as the 'mouthpiece of the Party, the government and the people'. The rapid expansion of the television industry since deregulation policies were introduced in 1983 has significantly complicated this relationship. New doctrines of accountability and supply-demand economics have been prescribed as blueprints for the success of cultural institutions now forced to survive without state funding. Whilst the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is anxious to see the television industry 'stand on its own feet' and respond to the challenges of market economics, there are also fears that its role as 'mouthpiece' might be diminished. The Communist Party has thus sought to curb the excesses of what it considers 'unhealthy influences', while at the same time learning from the successes of the market. This paper examines the emergence of Chinese 'popular' serial drama in the 1990s and the manner in which this form of television has been co-opted by the Communist Party as a means of inculcating new modes of ethical behaviour appropriate to a modern commodity economy.

SBS-TV and its amazing world -- Chris Lawe Davies

This paper looks at a particular moment in the history of SBS-TV -- the 1994-95 corporate image campaign, 'The World is an Amazing Place'.

The corporate image campaign redirected all promotional funds away from program publicity to try to 're-position' SBS as an urbane advertising vehicle, and at the same time to double its market share.

At the time, it was a kind of 'do-or-die' mission -- spurred to some extent by the need to see advertising as the only means SBS had of making up for government allocations which never seemed to match the network's aspirations.

SBS did not achieve the increased share through the campaign; the question is whether, in re-positioning itself, the network compromised its public service role.

Dazzled by the Sun: Corporatising Queensland film culture -- Jonathan Dawson

In the wake of economic rationalism and the failed cyber-fantasies of Creative Nation, there has been an increasing tendency towards the corporatisation of film funding bodies at a time when a loosening of self-defensive bureaucratic systems might have been expected.

For example, the Film Finance Corporation has created increasingly complex 'professional' systems of management and has foreshadowed a 'last stage' script assessment process that has created dismay in industry guilds. After exhaustive prior script development (and many funding and script editing stops), a project will face yet another barrier immediately prior to shooting.

In addition, the increasing invocation of 'craft skills' themselves as somehow learnable and precisely quantifiable processes, has dug an even deeper moat around funding bodies.

The winding down of Film Queensland and the enhanced corporatisation of the Pacific Film and Television Commission (even to office dress codes!) and incorporation of events such as the Brisbane International Film Festival into an Events Corporation are signs that many largely discredited constructs of The Market are still being applied -- to strengthen the power base of the apparatchicks at the expense of their local clients.

The events sketched in this paper are paradigmatic of over-regulated and inner-focused arts funding systems that have lost sight of who their real clients should be.

That way Habermadness lies -- John Hartley

This journal has kindly offered me the opportunity to respond to an article by Paul Jones in Media and Culture Review incorporating Culture and Policy, No. 88: 'Between cultural studies and critical sociology' (Jones, 1998). That essay is a review of my book Popular Reality: Journalism, Modernity, Popular Culture (Hartley, 1996). This essay is my reply.