Culture and Creativity Seminar Series
As we learn from First Nations peoples throughout Australia, creativity is deeply embedded in culture, and culture is deeply creative. The CCCR’s seminars explore the ancient, innovative relationship between culture and creativity. We open conversations by presenting new work in a wide range of humanities, social science, creative and applied disciplines. To learn more about the CCCR (Centre for Creative and Cultural Research), head to https://www.canberra.edu.au/research/centres/cccr
Episodes
Abstract
Bilibili isa popular Chinese video-streaming platform known for its synchronised Danmu commentary system which is particularly popular with younger audiences. A growing body of literature has explored digital nationalism in the context of Chinese social media participation, with Bilibili offering some important examples. Applying a digital ethnogra...
Abstract
Although this seminar takes Kim Kardashian's now-iconic 2014 Paper Magazine cover as its entry point, the argument it makes reaches back two centuries. When Kardashian "broke the internet" with a single image, she was participating in a mechanism of celebrity image-making with a much longer history than we might expect.
Abstract
This paper reports on the Poetry for Wellbeing and Recovery program at the University of Canberra Hospital. Patients in rehab have been attending weekly sessions focused on reading and writing poetry. Reading poetry often evokes powerful memories and strong emotions, as poems seem to open outwards when the reader’s own experience is engaged, and ev...
Abstract
Why do political slogans so regularly resort to rhyme? Why does alliteration play the prominent role it does in advertising? According to one study, ‘Two T-shirts for $21’ clearly outsells ‘2 T-shirts for $19’ (Davis, Bagchiand Block 2015). The presentation starts by considering social science explanations for the emphasis ac...
Abstract
This presentation reintroduces robotic musicianship as a way of understanding human–AI interaction through musical practice and performance. It begins with Savery’s recent work with Jen Music, a generative music start-up exploring ethical dataset construction, attribution, and transparency in AI training. It then turns to a DECRA project on r...
Abstract
During the Second World War, the Australian military relied on a sizeable contingent of Asian workers who were already present in Australia to fill labour shortfalls and key gaps in combat expertise. At the end of the conflict, the Commonwealth government sought to deport these workers under the framework of the White Australia Policy, to uneven levels o...
Abstract
This seminar explores the rapidly developing field of virtual production, a form of filmmaking that combines live-action and computer-generated elements on set, enabling real-time interaction between performers and digital worlds. Drawing on several years of practice-led inquiry and professional experience as a freelance motion capture technician, it exa...
Abstract
The practice of organising creative works into genres emerged (at least) as early as Aristotle’s classifications in the Poetics, though more recently its value has been questioned. This presentation suggests we explore the concept of genre in terms of operations: of how writers create new works, and how critics might understand how a work of writin...
Abstract
From the rediscovery of the ancient Roman catacombs in1578, until Pope Leo XII’s prohibition in 1881, the bones of men, women, and children – now known as catacomb saints – were exhumed from these subterranean cemeteries and widely distributed across Europe and the Americas. Unlike medieval reliquaries, these more recent simulacra were ...
Abstract
Each of us – whether we choose to embrace, deny or ignore this knowledge - is uniquely positioned within a shared colonial history. The question of positionality is a central theme for this seminar, to be explored through a comparison of two books that confront Australia’s colonial past and present from different starting points. In ‘Un...
The first age of wireless communications also marked the twilight of the theory of the ‘luminiferous aether’, the notion of an undetectable substance permeating all space that allows the transmission of light, just as air allows the transmission of sound. For many scientists the theory was definitively laid to rest by Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity in 1905. However, the notio...
This presentation introduces the initial findings of a cross-faculty research project that aims to develop a social sustainability rating system for medium- and high-rise residential complexes, with Canberra as the case study. The study examines how the built environment can support mental and physical health, building management, community cohesion, and other essential factors that collectively influe...
Analysing the feedback from the speaker’s major PhD exhibition, and looking at three recent Royal Commissions, this presentation focuses on key themes emerging from these large truth-telling/witnessing exercises. It explores ongoing research into art making centred on issues of social injustice examined in commissions of inquiry, and asks whether art, using a specific aesthetic approach can be an...
This presentation is a conversation about a research collaboration between academics from three universities. What started as a collaboration between three women from Edith Cowan University and four from Canberra University has grown to include another woman from both universities and one more from the University of Wollongong. We call ourselves the Kind Regards Collective.
Laser cleaning provides a highly controlled, non-invasive method for removing surface contaminants without damaging the underlying material, making it especially valuable in the preservation of sensitive cultural artifacts. Over the past year, the Victoria and Albert Museum’s conservation team has applied this approach across various materials and object types, such as plastics, micromosaics, cer...
In this lecture, Manuela de Barros explores how technology has interfaced with the concept of magic since the Renaissance, influencing how beliefs and expectations about their capabilities are formed. She considers how these cultural beliefs endow technologies with magical powers to take care of social problems, inviting us to reflect on their significance in the context of expanding space exploration....
In the first half of 2025, I was fortunate enough to conduct research on the Outside Studies Program towards completion of an academic textbook, How to Write Haiku, to be published by Bloomsbury Press. This included a month spent in Japan conducting background cultural research and, more specifically, interviewing and talking with contemporary poets and critics about Gendai Haiku. Gendai literally mean...
What are the essentials of Gille Deleuze’s philosophy? There is a multiplicity of Deleuzes, with multiple points of engagement. This presentation begins with the presupposition that they are all actualised examples of a philosophy of the event. Emphasising Deleuze’s philosophy as a philosophy of the event is largely congruent with major commentaries but is purposefully constrained and minim...
The production of creative objects for wellbeing seems to have been part of human culture since the dawn of our emergence as a species. It did, though, take until the 20th century before it became formalized and institutionalized – first as art therapy and more recently as a part of social prescribing. In this seminar I will briefly touch the history of creative intervention for wellbeing, and th...
This paper takes fire from Seamus Heaney’s comments on the “cultural depth charges latent in certain words,” and in particular from his analysis of poet Ted Hughes’s predilection for those with Anglo-Saxon roots. Heaney sees Germanic word choices as integral to Hughes’s attempts to evoke “the being-thereness. . . of sea, stone, wind and tree.” So Heaney makes c...
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