Two dogs

We're looking after another dog at the moment, a little black and white fox terrier. She's pretty cute. During the day while I'm studying, I have both dogs in the room with me. Most of the time they sleep in their beds by my desk but sometimes they get restless and rumble with each other and make a racket.

They've kept me company during this rather stucky blocked time I've been having with my PHD. It's been quite frustrating and has lasted for about two weeks. I'm trying to formulate my research questions and research statement and it just isn't happening. Well actually, I've written about 3 or 4 versions and am just churning over the same stuff.

Aside from the stuckness I'm currently experiencing, I have made some progress on other fronts. I'm a lot clearer about the areas of reading I'd like to cover. I've been overwhelmed by the amount of relevant material. Meanwhile I've met with my two other supervisors and both generated some really good discussions and feedback.

I went to Fisher Library yesterday and borrowed a few more books. One of them was written by another of my supervisors a number of years ago. It's still very relevant and is about computer culture and the irrational self. I particularly like the extrapolation of Don Ihde's typology of the human-technology relationship with the addition of the psychoanalytic categories. I came across Ihde's typology recently and have been thinking about them in terms of how they may fit into my own project. It occurred to me recently while browsing Rosalind Picard's "Affective Computing" that her conceptualisation of what a relationship can be in relation to computers and computational objects could benefit from a more nuanced approach to what types of relationships can be formed. She views them primarily in terms of an alterity relation.

IVF in Australia

The Australian Government based on a proposal by the Minister for Health, Tony Abbot, is considering capping the rebates on the number of IVF cycles for women over 42. This reform attempt has got me really bloody peeved and quite worked up. These are the concerns and observations I have about this proposal.

- There have been an increasing number of incursions by the government to regulate and control what women can and should be doing as "reproductive" members of society.
- This recent proposal is divisive and like many of the Federal government's reform policies creates discord within sections of the populace that would otherwise not have had disparate positions by producing an emotional and competitive discourse whereby an extremely narrow 'normative' body and lifestyle is justified against which all other modes of being and bodies are excluded.
- In addition to being about women's bodies, who and how these should be controlled, this is also an issue about Australia's health system, and about how we define what is an elective and non-elective treatment.

Highlighting some of the internal inconsistencies and ruptures of a piece in the Comments section of the Sydney Morning Herald on Friday April 29th reveals some of these issues at work. In her comment piece, Hilary Burden, addresses all women readers in her claim that "If you have trouble conceiving, don't be surprised, don't ask for handouts and don't think it's the end of the world". According to Burden, women are not only arrogant but also selfish and naive to assume that the government will cover the cost of repeated cycles of IVF once over 42. After dishing out on women, all women apparently, as there are no specific references to any actual quotes by women or women's groups on this issue, only a reference to something Emma Thompson once remarked, she ends by saying that no women should "be made to feel they are dependent on what they produce or don't produce with their bodies. In an overpopulated world, you don't have to have a baby to learn how to labour or live."

Hilary is having trouble making sense of all of this. It's "just weird maths", she states, that the Government gives "couples $3000 for having a baby on the one hand and then reduce their chances of having one on the other."

One of the reasons why Hilary is having trouble understanding this is because she is reacting from a position of being a woman who is struggling to be valued in her own right as a productive member of society without necessarily being a reproductive member of society. Unfortunately Hilary, by taking this stance, is colluding with the Federal government's policies, harming her own cause and those of other women who have a broader and more inclusive position that women who choose to work, women who choose to work and have children and women who choose to have children are all deserving of being valued and supported.

In fact, the inconsistency of the Government's stance on these two issues shows the consistency of their belief that underpins all their policies on women's re-productive and productive labour, the notion that only some bodies and only some modes of being in bodies are acceptable and normal and therefore should be supported by Government funding. For though the Australian government is trying to address what it sees as a growing problem of reduced birth rates, leading to an ageing work force, by encouraging reproduction, the social model for achieving this is not simply to make having children and bringing up children easier to all members of society but to reform the social conditions themselves, so that it is made easier only within certain very narrow parameters, i.e. by being young and by being legally infertile. What this excludes are the many choices and conditions under which either of these two parameters are not viable, such as working for the early part of one's life or due to a phsyiological condition which reduces the likelihood of being able to achieve pregnancy without assistance.

And so, finally to my ultimate concern, about Australia's health system. These parameters of eligibility are maintained by making IVF treatments financially inaccessible, and therefore unavailable, to those who fall outside of the narrow definition. Burden asks, "Why is it so bad to be given three attempts at having another child, and after that, you pay for it yourself. Raise the $10,000 amongst your kin..."

Because by supporting access of only those women who are under 42 and legally infertile, to a comprehensive IVF treatment plan, we are not just reducing the overall rates of successful pregnancy, we are reducing the social and life options of all women in Australian society, and impoverishing the diversity of our culture.

Reviewing blogging

A recent post to a mailing list I subscribe to has got me thinking about why I blog. I have journalled off and on for a number of years. Recently I migrated to a software program called MacJournal. This program has a number of features for journalling that I liked including being able to write up an entry in MacJournal and then post it to a blog or a number of blogs. I used this for a while and I found that it wasn't really doing it for me. There was a sense of being cut off within the program and by my computer. Paradoxically, I think this was associated with where I imagined the writing to reside within the space of my machine. It was hidden away, buried in the directory structure of my hard drive. My desire to reach out to an imagined audience was somehow thwarted by the isolation of the medium within which it was produced. It was a conceptual isolation, in fact. Since there is no reason why blogging directly into 'blogger' is any different. A post is just a button away, not matter which program I was using.

I started up my own blog initially with the intention of logging my PHD progress. This was really all I had in mind. Something happened to me not too long ago that was one of those life changing and life challenging experiences and partly because during that time I was so preoccupied with just getting through it, I didn't journal or log events. One of the reasons I wish I had logged this period was that it literally shifted my reality. Writing for me, in addition to feeling like I am reaching out to others, although mostly imagined others, is also an anchoring device. It is in the traces of thoughts and feelings and in the materiality of the word, that I can see parts of myself in relation to things, events and people and how things change. Oddly, sometimes I do not recognise myself at all but this too is an aspect of my relation to the world. So I started blogging to record my PHD progress and this is still my intention. But somehow my blogging practice has broadened somewhat. The daily asides are more the meat, the PHD progress an aside. Interesting...

Outrageous Breakfast Show

I recently attended the Body Modification Conference Mark II held at Macquarie University. On the second day of the conference, "The Today Show" did a piece on the conference. Karl Stefanovic, Tracy Grimshaw and co spent the next ten minutes laughing and spluttering about the "wacky" conference and its "freaky" subject matter. From memory there were a number of dismissive statements about the so called incomprehensible abstract titles, questions about the relevance to students today along the lines of "what are we teaching our children at University?", and outrage expressed that we could be wasting tax payers money on funding such an event. The presenters laughed nervously throughout. Pardoxically many of the questions raised in their guffawing outrage required a genuine and legitimate response. Why isn't there help available for people who go through life believing that they would be more themselves if they had one leg instead of two? Why is it that we live in a culture where even to mention the words "my smell" evokes horror and terror by its utterance alone? Their discomfort revealed a real anxiety, I believe, about their own inability to address any of these issues with the seriousness and consideration they deserve. On a deeper level, it revealed a cultural anxiety about the issues of body modification. So why is it not acceptable to have a forum for seriously discussing this topic?

Not only were the titles of the papers mentioned mis-quoted, the purpose of the conference was completely mis-understood and its content mis-represented. No member of the coordinating committee of the conference was consulted to comment or provide any information nor did any of the presenters attend the conference to find out what it was about.

In short, it was an exercise in ignorance and anti-intellectualism of the highest "Breakfast Show" order. As viewers, we were presented with the view that we should not take the topic of body modification seriously because we do not WANT to take this seriously. And we should attack anybody who does, because WE have decided that it is not knowledge worth knowing.

Later that day the participants of the conference gathered in one of the lecture theatres to discuss the piece as well as the editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian. I was there during the discussions and at the conference throughout.

What was discussed was the possibility of a response and it led to some really interesting debates about the status of education in Australia, the politics of education and the role of Humanities, the motives and tactics for an effective response were raised and discussed. Many believed that any response was a waste of time. But a strong contingent believed that it is not just necessary but crucial to engage with popular culture and take it seriously, particularly when it takes such an active stance of ignorance and an intention "not to know".

I want to say that the conference was one of the most enlightening and insightful intellectual experiences I have had. The breadth of perspectives and the level of discussion and quality of research was far greater than I had expected. We live in a culture, as Meredith Jones clearly and elegantly described in her presention, where "becoming is more desirable than being". We are presented with demonstrations of self-improvement from many quarters, and this "makeover" culture describes a broad set of current cultural concerns and desires. There are not many appropriate forums for discussing the immense effects and changes that go with these sweeping cultural changes. The conference was one of these. It was an appropriate and relevant forum for bringing together people from all over the world to present and stimulate discussion that will help us to understand and perceive this phenomema from a range of different perspectives and to engage in its complexity. The presenters and program makers of breakfast shows have a choice. They too, could offer a forum for discussing these issues and if it is expressed in a style that is relevant for its genre, then that's OK too. But there is no reason whatsoever to undermine other peoples efforts to understand because of their own ignorance and lack of desire to know or to simply to ask. No excuse at all.

Ode to old wheels

Stains on the passenger seat, faded over time
Indian dinner leaked from a plastic bag,
Traces of dog, white fur and finger nails,
Drivers seat depressed from repeated sittings
Small dents on the rubber bumper from touch parking
A scrape down the side from a poor reverse park
Globe blue, a colour from the nineties, no more
Citrus and Techno grey amongst todays colour schemes
My old car, dolphin of the road, sculpted by my presence and form
I parked her in a back alley in the end
Far from the shine and glare of her fashionable counterparts
I folded inside at the thought of leaving her there
Conveyor of memories and material from my past
Goodbye UDA 434.



Got myself a new set of wheels. I've been enjoying getting a feel for it, how it takes corners, finding the optimum revs to change gears to get the most accelaration but the smoothest changoever, becoming intimately familiar with handling the wipers and indicators, being able to swap CD's by touch (yeah - it doesn't have a six stack CD player unfortunately). Actually it's not really a particularly flash car as far as cars go and I certainly wouldn't call myself very knowledgeable about cars but I do love driving and learning to hear and feel the machine-body. And it's new. I've never had a new car. My last car I bought second hand in 1994 and it was two years old at the time. I loved that car. Dropping it off in the side lane behind the car show room where I was to pick up my new car, closing the creaking door for the last time, I really felt a pang of regret. How attached I had become to my old car. I felt like I was abandoning her in the back lot. So my initial encounter with my new car was a little mixed with sadness as well as excitement. I got the guys to take a shot of me with my old car and another one with my new. I felt they really understood. I asked them if they'd take care of my old car. They nodded and said "Of course".

This afternoon I was stuck in traffic on the highway I regularly drive down to get to Uni. I was on my way back from a special visit to the library in order to renew and then reborrow two books that were one day overdue. So there I was, music up loud, rain hitting the windscreen, the sweet smell of new car and dustless surfaces, my own personal bubble as Michael Bull would say. I turned to the side and to my amazement, saw my old car in the car lot of the place I purchased my new car. She'd had a makeover. New wheels, hubcaps and a polish. It was too quick to examine her new features in detail but my heart leapt at the thought that she would have a new lease of life and a new owner.

Zombie Pope

Where is Buffy when you need her? Doesn't she know that the undead is in St Peters Square? I mean can we be really sure that he is gone? Since he was almost gone for quite a few days. And all of these rituals involving teenagers and young twenty somethings worshipping his greatness strikes me as very hellmouth activity. Now that Sunnydale is a large whole of nothingness, perhaps the hellmouth has re-located to St Peters Square.

I'm seeing zombies everywhere at the moment and I guess that has something to do with watching Resident Evil II the other night and alot to do with the green and red pills I've been swapping between the last few days to facilitate continuous oxygenic intake and break up the mucous masses.

Drove out to Uni today to return the digital recorder after my first interview on Sunday. Someone at Uni needed it prior to going overseas so I hit the road clean. No green pills. I'm easily affected by these substances and it recommends on the packet not driving or using heavy machinery while affected. No shit! I wonder if that includes my computer. How heavy does machinery have to be before it's considered heavy machinery?

chai

That was a great idea - meeting up with a friend for chai this afternoon. My mind was spinning from reading about the writings of Levinas. Not even the texts of Levinas but an "Introduction to Levinas" was enough to get me wondering if existence itself may have been disappearing out of a slow leak in my skull. It was only when I came face to face with my friend that the sense of disorientation and dizziness passed into a feeling of familiarity and acceptance. I am very interested in following up Levinas' writings on The Face. What about technology? What is it in the face to face encounter with technology, specifically digital technology but really any technology, any object, anything that is conceived as part of this world, that gives knowledge about that object and yet still have a sense of our selves as separate from it? What does Levinas' face tell us about the interface? What is kept separate and how in the human-computer encounter? Is the separateness important and something to savour? How can it be understood? There is a foundational act to this questioning because it raises the issue of whether there is a relationship to discover and whether it can be called such a thing. And yet, I know on a deep level that it is there, formed in myself in my body, dreams and in my every day use. It is so thoroughly embedded that I feel its loss when it is not there, although it can hardly be called gone.

what's been up

Well it's been just over a week since my last post and my brain has recovered from its moment of excess stimuli. Unfortunately it was my back that decided to give me grief this week. Too much hunching at the desk with many an empty thought. Actually despite the back problems and being stranded in the rain with a flat car battery one day this week, I have achieved quite a bit on the PHD front. I seem to be slowly catching up on the summaries of readings done to date. This exercise involved me re-reading a journal article I had already read but made no notes about and I discovered on my second reading all sorts of interesting insights. My sister has suggested that I could spend the next three years re-reading the same article. Very funny sis but you know she does have a point.

I also drafted my first questionaire for a pilot interview I'm conducting with a friend next week. I emailed it off to my supervisor to have a look at and have re-thought big chunks of it since then. Oh well. It is a work in progress.

I finally got through Nardi and Day's "Information Ecologies". I put it aside for a while while reading other things. What I did find very inspiring about it was the 'systems approach' to the analysis of technology in use. Although I appreciate that the authors were extending this to an understanding of the system as an ecology which perhaps conceptually at least implies more room for local strategies and difference, the focus was on environments in which technology and people interacted and not just a single user operating on a piece of software.

Stimuli

I am feeling a little overwhelmed with intellectual stimuli. I must remind myself that I have been a very hands on kind of person for the last seven years. My brain muscles are sore...

Had another great brainstorm with my supervisor this morning. That is such a great word. Brainstorm. I thought surely somehow has registered the domain name but it doesn't appear to be being used although I haven't checked if it is available. Note to self. I do not need another domain name. My online etymology dictionary tells me that the word Brainstorm meaning "brilliant idea, mental excitement" was first used in 1849 and some of the other iterations include: brainsick (1483) meaning "mad, addled", braindead is dated back to 1976 (but doesn't seem to have a known source); brain teaser is from 1923, brainwashing has been imported from China and came into usage in 1950 and is a literal translation of Chinese xi nao.

But yeah braindead after brainstorm. Really love this PHD thing but geez it really is very brainfocused.

Writing workshop

The uni is offering a series of thesis writing workshops and I attended one today. It could be a good way to write and receive feedback but I have concerns about how the group will engage with each others material. I guess there is a danger that the feedback will be kind of pointless or worse, undermining but then again it could also be a stimulating environment that assists the writing process. I'll give it a go despite my qualms. It's an eight week course.

Almost time for a dog walk

I've been reading some more journal articles today and have consolidated some of the output I've generated to date. I have come up with a Reading Key and Area Key for the readings I'm doing to categorise them in terms of progress and topic. I'm hoping this will evolve into a file that documents the literature areas by priority which is one of my MOA's for this semester. I'm itching to start writing without really having a coherent picture of what it is I'm itching to write although plenty of wondrously vague images and ideas...

Going out to Uni today

Heading out to Uni today. There is a seminar series on that I am interested in attending on cultural diversity. I've been enjoying Postphenomenology but I think the essay "Image Technologies and Traditional Culture" was flawed and superficial. There is a vast amount of media theories that develop, interpret and critique these technologies in terms of machines that reconfigure the ways that a culture constructs space and time. Early semiotic readings combined with the psychoanalytic interpretations facilitate an understanding of how meaning is contstructed through the cinematic apparatus. Ihde does not refer to any of these insights or builds on them. The specific elements of the cinematic or televisual apparatus that Ihde chooses to foreground, that is, the irreal/real dialectic and the "effects" of cinematographic technologies including flattening, constructing space and time through techniques such as time reversals, flashbacks, special effects and discontinuities are mentioned but not contextualised or explicated in terms of how they create cultural meaning. Just as importantly, seeing the rise of fundamentalism as a reaction to the pluriculture that is becoming of a culture of image-mediation just doesn't gel, or at the very least, it doesn't help me to understand the cultural and historical specificity of the role of fundamentalism in the world today.

Islands on my mind

Been thinking about LOST and its significance as an allegory of cultural renewal and reinvention of the simulacrum, specifically, of America as television. What is LOST? Is it TV, as we may be tempted to believe by the title of the unofficial fan site on the web "LOST-TV"? Islands themselves and stories of island-making, by their liminality, can act as a stage for the re-working of meaning. What is lost in LOST is the past, which is slowly being reconstructed as the series progresses. What is lost is being able to communicate effectively through available technologies to the world, although here too we have the potential for technological salvation by the invention of a mysterious communication device by Sayid. What is lost is also how to get along with others, although it looks like this too may be rediscovered, episodically, as the survivors gain awareness of their situation; their hunger, thirst and isolation. What is lost is also material culture, though we have its wreckage and the remains of the plane's cargo which is rapidly diminishing. And here, in these diminished places, with the remains of the old, the series finds the space for its narrative of renewal and rediscovery. A quote from Dennings "Mr Bligh's Bad Language" echoes this idea of the meaning of island-making.

"Islands lie behind the screen of the sea. A screen as large as the Pacific Ocean thoroughly sifts the life that reaches an island. The few species of plants and animals that survive the sea, now without competition, play many variations on their own themes. All living things come to an island with only the capital of their minds, their instincts and their genes. In the case of human beings, they can also bring with them a select cargo of natural and cultural artefacts. Nothing is transported whole, however. The webs of significance are always darned...Island making sublimates a sense of alienation." (Mr Bligh's Bad Language by Greg Denning)

More to come on this, must stretch and rediscover my bodily parts such as toes and legs.

Study weekend

Some friends and I are away on a study weekend. A bit of postphenomenology before breakfast and a dog walk on the beach has set me up well for a relaxing day. We've driven about two hours north and are staying in a beach house by the sea next to a national park. My desires for the day - to read more of Don Ihde's series of essays on postphenomenolgy and to finish a research paper by Kim Dovey on "The Dwelling Experience: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture". And not to be forgotten, it's Mardi Gras today. We are planning an evening celebration up here in the beach house with the wildlife. It's the first year in a few years that I really feel like celebrating it. Happy Mardi Gras!

Lost in the Burbs

I got lost yesterday trying to find my way to an orientation for research students. It was one of those circular, maze like new suburbs on the fringes of the city. One minute I was driving past a long stretch of grassy hillocks and the next I was in a dense suburb of yellow and red brick kit homes built on a snaking main artery with lots of promising looking offshoots that turned out to be cul-de-sacs. I felt the panic rising when I realised that I had got myself completely disoriented and lost glimpse of the big grassy knoll with the building on the top of it that I'd been using as a landmark. I kept thinking of the new series of "LOST".

This new series has me gripped and has blitzed my long standing obsession with ER on at the same time. The combination of islands, an airplane crash, paranormal activities, psychic disturbances and the promise of self discovery is just too irresistable. I went in search for a new LOST desktop pattern and was disappointed to discover that there is one available for just about every character on the show except for Hurley. My favourite character! What's wrong with having a geek for wallpaper?

Had a second meeting with my supervisor later in the afternoon and have arranged some upcoming meetings and milestones. I've decided to meet my other two supervisors individually to seek their input and get a better sense of how their particular interests and approach can contribute to the process.

Capsule challenger

capsule challenger
Originally uploaded by Juzza.

Surely the combined mental force of an MA, PHD and Grad Dip will overcome the challenge of the rent-a-capsule.

Springy floorboards

What a strange noise. There is a guy crawling around under our house chocking up the piers where the ground has settled a bit. Well it is a 110 year old house built on a clay surface. We had gaps between the floorboards and the piers resulting in springy boards in certain sections of the house. The dog is going nuts trying to defend the house against the subterranean intruder.

Yesterday I blog swopped with a co-student. Possibly a bit premature. I'm still getting a hang of this thing. Not sure what I am doing with it yet. But sort of thrilling that it now features as one of the blogs of other PHD students around the place in his list of blogs. Thanks. Did I qualify that this is a really boring blog that contains the most banale asides of my life and very few insights?

Well as long as you know that...

I've been doing some productive work recently interspersed with periods of getting to know some other students, wrangling tradespeople and being a new Aunt. Current readings include a bunch of interesting journal articles including an organisational management type article on personal decoration of the work space, an ethnographic study of the making of Automatic Speech Recognition technologies and a cultural studies/sociological investigation into the affective dimensions of car driving.

Also have a new old game to explore and have been working on my summaries of readings to date. Talking to another student I am wondering whether I am approaching this a bit too formally. Each summary is taking forever and I think I'm treating it as if it was a review.

Humid Wednesday

I have done a great job of procrastinating today. I've been finding it quite hard to concentrate. Having read a number of journal articles and some books I decided to go no further without doing summaries of each one. A good idea too because as I started to do this I discovered that I had already forgotten important chunks of some of the readings. Somehow this task has proved harder than any of the others to date. I talked to my sister this morning and we came to the conclusion that perhaps it is the difference between absorbing information and processing it. I've also been trying to note down how some of the ideas in the readings may apply to my own project. This too has proved quite challenging and I find my brain muscles sort of yawning with the effort of it all - always a good sign that the old muscle is being exercised!

Yesterday I went in to Uni (going in every Tuesday and Thursday now as part of my weekly plan). I ordered Filemaker Pro V7.0 because the number of Word documents I have with various bits of information on it seems to be proliferating. A simple database will be an effective container for all these bits I think, particularly since most of them relate to each other in some way. This in itself could be a helpful process as the design of the database will require thinking about and understanding how they relate. Mmmm.

Tomorrow there is a welcome for all the new PHD students in the centre. I'm keen to meet the other PHD students starting this year. I'd almost forgotten there are to be others.

Week in review

It's been a bit of a frustrating week on the study front with all the work being done on the house. Finally, the plasterer is done and we have the rest of the house back, including my study. The dust has been persistent and completely unmanageable. Every day we have cleaned after the plasterer left and put the barest minimum of furniture back to be able to sit down. The rest of the time we've been camping in the kitchen and sleeping on the floor in the lounge room. Our vacuum cleaner kicked the bucket the day before the sanding and in protest of the tons of dust we made it suck up over a week, decided to pump dust out instead of suck dust in. The motor must have been shot 'cause it sounded like a 767's taking off in the lounge room and it shook and spat clouds of talcum powder-like dust into the surrounding air. Yesterday we bought a new vacuum cleaner and went nuts cleaning. We mopped and vacuumed three times in a row and booked the cleaner to come after that. This morning my body has stiffened and I feel really sore all over.

Nevertheless, I have done some work this week. I went in to Uni twice, attended a really useless training session in the library on online research and typed up the minutes from the panel meeting. I read a couple more interesting journal articles and have been thinking about writing an article, perhaps a popular article, on the emergence of technology before its time as per my discussion with my supervisor last week on the same topic.

Still a bit tired

After a very eventful weekend I am still a bit fragile and tired today. I have a niece and am now an Aunt. I attended the birth and was one of my sisters support persons throughout her labour. It was an awesome and life affirming experience. The sheer physicality of it is something to behold. My niece is beautiful. It feels like a whole new era.

This week has started topsy turvy. We are getting some work done on the house and it is very messy. The chasing of the electricals into the walls has resulted in vast plumes of ancient rendering and plaster dust to drift effortlessly onto every surface and into every nook and cranny. I have retreated to the kitchen behind a drop sheet to act as a barrier against the penetrating dust and it is still encroaching...

Between phone calls and dust attacks I have been re-reading my Honours thesis from years ago. It has been very interesting and I feel that I have been able to approach it with almost fresh eyes. There are some potentially useful concepts in it to follow up for my thesis. I think Kristeva's interpreation of 'chora' deserves another look in and some theories on play and gaming.