Colonial Exploitation observed through the Royal Commission into Papua (1907)

“Keeping Abernethy’s analysis in mind, assess the extracts from the Royal Commission into Papua (1907). Provide some background to the annexation of New Guinea and analyse whether the Australians were seeking to protect, advance or exploit the people of Papua New Guinea.” 

The Melanesian nation of Papua New Guinea was a central discussion point for Australia in the early 1900s. Utilising the 1907 documentation of the Australian government’s Royal Commission into Papua as a lens to glimpse back into Australian ambitions for their territory in Papua, an idea of their true desires can be discerned. Approaching the Royal Commission with the observations historian David Abernathy made regarding the questionable morality of colonialism, it can be extracted that above all else Australia had a vested interest in profiting off of Papuan exploits.

Who Holds Power in the Celebrity-Fandom Dynamic?

Beneath the Hanging Rock | Landscape & Aussie Cinema

The vastness of her rolling plains and harshness of her dense forests is one of the most central components of Australia’s national identity, and as such it is unsurprising to see landscape be a point of such symbolic prominence within the Australian cinema scene. Golden soil, boundless plains, beauty rich and rare in a home girt by sea – Australia’s heart is in its land. It is a wilderness untamed, rough and barren. In regards to landscape, Australian cinema primarily uses the rougher inland territories and bushland as a thematic juxtaposition against the westernised urban civilisation which has cut itself off from the voice of the outback. The colonial culture of British descent is painted as an unwelcome Other within the horizon. To explore this, I will draw upon two Australian films that place a particular thematic focus on the incorporation of landscapes depicted within. Most specifically, on how the bush and similar locations are utilised to stand in objection to urbanisation and project a consciousness that rejects westernisation.

PR response to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power station incident [2016]

Originally written 2016

In 2011 the worst nuclear accident this side of the 20^th century took place when a tsunami swept through the ‘Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant’ sending three of their six reactors into meltdown. The responses of both the Japanese Government and the facility’s owner the Tokyo Electric Power Company to the incident relit the fires of an already omnipresent mistrust of the potential danger presented by nuclear energy in the event anything were to go wrong.  This essay will illustrate how the Japanese government’s use of an energy source that they did not fully understand the potential environmental and health risks of is an example of Beck’s theory of the Risk Society. Alongside that, it will look at the way that both organisations, at least for a time, refused to take any responsibility and admit their wrongdoing by neglecting to look at themselves through the lens of Critically Reflective Practice and subsequently changing their social and energy policies in response.

JJMM: Homemade Chef

all media self-produced by the group unless stated otherwise

Homemade Chef is our way of welcoming newcomers into the world of cooking, guided by a game design roadmap and elements of online community

Statistics, Superiority & Self-Worth

all media content produced by myself unless otherwise stated

It’s a technological world. We are digital natives. The overhanging presence of the deified internet is not something we grapple with understanding anymore, it’s a ubiquitous, organic component of what it now means to be human.

A natural side effect of this, however, is that people are placing more of themselves in the web. We situate a piece of our own consciousness within the digital realm. With the advent of Web 2.0 online services expanded in order to accommodate ease of movement and place priority on a two-way user interaction (Murugesan 2007, p.34), encompassing the rudimentary early internet’s evolution into a fully flourished media ecosystem. In simpler vocabulary this speaks of websites with the freedom to submit our own participatory content at will. However this deepened user experience means an increased blurring between the real and digital borders. It creates a more potent brand of digital citizenship where humans are legitimately stepping into the wired world as if its communities constituted a tangible nation. The internet is no longer as centred on anonymous usernames as it used to be, instead focused on building a public, recognisable presence –  a digital humanity, if you will.

Step into the nExt world.

Skull Collecting, a Rural Kid’s Game

All media content produced by myself

Perhaps as a more fringe reflection of the gamification topic, I’d like to very briefly recount the experience of introducing game elements into the act of collecting animal skulls in my rural youth, and the way these systems influenced motivation and participation.

The top shelf of my skull cabinet featuring my favourites.

Flash back to year 10 of my highschool life. I and a friend I’ll refer to as Jayden for the sake of anonymity were both incredibly outdoorsy guys. In that time it was as if we existed for the sole purpose of adventure. Every weekend we’d be out exploring the bushland around us for hours on end, even during study periods or lunch breaks on many a school day as well. One day after stumbling upon a fox carcass I had the idea of severing the head and coming back to collect the skull later. This marked the beginning of an obsession that would consume our lives for the next few years.

Gamifying My Creative Cycle

All media content produced by myself

As any self-deprecating creative would tell you, a true creator is marked by having more stagnated drafts than finished products. And while this little piece of ‘insight’ comes in the form of an inside joke, there is an unfortunate amount of truth to it. After neglecting it for almost an entire year it was eventually made clear that my time-worn “media projects” notebook had just about reached the end of its useful lifespan. This was back in 2017, when I had just begun hearing the idea of “gamification” ring out in my university classes.

My old partner. Rest in Peace 2014-2018

[Next Natures]

“The Two Sights of Surveillance”

Originally published 28 September 2017