Star Wars After Lucas: A Critical Guide to the Future of the Galaxy

Star Wars After Lucas: A Critical Guide to the Future of the Galaxy

Focusing on The Force Awakens (2015), Rogue One (2016), The Last Jedi (2017), and the television series Rebels (2014–18), Dan Golding explores the significance of pop culture nostalgia in overcoming the skepticism, if not downright hostility, that greeted the Star Wars relaunch. In its granular textual readings, broad cultural scope, and insights into the complexities of the multimedia galaxy, this book is as entertaining as it is enlightening.

Partners

ACMI (Australian Centre for  the Moving Image)

Investigators

Dan Golding

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away—way back in the twenty-first century’s first decade—Star Wars seemed finished. Then in 2012 George Lucas shocked the entertainment world by selling the franchise, along with Lucasfilm, to Disney. This is the story of how, over the next five years, Star Wars went from near-certain extinction to what Wired magazine would call “the forever franchise,” with more films in the works than its first four decades had produced. Focusing on The Force Awakens (2015), Rogue One (2016), The Last Jedi (2017), and the television series Rebels (2014–18), Dan Golding explores the significance of pop culture nostalgia in overcoming the skepticism, if not downright hostility, that greeted the Star Wars relaunch. At the same time he shows how Disney, even as it tapped a backward-looking obsession, was nonetheless creating genuinely new and contemporary entries in the Star Wars universe.

A host of cultural factors and forces propelled the Disney-engineered Star Wars renaissance, and all figure in Golding’s deeply informed analysis: from John Williams’s music in The Force Awakens to Peter Cushing’s CGI face in Rogue One, to Carrie Fisher’s passing, to the rapidly changing audience demographic. Star Wars after Lucas delves into the various responses and political uses of the new Star Wars in a wider context, as in reaction videos on YouTube and hate-filled, misogynistic online rants. In its granular textual readings, broad cultural scope, and insights into the complexities of the multimedia galaxy, this book is as entertaining as it is enlightening, an apt reflection of the enduring power of the Star Wars franchise. Published by the University of Minnesota Press

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Superheroes: Creative Force, Cultural Zeitgeist and Transmedia Phenomenon

Superheroes: Creative Force, Cultural Zeitgeist and Transmedia Phenomenon

The project explores the historic, creative and artistic development of the superhero across multiple media.

Partners

ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) 

 

This research is supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council’s Linkage program (LP150100394)

Investigators

Angela Ndalianis
Liam Burke  
Ian Gordon (National University of Singapore)
Elizabeth McFarlane (University of Melbourne)
Wendy Haslem (University of Melbourne)

The figure of the superhero has loomed in the popular imagination for generations, providing a common language for understanding the diversity of lived human experience. This research project is an Australian Research Council funded Linkage project that focuses on the phenomenon of the superhero figure from its beginnings up to its contemporary manifestation. The project explores the historic, creative and artistic development of the superhero across multiple media.

Outcomes: 3 anthologies, edited journal, public events and 2 international conferences, a VR experience at ACMI – Superheroes: Realities Collide – at ACMI, and Cleverman: the Exhibition at ACMI in December 2018.

Traditional and non-traditional research outcomes have included the Cleverman: The Exhibition at ACMI; the Superheroes: Realities Collide VR experience at ACMI Screen Worlds, created by Visitor Vision; two major conferences Superhero Identities and Superheroes Beyond; the Senses of Cinema dossier on Australian Superheroes and the ground-breaking television series, Cleverman; and the edited collections The Superhero Symbol: Media, Culture, and Politics (Rutgers University Press, 2019) and Superheroes Beyond: Wider critical perspectives on a transcendent archetype (University of Texas Press, in press 2020)

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Imagining the Impossible: The Fantastic as Media Entertainment and Play

Imagining the Impossible: The Fantastic as Media Entertainment and Play

This is a Danish funded network of researchers (Danish, UK, US, Australia) working with media fictions. The network asks why the fantastic has exploded in contemporary entertainment, how we create, design, and engage with the fantastic, and why the fantastic is important for human existence.

Partners

Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond

The Danish Independent Research Fund

Investigators

Angela Ndalianis 

Rikke Schubart (University of Southern Denmark)

Amanda Howell (Griffith University) 

Anita Nell Bech Albertsen (University of Southern Denmark)

Jakob Ion Wille (The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts)

Jesper Juul (The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts)

Cristina Bacchilega (University of Hawaii), Marc Malmdorf Andersen (Aarhus University)

 Margrethe Bruun Vaage (University of Kent)

Mathias Clasen (Aarhus University) 

Sara Mosberg Iversen (University of Southern Denmark)

Stephen Joyce (Aarhus University)

Stephanie Green (Griffith University)

 

Led by Associate Rikke Schubart (University of Southern Denmark) Imagining the Impossible This is a Danish funded network of researchers (Danish, UK, US, Australia) working with media fictions and production design in television, film, video games, and literature.

Investigators adopt an interdisciplinary approach and apply theories and methods from tradition media/film/TV/VR fields while also engaging in audience observation and biometric measuring (e.g. heart rate, eye-tracking), and theories of embodiment, particularly as applied to engagement with the experience of the fantastic in VR.

Today, the fantastic reigns supreme in entertainment. However, we lack research in why it appeals to a broad audience, why the genre exploded after the turn of the millennium, and – our key question – why and how the fantastic invites us into play.  

We ask why and how the fantastic appeals and if the fantastic is especially suited to ask questions about human existence, pressing questions in times of ecological crisis. Our aim is to establish an interdisciplinary task force that can create a shared theoretical platform for a study of the fantastic. 

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Play It Again: Preserving Australian videogame history of the 1990s

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Play It Again: Preserving Australian video game history of the 1990s

This project documents, preserves, and exhibits digital cultural heritage by recovering the history of Australian made videogames of the 1990s, preserving significant local digital game artefacts currently at risk, and investigating how these can be exhibited as playable software using the newest emulation techniques.

Partners

ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image)
AARNet
UNESCO PERSIST
OpenSLX 
GmbH

This project is supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council Linkage Program.

Investigators

Melanie Swalwell (TMT)
Angela Ndalianis (TMT)
Helen Stuckey (RMIT)
Denise de Vries (Flinders University)

Play It Again: Preserving Australian videogame history of the 1990s is a project funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage grant (2019-21) and led by Melanie Swalwell. The other chief investigators include Angela Ndalianis (TMT), Helen Stuckey (RMIT) and Denise de Vries (Flinders University).

Play It Again documents, preserves, and exhibits digital cultural heritage, focusing on Australian videogames of the 1990s. The challenge of preserving and accessing complex digital cultural heritage such as software is one that collecting institutions worldwide are facing.

Partnering with the Australian Centre for the Image, AARNet, UNESCO PERSIST and OpenSLX GmbH, this project addresses the challenge of digital heritage by recovering the history of Australian made videogames of the 1990s, preserving significant local digital game artefacts currently at risk, and investigating how these can be exhibited as playable software using the newest emulation techniques. 

The project will generate new knowledge needed by government, museums and industry to inform future strategy and infrastructure investment aimed at making a range of digital cultural heritage available to the public.

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Experiencing space: sensory encounters from Baroque Rome to neo-baroque Las Vegas

Experiencing space: sensory encounters from Baroque Rome to neo-baroque Las Vegas

The project examines how Las Vegas is emblematic of the return of baroque aesthetics that have been nurtured by consumer culture, multi-media conglomeration and digital technology. 

Partners

This project is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts Discovery program.

Investigators

Angela Ndalianis (TMT)
Lisa Beaven (La Trobe University)

Experiencing space: sensory encounters from Baroque Rome to neo-baroque Las Vegas examines how Las Vegas is emblematic of the return of a baroque aesthetics that has been nurtured by consumer culture, multi-media conglomeration and digital technology. The project develops a new methodology for the study of baroque and neo-baroque cultures grounded in sensory and spatial approaches.

It examines how the metropolis as represented in the extreme by Las Vegas in the C21st gives new expression to the structural and formal qualities of the historical baroque, as represented by C17th Rome. The research has been funded by the ARC Discovery Projects Scheme, and Angela Ndalianis and Lisa Beaven (La Trobe University) are co-investigators. Outcomes have included article and book publications, presentations, and symposia.

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