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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60+ Online: Enhancing Social Inclusion through Digital Stories and Social Media Participation

60+ Online: Enhancing Social Inclusion through Digital Stories and Social Media Participation

Seniors are amongst the most digitally excluded in Australia. The 60+ Online project fostered digital inclusion amongst 22 Australian seniors (64-86 years), with varied digital skills, and socio-economic/cultural backgrounds.

Partners

Telstra Digital Inclusion Index

Boroondara City Council

Knox City Council

Investigators

Max Schleser (TMT)
Diana Bossio
Anthony McCosker
Hilary Davis

Seniors are amongst the most digitally excluded in Australia. The 60+ Online project fostered digital inclusion amongst 22 Australian seniors (64-86 years), with varied digital skills, and socio-economic/cultural backgrounds. 

Within workshops, seniors were encouraged to draw upon personal and community interests to inform storyboarding and digital story development. Digital stories were generated using iPads and smartphones, and edited using Adobe Premiere Clip. Social media sites Facebook and Instagram, facilitated shared digital skills development, supported by workshop participants and researchers. Regardless of skills at outset, every senior produced their own digital story. These were showcased at festivals, City Council events, and hosted on YouTube: 

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OPERA – Free from Violence

OPERA - Free from Violence

The Preventing Elder Abuse project develops and evaluates a community-based digital intervention into ageism as one of the primary drivers of elder abuse.

Partners

Department of Health and Human Services

Investigators

Max Schleser 
Diana Bossio
Anthony McCosker
Hilary Davis

The Preventing Elder Abuse project develops and evaluates a community-based digital intervention into ageism as one of the primary drivers of elder abuse. The digital intervention will be informed by a direct participation consultation process, which will contribute to the development of experiences of ageism as an evidence base around elder abuse. The evidence base will be used by Swinburne University researchers to produce a digital intervention, developed through a co-design model working with older people in the Eastern regions of Melbourne. 

The outcome of the digital intervention will be to contribute to and enhance the existing community education packages delivered by ECLC on elder abuse.  In addition to this, the co-created digital intervention will be shared more broadly across the sector to assist in building capacity of the Eastern Region workforce to better understand the links between the drivers of elder abuse and elder abuse.

Swinburne researchers will also lead an evaluation of the project to ensure sustainability and scalability of the project for future funding opportunities, and potential expansion of phase two to included targeted messages for specific cohorts across the community.

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New Media, Ageing, and Migration

New Media, Ageing, and Migration

This research project explores an often overlooked aspect of new media and migration. Working with Melbourne’s older Irish community the project explores how older people who migrated before the availability of new media make use of digital communications technologies.  

FPartners

Centre for Transformative Media Technologies

Investigators

Liam Burke

Modern Irish history has been marked by emigration, with the Global Financial Crisis prompting another mass departure. Yet, the Irish media was quick to suggest that modern expatriates will not be ‘lost’, when they can so easily be tagged, tweeted, and skyped. Liam directed the documentary short film @HOME as part of the New Media, Ageing, and Migration research team, which he leads. The film was screened in competition at a number of international film festivals and was broadcast on Irish television. 

This documentary short film focuses on those Irish people who moved to Australia before the availability of new media. Stretching back to the 1940s @HOME provides a loving portrait of those brave emigrants who moved to the other side of the world when contact with Ireland was limited to occasional letters and a phone call once a year. 

Featuring groups such as Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, Cumann Gaeilge na hAstraile, and the Irish Australian Athletic Association, this documentary follows these older migrants as they engage with new media and the web as a means to narrow the distance between Ireland and Australia. From these unique stories and experiences a picture of Melbourne’s Irish community emerges, yet across each account there is a desire to connect a community whose stories have all too often gone untold.

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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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