space between :: home

Honululu . Ann Arbour . Halle . Canberra

Thursday 27 June 2002   More news from Canberra...

As you're probably all aware we in Canberra were funded by Student Services to purchase a digital camera for the Space Between project and over the past few weeks have been having fun with it. These are a few piccies of some of us who are involved in the project. The photos of the rest were so bad I was forbidden to post them. (Oh...but how I was tempted!).

We're on mid-semester (Winter) break and have taken a few days to catch our breath. When we come together again we'll start posting images of our work-in-progress.

Monday 03 June 2002   Manisha writes from Canberra...

It was in the middle of February in 1999, I had just taken an eleven-hour flight and I was really tired. But my journey was not over yet. I picked up my luggage and passed through customs with a scrutinizing look from the customs officer, who went through my bags, which contained a few tools that I was carrying with me. On other circumstances these items would have been classified as suspicious but I was going to be an art student therefore I was let through. I spent the next few minutes rushing and making my way through the ever so busy Sydney airport trying to make it to the domestic terminal where I was to catch the connecting flight to Canberra. I finally did manage to make my way - just in time to catch the flight and found myself seated and buckled up all over again, waiting to take off. Once air born my introduction to this new land I shall call home for the next three years so began.

As I sat back in my window seat and watched, I was confronted with a sensation of "vastness". Land seemed to be endless even from an aerial view. My preconceived notions of Australia being of big thriving cities of excitement and great things was over ruled with mass areas of land. The big cities of course were there but what was greater was what was around it, the land. I was overwhelmed by it all and did not know what to make of it at the time, and found myself spending the next three years finding out.

My name is Manisha Gunawardena. I was born in Sri Lanka, a small island country situated to the south of India. My immediate family consists of my father, mother, a younger sister and myself. We call ourselves Sri Lankan Sinhalese, and belong to the majority of the country's population. Most of my childhood and adolescent years were spent growing up in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. During this time I was made to absorb the surrounding culture which was known to be typically Sri Lankan in its nature, and realised little else that there was to be known about the diversity of other life styles apart from my own country and region. It was not until I became completely removed from it and could stand back to take another point of view that I began to comprehend, understand and fully accept my own culture and its origins.

Australia as I know it is multicultural in its nature. The diversity of people, lifestyles and cultures that exists is numerous. With a good command of the English language I found it rather easy and pleasant to blend in to the life style that is known to be Australian. That is to mention little about the understanding of the traditions of mispronunciation, beer and drinking etc. but none the less I find it rather forgiving in the nature of life.

Being here in this land, surrounded by its vastness, the freedom and the endless possibilities I have come to realise a great many things. I have come to question my origins and individuality as a Sri Lankan identity. As I was questioned initially and was made to talk about my home and where I came from I began realise more about myself and the culture I claim to be from more vividly. And the easy acceptance and the freedom of the land encouraged me to plunge into the study of it.

I have spent the last three years pondering and researching my origins. I must admit that I have come to learn more during these years than I have done for the last decade or more so being in Si Lanka itself and in the process may have conjured some interest in some others as well. It has been most important for me to have started this journey of understanding an identity and nationality that a person so claims for themselves, but to surpass that is the place where I am at now and that has made me see and revisit my roots and brought me to a better understanding of myself and the people I come from.

My work is a reflection of experiences that I have just briefly explained. The work proposal that I have included in the package that was mailed to all the universities involved in the space between project, is the significance based on the context of what has been written above.

My intention is to use an extremely white and very translucent porcelain body known as Southern Ice to slip cast forms that I have designed on a 3D modelling software called form Z. The work is intended to be an installation.

At the moment I am amidst solving a few technical issues as they seem to come hand in hand with new technologies but nontheless the work is still going ahead and I welcome and greatly appreciate any input or questions on the matter.

Manisha

Wednesday 15 May 2002   Forum Fixed

A couple of technical problems on the Forum have been sorted out. Thanks to those concerned for letting us know. Now that everything is sweetness and light, go ahead and knock yourselves out.. post something for the world to read...

Sunday 21 April 2002   ...spaced out

I thought it would be interesting to see where the space between exists on the web.
I think the answer is spaced out. – Keiko Ohnuma, Honululu

The Space Between Literature and Culture 1914-1945
The Space Between is a society for the study of literature and culture between the wars which provides an interdisciplinary forum for discussion and research of overlooked texts, understudied authors and new approaches to traditionally cano nical texts. We also encourage fresh examination of art, society and culture illuminating the interwar period.

The society sponsors an annual conference, a journal, a listserv, and an annotated list of websites for literary research, including a "link of the month" award.

Web site for Space Between Concepts.
A web design studio in Portland, Oregon...
We specialize in custom design and full site creation targeted at artists, musiucians, and small to medium sized businesses.

The space between love and passion.
Web site of 17-year-old Aoki, a diary chronicling his cyber-fetishes, friendships, and his obsession with a girl named Karen.

Web site of Tom Jaeger
25, born in Munich, a marketing student who likes M.C. Escher.

The Space Between
Pauline Oliveros, accordion; Dana Reason, piano; Philip Gelb, shakuhachi
The Space Between trio formed in the winter, 1996 when the Dana Reason/Philip Gelb duet invited Pauline Oliveros to join them for a concert in San Francisco. Utilizing a unique combination of Just intonation accordion with shakuhachi and piano immediately puts the trio in a special sonic space. The trio employs timbre and texture as their main structural units for composition and improvisation. As a result the discrepency in tuning systems of the instruments becomes an advantage rather than a disadvantage. Since the three members live in different cities, performances have been sporadic; highlights include the Opus 415 festival in San Francisco, Spruce Street Forum in San Diego and a two night stint at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies where they were joined by Barre Phillips on bass.

A site that deals with UFO sightings
channeling, planetary vortexes, mysticism, astrology, ascension, archangel metatron... and the like.

A sort of communal diary site by people who sound like they are smoking too much drugs.

A page that describes the importance of kerning the space between letters in a typeface,

This Space Between Us
Synopsis:
Two years after his wife's death, Alex's once promising filmmaking career in L.A. is at a standstill. After being pushed over the edge by useless meetings with brainless producers, Alex takes off in his Dodge Dart to San Francisco with little more than a tape recording of his wife's last phone message and the will to re-discover himself.

Dave Matthews Band - The Space Between
You cannot quit me so quickly
Is no hope in you for me
No corner you could squeeze me
But I got all the time for you, love
The Space Between
The tears we cry
Is the laughter keeps us coming back for more
The Space Between
The wicked lies we tell
And hope to keep us safe from the pain

Interdisciplinarity : The Meme for The Space Between the Books
A Qualitative Probe of Cyberspace Toward Understanding The Knowledge-Building Imperative of Librarianship
by Joanne Twining Williams
Generating Theory: THE NEED TO KNOW

The research community seeks a new way to know, a sort of broad, inclusive, holistic understanding memed from Julie Thompson Klein's synthetic Interdisciplinarity. (1990, 195) Prefix debate aside, librarianship has assumed interdisciplinarity is a logical way of knowing that is proper to the domain of information and therefore of general and common interest to the disciplines. While the disciplines may turn to librarianship for interdisciplinary guidance, librarianship must turn to information for clues to its understanding. This analysis seeks understanding by probing a dataset mined from the Internet newsgroups. The dataset is analyzed to reveal memotypical aspects of the concept "interdisciplinarity" by looking at its contextual use, and seeks to determine if online use agrees with Klein's definition. It is assumed understanding will be relevant to discovery and pertinent to the development of the concept of metalibrarianship.

Colour categorization and the space between perception and language.
Dedrick, Don (1997) Behavioural and Brain Sciences 20(2):187-188.
Full text available as: HTML

Abstract
We need to reconsider and reconceive the path that will take us from innate perceptual saliencies to basic (and perhaps other) colour language. There is a space between the perceptual and the linguistic levels that needs to be filled by an account of the rules that people use to generate relatively stable reference classes in a social context.

 

Tuesday 09 April 2002   ...in case you were wondering

If you want to reply to any of the postings in Forum, you need to login when you get to the forum page. To login, you need to have created a forum account. You can do this at the Forum page also.

 

Monday 08 April 2002   ...Space Between website

Hi all,
Every-one was keen to have a space between to represent the space between project, SO, we here at Canberra had a brainstorming session and come up with the following plan.

Aims of the Website

Facilities of space between

Forum

Chat room

Webcam

Critique

Facilitate ongoing critiques of the projects works-in-progress. The idea was for one of the four Universities to put their project up (as a whole) on the website for a crit session. The critique page would facilitate a space for pictures and communications of ideas, where the project was up to and any ongoing research. The other three groups would, (over a two to three week period), critique the work. The critique page would facilitate these communication.

Exhibition

We also talked about have a more static page for each individual University which was linked from this space between part of the site. We talked about what we would like to see on a page/pages about Australia/ANU.

We came up with:
Having a page that would represent each of us students involved in the project. Pictures and a blurp about who we are and where we come from. Web links to sites in Australia that may be of interest to you guys, that would show a bit more about where we are positioned environmentally, culturally, socially etc. Page for images which would show the works in progress for the project. 'What's hot this week' page showing current issues, general interest, personal stories and/or exhibitions.

We envisaged each university having it's own static page. We did not know how this would take shape. Whether you would create your own static page and we all link through the space between or if you wanted to send the information to us and we put it into a standard format.

This, of course, will also be a work-in-progress and part of the project. Would love to hear what you think and if there are others interested in working collaboratively on this part of the project.

Cheers and warm wishes to colleagues and collaborators.

 

Sunday 07 April 2002   ...posting to this page

Things are slowly coming together. If you would like to post news of the project at your University to this page, send an email to Avi avi@avicam.com and I'll post it up. Soon the blog will up and running so you'll be able to post direct.
For general discussion and sharing ideas etc, the Forum is the place to go or if you prefer real-time, there's the Chat.

cheers folks
Avi

 

Thursday 05 April 2002   ...space between is launched

Move over Avicam, space between website has now been launched. The site is part of the project and as the days, weeks, months go by you will see ideas unfold as each of the new areas is completed. Today is the release of the Forum where brainstorming sessions, thoughts and ideas from all involved can be read and discussed. So, whether your part of the project or just coming along for the ride, hold on to your hats, we're now taking off.

 

Wednesday 04 April 2002   ...incoming

Dear readers, things will be looking very different here. Avicam's regular edition will be taking a backseat for a time, while we are involved in a new project called space between.

If you're sitting comfortably, I'll explain. It all started with a discussion between four ceramic artists', in four different universities, in four different parts of the world, about the ways in which there could be collaborations/connections between themselves and their students ..... and they came up with space between.

space between will showcase artists, students and their work from the far flung corners of the globe, and will give them the space between to connect and collaborate via forums, chat server, virtual exhibition and the space to critique one another's work.

Soon, Janet DeBoos (Department Head, NITA, Canberra) will be writing all about it, far more eloquently than your humble scribe here. You'll also soon be reading tomes from the other department heads:-
Antje Scharfe, Burg Giebichenstein, Halle, Germany
Suzanne Wolfe, University of Hawai'i, Honolulu,USA
and Georgette Zirbes, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan,USA
and their students.