METIOR
Murdoch Empire Telegraph & Indian Ocean Review
FREE
Edition #4 May 2012
Murdoch Empire Telegraph & Indian Ocean Review – Since 1975 Edition 4, May 2012 Metior acknowledges that this is and always will be Aboriginal land. Metior is a Murdoch University student publication. For latest Guild news, events and info go to www.the-guild.com.au Find us on Facebook www.facebook.com/metiormagazine Want to catch up on previous issues? Go to www.the-guild.com.au/metior Editor Phoebe Phillips
Copy Editor Nikita Wyllie
Graphic Design Karmen Lee
Our undying everlasting gratitude to... Dylan Whiffler Nikita Wyllie Scott-Patrick Mitchell Declan Luketina Krause Komics Emily Paull Shaun Tan Hannah Muir Joshua Sweetman Oscar Brittain Brad De Abreu Ashley Olman Agnes Gajic Zane Hoft
Photographers Daley King Tanya Voltchanskaya Daniel Kwabena Craig Joe Cel Daley Kinga Cover Photo Tanya Voltchanskaya
Metior’s deadlines for the next three editions of 2012 are 13th July, 17th August, 14th September In future, if you’d like to contribute writing, photography, poetry, illustrations or ideas please email us at metior@the-guild.com.au Editor Phoebe Phillips
Advertising Kingsley Norris
Email metior@the-guild.com.au
Phone 9360 7634
Address Murdoch University Guild of Students 90 South Street, Murdoch WA 6150
Email k.norris@the-guild.com.au
Disclaimer Metior is published by the students of Murdoch University, under the governance of Murdoch University Guild of Students. Content should not be regarded as the opinions of the Guild unless specifically stated. The Guild accepts no responsibility for the accuracy of any of the opinions or information contained within the magazine.
CONTENTS From The President............................................................. 2 Editorial................................................................................ 2 Creative Writing: Man Abandons Earth 2512............................................... 11 The Year is 2512................................................................ 13 The Yamanote Line................................................... 21 & 23 Lifestyle The Future of Festivals........................................................ 5 It’s not Science Fiction, its Science Prediction.................... 6 Cyber Games...................................................................... 15 Is Living Art the future?..................................................... 19 Chatting to the Vice-Chancellor........................................ 25 The Illustrator, The Music Maker & The Thinker............... 29 Al Gore’s iPod..................................................................... 31 Photography: Tanya Voltchanskaya.................................................. 4 & 30 Joe Cel........................................................................... 8 & 9 Ashley Olman.................................................................... 14 Daniel Kwabena Craig........................................20, 22 & 24 Daley King.......................................................................... 32 Poetry Focal................................................................................... 27 Ark Matter.......................................................................... 27 Visual Art Shaun Tan.................................................................... 3 & 28 Krause Komics............................................................. 7 & 33 Joshua Sweetman.............................................................. 10 Oscar Brittain..................................................................... 12 Dylan Whiffler.................................................................... 26
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FROM THE PRESIDENT Words by Bec Thompson The future is a pretty broad concept. And by ‘pretty broad’, I mean infinitely huge. Is it set? Does it change? Can we bring about change? Chaos theory suggests we don’t have any choice...But every choice. Change is here, it’s happening. Affecting the future. Who’s future? Yours? Mine? Everyone’s? Could my editorial be altering the future, one reader at a time? And is the answer a resoundingly dubious ‘maybe’? Yikes. I reckon the best way to move forward is to learn from the past. So I hope future Guilds look back on these years critically and reflectively to face the challenges of their day. I also hope future student presidents have access to cloning technology, caffeine implants, teleportation, and some kind of ethical way to read minds. It would go a long way! Right now is important too. And right now we are changing the future for our students. One appeal, one meeting, one conversation, one campaign, one voice, one magazine at a time. One butterfly, one storm. It can make all the difference.
EDITORIAL Words by Phoebe Phillips I was never good at parking. Attempting to nose my folk’s oversized van into one of Fremantle’s minuscule parking bays seemed more like a competitive sport then a skill. I could swear the old lady on the Zimmer frame hobbling down the footpath had score cards hidden in her jacket and the mother pushing her kids in a pram was secretly filming me for the next episode of Funniest Home Videos. I promise you, as soon as I would begin to reverse, the gleaming four wheel drives on either side of me would start leaning in and the white lines of the parking bay would shift inward like some weird freak of nature. So when Metior began looking at ideas about the future for the current edition my mind got ticking. I could already see my space ship pulling of the slickest parallel park imaginable. The old lady’s Zimmer frame would levitate so fast she wouldn’t even have time to stick around and watch. As for the mother, her kids would be chilling in air born space suits around her head while she flew Superman style down the street. When I say street, I mean a pimping florescent green walkway, with balls of light floating majestically along to light the way. The shop fronts are gleaming as people with long Harry-Potter-meets-Batman type robes buy sci-fi gadgets to fit out their space ships, before heading off to the moon for the Labour Day long weekend. I took the liberty of sharing my image with my house mates only to be hit back with ‘what about peak oil? Or environmental degradation? Or global warming?’ It’s true, the notion of where we’ll be in 1,000 years or even 100 years has got a few more variables other than whether my spacesuit should be florescent green or more of a demure silver. In this edition of Metior, we have taken the idea of the future and run with it. We have looked at the good, the bad and the fictional as well as talking to different key figures about what they predict. For me personally, it has been reassuring more than anything. I mean, who cares about parallel parking when you drive a space ship?
PHATTER THAN FACEBOOK Hey peeps. Metior is using its Facebook page to put up notices about edition themes, writers nights and submission details. Get involved: www.facebook.com/metiormagazine if you aren’t connected to Facebook email us for more info - metior@the-guild.com
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ARTIST Shaun Tan ‘Anthropologists’ from The Bird King, courtesy of Window Hollow Books.
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THE FUTURE OF FESTIVALS
Words by Agnes Gajic & Photography by Tanya Voltchanskaya It’s a 39°C day and you’ve purposely situated yourself under unwavering sunlight. You’re thirsty, your bladder is expanding and the knucklehead rubbing up against you is exuding sweat at a rate you did not imagine possible. The air is thick and your sunburn stings like a blazer made of bees. But none of this matters because your favourite band is about to set their amps to 11 and blow your brain. Welcome to the world of music festivals. Every year, thousands of psyched up punters don their rock tees and commit themselves to anywhere from 12 hours to seven days of live tunes. Music festivals can become a temporary home to as little as 800 fans, such as Western Australia’s own Wave Rock festival. Or they can become their own rock-city like California’s notorious festival Coachella which welcomes over 60,000 people each day. But after the amps have been unplugged, after the crowds have returned home and after the musicians have caught (or missed) their flights, all that remains is a myriad of rubbish, a trampled festival ground and a colossal electricity bill. Thankfully there is a way out of this junkyard jungle, and it’s all about marrying the concept of sustainable development with the conventional music festival we all know and love. Local community developer Shani Graham, owner of the Painted Fish eco-retreat and host of the annual Hulbert Street Sustainability Fiesta, has much experience in organising sustainable events. “Considering sustainability when organising events is essential. When people attend an event which inflicts a low environmental impact, it gets people thinking about how they can implement sustainability in their everyday lives,” she said. Organising an event with sustainability in mind can be somewhat challenging, but it only gets easier as people become more accepting of the buzz word that frequents our 21st century vocabulary. Shani implemented a sustainability contract for the Hulbert Street Festival by banning plastic, glass, cans and bottles, hence making all waste compostable. All festival food and drink vendors had to meet the terms with this contract and, lo and behold, there was full compliance. Shani prefers to think of waste management as ‘resource recovery’. With 6,500 people over two days attending the festival, the council suggested that she rent an extra 30 bins. Only six recycling bins were used and a butt load of compost was created, which she is still using on her 5 community garden.
While a local street festival is quite different to a global gathering such as Coachella, similar sustainability strategies and indicators can be used. “Waste reduction and management is a massive part of large music festivals and it is easy to measure,” said Shani. “Transport is a big thing and sustainable transport options should be available and easily accessible to all patrons. Carbon offsets can make a big contribution.” Kudos goes out to the Peats Ridge festival in New South Wales, which is officially acknowledged by the United Nations for their music and environmental initiative. Just about all of the packaging used at this festival is composted onsite. The eco living space teaches festival goers about sustainable living. Their signage is made out of what is generally considered ‘rubbish’. The whole festival is powered off solar energy and biodiesel from waste soy oil. Dom Simper from the band Tame Impala has been around the traps, attending hundreds of festivals. Dom believes the nature of the humble music festival is changing and the role digital and social media is having a big influence. “I definitely think social media, technology and interactivity will be more of a driving force over the next couple of decades. You can already see it happening; the entire Coachella being broadcast on YouTube, Tupac making an appearance via hologram…” Dom admits that from what he’s seen, it can be pretty challenging staging a massive festival that cares for the environment as well. “It’s a tricky one. I imagine it’s pretty hard assembling such a large number of people in such a small confined area in a place that often doesn’t have the infrastructure to cope with such human traffic without taking its toll on the environment. I definitely think the mindset that’s out there at the moment of putting together a festival to make a quick buck has lead to the over saturation of music festivals,” he said. Despite the desire to make a ‘quick buck’, there’s also a huge demand out there from punters and festival organisers alike to create a festival experience that that protects the precious world we live in. The future of ecologically sustainable music festivals is promising; now let’s hope they can keep those damn ticket prices reasonable so we can actually attend one or two.
IT’S NOT SCIENCE FICTION, IT’S SCIENCE PREDICTION Words by Hannah Muir & Comics by Jeremy Sheehan If I’m not levitating in a levitating robot fart powered carriage with my eight levitating android offspring strapped in the back by the year 2,500, I’m going to be seriously pissed off. To be honest, I’ll be 511 by then, so I’m assuming I would have lost my license. You’ll probably be able to find me playing 3D levitating bingo at ‘Clancy’s Remember Real Fish? Pub’.
puffer to work this one out. “Internet proliferation and transhumanism, in particular the blurring of lines between human and machine, augmented reality and the start or at least development towards the technological singularity” Considering there is already a company, aptly named i-Robot, creating robots for use in homes and the military, I think we can safely bet that come 2,500 they’ll be running the show. According to Sam Davies, who is die-hard Sci-Fi fan, sustainability is nothing more than a fad (unfortunately). According to her, it ain’t got nothing “until sustainability goals become compatible with goals of capitalism, like making sustainability profitable, or if we replace a capitalist driven economy with something else”.
It is a pretty fascinating question though… What will be going on in 2,500? Levitating cars? Android hookers? Tree holograms? Will we be living on the set of Futurama? In this day and age, it seems the latest fad is sustainability. Everybody’s trying it and if you’re not, you’re just about the lamest kid on the eco block. It’s no wonder, with the ever-evident global warming beast gnawing at our atmosphere and ripping up our ozone layer. With the constant state of debate on the matter, it will be interesting to see what will become of this green earth by 2,500.
She did however turn this bleak situation into a somewhat more exciting scenario when she mentioned electric cars. It’s no levitating robot fart powered Combi, but it is far more exciting than the doomed state of the world.
I’m not one to follow science fiction as a genre. Until recently I didn’t even know the difference between a cyborg and an android (not that much really). I stumbled quite accidently across a documentary about Philip K. Dick, the ducks nuts of science fiction through the 70s. He was a fairly fruity character whose imagination was influenced by some unfortunate circumstances. Dick always felt an overwhelming sense of loss due to the death of his twin sister at just six weeks old. Then his parents broke up. He also suffered from schizophrenia. All this was creatively tied together with a love of drugs. Whatever was going on inside that man’s head manifested into over 120 short stories, ten of which have been adapted into films including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly and some other titles I had never heard of. He didn’t have much to say about sustainability and the possible state of our future globe, but he did create some nerdy android concepts that have somewhat turned into reality. All these damfangled scientific robots that look creepily too much like humans featured quite heavily throughout his work.
Sam’s theory sees this all going down by having cars “powered by outlets in your home, which are in turn powered from sustainable sources, such as wind, solar, geothermal or tidal”. Amanda Rainey is part of Swancon. Which, I’ll have you know, is Western Australia’s premier Sci-Fi convention, so she must know her shit. Her sci-cic predictions are more focused on human rights. However, similar to the sustainability situation, this doesn’t have the most prosperous future. “In 40 years time, we’ll be much more aware of human rights abuses and terrible poverty. We will be so well connected’ that we can’t ignore it. We certainly wouldn’t have solved the problem by then though”. All in all, after my little investigation into science fiction and the prospects of sustainability, I really didn’t find out much. I have no idea where we will be, if we will have trees or android hookers, but I have learnt that perhaps levitating cars would be more trouble than they’re worth. Amanda quite promptly shut me down on that one.
After learning that Philip K. Dick wasn’t just a weirdo, but also a Sci-Fi physic, I decided to get some opinions from Sci-Fi lovers (note the absence of the term ‘geek’) on what state the world will be in in 488 years. It took me a long and hard gulp on the asthma
“Not only because of the expense of the car itself, but because of all the other nightmare problems, like applying road rules to a third dimension,” she said.
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Damn it.
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PHOTOGRAPHER Joe Cel
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MAN ABANDONS EARTH 2512
Words by Oscar Brittain & Image by Joshua Sweetman The following is a clipping from the Arcturus Station Gazette from the year 2512...
about the damage it was causing the planet as early as the 1990s, but, for reasons unknown, no action was taken to rectify it.
This Thursday, May 18th 2512, marks the final day the Earth will be officially classified as habitable by the United Nations Space Command. As of 14:00 VST (Venus Standard Time) the third planet in the Sol system will, after 37 years of parliamentary debate, be removed from the list of planets fit for human habitation.
“Lord Algore preached a carbon tax throughout the 1990s,” continued Jones II, “but unfortunately, after the Lord relinquished a presidency that was rightfully his, Satan doubled back on his pledge to regulate carbon emissions and doomed us all.” The UNSC reportedly opened unofficial communications with our closest extraterrestrial neighbours, the Lombax, in the hope that some of the refugees from Earth may be eventually settled in their territory.
Accompanying the announcement, the UNSC is offering free emergency relocation and refugee status to Earth’s estimated 12 million remaining inhabitants. This has sparked an exodus of Earth citizens migrating to nearby Luna City and Venus-03.
“While the Lombax are always willing to help those in distress, what we don’t understand is why you wrecked your planet in the first place? You humans continue to prove that your stupidity is matched only by a Garble-Flax on heat,” said Lombax Ambassador, Barla-Von.
“Eventually, we have to admit that Earth is lost,” said one evacuee. “It’s just so sad, it’s not like we can reclaim it we didn’t lose it to another country. We lost it to our own incompetence and greed” While many are taking the UNSC’s offer of relocation, many remain unwilling to abandon man’s home planet.
When asked if the technologically advanced Lombax found a way to combat Global Warming, the ambassador replied “Yeah, we didn’t burn fossil fuel like monkeys.”
“My ancestors fought and died on this planet,” said activist and Earth citizen Bill Banner. “They fought against all those bastards that poisoned our own damn mother Earth”
Professor of History at Space-Edmonton University, Professor Margaret Logan argued that there must have been something unequivocally more pressing for the governments of the 21st century to attend to.
Banner’s family has long been a vocal representative of the Earth Preservation Movement.
“Studying historical documentaries such as The Simpsons reveals much of the mindset of humanity of the time,” said Professor Logan. “The truth is, humanity was under attack by a race of aliens from dark space known only as the GFC.”
“Professor Robert Revelle began measuring carbon in the atmosphere in 1957, yet it took our dumbass human race nearly 60 years of alarming data to even acknowledge there was a problem,” stated Banner. “Even then, when all the world leaders got together to nut it out, they squabbled over percentages like babies.”
Historian Dr Mohammed Gaye disagreed. “All evidence points to preparation for the release of the final instalment of the Batman franchise as being the reason climate change was outside of the public consciousness,” said Gaye. “You can’t really blame them. That trailer with Anne Hathaway as Cat Woman was awesome.”
Worshipers of the church of Algore say their sacred texts warned of this impending apocalypse. “Our lord and saviour laid down his potential presidency to leave behind a legacy of truth,” said Pope John Paul Jones II. “His sacred teachings tell of harmful spirits known only as ‘carbon emissions’ that would be defeated when all races, cultures and creeds put aside their differences to wage holy war against global warming.”
These controversial theories are contested by scholars, many of whom claim that the GFC was in-fact a man-made Frankenstein that consumed the once great empire of North America, and that Batman films were notorious for being stupid and camp.
Research indicates that mankind could have known
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THE YEAR IS 2512
Words by Bradley De Abrue & Image by Oscar Brittain The year is 2512. Earth is a safe, thriving and peaceful place. The planet is protected by a group of super human heroes. These heroes are known as the Earth Protectors.
shines and the wind blows, the Climate Child will feel Earth’s pain. The child lives strongly and she has done for many years. Henry Hunger is very similar in many ways to an animal. He has overpowering intense instincts, a keen sense of smell; he has unbeatable foraging and survival knowledge and can source food from any location on the planet earth. Unlike the other Protectors, Henry does not talk, but with his extremely heightened senses he is able to communicate with people on an intrinsic level. Henry teaches the hungry how to find and grow food and is said to have planted crops which are enough to feed the planet for 20 years.
Earth had never come under threat from outside forces, but it was the humans of the planet that destroyed everything with their greed and selfishness. Unlike humans, the Earth Protectors are not clouded by judgements and prejudices; they merely want what is best for the human race and to ensure the longevity of planet Earth. No one knows where they came from. They appeared in 2403, when a massive nuclear tsunami caused by a hole in the ozone layer defrosted their remains, which had lain dormant at the bottom of the ocean for millions of years.
The Protectors are still amazing at what they do. The Mob Master and Henry lead hoards of people on food finding missions. They go from house to house collecting excess food that each family does not need. Selflessness and sharing are traits that have been instilled in all humans.
The Protectors are connected to the Earth and its inhabitants in a supernatural way. Some say they were forged from the molten magma of the Earth’s core and frozen during the ice age. The Earth Protectors are four beings which are part human, part animal and part plant. They are the Mob Master, General Justice, the Climate Child and Henry Hunger.
Meanwhile Climate Child and General Justice are off helping to save the entire population of the rare black cockatoo. With habitat rehabilitation and constant monitoring, the black cockatoo will live for many years to come. To the Protectors ,animals are just as important as humans and all living things deserve the same treatment.
The Mob Master has the power to mobilise publics and can cause a mass flash mob in just seconds. The Master uses his powers to help out those in need of a hand, but only on a massive mob scale. With his amazing rhetoric, linguistics skills and his ability to make everyone feel needed and valued, the humans of planet Earth are all fighting to help out. Towns have been rebuilt, crops planted and the natural environment has been rehabilitated.
The massive tsunami of 2403 was a wakeup call for the people of the planet Earth. If the Protectors had not appeared, the Earth would no longer exist. They showed the world that race, colour, money, looks and power meant nothing. These are minor, selfish, individual things. The humans had no choice but to unite as one Earth.
General Justice uses music and sounds to help all who are in need of justice. With his musical ability, he is able to show the world what is truly right and what is wrong. He has eradicated the need for jails, as his music sends messages deep inside the human body and fills them with empathy like they have never felt before. The General is on a non-stop tour around the world spreading his message of love, happiness and justice to all that care to listen.
On the final day that the United Nations was the governmental ruler of the Earth, they made a statement which holds true still to today. “We must think about the future. The world exists to be carried on by future generations and if that world is gone then everything we have done up to now has been pointless. The Protectors could have been any one of us because all humans have the ability to do super amazing things. You just have to get started.”
The Climate Child is eerily in tune with nature. When the world is sick, she is sick, she feels its pain. The people of Earth now reuse and recycle everything. Harmful gases are no longer released into the world’s atmosphere and trees cover most of the planet. All energy comes from renewable, natural resources and it is said that as long as the sun
If you want to get started doing super awesome things and being “The Protectors” of the world in 2012, check out the Big Help Mob at www.bighelpmob.org volunteering@the-guild.com
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Sarana Haeata
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CYBER GAMES
Words & Photography by Ashley Olman My family is one of those sporting families; every aunt, uncle, parent, grandparent, sibling and cousin kicks or hits some kind of ball around a field. They all love it and have trophies and big egos to prove it. So for me growing up I naturally played all the ball sports, and I had a natural skill of disappointing my semi-pro family. By my mid-teens I gave up on being picked last and decided to spend my free time playing competitive video games. From memory it was Call of Duty 4 and if I remember correctly I was terrible (surprise). But I didn’t give up, I honed my skills and overcame my frustration to become a slightly above average player and god-damn was I proud. However, it would seem I was alone in my glory. Call of Duty is hardly a sport and try explaining to your parents or even your friends what it means to have a K/D ratio of 1.5 without getting dismissive or worrying looks. I longed to discover others like me, which was when I stumbled on the concept of e-sports and a game known as Starcraft. Imagine if you will, a world where video gamers have legions of fans, are paid millions of dollars and they game in huge arenas watched by tens of thousands of people. This world does exist; it exists in a distant land known to the locals as South Korea. Where Starcraft is the national sport and being a professional gamer garners both respect and admiration. E-sports are the world of professional gaming and it is growing all over the world including here in Western Australia.
Snyper started playing CSS as a teenager and decided he wanted more from the game. “Every day I would play, but it didn’t feel like playing anymore, it was more like training and I would train at least 30 to 40 hours a week”. Iain flies all over the country to compete in national tournaments for thousands of dollars. “What I really want to get out of competition is validation, for my hard work and my ability. A trophy or a medal to me is worth more than any prize pool”. This made me think there was more to the moniker e-sports, perhaps it was prophetic. The future of video games and the future of sports could be far more intertwined than I imagined. If what I saw at RFLan was anything to go by the future of competitive sport could be in video games. When an entire generation is raised on video games and not traditional sports, it would be natural for them to gravitate to competitive games as opposed to competitive sports, which they for the longest time have had no interest in. Could such a future be possible? Will we one day gather around a television and cheer our favourite video game players? I went to Associate Professor Ingrid Richardson from Murdoch University who studies video game theory to find out. Not in that extreme kind of way,” Richardson said. “Our population couldn’t support it without a total migration from traditional sports, which I don’t see happening”. At this point I was somewhat disappointed; I guess my dreams of video games being considered more than just idle hobbies for nerds in basements will remain just that, a dream. I think Richardson sensed my disappointment and she continued “Although gaming in the future will change, gaming will garner larger amounts of acceptance as the lines between the hardcore and the casual will begin to fade and virtually all people will be gamers in one way or another”. It was then I realised the future of games is not in competition, money or validation. The future of gaming is in acceptance, acceptance that we all play games whether it is Draw Something, Angry Birds or Call of Duty and realising we all play games like we all watch movies without attaching a social stigma to it. The future seems very bright after all.
The RedFlag LAN (RFLan) is the biggest video game competition in the state – 460 people descend to Curtin stadium for a 27 hour non-stop battle royale. The atmosphere is electrifying, people are yelling in both glory and defeat, others are laughing till they cry and some hold their breath in anticipation. During the preliminary rounds of Counter Strike: Source (CSS) I spotted a small gathering of gamers all watching with great reverence two men having a private match on the other side of the stadium. I went over to have a look and as I approached what I saw was no simple set up. There were banners from international tech companies, a PR/media manager, high end gaming gear was displayed everywhere and at the centre of it all was Snyper – a professional gamer, a man who lives off playing video games.
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Photo by Phoebe Phillips
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IS LIVING ART THE FUTURE? A miniature jacket grown from human and mouse cells is visually confronting. It’s what Oron Catts, the Creative Director of art and science research laboratory SymbrioticA, hopes will expand the future of artistic enquiry. Phoebe Phillips had a discussion with Oron Catts about the ideas which underpin his work.
relation to contemporary art. It is not what is driving the decisions behind the aesthetic choices of contemporary art. PP: But people are drawn to beauty. OC: People are drawn to many things. We refer to it as strategies of seduction. We just did a review of our work and looking at the strategies in which we draw people to our work. Our early work one could say was beautiful. It uses striking colours and shapes which could be seen as beautiful. It’s hard to say our more recent work is beautiful, we use other strategies to draw people such as humour and provocation.
PP: What are the ideas behind the art you create? OC: The idea is that if life is becoming a raw material, is this going to change our attitude to life across the board. As an artist, I can engage in open ended questions, rather than try and solve anything; I just expose those feelings of discomfort. My claim is that we live in a time where we don’t really have a choice in how we interact culturally. I can take cells from your body and I can culture parts of your body outside of your own body. If I have enough money and resources I can make it so that I can have more of you outside of your body, than yourself. What does that say about your concept of self? This is a field which is called tissue culture and it’s hundreds of years old, but still society has not come to terms with it. In western society, we tend to embrace technologies which remove us from our own body and our sense of mortality.
PP: Could you argue beauty can be found in violence? OC: Violence is interesting in the context of what we are doing. Some of the research we do is called tissue engineering where the idea is to grow living tissues. So within the whole idea of tissue culture and engineering, the violence is very implicit, because we know that in order to obtain the tissue, you need to penetrate the living or the dead body to obtain the cells, so the violence is very present, but quite often it is masked. A lot of our work deals with this idea of implicit or explicit violence. We did some work in Spain which contrasted the bull fighters with McDonalds. We’ve got anecdotal evidence that the more McDonalds that open up and more fast food chains open, the more resistance there is to the bull fighting. So the very ritualistic and explicit, but small scale violence of the bull fighting is being replaced by the industrial scale violence of industrial farming. It’s a conversation we need to engage in, because it’s a part of the culture we create when we engage in life.
PP: Is it because you are ‘playing God’? OC: It’s because of this term. You wouldn’t say you were ‘playing God’ when creating new computer software. Why do Biological Sciences invoke this response? PP: Because it is living. OC: Ok, so why are we allowing engineers to engage with it? I think we need to find a new cultural language that is divorced from previous debates, because maybe the idea of God is no longer appropriate to people when they engage in these discussions.
PP: Can solutions to global issues be found through artistic endeavour? OC: Expecting art to come up with a solution is stopping it for what it is doing. Art has a place in society as a function, but not a utility, and function of art is not to solve problems.
PP: So bringing these ideas to people through an artistic medium is your way of inviting these discussions? OC: Yes. I never thought my work and the work of SymbrioticA would reach where it has reached. For example, it has been submitted to the American Congress on issues of bio-ethics. I find myself giving key note addresses to scientists, philosophers, engineers and computer scientists. So people are willing to listen and be challenged by it.
PP: Do you see your work as the future of art? OC: It is a future, not the future. It is about articulating a new language that didn’t exist, that is coming into existence. SymbrioticA’s exhibition Adaptations runs from May 6th to June 10th at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Mandurah.
PP: Despite its confronting nature, do you find there is a sense of beauty in your work? OC: Beauty is one of the worst words you can use in
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20 Hannah Muir
THE YAMANOTE LINE
Words by Emily Paull & Photography by Daniel Kwabena Craig In 2012, a major electronics distributor accidentally dispatched a batch of six hundred camcorders with the technology to see through people’s clothes. By the time the error was realised, most of the cameras had been sold with no way of tracing the customers. The decision was made not to recall the products, as this could not be done without revealing the existence of the X-ray function. All documentation of the technology was destroyed. The C.E.O.’s of the firm opinion that no one will ever figure out how to activate it…
hand hold, he might have fallen. The camera slips out of his gloved hand and bounces on the floor. It beeps obediently to tell him it has stopped recording. The train has stopped somewhere in the middle of the tunnel. Lights in the carriage bounce, shake and then disappear as the electricity goes dead.
2020. Shinjuku, Japan.
“The train has stopped. We seem to be stuck in the tunnel like a turd in a…”
“What the…” says Ken. He bends down to pick up the camcorder. People in the carriage have crawled up onto their seats to look out the window at the damp walls of the tunnel. He presses record again then films the rows of turned heads.
Ken Watanabe pulls the plush hood of his parka over his ears. It muffles the buzz of traffic. Dark drizzle makes it hard to see far in front of him. He turns left and ducks into the subway. He hates confined spaces, but this is the only way to get around now. All Japan’s city streets had to be submerged just to make space for enough housing. Ken himself lives on one floor of an apartment building directly above the station. When the trains go through at all hours of the night, the floors in his bedroom vibrate gently. He cannot sleep without it and sleeps fitfully if the trains are irregular.
A woman coughs. She pulls her young daughter close to her, patting the girl’s cold pink ears soothingly. Ken smiles, and moves away. He swings himself into a vacant seat reserved for the disabled. “Must be a crash further up,” he says to the Obaasan reading in the seat next to him. She doesn’t move, maybe hasn’t heard him. If it’s not a crash, someone has jumped, but he’s not going to say that. Ken begins to play with the camera. He opens his mouth, then moves the camera in and out of it, making guttural throat sounds as if he’s trying to eat the thing. The Obaasan slides closer to the window to get away from him.
The Yamanote-Sen is always on time and people push like penguins to get on. Ken jumps through the doors as they start to close and jostles through the crowd until he finds a hand-hold. He pulls out his camcorder, a relic of the last decade. It is clunky and takes hours to charge, but he likes it. He trains the lens onto himself and looks down the barrel.
It’s then that he notices the button. It hides under the crease of the viewfinder, a switch of sorts. Ken can only reach it by sliding his fingernail underneath and flicking. The camera whirs, but then falls silent. Disappointed, Ken presses record again and turns to the Obaasan next to him.
“Monday,” he says. “Skipping school again. You know, it’s getting hard to find film for this thing, even on the net.”
“AH!” he yells. The Obaasan is wearing nothing but her knickers.
A man in a suit turns to look over his shoulder at Ken and sniffs pointedly. He pulls a surgical mask out of his pocket and slips the straps over both ears before disembarking at Ueno Station. Ken shrugs, and rolls his eyes at the lens.
Ken goes bright pink. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!” he says. She raises her eyebrow, thin and drawn on in a blue pencil. “Leave me alone!” she barks. Ken nods. He rubs at the spot on his parka that hides his burning red ear and moves away.
“Pollution’s gotten pretty bad in the city. When it rains, the rain is heavy with grit. When the sun shines, we have trouble seeing much light through the fog. It’s always either really hot or really cold. Lately, it’s also been really dark. I keep sleeping late by accident and missing my first class.”
The doors to the compartment whoosh open, a body taking a breath. A man down the front of the compartment stands on a chair. “Listen here everyone! I’ve been to the front of the train. The driver is not doing this. It’s the train. The solar panels that power it have busted or
Train wheels shriek as the carriage stops suddenly, hurling Ken forwards and then back. If not for the
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THE YAMANOTE LINE
Words by Emily Paull & Photography by Daniel Kwabena Craig something. He’s trying to message the transportation authority to get us out, but they’re not answering. Does anyone have a Smartphone? We need to check the news headlines or call someone who can!”
lengths of desperation that he will be driven to. He does not want to know what he is capable of. All Ken Watanabe wants is to rewind his life to a few moments ago when he was no more than a horny sixteen year old. If he cannot do that, then all he wants is sleep.
Ken brings the camera up just in time to film the tail end of this speech. As he pans across the man’s body, his clothes peel off like they were a hologram. His fingertips tingle as he pulls the camera away from his face and inspects the button again.
The little girl with her mother begins to cry. The mother looks as if she might try to soothe the girl, but then she too bursts into tears. And Ken Watanabe turns the camera on, numbly forgetting the switch, and films it all- their last moments and their goodbyes, as if someone still had a chance of seeing them.
“X-ray vision?” he says aloud. Ken Watanabe is rolling in possibilities. His skin is hot and tingles with ideas. There are so many people he would like to use this camera on, so many girls at his school, a teacher in the English department who can never truly hide her lithe figure under high collared shirts she wears.
3013. What used to be Shinjuku as far as our records can tell us, is being uncovered under years of silt. After the explosion of the Earth sun, our civilisation was all that survived. We grew bigger and learned a form of language that allowed us to develop politics and govern ourselves. We studied their papers, learned of their great societies, modelled ourselves on a place called ‘Germany’, about which much was written.
While Ken drowns his thoughts, someone has made contact with the world outside the tunnel. The crowd in the carriage parts like the red sea to let this man through. His hair is dyed blue and fans out like a lion’s mane. He climbs onto the seats in the train and whispers in the ear of the man making the announcements. Both men go as pale as rice paper.
The humans referred to us as cockroaches, though we didn’t much care for this.
The first man coughs. “I… I’m sorry everyone it’s… it’s not the solar panels that are broken it’s the sun… the sun is gone…”
My team today made a rare find. A train carriage, perfectly preserved in what once was a tunnel contained several human specimens for our scientists to examine. Even more curious was the device. Some sort of recording technology- a camcorder- it was tightly clasped in the hand of a deceased male. We were able to play the recording on the machine, luckily, as we did not have a compatible viewing device. It did not tell us much, although it did reveal to us a strange anomaly. While all the remains found were wearing clothing fragments, none of the recorded persons wore anything other than undergarments. We have yet to determine why, perhaps some strange custom surrounding the recording media itself.
The Obaasan coughs, a barking cough like a seal Ken saw once in San Fransisco. “How can you know? Wouldn’t everyone be dead?!” she demands. The man with the phone nods. “It’s taken something like eleven years for the light and warmth of the sun to leave us, though the actual thing blew up a decade ago. Scientists … they knew … and they were looking for a solution, but the broadcast went out an hour ago … there was nothing …” He bursts into tears. Bowing his head to the other man’s shoulder, the lion man weeps.
My co-worker has remarked to me that he finds it ironic, that all we have remaining of the Old World is this technology, of which we have uncovered scores rotting in their filthy human waste sites, and us.
Ken Watanabe sits down, forgetting that he hasn’t got a chair anymore. His coccyx jars as his bottom hits the floor, but he doesn’t feel it. How futile his new discovery is in the face of this. Suddenly his body is raw, and it is he who might as well be stripped naked. He does not want to die, and yet he does not want to fight, does not want to see the
Their legacy is obsolete technology and cockroaches. He finds this hilarious. I however fail to see the humour.
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CHATTING TO THE, VICE-CHANCELLOR Professor Richard Higgott in Conversation, Recorded by Phoebe Phillips & Photographed by Daniel Kwabena Craig I’m typical of many a Murdoch student. I am a ‘first in family kid’, who’s parents had never been anywhere near universities. My parents wanted me to be school teacher, which they thought was respectable and safe. When I got my first degree and was going on to do my masters at the London School of Economics, my dad said to all his friends at the pub “his lad (as he called me) was doing a DPH atLSD”, which was the closest he got to understanding what graduate work was all about. Since having done a second degree and a third degree, then going to work as a lecturer through to Vice Chancellor it means I have never left Universities. When I told my old man I’d been made a Professor, he said “well I suppose that’s good, but you will get a real job one day, won’t you.”
As for the future of education, let’s start with a cliché ‘the future ain’t gonna be like the past’. The nature of undergraduate life in twenty years time will be very different from now. People ask ‘what are the really big variables which are changing the nature of higher education?’ At a most basic level is simply the sheer volume of people who want to be students. The Chinese are creating, I think it is, one new University every month. There are literally millions of students who want a higher education but there are still not enough places to go around. The way to deliver higher education will change, indeed is changing dramatically. I wrote my PhD on a manual type writer and look how you function now, think about that speed of change. You can do a degree now without ever going into a library. Take for example what we are doing in Singapore. We have nearly 3000 students in Singapore. My first graduation as Vice Chancellor there last September was really moving. Many members, more than just mum and dad, of a student’s family were there. They had all probably sunk considerable capital into their children’s education. We tend to think of higher education as a ‘public good’, everyone should have access to it. But for many it is increasingly a public good secured through private means. It may also be acquired a lot more remotely than in my day when full time on campus education was the norm. There is a really interesting story about a professor from Stanford, who resigned from the University and put his courses all online independently and he’s had something like 12 million hits.
I like it. Being in University is good fun. As an undergraduate my friends and I took over the Student Union Social Committee. We used to run all the bands and, because it was Britain in the sixties, we’d get good bands. New rock the bands would cut their teeth on the University circuits. We had bands such as Small Faces, Fairport Convention, Family, Bonzo Dog; a whole range of bands. Some of them, of course, were awful and never got beyond one show, and of course you’d get into terrible trouble with the other students, as they’d all be demanding their money back. Undergraduate life in my day was entirely different to today, because the classification of your degree was one hundred percent on examination at the end of the third year. So your second year at University in the sixties could be something of a right off.
Another change which will occur in higher education is the dominant Anglo Saxon derived mission of universities. When I first did my undergraduate studies we used to study the classics; Aristotle, Plato, Hobbes and Mill and so on. This is what became referred to as the ‘DWEMs’: Dead White European Males. This is what was considered the bedrock of higher education. As the structure of global economy and power changes and China becomes more powerful, East Asia becomes more prominent and India also re-establishes itself as one of the world’s leading powers, you will see a shift in education as well. We will be teaching these things with more Chinese or Asian characters than in the past.
I didn’t plan to be a Vice Chancellor. My wife and I came back to Western Australia for family reasons. I used to be a young lecturer here at Murdoch in the early eighties. It was an exciting, edgy time to be here then. While I did not plan it, I was excited to come back. It’s a great job as VC, it’s an incredibly full job, but I also like to think I am still a Professor. I still write papers occasionally. It’s an interesting time to be in this University. I think Murdoch is an undiscovered little gem. So we need to work on projecting ourselves into the future, to create a strong identity for the University in the twenty first century.
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POETRY
Words by Zane Hoft & Scott-Patrick Mitchell Stencil by Dylan Whiffler Focal stripnine the blue bell trills at the end of the hall Guya hangs like a husk faltering music on the paths recession pulsing like the blood of her thighs, mixing past itself over-setting, tipsy nihilist playgrounds bubbling feign delusion, the world is as bright as a butterfly, those blue skies gleam over highways rumbling with the joy of the hour houses odor stealing itself from room to room as I put the drum down by the dogs chair, strange months groping the base redemption, placating the fuggy rheumatic apparel of doubt and sickness calm alien eyes weave through the darkness like the past light of my soul I lost at birth and slipping altars of her glowing, silly, pintsized glory by my trembling lips streaming down the garden path with limpets exploding in my mind, helpless, tied to joy and slinky happy sparks of our wet eyes. Ark Matter punctuating space with parsecs & planetary wobbles, we sphere no -thing the achingly empty omni -verse can vomit up out over us as we apollo onward with radio -active wings & hymns. oblivion ’s abyss nothingness of nothing -ness is waiting beyond all this for us – the consumptive green time machine beings – with a kiss loud like hawaiian hibiscus ,ready to make us explode with extra-terrestrial-specialness.
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THE ILLUSTRATOR, THE MUSIC MAKER & THE THINKER Words by Phoebe Phillips & Art by Shaun Tan Oscar winning illustrator Shaun Tan, Joe Ryan from the band Pond and Murdoch University’s Vice-Chancellor Professor Richard Higgott give Metior the low down on spaceships, tree houses and skills sets for the future.
If you had to take one item into the future what would it be? My rug, so I could play my sitar on it. I guess it’s gonna have to be a package deal, because my sitar is wrapped up in my rug.
The Illustrator: Shaun Tan
To be a resilient human community what quality do we need to develop? I think more of a laid back attitude. You could put that under tolerance or that kind of crap, but essentially just a laid back attitude.
Shaun Tan I’m really attracted to science fiction and I do classify myself as a science fiction illustrator. It’s not the future that interests me. I’m interested in parallel worlds. The future doesn’t exist only in the imagination and the imagination is an extrapolation of the present. I love it because it makes me realise that everything now, our lives, are somewhat arbitrary. That, with a role of the dice, it could have turned out many different ways.
Paint me a picture of your perfect world in 1,000 years. A lot of vegetation growing around the place, less of a concrete jungle. Everyone lives in their tree houses. Then you don’t need a front yard or a backyard, you’ve just got space under your house. It’d be great. Everyone would have trees - it’d be great.
If you had to take one item into the future what would it be? My pants. Nudity may be frowned upon even in the future.
The Thinker: Professor Richard Higgott To be a resilient human community, what quality do we need to develop? You had the answer in the question to be a resilient human community you need to have a sense of community. You need to have a willingness to share, a willingness to give a little. The only way you are going to develop reciprocity is if people trust you and think you will do the same for them. So community is important for resilience.
To be a resilient human community what quality do we need to develop? Tolerance. We are never going to go back to being isolated communities and that is one thing we are probably doing the worst at globally, and with that I include plants and animals. I think people are going to look back on this like it’s the dark ages and be like ‘what the hell were they thinking?’ in the same way we look at slavery now.
Paint me a picture of your perfect world in 1,000 years. I think the crucial thing for a perfect world is whether technology becomes an enabler or whether it enhances our remoteness. Technology is inherently a good thing. The issue is how you use it. For example, if you look at the issue of sustainability, if you look at the rights and entitlements of people who don’t live lives like ours (which is basically 6 billion of the 6.5 billion people in the world), we cannot indefinitely deny them the benefits of technology. So the question is can we harness technology in a positive way, in a benign and not a malign way. So the perfect world would be one where the technology has been enabled and put at the service of the community, rather than providing alienation and conflict.
Paint me a picture of your perfect world in 1,000 years. That’s a dangerous game, because every time someone does that it ends up being a totalitarian dictatorship, whether they like it or not. I think the perfect future would be the one which ignores anything I have to say about it. Catch Shaun Tans exhibition Suburban Odyssey at the Fremantle Arts Centre 19 May 2012 - 15 July.
The Music Maker: Joe Ryan What do you think is the future of music in the next hundred years? I always think about it like robot bleeps, some like R2D2 to some doof beats. All the cast from Star Wars in a band, that’s what it’s gonna sound like.
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AL GORE’S iPOD
Words by Declan A. Luketina & Photography by Tanya Voltchanskaya I am never environmentally conscious when it comes to music, I don’t go out of my way to buy Australian pressings nor do I play a carbon-free air guitar. Consumers of music more often buy digitally allowing zero carbon footprints to be travelled, not needing to bin the plastic wrapping. In two months time, you won’t have to throwaway that One Direction album into the rubbish out of embarrassment, all you have to do is hit delete. However, when it comes to the producers of the music, the artists who spend most of their time travelling are slowly embracing the environmentally friendly culture. Perhaps they travel by SmartCar instead of a van. Maybe Bono doesn’t import his sunglasses from Africa. The following are a few contemporary artists that Al Gore would have on his iPod.
sions. Radiohead’s latest album, King of Limbs, was heralded as a ‘newspaper album’, distributed with an accompanying broadsheet titled The Universal Sigh. Made on recycled paper, the artwork was also on oxy-degradable plastic packaging (dictionary please!) and the theme of the album was the British wilderness. To quote Liam Gallagher, “[Radiohead] writing a song about a f***ing tree? Give me a f***ing break! A thousand year old tree? You’d have thought he’d have written a song about a modern tree or one that was planted last week”. Hell&Lula Vegetable oil is not only for making vegetables oily or massaging vegans with. This dance rock band from LA understands the importance of vegetable oil. The band got sick of their old, musty diesel tour bus, but with some magic and plenty of donations, they’ve got it running purely on recycled vegetable oil. They’ve christened this revolutionary vessel ‘The Cool Bus’. Hell&Lula have also started the Recycled Merchandise Program; I assume they just sell a bunch of Sonic Youth t-shirts circa 1997 as their own.
Drake Did anyone watch Degrassi: Next Generation? You know that show from Canada about high school life where everyone was lectured about the safe way to have safe sex, to never take drugs and smoke only if you look cool. Hell, does anyone remember Degrassi? It’s probably a good thing if you don’t, because Drake sure doesn’t want to relive his teenage acting years. Drake is a critical acclaimed artist in the hip-hop genre. This contrasts with the fact he is also a delicate soul (sigh). This delicateness made him headline the Reverb Campus Consciousness Tour, where artists promoted environmental awareness, and Drake has a powerful voice to do so.
Al Green, Green Day, Johnny Greenwood & Colin Greenwood, Peter Green Notice a recurring theme? Besides the fact that they are musicians they’ve got GREEN in their name. They must be promoting the environment, which is the only explanation. Johnny and Colin Greenwood are the guitarists from Radiohead, so they were environmental right from their conception. You have to give props to Green Day, who helped the younger generation around the world hate George Bush and rednecks.
Radiohead Ever since the release of Kid A, warning us about the psychotic depravity of human culture and the impending meltdown of glaciers, frontman Thom Yorke and his merry men have been concerned about everything that is not greener than the whole of Ireland. In order to cut down their carbon footprint and not spend thousands of dollars to get one extra kilogram of luggage aboard, they’ve sent their equipment, instruments and drummer by ship. From Canada to Amsterdam they’ve planted trees as they go (on the land of course, not in the Atlantic Ocean), and in 2009 Thom Yorke snuck into a UN conference where presumably he stared at them with his lazy eye and did his infamous dance from ‘Lotus Flower’ to persuade the nations to cut down on their emis-
The Roots If you’ve ever watched The Late Show with Jimmy Fallon, you are familiar with the hip-hop and funk stylings of this ensemble of musicians who’ve released ten albums since the early nineties. They’ve headlined and run a Jam Session which launched a forum for social activism and neutralised all C02 emissions with the use of renewable energy. Famous record producer, DJ ?uestlove of The Roots, who has an even more famous afro, has personally handed over compost bins to fans, because nothing says ‘thank you for listening to our music’ more than a bin of worm shit.
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PHOTOGRAPHY Daley King
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