Aaron Burton

UOW Local Gong Talks: Chat GPT - Is my AI friend stealing my job?
Tuesday 11th July 7pm @ The Music Lounge Wollongong

Presentation transcript from Dr Aaron Burton

NOTE: This presentation was performed in jest and does not accurately reflect scholarly research

In 1967 the NASA ATS-III weather satellite took the first complete colour photograph of the Earth. Adorning the cover of the inaugural issue of the Whole Earth Catalogue, the unmanned image has been credited as an icon of the 1970s environmental movements. Over the last five decades, however, a human-centric perspective has dominated photographic and cinematic representations of environmental issues. A recent proliferation of unmanned imaging technologies and a renewed counter-cultural imperative, has reawakened an ontological distinction between human and non-human points of view. Removing the human from behind the camera significantly alters the provenance and meaning of the image, non-human actors are foregrounded — such as the weather, objects, plants and animals — and there is a levelling of existence. Unmanned imaging technologies offer an unprecedented range of spatial encounters, from impossibly close to impossibly far, opening up new ways to experience the fragility of our ecosystems. This chapter explores the potential of unmanned photographic technologies such as drones, GoPros, and satellite imagery to assist a non-anthropocentric understanding of the environment and urgent ecological issues

2018 marked the 50th anniversary of the famous Earthrise image taken by William Anders of the Apollo 8 mission. One year earlier, in 1967, the NASA ATS-III weather satellite took the first complete colour photograph of the Earth. Both images have been credited as important to the environmental movement and highlight the fragility of the planet, however, the provenance of the two images reveal divergent meanings. Earthrise is arguably embroiled in cultural and political battlefronts of the Cold War, whereas the ATS-III satellite was tasked with transmitting images for weather forecasters to look for extreme events and study cloud formations. Furthermore, the two images represent an important ontological distinction, the human world versus a non-human world. Over the last five decades the human-centric perspective of Earthrise has continued to dominate documentary photography leaving a visual record suitably reflective of the Anthropocene.

A recent proliferation of unmanned imaging technologies and a renewed counter-cultural imperative, has reawakened this ontological distinction. Removing the human from behind the camera significantly alters the provenance and meaning of the image, non-human actors are foregrounded — such as the weather, objects, plants and animals — and there is a levelling of existence. Unmanned imaging technologies offer an unprecedented range of spatial encounters, from impossibly close to impossibly far, opening up new ways to experience the fragility of our ecosystems. This chapter explores the potential of unmanned photographic technologies such as drones, GoPros, and satellite imagery to assist a non-anthropocentric understanding of the environment and urgent ecological issues.

My Mother's Village is a personal documentary response to The Sri Lanka Series (1980), a series of ethnographic films produced by the author's anthropologist mother, Sharon Bell, and filmmaker father, Geoff Burton. Four women, a community of fishermen, and a dance instructor were the 'subjects' of their three films. The feature length film My Mother's Village revisits the same participants in Sri Lanka and pursues the original themes and issues, such as economic conditions, the status of women, colonialism, religion, ritual, and inter-generational change. My Mother's Village explores how both the filmmaker and participants are navigating heredity and inheritance. Supplementing the film, the exegesis component, Provenance in Personal Documentary interrogates the conceptual underpinnings of the creative research. 'Provenance', the key concept informing the production of My Mother's Village is a fine art term specifically ârepractisedâ and retheorise...

SBS's suite of slow TV programs, "Slow Summer", arrived at a fortuitous time in our annual media trajectory, when we were briefly relieved of the busyness plaguing our lives. Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Law Publication Details Burton, A. L. "Why slow TV deserves our (divided) attention." The Conversation 30 January (2019): 1-4. This journal article is available at Research Online: https://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers/3807

http://aspera.org.au/research/sightlines-2/journal/

Leo Berkeley & Smiljana Glisovic, RMIT University

The Sightlines event, part film festival and part conference, was held in Melbourne in November 2014 and had two main purposes. One was to showcase the breadth and quality of filmmaking that occurs in the university sector. The other was to contribute to the development of screen production as an academic research discipline. This occurred through a range of discussion sessions, both formal and informal, and the decision that after the event an audiovisual journal would be established that participating films could be published in, following a peer review process that would evaluate their quality as research. This initial issue of the Sightlines audiovisual journal is the outcome of that process. It is something of a pilot and we see the future of this journal as creating a site where important and necessary discussions can occur about the relationship between screen production and research.

https://vimeo.com/user34192212/review/113130961/5b93932126

In April 2013 I travelled to Broome in the far north-west of Australia with Stephen Muecke and Michael Taussig, two leading authors of 'experimental ethnography.' They held a workshop there to share experiences and develop ideas.
The day we arrived in Broome was a day of jubilation as oil and gas company Woodside announced its withdrawal from a controversial proposal to develop a gas processing plant roughly 60kms north of town.
Walmadany - the proposed site for the gas plant - is sacred to the Goolarabooloo mob, the indigenous custodians of this land. They were determined to protect the living heritage of their country.
Lots of people came to help the cause, including independent scientists. Their dedicated research of whales, and other flora and fauna, contradicted the government and corporate environment reports. The area is of extreme ecological significance.
Woodside's withdrawal was a momentous win for the local community and activists who had been passionately fighting the proposal since 2008.
Nevertheless, the Western Australian government remains bitterly intent on industrialising the region and has since imposed a compulsory acquisition of Walmadany from its traditional owners.
These events form the backdrop to Stephen Muecke's ongoing ethnographic project with the Goolarabooloo people and Michael Taussig's unique journey across Australia.

My Mother's Village is a personal documentary response to The Sri Lanka Series (1980), a series of ethnographic films produced by the author's anthropologist mother, Sharon Bell, and filmmaker father, Geoff Burton. Four women, a community of fishermen, and a dance instructor were the 'subjects' of their three films. The feature length film My Mother's Village revisits the same participants in Sri Lanka and pursues the original themes and issues, such as economic conditions, the status of women, colonialism, religion, ritual, and inter-generational change. My Mother's Village explores how both the filmmaker and participants are navigating heredity and inheritance.

Supplementing the film, the exegesis component, Provenance in Personal Documentary interrogates the conceptual underpinnings of the creative research. 'Provenance', the key concept informing the production of My Mother's Village is a fine art term specifically ‘repractised’ and retheorised here. It is hypothesised that cross-disciplinary personal documentary production is a fertile environment that responds to increasingly accessible technologies and progressive interpretations of what contemporary ‘documentary’ means. This research project responds to the lack of a critical framework for interpreting and developing inter-disciplinary documentary praxis. The experimental methods employed in the provenance of My Mother's Village extend to the adoption of an auto-ethnographic and autobiographical mode of storytelling in this exegesis. This marriage of creativity and scholarly research is further reflected in the relationship between the exegesis and corresponding personal documentary film production.

The provenance of My Mother's Village reveals an historical convergence of 20th century documentary traditions of photography, cinema, and visual ethnography. The convergence of these traditions in the contemporary art context echoes Walter Benjamin's observations of the shifting nature of art in the 20th century. Provenance, in Benjamin's revolutionary context, transgresses the 'aura', market valuation, and ownership of art objects to a dynamic understanding of processes, intentions, and storytelling throughout artistic production. This investigation finds that personal documentary modes account for this shifting paradigm in visual arts and offer ethical and creative methodologies for inter-disciplinary visual research. In the current global technological landscape of data-streams and personal media devices, provenance encourages a sensuous topography of encounter, contingency, boredom, and experiment.

https://vimeo.com/256418532 (password: retrace)

2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the famous Earthrise image taken by William Anders of the Apollo 8 mission. One year earlier, in 1967, the NASA ATS-III weather satellite took the first complete colour photograph of the Earth. Both images have been credited as important to the environmental movement and highlight the fragility of the planet, however, the provenance of the two images reveal divergent meanings. Earthrise is arguably embroiled in cultural and political battlefronts of the Cold War, whereas the ATS-III satellite was tasked with transmitting images for weather forecasters to look for extreme events and study cloud formations. Furthermore, the two images represent an important ontological distinction, the human world versus a non-human world. Over the last five decades the human-centric perspective of Earthrise has continued to dominate documentary photography leaving a visual record suitably reflective of the Anthropocene.

A recent proliferation of unmanned imaging technologies and a renewed counter- cultural imperative, has reawakened this ontological distinction. Removing the human from behind the camera significantly alters the provenance and meaning of the image, non-human actors are foregrounded — such as the weather, objects, plants and animals — and there is a leveling of existence. Unmanned imaging technologies offer an unprecedented range of spatial encounters, from impossibly close to impossibly far, opening up new ways to experience the fragility of our ecosystems. This paper explores the potential of unmanned photographic technologies such as drones, GoPros, and satellite imagery to assist a non-anthropocentric understanding of the environment and urgent ecological issues.

In the lead up to the 2019 “climate change” election, the Liberal Government guaranteed an increase in coal mining and less “green tape”, and the Labor party weren’t far behind with a commitment to opening up coal-seam gas in the north and no transitional solutions to impacted mining communities. On the spectrum of responding to climate science, both political parties continue to prevaricate.

But where were the images confronting voters with what is at stake?

UOW Local Gong Talks: Chat GPT - Is my AI friend stealing my job?'
Tuesday 11th July 7pm @ The Music Lounge Wollongong

Presentation transcript from Dr Aaron Burton

NOTE: This presentation was performed in jest and does not reflect scholarly research