Politics

My latest Indieoma post is the second installment of my series of articles on Politics in Music, this time it's the turn of Classical music, read it <a href="https://www.indieoma.com/public_journal.php?d=2a79ea27c279e471f4d180b08d62b00a" target="_blank">here</a>.

Politics in Folk music, part 1...

Firstly I wanted to share with you a recent experience of editing...

This week my column is something a little different, I've moved out of Indie Rock and it's a description of a demonstration of John Cage's Prepared Piano I saw during the Melbourne International Arts Festival, read it here.

My latest column is a brief foray into the Politics of Music in Melbourne, and poses a few questions, some of which I may be wrong on, and some I may be right on...

<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">As part of RMIT&rsquo;s sessions in Open Access week I toddled down to &ldquo;Publishing the Open Access Way: The Change in Business Thinking Towards Open Access&rdquo; and a slightly small crowd&hellip; I&rsquo;m a little behind with blog posts, so this will again, be a little bit of a collection of items with some opinions and thoughts.<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">The speakers and talks were<p class="p1"><b style="line-height: 1.538em;">Dr Adrian Danks - Senses of cinema</b><br /><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">A quarterly academic journal around cinema culture and commentary. To me it&rsquo;s approach seemed fairly conventional. Their open nature means not Peer reviewed. Their 4th largest&nbsp; audience is Australia, which seems to be a constant, many Australian creative organisations have to be successful overseas to make it at home. Dependent on funding bodies, how does this affect the open nature? Is it any better than an advertiser really?<p class="p1"><b style="line-height: 1.538em;">Philip Dearman - Communication, Politics &amp; Culture</b><br /><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">An open access journal, I think the title pretty much tells you what the content is. Seems like some publications just become free because they have no other options or are forced to. Again, the journal is backed by Academia anyway, so it doesn&rsquo;t have quite the same restraints others may have.&nbsp;<p class="p1"><b style="line-height: 1.538em;">Debbie Dickinson - The conversation</b><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">&nbsp;<br /><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">The Conversation is fairly well known, again with some academic backing, but seemingly looking into wider sustainable sources of funding and life. Some of the Conversations interesting features and approaches are republishing their content,&nbsp; sharing is positively encouraged leading to strong worldwide access.<p class="p1"><a href="https://www.rmit.edu.au/library/oaw" target="_blank">www.rmit.edu.au/library/oaw</a>

A valid discussion, but what will the limitations and potentials be.

Growth is always a goal in many countries, statistics appear everywhere and it's always discussed. Even small reductions in GDP are met with bitter disappointment, it's become one of the most important measures in the modern era.

Michelle Bauens, the P2P Foundation The Nutrient dense project is a global community of farmers and civic scientists who believe that putting nutrients into the soil it will improve food growth rates. These projects will often receive no funding, so they have mutualised their research and practices. This knowledge and information is shareable and escapes the commodity model. This is the production of commons, not capital.

We are looking at what these models and projects share in common and what is different between them and why.

It's refreshing to hear someone (unsurprisingly an engineer) mention that the Degrowth movement could do with more practical projects and methodologies to run alongside the theoretical discussions.

Konstantatos Haris of the Harokopio University of Athens is a member of Syriza and Political scientist in the department of Geography. He states that Geography and History are also factors as well as different political and socio-economic structures. There are commonalities amongst many Southern European countries that need to be addressed today.

Despite attending the conference, not everyone will fully understand what 'Degrowth' is, or the multitude of related terms that will be mentioned during the conference. Thankfully the first session on the schedule is ideally suited for getting your knowledge up to scratch.

This has been a week of me appearing at meetups rather than attending, and I must admit, when I present, I tend to forget what else happened. More of an adrenaline rush than egotism. I hope.

Yael Eisenstat has an interesting past. She ‘came out’ as a long term CIA employee in January 2017 after Donald Trump delivered a poorly received speech in front of the C.I.A. Memorial Wall. She didn’t intend to be sensationalist or release state secrets like some previous ex-secret service employees who revealed their identity, rather she had had enough of Trumps stream of insults to her country and hoped that her actions could make a difference. She has advised vice-presidents and major corporate companies and now works at New York University as an adjunct professor. Whilst at the eccentric and eclectic Tech Open Air in Berlin, I spoke with Yael to discuss technology, its impact on society, and we, or tech companies can and should do about it.