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Other / 06.02.2009

I received a reply from the minister’s senior policy advisor declining to provide a grant, but directing me to possible funding sources.

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Other / 09.01.2009

Today, following a phone conversation with his senior advisor, I posted a letter to Andrew MacNamara, Queensland Minister for Sustainability, asking him for a grant so that Steve and I can put the 40 hours of the unedited Standard Definition archive onto a Raid hard-drive (mirror back-up) in 20 minute sequences. This will enable the State Library to create DVDs as needed. It will also enable the Library to migrate the material to future preservation and access technology.

 

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Other / 08.01.2009

This evening I was at Steve’s working on the soundtrack for Supplement 1, having recorded the narration in a sound booth at Bond University Film School late last year. Hopefully one more week will see its completion. I will revise the script for Supplement 2 so that we can record the narration for it. Supplement 3 will be an interview in two parts with Darryl Jones, an ecologist and Associate Professor from Griffith University. It was filmed just before my overseas trip last year and last November. I plan to issue the 3 supplements at the same time.

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Other / 28.11.2008

Following a visit to my place in October by Jo Ritale, Manager, Original Materials Heritage Collections, I wrote her a letter confirming my intention to donate, in due course, the unedited DVCAM tapes and associated papers of my archive to the State Library. I also mentioned my intention to put the tapes onto a hard-drive for access on DVDs. Jo replied by letter just before she left to take up a post in Melbourne, acknowledging my donation and providing contact details for her successor. Exchange of letters 14th and 28th of November

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Other / 21.11.2008

Today I filmed a second interview with Darryl Jones. In the rush to complete the Beauty Series DVD before my overseas trip, I clean forgot to mention the first interview I had filmed with him on the 3rd of July. The second interview was needed so that Darryl could talk about global warming and its effects on the local biodiversity. He also spoke about Tamborine Mountain as a place where the southern and northern limits of species overlap and about the age of the Mountain’s rainforest. For the first interview I asked Darryl to talk about some of the basic science of biodiversity, touching on species grouping and identification and key relationships between species. Then I wanted to hear about the distinctive features of the biodiversity of South East Queensland and its vulnerability, ditto for Tamborine Mountain. Finally Darryl spoke about a pet subject of his, harking back more than 20 years to his research into scrub turkeys conducted on the Mountain. The males construct mounds containing up to 4 tons of material in which the females deposit eggs. The young hatch and emerge from deep inside the mound and are left to fend for themselves. Their… Read Complete Text

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Other / 20.11.2008

Quite out of the blue I received an email from Art Vogel, the Curator of the Leiden Botanical Garden, whom I met briefly on my visit there in late August.  Constance, the information officer at the Garden, had forwarded him an email I had sent her. He is very keen on cycads and has an impressive display of them, including specimens from South East Queensland. One of the Mountain’s small national parks mainly comprises a grove of palm-like Lepidozamia peroffskyana. Art wrote about a cycad hunting visit to Australia in 2003 and of his recent travels in Mexico where he was impressed by some huge cacti. I attached a couple of frames of the Mountain’s very own huge cactus, a Cereus jamacaru, to the email I sent him. The cactus is a native ofBrazil, resembles a tree and grows to 9m or 30’ tall. Its trunk is 45cm or 18” in diameter, so this is as good a specimen as one is ever likely to find. Exchange of emails 20th and 26th of November

 

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Other / 27.10.2008

Stans (Constance) van der Veen emailed me pictures of the giant Arum lily, which was supposed to have flowered on the night of my visit in August. Except that they were a day out in their calculations. In any case because I had to get back to Amsterdam I could not have stayed for the duration of what wasn’t the flowering. These plants are famed for their size and the rarity of their flowering and are notorious for the foul odour they emit when in bloom. Stans’ backpack retained the odour a month after the event.

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Other / 02.07.2008

The two parcels I sent via courier, containing the DVCAM master tapes of the published archive, a set of the DVDs, the original revised script and copies of the signed interview releases, have arrived at the National Film & Sound Archive.

It’s taken a long time to reach this point, given that I thought the future of the entire archive was secure in the hands of the State Library of Queensland – even before publication at the end of 2005. A letter dated April 11 from Graham Shirley, Senior Curator, Moving Image, at the NFSA broke the logjam. I await the paperwork to formally conclude the handover of my donation.

 

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Other / 24.06.2008

I received confirmation that the master disc for The Beauty of Overlooked Things (see blog item: 20 March 2008) has arrived at the production company in Sydney. I am having the DVDs made from a glass master. All being well, they will be ready in time for me to take some copies with me when I leave on my overseas trip to the UK and Europe on July 16.

Steve and I spent a hairy week finalising the soundtrack and authoring – only to discover that the presentation had to be completely changed to allow a seamless transition between the 4:3 footage and the widescreen footage. Christina designed some beautiful graphics for the disc print, the insert and the video titles. I want to explore the possibility of creating a video installation of the Beauty series.

 

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Other / 21.06.2008

Sandrine Meats, who interviewed me in London in 2006 for her dissertation on 60s and 70s performance art in the UK, wants to interview me on my next trip to Europe for an article she is writing about WHSHT (see blog 11 July 2007) for a leading French art publication. She is also interested in the essay I wrote on the Light/Sound Workshop at Hornsey College of Art, so I mailed her a copy the other day.

I am looking forward to seeing her again. The first interview was lots of fun, though my memory of events 40 years ago was rather hazy.