An email has arrived from Jo Ritale, Manager, Original Materials of the Heritage Collections at the State Library of Queensland, confirming the library’s willingness to house the master edit DVCAMs of the unpublished archive. This amounts to over 40 hours, plus the associated papers. Jo will visit me when we can arrange it, to see what the archive consists of.

The main reason for the protracted negotiations on the best way to preserve the archive has been the need for The State Library to develop protocols on how to protect original digital material. The National Film & Sound Archive was suggested as a better prospect, except that the NFSA regards unedited footage as out-take material, whereas I regard it as additional, useful research material. Fortunately the State Library agrees with me.

At one point, much to my horror and that of both my editors, the library wanted to preserve the archive on analogue tape. Fortunately it has agreed to accept DVCAMs for preservation purposes and DVDs for access purposes.

The NFSA staff have no problem with DVCAMs but it was just as alarming that they insisted access should be… Read Complete Text

I delivered a set of the DVDs to the Environmental Protection Agency in Brisbane with a feeling of great satisfaction, even triumph, following a meeting with the head of the Biodiversity section earlier in the month.

In March 2006 I had written to the then Director General requesting that the EPA buy the archive, only to be turned down by the Executive Director of the Parks Division citing the (to me ill-mannered) non-sequitur that the State Library already had a copy. I felt that my archive showed what was at stake in this part of the world (and still is), that biodiversity was a core concern of the EPA and that for these reasons they should have a copy. I even followed up with a tongue in cheek letter to the Minister asking her to ‘correct an apparent oversight’. It was only after phoning to request a meeting with the current Director General earlier this year that all the pieces for a successful conclusion fell into place.

Received an email from Julian Palacios, the author of Lost in the Woods about Syd Barrett and the Pink Floyd, praising the essay I wrote as part of my BA degree on the Light/Sound Workshop at Hornsey College of Art, of which I was a member. He first got in touch in December 2007, having read this website’s Press page, and asked for my recollections about the Workshop, my memories of Mike Leonard and the ‘boys from the Floyd’. He requested the essay in one of his emails. I knew I had kept it and was able to dig it out.

Mike was an architect and the Workshop’s presiding genius. I shared a flat in his house with Roger Waters and Nick Mason whom he taught at architecture college. The boys from the Floyd would come into our studio at art college and improvise to our light projections.

Wrote a letter to Peter Garrett, Federal Minister for the Environment, following his March 12 reply to the email and brief paper I sent him on January 8, about rectifying the lack of protection of biodiversity in Australia’s inhabited areas. These can be more biodiverse than remote or wilderness areas. I drafted the paper soon after a meeting on the Mountain in June 2007, at which Jennie George, now Peter Garrett’s Parliamentary Secretary, asked what can we do to protect Australia’s biodiversity. I thought his letter glossed over the lack of protection and wanted to tell him so. Much good may it do me.

Today Edward O Wilson, the inspirational conservationist and the first person to use the word ‘biodiversity’ in print, sent an email in reply to a letter I wrote him last week.

I wanted his reflection on my concern about the gap between the widespread use of the word ‘biodiversity’ in conversation and in the media and people’s understanding of its meaning. I suggested that the gap could best be bridged via a blue-chip natural history TV documentary series and expressed puzzlement at this apparent gap in the illustrious record of the genre.

In his generous reply Professor Wilson agreed with my premise and was very complimentary about my archive.

In my letter to him I had acknowledged an immeasurable debt of gratitude to him because, without the word ‘biodiversity’, my archive would be inconceivable.

I also sent a similar letter to Sir David Attenborough who graciously replied by post in beautiful handwriting. He did not refer to my point about the apparent gap in the record of natural history documentaries, but confirmed that my two contacts in the BBC’s Natural History Unit were the people best… Read Complete Text

Steve has started editing The Beauty of Overlooked Things video series. The idea behind the series is to make the archive footage more accessible as art, given the inherent inaccessibility of the published archive.

The series will comprise five 6-8 minute videos. I emailed Christina to ask her if she would do all the graphics. Clive and I had previously discussed on the phone the idea of a book based on the archive and which could include the Beauty series of DVDs. We intend to work on the book during my UK stay in late July, early August.

Steve has completed the initial edit of Supplements 1 & 2 of the archive, filmed in HDV. I now need to go over the footage and start the draft script.

The Supplements are very different to the published archive. They do not follow the seasons, but apart from some grouping of particular subjects, unfold chronologically in the order of filming. Also, the sequences tend to be longer because proportionally more of the footage is devoted to fauna. I plan to keep the narration to a minimum and rely more on generating a good soundtrack. We’ll see.

Christina has adjusted the running time of the recently introduced slideshow on the home page, thus completing the blog update which she and Clive began last October.

We have introduced Gallery pages 8 and 9 which contain frames from the HDV footage and were filmed in widescreen. We have a March deadline because the State Library are planning to do a recapture of the site for the National Web Archive. This was initially scheduled six weeks ago to mark the site’s second anniversary.

I intend to add to the Archive with a series of hour-long DVD supplements. I have spent most of September shot-listing the nine 64 minute HD tapes filmed so far, and I have been doing shot selection on the first eight.

While engaged on this work I have done a small amount of filming – mainly of moths – as the beginning of Spring has resulted in warmer weather and a reinvigorated insect life.

I have also updated filming of an immensely spreading fig tree, which loses its leaves for all of two weeks. I only get to pass the tree one day a week on my way to the coast. My film diary shows a 15 day gap between filming the tree without leaves and then with new leaves.

After the Recovering Rainforest Forum, I emailed the two professors at Griffith University (see entry for 25-27 June) and set out my ideas about video archiving biodiversity projects in the field. I subsequently followed this up by letter but have not received replies. I find the professors’ silence disappointing, but would still welcome the opportunity to engage with scientists to see if video archiving research projects is viable. With this in mind I have been in contact with the director of business development at Earthwatch in Melbourne. He had earlier sent me an email praising this website and we spoke on the phone. Maybe the idea can be pursued after all.