Book Chapter: From Social Butterly to Engaged Citizen (MIT 2011)
A new book on urban informatics hit the bookstores last December: From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen (MIT 2011) edited by Marcus Foth, Laura Forlano, Christine Satchell and Martin Gibbs. Congratulations to everyone involved in the creation of this impressive collection of case studies, reflections and stories from the front lines of the ever-expanding set...
Unguarded Moments – Art & About Sydney 2011
Unguarded Moments is a new project I’m working on as part of Art & About Sydney 2011. The project has been selected as the ‘City Villages’ project and will be based around the wharves of Walsh Bay and up through to Millers Point. For the project’s accompanying website, I’ve been able to set up some...
Remembering the Green Bans
I had the pleasure of attending a great forum at the Institute of Australian Geographers Conference on Tuesday on the topic of the Green Bans. This year we are seeing a number of events and articles on the topic, marking the 40th anniversary of this particularly intense period of urban activism in Australia. Bob and...
James Gleick on the Future of the Book
A little contribution to the reams of type currently circling the skies, relating to the future of the book. Written for creativeinnovation.net.au
The Death and Life of the Real-Time City
My PhD dissertation is now complete, and can be downloaded from this site.
Sounding the city’s real times
It was 9am Sydney time on August 15 1945 when British Prime Minister Clement Atlee announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. “The last of our enemies is laid low” he said. “PEACE!” roared The Sun. In downtown Martin Place, massive crowds spontaneously gathered, to dance and make whoopie in celebration of the...
George St gets a makeover: 1906 to 2030
Publishing street level film archives online can lead to some interesting results. While the Powerhouse Museum have been exploring new uses of high-res images published from the Tyrrell Collection, I’ve also spotted a recent montage by Dan Hill which uses some of the film footage published through Sidetracks on Architect. Peering into the flow of...
On making Sidetracks
Apparently it’s not very easy to be offered access to the ABC’s TV and Radio archives. This strikes me as slightly odd – with the broadcaster so happy to lecture the Australian public that it’s ‘Our ABC’, and, increasingly ‘the town square’ of Australian media life, it would seem to me that a system enabling...
Fresh & New(er) interview about Sidetracks
The Powerhouse Museum’s Seb Chan conducted an interview with me exploring some of the ideas and aspirations of Sydney Sidetracks. Excerpts of the interview are pasted below. Q: Sidetracks (re)tells some great stories of our city. How did you choose which stories to tell? Sarah Barns: I was pretty motivated in my selection by finding...
Sidetracks launches
Drum roll… After a period of gestation, Sydney Sidetracks has been launched by ABC Innovation in partnership with ABC Local Radio 702 Sydney. You can read more background information about Sydney Sidetracks on this website here. Here’s some excerpts from the media release of 10 November 2008. Discover history where it happened with ABC Sydney...
Sidetracks collection – highlights
RADIO WAVES VP DAY 1945: Talbot Duckmanton recording the crowds celebrating VP Day, 1945 in Martin Place. While the NFSA has some interesting film footage of these moments, the sound quality is poor. It’s also owned by Cinesound and so re-publishing has some rights limitations. But more importantly, the commentary provided in this piece by...