eBooks

Despite my love of ebooks, it wasn’t until this year I found a reading device that made it truly a pleasure to read them. It sounds like a cliché, but that device is my iPhone. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why this is and it didn’t take long to realise what a simple creature of habit I really am.

As previously mentioned, I’ve been downloading and reading free ebooks for some time – mostly novels or older academic texts that were hard to find elsewhere. It wasn’t until I started reading these works on my iPhone, however, that I’ve enjoyed the experience of reading ebooks as much as I do a dusty old paper tome.

Many handheld devices that come loosely under the banner ‘mobile phone’ have had the capacity to house and display ebooks for some time, commonly as PDFs, with limited capacity to adjust viewing settings. An adequate reading experience, very similar to that available on my home computer, but nothing spectacular.

Two key technological changes have been incorporated into newer handheld technologies that I think have changed this experience – freely available ebook reading software (like Stanza) and the touch screen.

I can’t speak to the impact these developments have had on other handheld phone-like devices, but to have these features on my iPhone has made all the difference. Using any wireless or mobile network I can call up a catalogue of websites, download an ebook, apply my preferred viewing settings and start reading. I can annotate, bookmark and search the text just as I could on my computer. But none of this compares to the simple tactile function of using the touch screen to pretend that I’m manually turning the page. And there we have it.

Up until now, I was missing the tactility of reading, and options for colour and font. It was that simple.

Fortunately for me, it seems that manufacturers are also realising how these elements can transform the ereading experience. The question of whether to opt for paper or electronic is now shifting to matter of whether to read your ebooks on a touch screen tablet or an e-ink reader.

It’s a difficult choice, but one I look forward to making.

Digitised Text for Posterity and Enjoyment

The Joy of Discovery
I’ve always been a bit in love with the idea of the electronic book. Even as a child, when ebooks didn’t exist in my world except as an idea from the pages of teen science fiction novels, the idea captivated my imagination. Little did I know then that the ebook was already in its infancy. Now there are multiple projects dedicated to the digitisation, archiving and dissemination of texts that date back about as far back as writing does.

A late bloomer to the electronic age, it was not until about ten years ago that I first came to the world of digitised text in the form of documents and novels.

In the middle of the night, writing an essay for a contemporary world history subject that I didn’t really understand, I decided in a panic that what I really needed, more than anything, was to read a copy of The Treaty of Versailles. With my dinosaur PC running at capacity, I cranked up the ancient dial-up modem, turned off the ‘view images’ option in my web browser to move things along, and crossed my fingers. Much to my delight, at the top of my search results was a complete copy of The Treaty of Versailles, unabridged, digitised and indexed, courtesy of Yale Law School’s Avalon Project. I thought: I’m saved! And, although my wide-eyed wonder at the availability of information has subsided, I’ve returned to sites like the Avalon Project ever since. I’ve also put more thought into what makes it possible for these projects to exist.

The Avalon Project
The Avalon Project strives to make available in digital form all historical documents relevant to the areas of law, history and diplomacy. With an index dating back to 4000 BCE, it appears they’ve covered most documents dating from the advent of the written word onwards.

While the documents provided by Avalon are a tremendously useful resource, my heart lies with Project Gutenberg.

Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg was founded by Michael S. Hart in 1971 with a grant to use the Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the Materials Research Lab of the University of Illinois. Housing the largest collection of free ebooks, and run by volunteers, Project Gutenberg’s mission is to digitise and archive cultural works of all kinds, make them as freely available as possible, and encourage further creation and distribution of ebooks.

There are around 30,000 books available from Project Gutenberg’s online catalogue, with about 70,000 more works available through project partners and affiliates, across a range of languages and countries. In order to offer ebooks for free, texts from Project Gutenberg are generally restricted to those available in the public domain. A note on the project’s home page reminds us that it is operated under US copyright law and that anyone outside the US should be familiar with the copyright law particular to their own country.

Copyright and Intellectual Property
Recognising a creator’s right over their work is important, but there is a need to balance this with equity of public access to information. The general rule of intellectual copyright seems to be that it holds for the life of the creator, plus a certain number of years (that varies between countries) following their death. With copyright increasingly benefiting corporations, rather than individuals, there is a danger that the time before a work reaches the public domain will continue to extend – maybe indefinitely. If the original creator is no longer benefiting from copyright royalties, it must be asked whether continual extensions are justified – especially if the work protected is no longer in print.

Copyright is a contentious and complex issue that requires a more thorough treatment than I’m prepared to give it here, but for those who are interested in following this thought, a good place to start is The World Intellectual Property Organisation. Established by the United Nations, the WIPO offers clear and helpful information on the many complex issues surrounding intellectual property and copyright.

The Importance of Ongoing Support
Supporting endeavours like the Avalon Project and Project Gutenberg, understanding what they offer and engaging in dialogue on the issues that affect them will help ensure their success. Through making use of these resources, we can encourage debate, preserve information and promote equality of public access. Not to mention ensuring many more hours of reading pleasure.

Making a Living in the Arts

If you are a professional practising artist, income from your practice is likely to be intermittent, and often not equal to the amount of work and skill that goes into making art. So how do artists get by? Will the cliché of the starving artist ever be a thing of the past?

Since 2000, there have been several reports by the Australian Government on arts professionals in Australia. Each offers a different view, but none offers a solution.

Don’t Give Up Your Day Job
At the time of the 2003 report Don’t Give Up Your Day Job, there were approximately 45,000 professional practising artists in Australia, typically earning an average income of only $7,300 from their creative endeavours. These figures reference artists that fall under the broad categories of: writers; visual artists; craft practitioners; dancers and choreographers; actors; musicians and composers. This picture may seem broad, but it excludes many key arts practitioners, who are in a similar position.

To counter such meagre earnings, artists frequently hold down multiple jobs. Important considerations, such as having to have the time to make art, mean it is difficult to hold anything other than casual or part-time positions that are not career-focused. Wages earned from these additional jobs are therefore also intermittent and at the lower end of the wage scale. To add to the financial stretch, artists will frequently commit a portion of their wages towards the cost of making a new work – for materials, time and space.

The Culture of Statistics
In 2008, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released a report on jobs within Australia’s ‘cultural industry’, based on data from the 2006 Census. As arts industry commentators have noted, the report focuses on the growth of the cultural sector as a whole. In the arts, however – a small portion of what the government defines as ‘cultural’ – the statistics show that the number of professional practising artists across all areas is in decline.

Considering this struggle to survive financially, the additional burden placed on artists to operate as small businesses with GST responsibilities, and the devaluation of all things cultural during the Howard era of government, this decline is not surprising. Yet these worrying findings are all but hidden under a positive spin on Australia’s cultural life.

A Need for Change from Within
The arts industry is caught in a vicious circle. Most professional artists will regularly contribute extra time and personal resources to ensure a project’s success, without which much art work would never come to fruition. While this kind of passion is to be commended, it sets up artists in the difficult position of being expected to make art with few resources, and little if any pay.

Attitudes and expectations within the industry remain split – between artists who insist on being paid appropriately for their work, and those who question the commitment of anyone actively seeking such remuneration. Until agreement is reached on these issues, and more value placed on artistic endeavour in Australia’s cultural landscape, the myth of the starving artist will not only be perpetuated, it will also remain a reality.

Film review: Blessed

Released in September 2009, the film Blessed is a screen adaptation of the play Who’s Afraid of the Working Class?. Focusing on the darker emotional elements that accompany marginalisation in Australia, Blessed is a cathartic viewing experience.

The film leads us through 24 hours in the lives of five working-class families, whose actions subtly intersect through circumstance. Firstly, events unfold through the eyes of the children, then through the perspective of their mothers. Taken from one of the film’s more harrowing moments, the title ‘Blessed’ refers to the idea that children are our (sometimes only) blessings.

The original script from which Blessed grew was commissioned by Melbourne Workers Theatre and premiered as a live theatre production in 1998. The story itself was woven from several separate plays, each by a different writer: Trash, by Andrew Bovell (Lantana); Money, by Patricia Cornelius, Suit, by Christos Tsiolkas (Head On); and Dreamtown, by Melissa Reeves. This same team also created the screen adaptation, maintaining the integrity of the writing, and some theatrical storytelling techniques.

While a couple of the more poetic monologues from the plays were sacrificed in translation to the new medium, this filmic treatment brought clarity to the sometimes implicit connections between the characters. Remembering the film’s theatrical roots is important to accepting some of the dramatic devices and smaller details that depart from the real-to-life depiction suggested by the visuals.

Directed by Ana Kokkinos, who also directed Tsiolkas’s Head On, Blessed has a gritty visual aesthetic, holding the characters in a relentless and intimate exposure akin to being caught in the headlights. Bleak though the subject matter is – crime, gambling, dispossession, loneliness, sexual abuse and death – Kokkinos has managed to hint at the possibility of hope. Absent from the play, this underlying thread is a life-raft that lifts the writing, while not letting the audience off with an easy ride.

Excellent casting has formed a stellar Australian ensemble, with Deborra-Lee Furness, Victoria Haralabidou, Monica Maughan, Miranda Otto, and younger actors, Harrison Gilbertson, Sophie Lowe and Eamon Farren all delivering strong performances. Frances O’Connor particularly shone in her role as the young mother Rhonda, delivering some of the most emotionally wrought scenes, with Reef Ireland and Eva Lazzaro, as her children, Orton and Stacey. And it has to be said that Miranda Otto performs what is possibly the best alone-at-home-with-loud-music-and-a-bottle-of-wine dance ever.

Insightful treatment of interpersonal relations is a hallmark of Australian cinema. In Blessed we witness a despair at the lack of control that compels the characters to reach out to others in unexpected ways – small struggles to grasp at comfort and warmth in a world where these things are almost out of reach – all captured beautifully by Kokkinos.

Blessed asks much of its viewers, but offers equal reward to those who take the journey. It is a bold attempt to capture a dimension of our society that is too often ignored. Not for the depressed or faint of heart, but definitely worth seeing.