I have been terrible about blogging lately. It’s due to a number of reasons. The two at the top of the list are, firstly, that I have been spending so many hours in front of the computer monitor every day that the last thing I feel like doing at home at night is sit at a keyboard and write updates for you. Secondly, there are so many things to try to update you about that I’ve gotten overwhelmed from how far behind I am.
For example, right now I am taking time to write this update during the family’s trip up North to the Coral Bay and Ningaloo area. We’ve been snorkelling, and hiking, and having a blast. Two weeks ago we went down South to the Margaret River area….again, unforgettable times that I want to write about. But…I’ve got to get caught up.
Last time I wrote it was a week before my trip to the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute at the University of South Australia. It was a good trip, both personally and professionally. First, let’s deal with the time spent with the marketing faculty and graduate students at “Uni-S.A.” The first talk was a reminiscence about two experiments focusing on advertising clutter in radio broadcasting. Here’s a picture of me giving that talk…just to prove to the IU sabbatical police that I’ve done some things while here in the land of Oz.
The clutter presentation was requested by two faculty members form EBI who also have done work on advertising clutter: Erica Riebe and John Dawes. I was able to enjoy a nice lunch with the two of them, too, and talk about future collaborations we could do. Cool benefit of trips like this, for sure.
The next talk was one taken from the first chapter of my upcoming book with Paul Bolls. The talk was called, “Is the Third Time a Charm?: The Spotty Past, Booming Present, and Hazy Future of Psychophysiology in the Media Psychology Laboratory.” This talk got off to a rocky start, honestly…with some members of the audience taking exception to claims I made about behaviourism. The stated that behaviourism concentrated primarily on developing cause-and-effect linkages between stimulus and response. The strict behaviourists were not interested in exploring the internal mental processes involved in the linkages. I’m pretty confident that this was the case…but those listening to the talk thought it painted the behaviourists with too broad a brush. That’s possible, as it is easy to generalize too much when looking at things with hindsight. But, I am fairly confident with claims I made about the influence of the behaviourist approach on communication research. But…I’m interested in waiting to see what the external reviewers of the book manuscript will be saying, plus I’ll be giving the same talk to the Murdoch University department of psychology in April and I’ll see what they say too.
Now, for the personal stuff:
I loved the city of Adelaide. It is known as the “City of Churches” and I can certainly tell why.
Also, the entire state of South Australia is known as “the Festival State” and as I mentioned in an earlier post, I was invited during a time called The Adelaide Fringe Festival which occurred just a few weeks before the “actual” arts festival. Here’s a shot of the FF’s mascot in her/his tutu looking rather MTV-ish
Although I was too busy walking around the city sightseeing to check out the shows…a bunch of us did go to the Garden of Earthly Delights on Friday night…it’s like a whole park filled with sideshow acts. Check this out:
And, the other things I will remember about Adelaide are the beautiful and modern outdoor sculptures. A few of these were related to geocaches (which I did a lot of in Adelaide…urban geocaching is much different from what I’ve done before and it was a blast). Here’s a few of them.
The first cache was called “In Knots,” and it was located right at a busy commuting intersection and I first tried to find the cache at about five in the evening, I wasn’t able to do as much poking around as I wanted to until I came back later that evening.
This knot sculpture is one of several stainless steel works done by Bert Flugelman in Adelaide. I had never heard of the guy before, and a little bit of net snooping had me realize that he was also quite famous for another one in the city affectionately known as “Malls Balls.” I was hoping to stumble upon that one during my stay, but since I did not foresee myself doing much shopping, especially shopping in a mall, I didn’t hold out much hope.
Oh, silly American…malls can also occur outside. When I was merely out and about on a walk the next morning I came across the Rundle Mall and there they were!
Also, there was the cutest sculpture of pigs digging through garbage cans. I know, just doesn’t sound cute, does it. My wife didn’t think so as I described them for her over the phone…but they are! See for yourself.
And, some other fine pieces of sculpture that helped to leave a very favourable lasting impression on me of the city of Adelaide.
And here’s a sculpture of Alice in Wonderland in the middle of a park. Why? Not sure, but it was for a geocache (which I FOUND!)
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