The virtual world – research and commentary on Australian arts and culture

When I established my blog ‘indefinite article’, a couple of years back, it was because I wanted to research and comment on Australian arts and culture. This is my main blog that gets most views. It seems to have taken off. I’d always thought that, given the specialist subject matter – after all it’s not a popular culture blog like a cooking one – that it would grow steadily but no more, which all along is what I had wanted. The rate of growth has surprised me. Now, I’m starting to focus on the other blogs that have played second fiddle – about short humour, gardening and cooking and creative writing.

When I first established my blog ‘indefinite article’, a couple of years back, it was because I wanted to research and comment on Australian arts and culture, something I know something about from working for over 35 years in the arts and culture sector. I could have written about other subjects but that would just be me expressing my opinions like every other man, woman and their dog (and cat) on social media. ‘Who cares?’ I thought. ‘indefinite article’ is irreverent articles about contemporary Australian society, popular culture, the creative economy and the digital and online world – life in the trenches and on the beaches of the information age. This is my main blog and it’s the one that gets most views.

Ages ago I used the phrase on this image, thinking that I had very cleverly been the first person to think of. Recently I saw the same phrase, virtually word for word, on an Internet meme. Whether my words just drifted around on their own and were picked up and reused or whether, more likely, it's just a case of a good idea appearing at the same time in many different widely separated places, is hard to tell. There are no secrets or possessions on the Internet. Here's my illustrated take on the meme.

On the morning of 25 February it passed 8,000 views and is now just over 100 views short of the next milestone of 9,000 views. It seems only a short time ago that I was celebrating having passed 7,000 views. That amount represented the total views from when I effectively started the blog, when I left the public service in late February 2014, to 25 February this year, a period of just under two years. My most recent jump of 1,000 views, from 7,000 to 8,000, took just 5.5 weeks. Three days later I was already a quarter of the way to my next thousand, 9,000 views. I seem to have settled around 1,000 views a month.

State of origin

State of origin was a multimedia piece by Stephen Cassidy, developed with visual artist, Deborah Faeyrglenn, as part of the Conversations exhibition at Goulburn Regional Art Gallery in 2004. It involved many different kinds of creative dialogue between five artists and five writers.

State of origin looked at where we come from, where we go next and where we truly belong. In this work the writer and visual artist combined word, image and computer technology to make visual music. Words and images moved across the computer screen, with no fixed address.

One of the slides from State of origin

While Stephen is primarily a writer, he has always had a strong interest in visual arts and images, though it is not his main area of expertise or interest. For both these reasons, working with a visual artist with a similar approach, stretched the visual side of his skills and also provided a different perspective on his writing.

Word wall

The Conversations exhibition at Goulburn Regional Art Gallery in 2004 included a series of poetry and prose, Word wall, by Stephen Cassidy, many with images by visual artist, Deborah Faeyrglenn. The series developed from the common discussions about the themes of the exhibition during the planning sessions, and reflected long-running subjects in his work.

This series plays with words and images, directly referring to or basing words on Australian geographic icons, such as the Coorong (‘Sitting on twigs’), Broken Hill and Lake George, as well as more personal histories and paths.