M/C Journal 'collaborate' Issue Now Available

Last week I had the great pleasure to publish the 'collaborate' issue of M/C Journal, which I edited with my great friend and colleague Donna Lee Brien from the University of New England. I'm very happy with how it's turned out, with a very interesting mix of general theory and practitioner reports from academia, arts, and the media, and a great feature article by Suw Charman from the Open Rights Group. Here's the announcement:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 9 May 2006

M/C - Media and Culture is proud to present
issue two in volume nine of M/C Journal
'collaborate' - Edited by Donna Lee Brien & Axel Bruns

Collaboration is a highly desirable and, increasingly, often a mandated element in many modes of Australian (and international) research, creative and business practice - and a factor on which successful and innovative outcomes, as well as funding, often depend. In many cases, however, participants in collaborative projects have a limited understanding of collaboration (in theory and practice) beyond that of a general concept, tossed about with nods of approval but rarely unpacked. In other fields of DIY content production, from open source software development to the large-scale distributed collaboration on projects such as the Wikipedia, collaboration often happens perhaps even more intuitively, but nonetheless produces results which can usually stand up to serious professional scrutiny. So how, and why, do we collaborate?

This issue of M/C Journal features case study articles from the point of view of practitioners and researchers, innovative research about collaborative practice, examinations of authorship credits and copyright issues in collaborative work, including collaborative interventions like the creative commons, and wider insights into the apparent human need for interaction, collaboration, and what World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee has called 'intercreativity'.

Feature Article
"Copyright in a Collaborative Age"
- Suw Charman and Michael Holloway

There has never been a better time to collaborate. The Internet is providing us with ways to work together that were unimaginable even just a decade ago, and high broadband penetration means that exchanging large However, copyright law has, in general, failed to keep up with the amazing progress shown by technology and human ingenuity. It is time that the lawmakers learnt how to collaborate with the collaborators in order to bring copyright up to date.

Articles
"Stigmergic Collaboration: The Evolution of Group Work"
- Mark Elliott

"Students 'at Risk': Dilemmas of Collaboration"
- Nahid Kabir and Mark Balnaves

"Riding Waves of Resonance: Morphogenic Fields and Collaborative Research with Australian Travelling Communities"
- Geoff Danaher, Beverley Moriarty and P.A. Danaher

"The Impossibility of Collaborating with Kathy, 'The Stupid Bitch'"
- Sheryl Brahnam

"The Wicked Problem of Collaboration"
- Judd Ruggill and Ken McAllister

"Reflections on Practicing Student-Staff Collaboration in Academic Research: A Transformative Strategy for Change?"
- Maud Perrier

"A Cappella and Diva: A Collaborative Process for Individual Academic Writing"
- Wendy Beck, Kerry Dunne, Josie Fisher, Jane O'Sullivan and Alison Sheridan

"Would We, Could We, Did We Collaborate? Mutuality and Respect"
- Belinda R. Tynan = Dawn L. Garbett

"Metacognition through Group Practice in the New Media Classroom"
- Chris Leslie

"Creative Communities after Television: The Collective Authorship of Channel 101"
- Elliot Panek

"Off World Sounds: Building a Collaborative Soundscape"
- Tara Brabazon and Stephen Mallinder

"Posthuman Collaboration: Multimedia, Improvisation, and Computer Mediation"
- Hazel Smith and Roger T. Dean

"The Convergence Potentials of Collaboration & Adaptation: A Case Study in Progress"
- Patrick West

"Interruption/Interaction/Collaboration: A Critical Appraisal of the Textual @traction Interactive Event"
- Ieuan Morris

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Further M/C Journal issues scheduled for 2006:

'street': article deadline 1 May 2006, release date 28 June 2006
'free': article deadline 26 June 2006, release date 23 August 2006
'filth': article deadline 21 August 2006, release date 18 October 2006
'jam': article deadline 16 October 2006, release date 13 December 2006

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M/C Journal 9.2 is now online: <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/>. Previous issues of M/C Journal on various topics are also still available.

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Visit all three M/C publications at <http://www.media-culture.org.au/>.

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All contributors are available for media contacts: mc@media-culture.org.au.

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