Are video games art?

The most debated topic in gaming, and one of my better-received GameSpot AU investigations. Check out some of the comments! Gamers don't mess about.

Original here.

In 1917 French artist Marcel Duchamp exhibited a urinal and called it art. Eighty-seven years later it was voted the most influential artwork of the 20th century by 500 art world professionals.

Art is notoriously tough to define. The moment a reasonable description of art is agreed upon, something comes along that demands it be re-evaluated. The latest culprit to upset the balance is video games. The debate of whether or not video games are an art form began as a discussion among academics a little less than a decade ago, and has since gained momentum in the video games community and, to some extent, the mass media.

One side argues that video games are increasingly valuable cultural artefacts that employ new technologies and a range of creative processes to produce an effective, and artistic, entertainment medium. The other side argues that the interactivity of video games renders them unfit to be classified as art. But this feature doesn’t aim to draw conclusions--it aims to give voice to those who have not yet had their say. Do video game developers see themselves as artists? Do they want the games they make to be labelled as art? Do they care?

All art takes into account the intentions of its creator. With that in mind, GS AU has caught up with some of this year’s most innovative game developers including Jonathan Blow (Braid), Media Molecule (Little Big Planet) and Blue Tongue (de Blob) to find out what, if any, artistic motivations were at the heart of their creative visions.



Defining the Indefinable

In November 2005, US film critic Roger Ebert claimed that video games will never be as artistically worthy as movies or literature. He wrote:

”I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilised and empathetic.”

It would not be wrong to say that Ebert’s perspective on video games mirrors the majority of the non-gamer public. But what if things were the other way around? In his book titled Everything Bad is Good for You, US author Stephen Johnson defends video games against the widely held preconception that they, along with other forms of popular entertainment, are detrimental to cognitive and moral development. To do this, Johnson envisions a world where video games are the standard and books have newly been invented. He imagines that critic responses to this new medium may be something like this:

“Unlike the longstanding tradition of game playing, which engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical soundscapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements, books are simply a barren string of words on the page. Reading books chronically under-stimulates the senses. You can’t control their narratives in any fashion; you simply sit back and have the story dictated to you.”

Video games have a long ladder to climb before Johnson’s imagined reality can become our own, but acknowledging games as an art form is a step in the right direction. While defining art relies to some extent on subjectivity, there are certain characteristics that appear to be staples in any definition of the visual arts: great technical ability, self expression, a level of visual harmony and/or beauty, an insight into reality and the potential to make the viewer question the way he or she looks at the world. Interactivity, you’ll notice, is not on the list. This, in a nutshell, is the case against video games as an art form. Traditional forms of art engage the viewer in a static way; video games engage the viewer through participation.

Helen Stuckey, games lab curator at the Australian Centre for Moving Image in Melbourne, has been working with video games for eight years. She says art cannot happen without interactivity. “Interactivity is a very challenging experience for earlier definitions of what art is,” she said. “I’m trained to tell people what’s art and video games are art--they are a beautiful blend of art and technology that take years to develop and are full of craftsmanship of an extraordinary kind.”

The question of whether video games should or shouldn’t strive for artistic value is important. Certainly, with games like Okami, Shadow of the Colossus or BioShock it’s easy to imagine art playing a central role in the original aims of the game. But should all developers keep this in mind? “I think they should,” Stuckey said. “You certainly see games where you really feel that art has been part of the ambition, and in some ways they’re much closer to the traditional definition of art, both in the fact that they’re storytelling games and that they’re beautiful.”



At the same time, Stuckey warns that video games are creating their own rules about what is artistically valuable; an art form in their own right, and by their own standards.

“Games create their own kind of aesthetic, so we don’t want to be comparing them to other art forms to find out what makes them art. We have to look within games. Most art forms have a relationship between the creator and the audience--audiences now come with their own concepts and ways of reading that enriches the artwork. That’s a very active relationship when you’re dealing with video games, because you have to be literally playing the video game to appreciate it.”

In early 2006, US author and self-confessed gamer Nic Kelman wrote Video Game Art, a book whose aim is to convince readers that video games are the dominant art form of the new millennium. Like Stuckey, Kelman argues that video games have created new standards for artistic merit.

“A game like Shadow of the Colossus might be considered valuable for its beauty, music, or as a whole,” Kelman said. “A game like Madden NFL 08 might be considered artistically valuable for its ability to portray reality as accurately and deeply as possible. The emotional impact of video games is just as deep and strong as a movie or a book or a piece of music. The people who do not agree are most often those who have never played a video game. “

Historically, art has been discussed in such a way that supports the notion that an artwork is created by a single mind. Despite collaborative projects such as film, art has continued to be framed this way. In countries like Japan, where manga and anime are celebrated as mainstream art forms, there is a much stronger sense of video games as an art form made by collaborative voices. But the West is still to catch up.

“It’s a shame that people don’t have an understanding of the faces behind games, and that games are made by creative people,” Stuckey said. “Your average punter can tell you the roles that go into the making of a film, but even your most passionate gamer can often struggle with defining the roles that go into making a game.”

According to Stuckey, gamers care passionately about having a more complex dialogue around how video games impact on their lives, what they make them think about, and how they resonate with broader philosophical ideas. “I’d like to see a lot more knowledge in the general public about who actually makes games. We don’t really discuss creators and I think that would be good for games. People have to start associating them with creative people rather than companies.”

However, not all academics share Stuckey’s opinion that video games should strive to be artistic. Miguel Sicart, assistant professor in game design at the Center for Computer Game Research at the IT University of Copenhagen, argues that game developers have no obligation to produce artistic products. “The mandate of mainstream developers is to make games that are fun and that sell,” Sicart said. “This doesn’t mean that they have to renounce making good games, but art challenges its spectators and users, and blockbuster games cannot afford to do that. Games should be fun and engaging. Art requires more than that. There is a clear trend towards making artistic games, but this is coming from indie developers.”

Sicart’s own take on the debate is that in order to understand video games as art, society must place them in relation to, not separate from, previous forms of artistic expression. “In a game like Braid, the mechanics are the message. To play this game is to understand the relation between the actions afforded to players and the vague narrative that frames them. In this sense, Braid is close to be a conceptual art piece, and hence a work of art.”

Diamond in the Rough

One of the most innovative games of the year was the Xbox Live Arcade puzzle platformer Braid. Its creator, Jonathan Blow, used the game as a reflection of his own personal experience, thoughts and ideas of the world. If art is partly about self expression, then Braid is a definite contender.

“I definitely produced Braid as an art object. Nothing in the game is random; everything is put there because I wanted it to be there,” Blow said. “It’s not all autobiographical, just a metaphorical version of things that happened in my life, things I’ve thought about, or things I’ve done. There were things that I wanted to try and things I wanted to show people, and video games are a natural way to do that.”

It took Blow three and a half years to make Braid into a game that has simplicity and elegance at its core. After its Xbox Live Arcade release, it was purchased by more than 55,000 people during the first week and was critically acclaimed by the review community (GameSpot gave the game a score of 9.5, the highest score given to a downloadable game in the site’s history). Reviewers praised Braid for its innovative use of the time reversal as a platformer, its art style, music score and story. But the most obvious thing about Braid is its distinction from other video games.

“It exists for a different reason than what most games do, and people pick up on that,” Blow said. “It isn’t a game that caters to a certain demographic, and it’s not a game that’s trying to do the same thing as another game. People appreciate where Braid is coming from, and what it’s trying to do.”

As somebody who makes games and intends them to be art, Blow thinks the debate surrounding video games as art is not a useful one.

“I know what I’m doing, so why do I need to argue about it? It doesn’t change what I’m doing. It just doesn’t make sense for someone to come along and tell me that what I’m doing is not art.

“The problem that I have with the ostensible argument of whether games can be art is that people very seldom approach things at that level of thought. It’s not just a level of discussion that seems very productive or helpful.”



According to Blow, games like Braid that differ from the mainstream can help change public opinion on the artistic value and worth of video games. But if video games are to ever become more than just mere entertainment, they will need to master a new formula that is innovative and successful. New York Times writer Daniel Radosh argues that the games that come closest to achieving artistry tend to be non-narrative: abstractions of light and sound and puzzle adventures that subvert a gamers’ sense of space, time and physics. Radosh argues that while a game like Halo 3 is flawless, it does not succeed as a work of art because it does not even try.

“Like cinema, games will need to embrace the dynamics of failure, tragedy, comedy and romance,” Radosh argues. “They will need to stop pandering to the player’s desire for mastery in favour of enhancing the player’s emotional and intellectual life. Gamers have a right to expect more than what the medium now has to offer.”

Blow is trying to achieve just that. But he’s not certain the revolutionary change he’s hoping for will come anytime soon. “In order for people to appreciate video games we, the developers, have to stop creating 99.9 per cent juvenile crap,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s going to happen.

“I would really appreciate if the game development community explored the potential of the medium and make stronger and more compelling games outside what we’re doing right now. No one save teenage boys and a few exceptions wants to run around killing monsters as Kratos from God of War. Very few people are interested in that on a societal level. We, as developers, have found an audience that is very interested in that and we keep playing to that audience, because it’s very risky not to.”

“There are very few games right now that are really aimed at changing a person’s life. I think I’ve made some attempt at that direction with Braid. It’s a game that is trying to speak to people, to make them see the world in a new way. I hope we can keep on creating games like that.”

Play and Learn

Roger Ebert’s comments in 2005 sparked the first real public debate on whether video games can or cannot be classified as art. The main arguments against video games which sprung from what followed centred on the belief that video games are unable to communicate meaning in the same way that films or books. While the majority of video games are not built in this fashion, more and more video game developers agree that video games have the potential to communicate ideas about life and the world to players.

According to Kellee Santiago, president and co-founder of thatgamecompany--the studio behind flOw and the upcoming title, Flower--video games have already begun to tap the communicative possibilities of interactive media.

“I want to see more critiques of games that focus on how games make the player feel,” Santiago said. “Games are a medium through which we communicate, and therefore they are art. Those of us who played games through our most formative years know that games absolutely do communicate ideas and can impact an audience.”



Santiago founded thatgamecompany in 2006 with business partner Jenova Chen after meeting at the University of Southern California. Combining their shared passion for video games with a will to push the communicative boundaries of the medium, Santiago and Chen began working on titles for digital distribution. “The timing seemed perfect for us to go ahead and create games that offer different emotional content and push the idea of what can be communicated in a video game,” Santiago said.

And that’s exactly what they did. After striking a three-game deal with Sony for the PlayStation Network, thatgamecompany’s first commercial title, flOw, was released in February 2007, and quickly became the top selling PSN title. The company’s next game, Flower, aims to be the video game equivalent of a poem. Rather than telling a sophisticated story, Santiago and Chen want players to have their own interpretations of the game.

“Flower's creation is very much inspired by my personal journey through the US,” Chen said. “Having grown up in metropolitan China, I was shocked by the endless green grass fields and the windmill farms I saw while travelling between big cities. I mixed what I saw in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and my hometown Shanghai together with the wild dream of nature.”

For Chen and Santiago, learning to treat video games as an art form came naturally. When working on a game, the pair abandons any considerations for the kind of game they as developers want to make, and focus on what the game could communicate to players. This approach to game making is one that Chen and Santiago see splitting the game development community.

“On one hand it appears we [the game development community] are crying out that games should be recognised as art,” Santiago said. “On the other hand, it also appears we're saying that content in games doesn't influence player behaviours. I see a contradiction in wanting to be taken seriously as an art form, but then waving any responsibility in the kind of content we produce. “Only when a gamer accepts a video game as a work of art will they become aware of the ideas it is communicating. We hope Flower inspired some thoughtful contemplation in the player, and we hope it inspires ideas that players will be able to discuss with others.”

A New Approach

Despite academics like Miguel Sicart indicating that mainstream developers and publishers will continue to deliver successful prototypes of video games without moving beyond the conventional boundaries of the medium, some mainstream developers have already begun to push the envelope.

In September this year, Australian studio Blue Tongue and publisher THQ released the colourful puzzle game de Blob. Lauded by video game critics worldwide for its originality and entertaining gameplay, de Blob invites players to use their creativity in restoring a city back to life by re-animating it with colour. Creative director of Blue Tongue, Nick Hagger, says de Blob invites reflection and interpretation.

“If we accept that as one of the definitions of art, then de Blob should be considered art,” Hagger said. “Games are still a somewhat nascent art form, their widespread acceptance as art is reliant upon generational and cultural change, as well as the development of a shared critical dialogue, which allows people to engage equally in discussion of games.

“As games become more a part of mainstream culture, I think the debate will be less relevant.”



Like Jonathan Blow, Kellee Santiago and Jenova Chen, Hagger used video games to reflect his own values and ideas of the world; de Blob reflects a lot of Hagger’s feelings about growing up in the inner city.

“I think any medium that makes you think about what you’re doing outside it and invites wider questions about your world is artistically valuable. This debate is something that is less about the perceived artistic merit of the medium, but more to do with the insecurity of gamers wanting to accelerate the mainstream legitimisation of games; it doesn’t engage anyone beyond those people who are active participants or consumers of gaming culture. I think the majority of people making games would have no trouble asserting that what they create is art; developers join the games industry because they have a passion for creative expression, regardless of their specific discipline.”

This is certainly true of Media Molecule, the developer behind Sony’s Little Big Planet. Like de Blob, Little Big Planet uses creativity to encourage self expression; Media Molecule’s vision for the game centred on fusing art with gameplay and design.

“Right from the start, art was integral to the creation of Little Big Planet,” said Media Molecule’s executive producer, Siobhan Reddy. “We wanted the game to be about expression. Our art director is actually an artist and he brought to the table that traditional aspect of art that you see in the game.”

While Reddy believes that video games as a medium are artistic, the current video game development industry is far too broad to demand artistic value from all video games.

“There are definitely games out there that are wonderful examples of a synergy of art, design, gameplay and sound, all of which take the player on a journey. Of course, not all video games can be, or need to be, like this. It’s just great that there are some developers out there who are using the medium to produce art. Artists don’t have to be painters or sculptors--I consider my programmers at Media Molecule artists because I’ve seen what they can do.”



Through Little Big Planet’s creative tools and gameplay, Reddy and her team hope to attract non-traditional gamers to gaming.

“I can play it with my nephews who are eight and six; I can play it with my brother who is a photographer and artist; I can play it with my sister and her fiancé; and I can even sit down and play it with my mum and my dad. And for a game to be that diverse is really rare.”

Earlier this year, Media Molecule and Sony teamed up with design schools in New York and Sydney to promote Little Big Planet and give design students the opportunity to create their own levels. The partnerships were a success and, according to Reddy, helped to promote the studio and the work they had created. This, she says, is something more development studios need to do.

“We as developers all feel comfortable seeing and using technology as a way to fuse all the different aspects of art and creativity together. But I would love to see teams get more exposure. It comes down to studios backing their teams, and giving them the opportunity to express themselves. The industry should promote its own talent, but that could quite easily start with studios promoting their own talent first.”

Star Wars exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum

An article about the new Star Wars exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum for the Sydney Morning Herald. Original here.


Somewhere in a laboratory a scientist is watching Star Wars and taking notes. It's not the popular story, engaging characters or entertaining action scenes that capture the scientist's attention - it's the speeders, robots and spacecraft. But what do these on-screen technologies have to do with science as we know it now?

The Powerhouse Museum has the answer. Its new exhibition, Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination, will use the Star Wars films to introduce visitors to real scientific concepts that are being developed today.

Developed by the Museum of Science, Boston, in collaboration with Star Wars creator George Lucas's company, Lucasfilm Ltd, the exhibition will explore the real science behind the fantasy technologies depicted in the films, comparing these with the latest research that could lead to real-life equivalents.

Kerrie Dougherty, the curator of space technology at the Powerhouse, says the exhibition also explores the role that imagination has played in inspiring real-life scientific work.

"People have always been inspired by science-fiction, and that creative spark leads to innovation," she says. "The aim of this exhibition will be to encourage people to think about the future of science and where these new technologies are headed."

The exhibition will draw on four technological themes from the Star Wars films: transport, robotics, medical developments and environmental adaptation. It will feature more than 20 examples of real-world technology to tie in with these themes, including video interviews with filmmakers, scientists and engineers, hands-on interactive displays, and props, models and costumes from all six films, including Luke Sky- walker's speeder from Episode IV, original models or robots R2D2 and C3PO.

Over two levels, the exhibition also allows visitors to experiment in two makeshift engineering labs, where they can build magnetic levitation devices and miniature droids, and spin around in a real hovercraft.

The point of all this will be to get people thinking about the real-life equivalent of the technologies they see at work, such as modern prosthetics, medical implants, adapting to new environments as global warming takes its toll and questions of ethics, such as whether robots should have rights.

"This exhibition is all about education, but it's not just for children," Dougherty says. "I recommend this to anyone, Star Wars fan or not. There is so much knowledge to take away about everything from robotics and technology to science in general. Star Wars is the perfect platform to teach about these things because people know about it even if they haven't seen any of the films. It's become embedded in popular culture."

Why has Star Wars remained so popular? Dougherty remembers the hype surrounding the first film as it premiered in Sydney in 1977.

"People were amazed. I think Star Wars has endured the test of time because it's such an endearing story. It keys into all the stories we use in our society: the good triumphing over evil, the hero's journey etc. It's got all the good stuff that we love. It's a very simple story in one sense but a powerful one."

The exhibition's original curator, Ed Rodley from the Museum of Science in Boston, says that despite its title the exhibition is not about Star Wars.

"It's about our world, and our future. So, why Star Wars then? One of the greatest challenges of thinking about the future lies in visualising things, particularly technologies that don't yet exist. To talk about our future, we needed a depiction of a tech- nologically advanced society that was familiar to a broad audience."

This is not the first Star Wars exhibition at the Powerhouse. In 2002, Star Wars: The Power Of Myth explored the archetypal themes and motifs from classical mythology in the films. One of the most successful Powerhouse exhibitions, it attracted more than 200,000 visitors in five months. The two exhibitions differ in aims but expectations are high that the new Star Wars exhibition will attract even more visitors.

Dawn Casey, the museum's director, says there will be a focus on the educational component of the exhibition.

The museum will run school seminars for students in their final years of high school, and host teacher forums to introduce the exhibition and offer professional development. "We're keen to reverse the shortage of children taking up science, and we see the exhibition as a launching pad to increase the involvement children have with the subject," Casey says. "With the last Star Wars exhibition we didn't get as many school groups coming through as we would have liked."

Casey has run forums with museum colleagues and academics to gauge the future of the Powerhouse Museum.

"We discovered that people think it's time for the museum to take on a stronger science and technology focus, and we're taking this on board with the new Star Wars exhibition.

"The story of Star Wars engages everyone, no matter what their age. People have grown up with the characters, and the imagination around it. It's lighthearted and it feeds the imagination."

Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination opens on December 4 at the Powerhouse Museum.

Australia's Internet Censorship

This is an article on internet censorship for The Guardian. Original can be found here.


Won't somebody think of the children? This mantra is being used with great effect by the Australian government to increase its control over what Australians see, watch and do - all, ostensibly, in the name of protecting the nation's youth. And a scheme that amounts to censorship is coming closer: the government has said that it wants to start live trials of ISP-level content filtering before Christmas.

In January, the government annouunced its $A128.5m (£55.2m) Plan for Cyber-Safety - a content-filtering scheme based on the pre-election pledge of Kevin Rudd, who became prime minister last year. His plan follows the failure of the A$189m NetAlert scheme put in place by the government of John Howard, who was defeated in the last federal election.

The plan was put together by Australian Labor senator Stephen Conroy, the minister for broadband, communications and the digital economy, with the aim of protecting children from pornography and violent websites and the banning outright of illegal material.

Australians will be unable to opt out of the scheme. Senator Conroy told the Australian media: "Labor makes no apologies to those that argue that any regulation of the internet is like going down the Chinese road. If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the government is going to disagree."

Keeping it clean

The scheme will require ISPs to offer a "clean-feed" web service to all homes, schools and public internet access points. There will be two blacklists: one that blocks all illegal material, such as child pornography; and the second which blocks a list of things deemed unsuitable for children, to be determined by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). Only the latter blacklist will be optional.

What better rationale than children's sensibilities to reassure people the trampling of their rights is worth it? The Australian government's agenda on national censorship is based on an appeal to emotion - it doesn't matter what it bans or censors, it can always claim it's for the benefit of children.

However, the response has been largely hostile. An online poll by the Courier-Mail newspaper in Queensland showed that some 86% of respondents do not support the scheme. And concerns that it is technically impossible to implement and will slow further Australia's already slow internet speeds by as much as 30% are just some of the fears.

Civil liberties groups say that the scheme is an infringement of Australians' rights. Colin Jacobs, who chairs the online users' lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia, says: "I'm not exaggerating when I say that this model involved more technical interference in the internet infrastructure that what is attempted in Iran, one of the most regressive censorship regimes in the world."

Australia doesn't have a good track record on censorship. For example, the continued refusal by the attorneys-general of Australia to introduce an R18+ classification for videogames is just one issue in addition to the proposed filtering scheme.

When DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover was first published in 1928, Australia was not the only nation to ban the book. But 40 years later, it remained one of the only countries where the ban was still in force. Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho is still in effect banned in the state of Queensland - the book is classified a Category 1 publication, meaning it cannot be sold in the state and must be sealed in plastic before it is sold anywhere else. And Australia's previous attempt to censor the internet is nothing to be proud of. In August last year, 16-year-old Tom Wood was able to hack through the NetAlert filters, put in place by the previous government at a cost said to be A$84m, in just half an hour (Are web filters just a waste of everyone's time and money? August 30 2007). When the Australian government was apprised of that, it added another filter; Wood cracked that in 10 minutes.

Helen Coonan, the then communications minister, said at the time that "unfortunately, no single measure can protect children from online harm and ... traditional parenting skills have never been more important". But perhaps that has been rethought in favour of ever more ambitious filters. While nobody would argue that it's important for everyone to have access to child pornography, the counter-argument - that it's more important to find the tiny number of people who access such content and prosecute them, while leaving everyone else alone - doesn't seem to have occurred to the Australian government.

Who benefits?

The Rudd government has released the results of a lab trial carried out last year by the ACMA, a closed-environment test of ISP-level content filters which tested the effect on network traffic and its effectiveness at identifying and blocking banned content. While the filtering technology had improved since a trial in 2005, what is clear is that a slower network is guaranteed. Of the six ISP-level filters tested in July by the ACMA, the majority caused drops in speed between 21% and 86%. The filters also proved inaccurate, with a significant number of innocuous pages blocked (1.3% to 7.8%) and unsafe pages let through (2% to 13%).

What's more, the scheme will only be applied to web traffic, meaning that peer-to-peer filesharing will not be filtered, despite accounting for an estimated 60% of internet traffic in Australia.

The government has tried to get around these problems by pointing to Britain, Sweden, Canada and New Zealand, which all have similar filtering systems. However, in those countries the filtering systems are not mandatory. In the UK, BT's CleanFeed system uses a list of thousands of sites hosting content such as child pornography provided by the UK-based Internet Watch Foundation; the list is offered without compulsion to ISPs.

The Australian government is commited to pushing ahead with its trials, despite the overwhelmingly negative reaction. Nobody seems to be benefiting from the move - except possibly the ISPs, who will be able to charge for additional filters. The children the government is so keen to protect will simply see their internet speeds degraded.

Tharen's

Another restaurant review to be found in 3D World on Monday.

Tharen’s Restaurant and Bar
15 Kellet Way, Kings Cross

I was duped by Tharen’s. In my research I discovered that this little French restaurant in Kings Cross is owned by a beautiful French woman named Tharen, who escaped from the clutches of the evil Nazis in Paris during WWII and came to Australia to set up a lovely restaurant in the name of her dead parents. As it turns out, Tharen’s is owned by a 20-something Australian guy named Bobby.
“I feel bad about the whole thing,” he said. “The story is made up, and it’s effective, but it’s time we let it go. We’re all Aussies here, and we’re proud of our French restaurant.”

Going back to 1979, the recently updated and refurbished Tharen’s has been given a new life by its manager and director, Bobby Jewell. After buying the restaurant from its previous owners at the ripe old age of 21, Jewell re-designed it to fit the theme of a rather loud, raucous and fun costume party. Hats of every size, shape and colour adorn the restaurant walls. A woman in a Queen of Hearts costume greeting you by the door, with fire spinners in her hands. The hat stand by the front door is full of feather boas and other accessories. Magicians, fantasy face painters and performers walk through the restaurant at regular intervals.

At first my partner and I were shy – we chose a hat and sat down at our table as the restaurant around us began to slowly fill with the excited chatter of newcomers: two birthday parties, one hen’s night and an office party. The restaurant caters for parties of 4 to 180 and the menu is set. For $55 per person (food only) you can have your choice of six exotic entrees, mains and desserts, and buy your own drinks from the bar. For entrees, we opted for the Moroccan spiced lamb with chickpea, tomato, preserved lime and cucumber riata and the caramelised onion, goat’s cheese and tomato tart with green olive dressing. Both arrived on time (after complimentary garlic bread and salad) and tasted delicious. The portions weren’t big, but that left us excited about the mains. When the mains did arrive, the restaurant party was in full swing – the soundtrack playing was made for sing-alongs, and everyone was taking advantage of it. My partner’s main of herb and garlic chicken ballentine on spec and pumpkin rosti and citrus basil beurre blanc was succulent and tangy, while the red wine jus on my mustard roasted veal loin fillet with potato and kumara gratin made me, albeit discreetly, lick my plate.

Seeing as there were a few birthdays to celebrate, including my own, we were informed that we’d have to try the Tharen’s house special Bombe Alaska baked ice cream cake. As the cakes are brought out by staff in fancy dress, the house lights dim as the whole restaurant bursts into chorus to sing ‘Happy Birthday’. The cakes are lit on fire, briefly, before being divided into portions. I’ve never had fiery baked ice cream before, but I’m sure to make it a habit after this particular experience. The pace inside the restaurant picked up after dessert – tables were pushed back and people took to dancing. We marveled for a while at the sight of a restaurant where complete strangers become best friends by the end of the night, before calling it quits ourselves after four hours of extravagant, Tharen’s fun.

The Chophouse

A restaurant review to be found in 3D World magazine on Monday.

Chophouse Restaurant and Bar
25 Bligh St, Sydney

Kingsley Smith’s new restaurant has no windows. This is an unusual design decision for the restaurateur, whose successful Kingsleys Steak and Crabhouse in Woolloomooloo overlooks the wharf with sprawling city views. But then again, the Chophouse is re-inventing many restaurant rules.
Set in the heart of the CBD, the Chophouse is a modern steakhouse with a health conscious focus. As we learn from Executive Chef David Clarke (formerly of Quay Restaurant), the purpose of no windows inside the restaurant is to offer customers a break from their day-to-day high-rise surroundings.
“You can come here to eat fast, healthy, food and get away from the bustle of the city,” Clarke said.

The effect is immediate—the stained and crumbling walls of the Chophouse with its high ceilings contrast perfectly with the immaculate tables and mood lighting, like you’re about to embark on a fine dining experience in the midst of an abattoir. Even the stainless steel sculptures hanging from the ceiling look remarkably like the ribs of a cow.
The menu is also not what you’d expect from a typical steakhouse—half of it is dedicated to salads.
“A lot of people are health-conscious these days, and we’ve made that the focus of the Chophouse,” Clarke said. “We make everything ourselves right here, including growing our own herbs and getting the best seasonal produce from local growers.”
This, Clarke says, is also to attract more women clientele, who traditionally steer clear of ‘giant steak and pint of beer’ steakhouses.



As we sit down to dinner we can’t help noticing the extensive wine list. I didn’t count, but it’s safe to say more than 100 were on offer, ranging in price from $34 to over $800 a bottle. We chose a modest $41 bottle of 2006 Grant Burge ‘Hillcot’ Merlot. For starters I know I must try one of the salads and so opt for the crisp pork belly and sea scallop salad ($18.90) while my dining partner goes for the spinach and tallegio risotto ($18.50). For mains we choose the glazed beef short rib with house made BBQ sauce ($28.90) and the T-bone with chutney and jus ($46.50). The mains don’t come with any sides, so we get shoestring fries ($6.90) and a salad called The Wedge (iceberg lettuce, bacon, blue cheese, salad onions, basil and dried tomatoes, $12.90). When the entrees arrive, my partner swoons over his risotto which melts in his mouth, and I dig into my pork belly and sea scallop salad, still warm, and have a similar reaction: I’m glad someone thought of mixing these two foods together, because they taste amazing.



The mains come in huge portions, but we’re not put off—my partner’s steak glistens on his plate while my ribs are so tender they practically fall off the bone. The house made BBQ sauce is great, but the salad left me a bit disappointed—it tasted good, but there was just too much lettuce. We could barely fit in dessert but we did our best, with the gooey goodness and candied almonds of a Peach Melba ($12) and an opulent flourless chocolate cake ($14.50). So delicious was the whole ordeal that I looked longingly at my unfinished beef ribs and was almost tempted to ask for a doggy-bag. As a woman, I can say with certainty that I’ll definitely be joining the regular clientele of the Chophouse.

Parkour

My lover Darryn and I did a story together for The Vine on Parkour. The French invented it and it's all about getting from one place to the other in the shortest amount of time possible. Exciting stuff. There's also jumping from buildings and doing flips and what not.

Anyway, I took some pictures and Darryn did some wonderful things with them in Photoshop and here is the result. The original story is here.

Karen Allen aka feisty Marion Ravenwood

Garden Music Festival

This review can be found in 3D World.

Garden Music Festival
Government House
Sunday, October 19

Walking past the gates of Government House on Sunday towards Garden Music, I felt compelled to turn to my lover and ask: “Are we in the right place?” For sure enough, the short glimpses of the perfectly manicured grounds gave way to babies, kites and women with wide-brimmed hats.

Things were only slightly different once we were inside the grounds—sure enough, Entropic were there on centre stage, cruising through one of their jazzy percussive melodies and trying to will the crowds away from the coffee stand, but the clientele of Garden Music had remained relatively unchanged: families galore, interspersed with the occasional young couple. It’s true, the sunny day and lazy beats made for a perfect pairing, but I couldn’t help feeling a little out of place. This feeling was only heightened as we walked past a herd of elderly citizens, grouped together under the shade of a tree in large sun chairs, raving about pensions and what not.

The 1940s vibe continued well into the Government House grounds, where the croquet and badminton were in full swing. After a moment or two of excited anticipation at living out my Alice In Wonderland fantasies (I’ve wanted to play croquet ever since reading that book), my lover and I descended into the field where we amused ourselves for about two minutes playing badminton, before the huffy game attendants told us, rather sternly, that we could just walk onto the field and start playing, we had to get in a line. Fuck that, thought we. So it was on to croquet, which turned out rather disappointing, given the weight of the mallets and the surprising difficulty of coordination.

By that stage we were content to simply lie down on the lawns with some garlic prawns and a glass of wine and listen to Hermitude as they took to the stage with their Cuban-based rhythms, jazz and hip-hop, while watching the small crowd that had formed in front of the stage, dancing along, waving their arms in some sort of ritualistic, rain-dance kind of way.

And so the afternoon slipped away, until the excited screams of children got too much for us and so we said goodbye to one of the most confusing, yet delightfully fun music festivals we’d ever been to.

Video Games Draw Parallel with the Art World

Art scandals are fun. Sometimes whole decades can pass without a really good, juicy, art scandal. The art world is usually a reserved, shy, sort of place, where debates are carried out in polite, hushed whispers. Barely does the general public get a glimpse into this paradise of civility. But, when they do, the paradise can quite quickly turn into Hades.

Australia's latest art scandal saw one of our most famous and talented photographers, Bill Henson, shrouded in a media frenzy that sought to judge whether or not the artist passed as a child pornographer. I think the jury may still be out on that one, even though public censors and police have all stated Henson's work is decidedly not guilty being anything but art. But since this is an opinion piece, I'll begin by stating my view on Henson, and his work.

I first came across Henson's work while studying visual arts in high school. Having a keen interest in photography, I was instantly grabbed by the subtle, emotive and rather lonely nature of his photographs. I loved them. Never, as the then-15-year-old girl that I was, did I find contention with the fact his photos often depicted naked children.

Henson has long been considered one of this country's greatest exports, and one of the best photographers all around. Never has anyone, to my knowledge, had any problem with any of his work (and he's been photographing children for a long time). Why now? I guess that's the nature of art scandals; they spring up without real reason.

In any case, the debate has been an interesting one to follow. It's in its dying days now, but someone has already written a book about it--author and journalist David Marr (who has written about previous art scandals in Australia) wrote The Henson Case.

I saw David Marr last night, speaking about the 'Henson hullaballoo', as he called it. What struck me though (and here's what I'm sure you've been waiting for) is that throughout his entire speech, he might as well have been speaking about video games.

The link here is the protection of children, and the fact that Australian society seems to have gone a bit cuckoo over this. Australia remains the only civilized country that still effectively 'bans' video games because of this obsession with the protection of children. No matter that children are not the target audience for video games or the visual arts-- their protection seems to overrule the basic freedoms that should be afforded to citizens.

What is happening now in the art world has been happening for a long time in the video games world. The fact that the government refuses to introduce an R18+ classification is all tied to this notion of protecting children.

At the Federal Government's request, the Australia Council now plans to introduce 'arts protocols' in response to the Henson case. The protocols relate to the depiction of children in government-funded artworks, exhibitions and publications, and will apply from January 2009. They will be a condition of Australia Council funding, and have apparently been designed to ensure the rights of children are protected in the artistic process. However, this includes ensuring that everyone viewing the artwork has an appropriate understanding of the nature and artistic content of the material.

What this means is that government-funded art galleries will not be able to exhibit any works that are deemed 'too difficult to understand' by the public. What does this mean? I don't know. How can anyone have 'an appropriate understanding of the nature and artistic content' of an artwork?

If this were a universal rule, it would effectively mean that no gallery anywhere would be able to display any artwork ever again. This goes against the very nature of what art is. The artistic vision of the artist is shared through the artwork, but everyone is free to interpret it as they wish.

And all this because they do not want children to be corrupted by, and through, images such as Henson's. These protocols are not just aimed at protecting children from being exploited as part of the art creation process, but also protecting them all around, including not being exposed to inappropriate content.

No government can censor art just because one or two people find it offensive. But as soon as there is talk of 'protecting the children', that gives a government carte blanche to do as they will, because who is going to oppose the protection of children?

This is David Marr, speaking on ABC's Lateline program:

"I try to distinguish between real children who have the real need to be protected and the kind of forum in which the fragility of children is being used by people who have always been trying to have a more modest society, a better behaved society, a more sexually conservative society. Those people aren't listened to any more at all by anybody unless they're talking about children, unless they're talking about the safety of children."

"What we have to decide as a society is whether that means we are going to start banning a whole area of material which is not considered remotely pornographic by people like the Classification Board, by the directors of public prosecution around Australia or even by police. But there is in the community at the moment a very strong wish that this somehow be stopped and banned. This is the most ambitious call for censorship that Australia has experienced for a very long time."

I would disagree with Marr only on his last point: Australia is already experiencing a very similar, if not more ambitious, wave of censorship, with the constant banning of video games in this country.

Kitty

Bubbles

Some pictures

Wayne Kramer on Guitar Hero: World Tour

I interviewed rock legend and MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer recently for a story for GameSpot Australia in relation to the upcoming release of Guitar Hero: World Tour, which Kramer features in with a rerecord of the MC5 hit Kick Out the Jams.

Wayne Kramer has cave-dwelling hermits on his mind. These, according to the legendary MC5 guitarist, are the only people on Earth who aren't familiar with the worldwide popularity of the Guitar Hero franchise. But Kramer is biased; he's become somewhat of an advocate for the game ever since Guitar Hero publishers Activision Blizzard approached him to be part of this year's anticipated release, Guitar Hero World Tour.



It's a match made in heaven for Kramer, who, at 60, is still going strong. Performing live shows and recording music for TV and movies as often as he can, there's no doubt that the plastic Gibson would feel right at home in his hands. That is, if he ever had time to pick it up. At this stage, he's just enjoying the popularity among his younger fans.

"I don't think I've actually ever strapped a Guitar Hero guitar on, but I've been talking to a few of my friends who are in the games, and they all tell me they're always getting their arses kicked by their 6-year-old nephews," Kramer says via phone from Los Angeles. "My nieces and nephews all had the same reaction when I told them: They asked me if they could get a free game. They think I'm all hooked up. I don't even know if I'll be getting a free game, and I'm in it."

Kramer is one of the more established artists to feature in the Guitar Hero games, having started his career in 1967 as a teenager and cofounder of the very loud, very successful Detroit rock act, MC5. After a string of personal problems, the group broke up, leaving Kramer to battle a serious drug addiction for several years before returning to performing in the '90s. Kramer is now recognised by Rolling Stone as one of the top 100 guitarists of all time and will soon have his very own, signature stars-and-stripes Fender, which the guitar company will release in honour of Kramer's career. "I'm so excited to have a model of my own guitar made," he said. "It's a great honour for a kid like me who used to look at catalogues of electric guitars hoping that someday he could own one."

Although guitarists all over the world will soon be able to strap on a Kramer Fender, faux rockers all over the Guitar Hero world will soon get their own piece of Kramer memorabilia, in the form of a brand-spanking-new rerecorded version of the MC5 hit, Kick Out the Jams. Earlier this year, Activision Blizzard announced to eager ears that the long-awaited Guitar Hero World Tour, the seventh game in the popular series, would feature exclusive rerecorded songs by the likes of Motörhead and The Sex Pistols. Kramer joined the lineup of rerecorders after teaming up with original MC5 producer Bruce Botnick as well as friends Jerry Cantrell (of Alice in Chains) and Gilby Clark (formerly of Guns N' Roses) to rerecord Kick Out the Jams. The session fell just short of the 40th anniversary of the track's first studio recording, Kramer wanted to keep its authenticity by including the original vocals recorded by Rob Tyner in 1968.

"I wanted the sound to be really heavy and modern, but I wanted the spirit to be original," Kramer said. "We started brainstorming and we came up with the idea of using Rob's original vocals. We have pretty amazing tools nowadays and so that was possible. I really wanted the guitars on the track to be slamming, and I thought I'd bring in some firepower by bringing Jerry and Gilby in, and the whole thing just came together."

When Activision first approached Kramer, the musician felt thrilled that the video game publisher's music taste ran that deep. "I'm really honoured that they think the music of the MC5 deserves to be with all the other great rock artists in there. I'm really humbled by it. It looks to me like [Guitar Hero World Tour] is a who's who and a cross section of the wide world of rock, and it makes me grateful that other people would be that interested in my songs, and that these songs might mean something to them. But just because people are playing my song on Guitar Hero doesn't make me any cooler. I still have to put my pants one leg at a time."

Musically speaking, a game like Guitar Hero can play a big role in education. Its ability to condense music history into a few hours' worth of songs has seduced many artist, ancient and modern, to lend their talents to the rhythm game. The benefit for them is as much music appreciation as it is millions of people hearing their work. "With a game like Guitar Hero, 'old' bands no longer exist," Kramer said. "Every band that was ever a band is a band right now. For those who are 16 or 17, The Who is a band right now. The Yardbirds are a band right now, Black Sabbath, the MC5, The Rolling Stones--it's all right now, and I think that's a terrific state of affairs."

Kramer believes Guitar Hero sends a positive message to those who play it, and he's got high hopes that it might even inspire one or two people to pick up a real guitar. "Games like Guitar Hero combine art that's been created over the last 40 years with activities that tech-savvy people of today are comfortable with and that they enjoy. I can't see how it won't inspire people to pick up a real guitar. There's got to be some 16-year-old somewhere that gets into the game and thinks 'This is really great.' Inspiring kids to be musical is a great thing; there's no downside to it. The more art that's in people's lives, the richer their lives are."

So what of the prospect of future involvement in Guitar Hero? "I'm certainly not ruling out being part of any future Guitar Hero games. I think it's all such great stuff, and I'm happy to do anything that I can to continue to get music to the people."

Kramer has just completed a score for a documentary film called The Narcotic Farm, which will examine the history of America's attempts to deal with drug addiction. After that, Kramer will begin work on a new TV series for HBO.

Philosophy in high schools Part Deux

So I wrote an article for the Sydney Morning Herald a month ago about philosophy in high schools. They got me to write a follow-up article, paid me for it, but never actually printed it...in any case, I'm tired of waiting, so I'm probably breaking like ten copyright laws right now but my blog was in dire need of something new. So here it is.

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In response to last week’s article on philosophy in high schools, the Herald was contacted by University of Sydney lecturer Dr Luke Russell, who has been teaching a HSC philosophy course titled Mind and Morality since 2001. Written and developed by Dr Russell during his PhD year, the course teaches year 11 and 12 students introductory level philosophy to the same standard as first-year university courses; its three main topics are philosophy of mind, personal identity and ethics. The course is taught partially at participating schools and partially at the Sydney University campus.

“I’ve designed Mind and Morality for students who are already doing well in their school subjects and are looking for an extra challenge,” Dr Russell said.
“It gives students analytical thinking skills and improves their ability to present a complex argument step by step.”
Dr Russell promotes the course in NSW schools, forming strong word-of-mouth support connections between students. However, numbers are still low: only around 80 students participate in it every year from across NSW. This is due to the fact that Mind and Morality counts as both a preliminary HSC unit as well as part of a future university degree, a characteristic that means the Board of Studies must place a limit on the number of students that can do the course. This, Dr Russell says, is not altogether unfavourable.
“There is a real advantage in having smaller class sizes, and that is the fact that we can have tutorial-style discussions at any point. The course has grown over the past few years and I think it will expand further in the future when we will offer more classes.”

Eighteen-year-old Chloe Paul is an ex-student of Dr Russell’s Mind and Morality course, and is now completing a Bachelor of Advanced Science at the University of Sydney with a major in Philosophy. She says studying philosophy in high school opened the door towards a better understanding of the world.
“I was very interested in the morality part of the course,” Chloe said. “I really enjoyed examining the arguments for and against various normative
ethical theories. I realised that some of my previous cultural relativist ideas (as I now know them) were pretty implausible and I think it’s made a difference to how I approach learning. I have also become far better at structuring my arguments and communicating with writing.”
Chloe believes anyone can study philosophy, no matter how young.
“There is no real limit. Three-year-old children ask philosophical questions
that the Ancient Greeks wrestled with. It’s all a matter of appropriating it to the right level.”

Daniel Wodak, 21, completed the Mind and Morality course while he was in year 11 at Sydney Boys High School in 2003, and went on to do the Philosophy Distinction Course the following year. He is now halfway through an Honours degree in Philosophy at the University of Sydney.
“As nerdy as it sounds, I really enjoy [studying philosophy],” Daniel said.
“Dealing with thought experiments about whether you'd push a fat man in front of a train to save five children is a lot more fun than real work.”
Wodak enrolled in Mind and Morality in order to try something different; what he found was something complex and challenging.
“I think that high school education in NSW really struggles to foster critical and analytical thinking. There have been some notable and laudable attempts at rectifying this, but for the most part, education is still far too focused on studying too many subjects with too little depth.”
“I think that the reason I enjoyed Mind and Morality so much is that the course was intended to test our ability to delve into one particular issue and understand it to the best extent that we could. We were encouraged to develop our own thoughts, rather than recite the thoughts of others.”

Sarah Kennedy Bates, 18, also chose to pursue philosophy in university after studying Mind and Morality in the summer school session in 2007.
“I believe that studying philosophy is beneficial to all
students, regardless of their academic focus,” she said. “Whilst there is an HSC distinction philosophy course in NSW, this is limited to accelerated students. This exclusivity and elitism helps to create the idea that philosophy is irrelevant to your average student, which is, of course, not true at all.”

Dr Russell agrees. He says the benefit of high school students studying a course like Mind and Morality is that they get to think hard about important questions that are ignored elsewhere in the HSC curriculum, such as ‘What is a person?’, ‘What are beliefs and emotions?’, and ‘How do we figure out what is morally right or wrong?’. “Our students find these philosophical questions fascinating and deeply relevant to their everyday lives,” he said. “Students appreciate being given room to question and argue in class, and lots of them say that studying philosophy has really changed their lives. It would be great if philosophy were taught more generally in high schools across Australia.”

Cupcakes

One of my many dreams is to live in New York City with my lover, and bake cupcakes for a living.

Kind of like this.

Help!

If anyone has any good ideas for cool and quirky photos involving:

a) a piece of red ribbon
b) bubbles
c) a tea candle
d) a blue crayon
e) a cocktail umbrella

Please tell me. Now.

Harry Potter

I know I've spent a good number of years poo-pooing fans of the Harry Potter books for no good reason. I've always enjoyed the movies, and never been afraid to say so, but seven books? Come on. Who has got time to read seven books, let alone when they're supposed to be for children?

How wrong I was.

I am halfway through the sixth book, and am finding it very hard to deal with the fact that it will one day end. I have never been so captivated by a story. I come home from work, I make dinner whilst reading, eat whilst reading, and then retire to bed and read until midnight. Lame? Perhaps. But when a story can have that kind of power over you, it has to be magic.

My apologies to everyone who I may have taunted during my non-Harry-Potter-loving days.

Pixar's Andrew Stanton with Wall-E

Pixar studio's Andrew Stanton headed down under recently to promote Wall-E. Here are some pictures of the duo, smiling happily for Australian photographers. Stanton proved a very nice guy who is not above signing autographs and talking to fans about their favourite Pixar films.

Philosophy in high schools

This is an article I wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald on the teaching of philosophy in high schools. I interviewed Queensland teacher Peter Ellerton, who is trying to push for more high schools around Australia to adopt philosophy.

Special thank you to Darryn, who helped me to discover a Philosopher's Zone podcast, moving silently through the Greek countryside on a sunny day in June.

Article here.

Why is philosophy as a subject such a fizzer in schools, asks Laura Parker.

For Said Bouziane, a year 11 student, using deductive logic is as easy as stacking chairs.

"One day after class I noticed a student pick up a pile of five chairs and place them on a pile of two. I wondered how many times this student chose the bigger, heavier, more troublesome pile of chairs," he said.

Pondering reason and logic is a normal part of Said's day at Calamvale Community College in Brisbane, where he studies philosophy under the guidance of teacher Peter Ellerton.

A former physics teacher, Mr Ellerton introduced the philosophy and critical thinking program to Calamvale after joining a network of Queensland teachers which promotes and spreads the teaching of philosophy in high schools throughout the state.

"Some people don't understand what we mean by philosophy - they think it's just discussion," Mr Ellerton said. "The truth is it's a rigorous and analytical subject; you have to do it properly. We don't discuss the meaning of life. As a subject, I think it's more fundamental than maths or English."


Reason being … Peter Ellerton teaches philosophy at Brisbane's Calamvale Community College and started the Australian Philosophy Teachers Network to get more resources to teachers. Photo: Paul Harris

The teaching of philosophy in Queensland high schools is not new. The subject has been taught, in one form or another, for 50 years.

Other states have been quick to catch up, with Western Australia introducing a philosophy high-school program in the last year, and Victoria in the past five years. But in NSW the situation remains uncertain. The NSW Board of Studies offers philosophy as a distinction course only to students who have already sat the HSC exams.

The course is delivered through universities, and, although it contributes to the student's UAI, attendance numbers are not high: the Board of Studies data shows only 54 students enrolled in the philosophy distinction course last year. The Board of Studies also endorses school-developed courses in general philosophy, but only a handful of high schools in NSW that have taken up this offer.

One such high school is Newington College in Stanmore. The school offers critical thinking courses for each year group, as well as a moral philosophy course for years 10 to 12.

The school introduced the International Baccalaureate in 2007, which includes a theory of knowledge component. Jeremy Hall, a teacher at Newington, believes teaching philosophy in high school is the basis of a good education.

"We live in an increasingly complex world," Mr Hall says. "Whether it is genetics, war, globalisation or environmental issues, we need students to be engaged with these issues at a level that goes beyond superficial.

"Philosophy helps students to think critically, provide good reasons for being persuaded and explore their beliefs and values."

But why aren't more high schools in the state catching on?

Phil Cam is an associate professor in the school of history and philosophy at the University of NSW and the president of the Philosophy for Schools Association of NSW - a group that aims to introduce philosophy to more high schools around the state. For him, the lack of philosophy in NSW high schools is nothing short of an embarrassment.

"No one is seriously looking at teaching philosophy in high schools in NSW," Dr Cam said. "Philosophy is actually doing very well in other states, so it's clear we're behind in educational innovation.

"Would the world be a better place if kids began learning philosophy in school? Yes. It would result in a more inquiring society, a society of thinkers who are rational and reasonable."

On the world stage, philosophy is part of the high school curriculum throughout Europe and Latin America; it's only the English-speaking countries such as the United States, Britain, New Zealand, Canada and Australia that are to catch up.

"I think philosophy will eventually be added as a high school subject throughout Australia," Dr Cam says. "It's a matter of strengthening what's already happening in the curriculum."

Mr Ellerton agrees. In June this year he started the Australian Philosophy Teachers Network, to provide philosophy teachers across the country with the ability to download and share resources freely and easily.

"The problem in Australia is a lack of qualified philosophy teachers," he said. "My interest is in distributing and collecting resources for the teachers already teaching, and inspiring a few more to start.

"Overall, I think we need more teachers to bring philosophy into common ground, and understanding how great the skills it gives students are. It's a system of understanding the world, and what could be more precious than that?"

The Queensland program is taught to year 10, 11 and 12 students at Calamvale and is composed of three strands: deductive logic, critical thinking and pure philosophy. Students are instructed in the teachings of the great philosophers as well as reasoning, argumentation and spotting fallacies. Mr Ellerton discovered a newfound scepticism in his students after just one year.

"Once my students realised that they were learning to reason, they seemed to be shocked that it wasn't taught to them earlier," he said. "I think it's one of the most important things in life. A student even said to me that learning philosophy was like flipping a light switch inside his head. It's encouraging for me as a teacher to elicit this kind of response."

True enough, philosophy has left a big impression on students such as Said, and Nikki Greethead and Sara Merlino, who all study under Mr Ellerton.

"I now question absolutely everything, and I take everyone's word as opinion and not fact," Said says. "Being able to distinguish the difference between those two, I think, is priceless. Learning logic and reason has helped me find my moral compass. For a long time I'd been wondering why should I do what someone tells me, and philosophy gave me tools to reason and find answers."

Nikki found she was "far more likely to think things through now, and ask for more detailed reasoning. Nothing forces you to ask yourself 'why' quite like philosophy."

As for Sara: "I'm Christian so I had very firm beliefs to begin with. But I found that even then I was able to become more sceptical and think about things in a different way because I had learnt to reason. Philosophy is not a yes or no subject."

It seems that learning philosophy in high school also helps students to draw parallels to other subjects, encouraging their development in different areas.

"What we've found looking at the final year exams of Queensland students is that those who have studied philosophy perform better across all subjects," Mr Ellerton said.

"The result is kids who are critical thinkers and informed citizens. It's a big call to say the world would be a better place if everyone was taught philosophy young, but what you'd certainly get is a more informed and critical population, which can only be a good thing. This is incentive enough to see philosophy subject taught in other states."

Why robots are better than aliens

I like robots because they’re cute. Some can not look cute, but no one really makes robots that don’t look cute. I am talking of course about androids, who are robots made to look like humans. Not entirely like humans of course but just the basics: a body, a head, two arms and two legs. Most developers choose to make androids because it helps the human-robot relationship because it’s much easier to interact with something when it’s shaped like you.

A robot’s cuteness usually comes from the fact that they have rounded joints, which makes them look cuddly. Some developers also give their robots really big puppy-eyes and this makes them a lot cuter than those C3P0-type robots that you see sometimes in university research centres. The reason why robots are better than aliens is because robots were invented to help humans lead a better life, and now there is serious research being done in using robots to help with aspects of human life that we’ve always reserved for other humans, i.e. early childhood education, care and service, and even companionship. Aliens don’t do any of these things. They’re also not cute, like robots are.

This is why robots are better than aliens.

David Sedaris

My lover and I haven't been able to find a publication that will print an interview with David Sedaris, and we both really, really want to interview him.

David, if you can read this, will you let us interview you just for the fun of it?

The article can be published here, on my blog. Yes?

Looking for a great gift?

Everyone is.

Here's my latest from The Vine: an article all about the joy of gift-giving. People often think that giving gifts is more about the sentiment rather than the gift itself. That's not true. I don't really care half as much about the peron's intentions as I do about what's actually given to me. You may call this selfish, but I'm sure you'll find that most people feel the same. Giving shit gifts is no excuse. So, here are some good ones.

Crafty Gift Guide

Being a creative present buyer doesn't come easy. Time, money and a general lack of good ideas often lead the best of us to the sock counter at Myer ... which can often leave the gift receiver a little more than wanting.

To save you unnecessary embarrassment, we’ve come up with a list of innovative arty and crafty gifts that will soon put you at the top of everyone’s party invitee list.

TABITHA EMMA

This 22-year-old designed lives in the outskirts of Sydney and works as a casual ice-cream shop assistant in-between designing novelty bags, purses, tea cosies, art prints and pocket mirrors. Inspired by childhood memories, Tabitha's creations are girly, young and innovative, with a touch of humour that makes these beauties perfect for the young at heart.

After studying fashion at the Whitehouse Institute of Design, Tabitha set up her own business online at Etsy.com, a site for selling and buying handmade things. Her products range from $5 to $40 and her customers come from all over the world.

"I sell wholesale and consignment to other shops around the world, both online and physical stores. I also do custom orders - I have made my purses in alternative colours and even made my designs into cushions for customers. I mail off most orders the day after purchase where possible, if not within 3 days."

Web: tabidesigns.etsy.com

KATE BANAZI

Born in London "long enough ago to have seen Star Wars when it first came out," Kate grew up in a studio environment courtesy of her artist parents. After a fashion degree and a job in textiles, she began working as a screen-print artist with her friend before moving to Sydney a year ago to get married. Kate now works from home creating custom-made silkscreened prints for just about anyone.

“I've done quite a few custom portraits and they've always been really interesting projects,” Kate says. “I try and get the idea of someone’s character often by not having met them personally or even having heard their voice. I usually send out a questionnaire, with somewhat inane questions, but these help establish personality when all I have to work with are photographs.”

Kate has worked on commissions for the music and entertainment industry, books, restaurants and tourist attractions. She uses professional water-based inks and tries to use as much recycled board and paper as she can. Her prints range in price from $50 to $2000.

“My screenprints and portraits would be the perfect gift for someone who’s looking for something a little different, and who appreciates the imperfections of something handmade.”

To order a custom-made portrait, contact Kate’s agent Jeremy, at www.jackywinter.com.

Web: www.katebanazi.com

BETSY BLONDE

Growing up in Victoria, Betsy started making jewellery for her family and friends when she was very young. After following the love of her life to Queensland, Betsy began making jewellery to pay the bills and, with no formal training under her belt, quickly quit her job to pursue her creative habit.

After a few months of selling to work colleagues and friends, Betsy Blonde was in full swing. Heavily influenced by pop culture, Betsy’s perspex shapes are quirky and fun, selling to anyone of any age, sex or taste.

“I sell to people who want something different, something that they will not see anyone else wearing. My jewellery starts conversations,” she says.

Betsy currently sells online (her own website is under construction) and her products range in price from $10 to $50. She takes custom orders and usually ships within 24 hours after receipt of payment.

Web: www.stores.ebay.com.au/betsy-blonde

SHERBET BIRDIE

Sherbet Birdie, aka Sasha Dobies, moved to Brisbane six months ago to start her own boutique old-school glamour photography studio. Catering for the 40s, 50s and 60s pin-up girl look, Sherbet Birdie is aimed at bringing out every girl’s inner sass.

“I had been art directing photography magazines in Sydney when I realised how many women I knew compared themselves with the models on the pages,” Sasha says. “I began shooting my friends for fun and that’s how it all began.”

After spending the better part of two years sourcing the right clothes, lingerie, props and costumes, Sherbet Birdie opened last month. Each photo shoot last for four hours - including hair, make-up, home-made snacks, champagne and pink cupcakes – and Sherbet Birdie caters to every girl’s fantasy (just tell them what you want).

“It’s all about a personally-tailored experience,” says Sasha.

A basic package for a half day session costs $900, including two prints. Sherbet Birdie is touring the country with stops in Sydney and Melbourne late October.

Web: www.sherbetbirdie.com