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Research by Leonie Cooper

This chapter explores the complex relationship between science fiction and the theme park. It mov... more This chapter explores the complex relationship between science fiction and the theme park. It moves beyond an analysis of SF themes and tropes that are used to design theme parks and their attractions to explore the SF experience that is enabled by these environments. The Disney parks are taken as exemplary of the theme park, and a close analysis of an attraction at Epcot entitled Mission: Space is undertaken. This particular focus provides a means of revealing how Disney situates “guests” in an ambivalent position, one that is inherently science-fictional. The chapter proposes that the sciencefictional mode of engagement activated by the theme park offers the means of recognizing and negotiating the science-fictional worlds that we now inhabit.

all speak to the different cultural conditions in which they were produced. Available for re-view... more all speak to the different cultural conditions in which they were produced. Available for re-viewing in the Monash Faculty Gallery, they act as portals to particular periods and experiences already lived but, in turn, they are also transposed, in the act of their transmission, into the horizon of present-lived experience. These works as they have been, and might be, recollected are more than mere snapshots imbued with the auratic quality of an object transposed from its historical anchors to act as metonymy for video's grand histories. They are not souvenirs meant to conjure up the past, the kind of objects that, Susan Stewart has argued, activate a "narrative which reaches only 'behind'" and can only ever feed the "insatiable demands of nostalgia". 1 Nor are they pinned to the chronological order and hierarchical program of the collection as if specimens accorded the weight of the museum. Always aware of the ephemerality of the video signal and its allegorical relations to the transience of memory itself, they intersect in ways that resonate with the lived relations between video art and the processes of memory-making and the marking out of video's historiography.

When is and should an artwork be projected? How do we understand the (current?) movement from pro... more When is and should an artwork be projected? How do we understand the (current?) movement from projection onto the wall, a paradigm based upon the screen as window, to projecting images (and can we even call them images?) onto (and into) other surfaces (perspex, fabric, etc)? This is not video art where the television itself was conceived as a sculptural object or assemblage and nor is it 'cinema' as it has been historically choreographed to occur within an architectural scaffolding of the theatre (and now multiplex).

This paper takes the trace (a key theme of this conference) as a concept capable of travelling in... more This paper takes the trace (a key theme of this conference) as a concept capable of travelling into the domain of 'mixed reality' artworks. The term, mixed reality, is used to refer to art where software is used to generate a participatory, persistent 'world', which is screened within an exhibition environment. The work can also be accessed online, and regenerated in other media forms and contexts, such as machinima on Youtube and screenshots embedded in blogs. I will take one work as a case study: mellifera, created by Trish Adams and Andrew Burrell. The world of mellifera has been generated using Second Life (www.secondlife.com) but it is not the turn to Second Life 'artwork' with which I'm concernedas this focus often becomes entrapped in a process of validating Second Life as (or as not) an appropriate platform for art. Nor am I concerned with using this work to account for the impact of 'the digital' on analogue practices and to, thus, articulate the trace as bound (or not) to the image and its index. Instead, the trace as concept and mellifera as object (both being co-constitutive of each other) are positioned in a productive encounter meant to mobilise thinking beyond these somewhat reductive situations. In the world of mellifera the participants leave traces that are rendered in visible and material terms. The work, however, can also indicate how the concept of the trace might be made transversable, the activity of analysis traversing an intermedial field where critic-researchers must cross paths with participants -I (as researcher and participant) track the trace that I (once) generated. This process of tracking renders the trace as a residue that accrues through ongoing encounters with the work, even when the world within which such traces appeared has long since disappeared.

This paper will return to research previously undertaken by myself within ‘early’ virtual worlds ... more This paper will return to research previously undertaken by myself within ‘early’ virtual worlds at the turn of this century - even though many of these worlds are still in existence and in the light of questioning any form of teleological evolution. I will engage with material gleaned during such research, which is mainly comprised of screenshots, for at this time, it was the screenshot that was my only means of ‘documenting’ my travels ( although I will be questioning any assumption of their evidentiary status). I will ask how this visual material worked with, and against, other imaginary constitutions of the virtual world that were in play during this period (Damer 1997). I will also critically consider how I should re-constitute them in current writing: are they now artefacts, passive things that speak of the past, or active agents in the ongoing historiographic marking up of these worlds?
In doing so I aim to acknowledge the work of those who have explored virtual worlds from a cyber--ethnographic perspective to recognise their invested participation in the co-creation of these media environments as worlds. Celia Pearce, for instance, speaks of her discoveries from the situated positions of researcher and through her avatar-identity of Artemesia (Celia Pearce and Artemesia, 2009). However, I extend upon (and critique) such work by drawing on the approach of media archaeologists such as Erkki Huhtamo (1997) and Thomas Elsaesser (1998, 2006) to develop a method alert to material processes and the historical constitution of these media environments as worlds. I argue this approach can elucidate what might have been missed, suppressed or occluded in the marking up of these ‘worlds’ by researchers and what might be said of the ‘events’ this ‘research material’ seeks to capture when they occurred on virtual terrain that has since been modified and even erased.

Stars in our eyes: the star phenomenon in the …, Jan 1, 2002

Chapter 6 Virtually Touching the Stars—from the Moon to Heaven's Gate and Beyond... more Chapter 6 Virtually Touching the Stars—from the Moon to Heaven's Gate and Beyond Leonie Cooper It is as if a window opened in the room of our everyday life, and we were invited to look outside into space, into the sky and the cosmos. —Pope Paul VI, quoted in Thrapp, p. 35 ...

Papers by Leonie Cooper

The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction, 2014

This chapter explores the complex relationship between science fiction and the theme park. It mov... more This chapter explores the complex relationship between science fiction and the theme park. It moves beyond an analysis of SF themes and tropes that are used to design theme parks and their attractions to explore the SF experience that is enabled by these environments. The Disney parks are taken as exemplary of the theme park, and a close analysis of an attraction at Epcot entitled Mission: Space is undertaken. This particular focus provides a means of revealing how Disney situates “guests” in an ambivalent position, one that is inherently science-fictional. The chapter proposes that the sciencefictional mode of engagement activated by the theme park offers the means of recognizing and negotiating the science-fictional worlds that we now inhabit.

all speak to the different cultural conditions in which they were produced. Available for re-view... more all speak to the different cultural conditions in which they were produced. Available for re-viewing in the Monash Faculty Gallery, they act as portals to particular periods and experiences already lived but, in turn, they are also transposed, in the act of their transmission, into the horizon of present-lived experience. These works as they have been, and might be, recollected are more than mere snapshots imbued with the auratic quality of an object transposed from its historical anchors to act as metonymy for video's grand histories. They are not souvenirs meant to conjure up the past, the kind of objects that, Susan Stewart has argued, activate a "narrative which reaches only 'behind'" and can only ever feed the "insatiable demands of nostalgia". 1 Nor are they pinned to the chronological order and hierarchical program of the collection as if specimens accorded the weight of the museum. Always aware of the ephemerality of the video signal and its allegorical relations to the transience of memory itself, they intersect in ways that resonate with the lived relations between video art and the processes of memory-making and the marking out of video's historiography.

When is and should an artwork be projected? How do we understand the (current?) movement from pro... more When is and should an artwork be projected? How do we understand the (current?) movement from projection onto the wall, a paradigm based upon the screen as window, to projecting images (and can we even call them images?) onto (and into) other surfaces (perspex, fabric, etc)? This is not video art where the television itself was conceived as a sculptural object or assemblage and nor is it 'cinema' as it has been historically choreographed to occur within an architectural scaffolding of the theatre (and now multiplex).

This paper takes the trace (a key theme of this conference) as a concept capable of travelling in... more This paper takes the trace (a key theme of this conference) as a concept capable of travelling into the domain of 'mixed reality' artworks. The term, mixed reality, is used to refer to art where software is used to generate a participatory, persistent 'world', which is screened within an exhibition environment. The work can also be accessed online, and regenerated in other media forms and contexts, such as machinima on Youtube and screenshots embedded in blogs. I will take one work as a case study: mellifera, created by Trish Adams and Andrew Burrell. The world of mellifera has been generated using Second Life (www.secondlife.com) but it is not the turn to Second Life 'artwork' with which I'm concernedas this focus often becomes entrapped in a process of validating Second Life as (or as not) an appropriate platform for art. Nor am I concerned with using this work to account for the impact of 'the digital' on analogue practices and to, thus, articulate the trace as bound (or not) to the image and its index. Instead, the trace as concept and mellifera as object (both being co-constitutive of each other) are positioned in a productive encounter meant to mobilise thinking beyond these somewhat reductive situations. In the world of mellifera the participants leave traces that are rendered in visible and material terms. The work, however, can also indicate how the concept of the trace might be made transversable, the activity of analysis traversing an intermedial field where critic-researchers must cross paths with participants -I (as researcher and participant) track the trace that I (once) generated. This process of tracking renders the trace as a residue that accrues through ongoing encounters with the work, even when the world within which such traces appeared has long since disappeared.

This paper will return to research previously undertaken by myself within ‘early’ virtual worlds ... more This paper will return to research previously undertaken by myself within ‘early’ virtual worlds at the turn of this century - even though many of these worlds are still in existence and in the light of questioning any form of teleological evolution. I will engage with material gleaned during such research, which is mainly comprised of screenshots, for at this time, it was the screenshot that was my only means of ‘documenting’ my travels ( although I will be questioning any assumption of their evidentiary status). I will ask how this visual material worked with, and against, other imaginary constitutions of the virtual world that were in play during this period (Damer 1997). I will also critically consider how I should re-constitute them in current writing: are they now artefacts, passive things that speak of the past, or active agents in the ongoing historiographic marking up of these worlds?
In doing so I aim to acknowledge the work of those who have explored virtual worlds from a cyber--ethnographic perspective to recognise their invested participation in the co-creation of these media environments as worlds. Celia Pearce, for instance, speaks of her discoveries from the situated positions of researcher and through her avatar-identity of Artemesia (Celia Pearce and Artemesia, 2009). However, I extend upon (and critique) such work by drawing on the approach of media archaeologists such as Erkki Huhtamo (1997) and Thomas Elsaesser (1998, 2006) to develop a method alert to material processes and the historical constitution of these media environments as worlds. I argue this approach can elucidate what might have been missed, suppressed or occluded in the marking up of these ‘worlds’ by researchers and what might be said of the ‘events’ this ‘research material’ seeks to capture when they occurred on virtual terrain that has since been modified and even erased.

Stars in our eyes: the star phenomenon in the …, Jan 1, 2002

Chapter 6 Virtually Touching the Stars—from the Moon to Heaven's Gate and Beyond... more Chapter 6 Virtually Touching the Stars—from the Moon to Heaven's Gate and Beyond Leonie Cooper It is as if a window opened in the room of our everyday life, and we were invited to look outside into space, into the sky and the cosmos. —Pope Paul VI, quoted in Thrapp, p. 35 ...

The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction, 2014