Transient Languages & Cultures

Australia recently lost another of its national treasures. Paddy Bedford was one of the prodigeously talented Gija artists of the East Kimberley. He was doubtlessly one one of the greatest artists this country has ever produced. You can read obituaries here and here (WARNING: Photo) and see for yourself the wonderful legacy he has left behind (a, b, & c).

Lots has been written and there'll be much more written yet. I just thought he thought he was a beautiful man. When he was young he earned the name Kuwumji, because Kuwumjingarri nginini, 'he went around combing his hair'. Even as a kid they reckoned he was a dude. But as he got older, he was *the MAN* (WARNING: on left in photo). But more importantly he was one of the nicest people you could hope to meet. I have many fond memories of camping on the verandah in Kununurra at Frances Kofod's house where he had his bed. He would wake up every morning to the view of Kelly's Knob. Life could be worse.

He was the only person I know who shared my passion for Spaghetti Westerns. We'd sit back with a glass of 'lemonade' and cheer while Lee Van Cleef would showem all who's boss.

One of the main reasons he lived to be 85, or however old he was, is because he was so well looked after by Frances and her son Rowan. He was well-fed and healthy and happy. Apart from being an astoundingly good linguist, Frances is one of the kindest people I've ever met. Nambijin, you're one of the world's truly unique individuals. Your loss is all of our loss.
Jungurra

On Wednesday 20 June last week PARADISEC held a very successful Open Day for staff and students of the University of Sydney.

Several of the regular bloggers here are associated with PARADISEC, and they are modest folk. We cannot therefore expect them to tell you that the conference which they held this week (Sustainable data from Digital Fieldwork) was a huge success and a really wonderful event.

But this is a message which should be broadcast, so I felt that a guest post was appropriate.

Our December conference is almost full, so if you were thinking of coming along, now is the time to register! The preliminary schedule is up, papers have been reviewed, everything is going along nicely (touch wood).

The third day of the conference is a workshop, with sections on audio and video recording, transcribing and managing your data, and producing outputs from this data. If this is more your thing you can come to just that. If you're interested in ELAN for transcribing or shoebox/toolbox, I thoroughly recommend it, but there'll be plenty of other useful stuff.

The preliminary schedule for the conference "Sustainable data from digital fieldwork: from creation to archive and back" is now up. There looks to be some really interesting projects on display. I had a sneak peek at EOPAS, a project to create a workflow and display interlinearised texts, and annodex, a project to display multiple streams of visual, audio and textual data, both of which look great. I'll also be talking about the FieldHelper tool I've been working on this year, a tool to add in the tagging of arbitrary metadata to field work data, amongst other things.

Our registration quota of 40 places is fast filling up. Please register now if you wish to come, also note that you can choose to come to the third day workshop if your interest in more in practical experience with current digital field work tools.

RNLD in collaboration with the conference "Sustainable data from fieldwork" is offering a day-long session on the creation, organisation, annotation and display of digital media. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in making digital recordings and annotating them. If you're new to shoebox or ELAN and have any questions about using it, and you have your own data, then bring along your laptop. The workshop will be held at Sydney University on Wednesday, December 6, 2006.

Read on for the specifics

Many academic disciplines depend on analysis of primary data captured during fieldwork. Increasingly, researchers today are using digital methods for the whole life cycle of their primary data, from capture to organisation, submission to a repository or archive, and later access and dissemination in publications, teaching resources and conference presentations. This conference and workshop will showcase a number of projects that have been developing innovative and sustainable ways of managing such data.

Thanks to Linda and Frank for a very interesting workshop last Friday. I picked up some great tricks on using transcriber and audacity. Perhaps the best trick I learnt was how to remove cicada noise from my PNG recordings.

Maybe you already knew how to do this (or maybe you just fiddle with the EQ), but I always thought this was in the realm of Hollywood fantasy (like when the forensics guy magically "enhances" a grainy image to reveal the killer's face in a thriller). Removing the noise allows me to more easily transcribe a busy recording, and seeing as insect noise was pretty constant and loud through all my recordings, this is quite handy. There are some caveats, but here's how to do this using freely available, cross platform software.

Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures / Sydney Humanities and Social Sciences e-Research Initiative Workshop

Presenters: Dr Linda Barwick, Director, PARADISEC and Frank Davey, Audio Preservation Officer, PARADISEC.
A free workshop covering: the range of research applications for recording and analysis of digital audiovisual media; questions of sustainability and archiving of audiovisual data; tools and resources for archiving, analysis and presentation of digital audio; the role of recordings in humanities disciplines; and using audio recordings in presentations and teaching. Includes hands-on sessions using Audacity sound editing software and Transcriber speech annotation software.