Sydney Ideas

Our greatest task is to try to imagine the future before it arrives and then to try to shape it. Will the buzzwords ‘innovation’ and ‘agility’ come to mean more than increased efficiency and wealth for the few? The future is almost within reach, but the portents are challenging; rarely has the future seemed so difficult a prospect. Coinciding with the 500th anniversary of Thomas More's Utopia, Griffith Review founding editor Julianne Schultz launches Griffith Review 52: Imagining the Future. Professor Schultz is joined by University of Sydney scientist Professor Thomas Maschmeyer and distinguished writer-journalists and Griffith Review contributors Kathy Marks, Tony Davis and Paul Daley, in a conversation around themes arising from our urgent need to address the world ahead.

This talk explores how the manifesto became a defining genre of the artistic avant-garde and other political movements across the 20th century, from Futurism and Surrealism to radical feminist manifestos by Valerie Solanas and the Riot Grrrls. It coincides with Julian Rosefeldt’s moving image 2014-2015 artwork, ‘Manifesto’,which brings to life the enduring provocation of the historical art manifesto. ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Natalya Lusty is an Associate Professor in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. She is the author of Surrealism, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (2007), Dreams and Modernity: A Cultural History (2013), with Helen Groth and the edited collection, Modernism and Masculinity (2014), which was shortlisted for the Modernist Studies Association book prize. She has spent the last decade writing and talking about manifestos in numerous academic contexts and public forums and is currently completing a book on feminist manifestos.

The unrivalled corpus of medieval manuscripts unearthed in the northwestern Chinese desert town of Dunhuang in the early twentieth century divulged a trove of secrets about the practice of Chinese Buddhism. Among the thousands of liturgical texts created by local monks for the performance of rituals, almost two hundred separate manuscripts contain liturgies that were spoken aloud during healing rituals. Stephen F Teiser, Professor in Buddhist Studies and Professor of Religion at Princeton University, introduces Dunhuang and its manuscripts, surveys the practice of healing in medieval Chinese Buddhism, explores how illness can be cured through karmic means, discusses the role of confession in curing, and reflects on the process of healing in Chinese Buddhism.

Why was Zika virus declared an international public health emergency by the World Health Organization? What are the implications for people living in Australia? What other infectious diseases pose a risk here, and how would we respond if there was an outbreak? Listen to a wide ranging discussion about the facts behind Zika and other mosquito-borne illnesses, the role of the media and government in keeping the public properly informed, the mechanisms for controlling the risks, and a frank assessment of where in the world we should be focusing our attention to limit the potential for epidemics.

Data is the currency of the digital age and has transformed all areas of physical life and social sciences. In all disciplines there has been an unparalleled growth in the quantity and variety of data made available by the pervasive nature of the internet and enabled by almost free digital storage. Moving beyond the expectations of ‘big data’ the focus is now on development of sophisticated and nuanced transformational data-driven ideas and algorithms. Have we reached a tipping point where new approaches to complex systems, personal health, social policy and understanding our earth can now be understood with sophisticated and nuanced data-driven discovery? What are the next fruitful steps for bringing together disparate data for applications that benefit individuals, business and our society? The University of Sydney’s new Centre for Translational Data Science is driving new and transformational advances in research through the application of data and machine-learning technologies. The Centre is also supporting and building substantial new human capacity through teaching data science as a translational methodology and training a new generation of scientists. In this interactive forum they discuss what we now know and what the future of data science holds. A Sydney Ideas event on 7 June 2016 http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2016/data_transforming_science_and_society.shtml

This talk was a key note address for the 2016 Photography.Ontology symposium that took place at the University of Sydney in June 2016. Professor Smith considers Frederick Douglass’s propositions about the social power of photography. Looking back at Douglass’s lecture “Pictures and Progress” through the lens of contemporary artist Rashid Johnson’s homage to the nineteenth-century orator, the talk examines Douglass’s surprising celebration of photography as an objectifying medium. Douglass saw the persistence of photographs as both a conserving and a conservative force, and Johnson’s self-portrait after Douglass testifies to that doubled dynamic. But Douglass also found progressive power in the technology’s capacity to alienate the self, an unexpected position for the formerly enslaved. The talk explores Douglass’s complicated embrace of photography as a medium of objectification as well as progress, as a link to the past as well as the future.

Constructed, neglected, rebuilt and expanded over the course of nearly a century, the Qing imperial park of Bishu shanzhuang played a central, but constantly changing, role in the history of the Manchu dynasty for nearly two centuries. Scholars of the site have focused on its final form at the end of the 18th century, taking a single vision of its design and use as descriptive of its entire history. In this talk, Stephen Whiteman explores the park’s early history under the Kangxi emperor, from its original conception as an imperial retreat to its representation through text and image, and considers the legacy of this history not only in later iterations of the landscape, but also in collective memories of the rise and fall of the dynasty itself.

Scientists have long thought that the adult brain is unchangeable, but new evidence is emerging to challenge this belief by revealing that the brain is capable of lifelong change and adaptation. This adaptability - or neuroplasticity as it is commonly known - shows the mature brain can reorganise or ‘rewire’ itself in response to experience, disease or injury. University of Sydney researchers are at the forefront of brain and mind research. In this fascinating forum our experts will share what neuroplasticity means for degenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s, regaining speech after disease or injury, and the implications for all of us in terms of maintaining a healthy brain. Presenters: Associate Professor Michael Valenzuela, Head of the Regenerative Neuroscience Group, Brain and Mind Centre Professor Leanne Togher, Professor of Communication Disorders following Traumatic Brain Injury, Faculty of Health Sciences Dr Michael Lee, Clinical Neurophysiologist and Physiotherapist, Brain and Mind Centre and Faculty of Health Sciences Professor Simon Lewis, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Clinical Director of the Ageing Brain Clinic, Brain and Mind Centre

Panel discussion with audience Q&A on the topic of Wiser Healthcare We all want to be able to get good healthcare when we need it. But what would it mean to provide and consume healthcare wisely? This panel discussion with Dr Iona Heath considers a radical idea: that sometimes wiser healthcare means less healthcare. Or at least, less healthcare for people who don’t need it, so we can give more healthcare to people who do.

Music’s power to form, sustain and present social identities is especially relevant in today’s changing and increasingly networked world. A panel of Indigenous researchers and performers from Australia and overseas discuss: how songs can support language revitalization; how music can help us to understand our history and our communities; and how Indigenous youth today are using Rap music to share their cultural knowledge and their lived experiences. A Sydney Ideas event on 27 May 2016. http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2016/music_and_contemporary_indigenous_identities_forum.shtml