"History must, in its scholarly and in its many more public tellings, suggest a story always as yet unfinished'
Rhys Isacc, The Historian's Conscience

Milkbar.com.au: The Everyday City and Globalisation is a project that seeks to uncover the stories and concerns of some of the local residents of Fitzroy; an inner city Australian community (completed October 2002).

A number of characters within the suburb were first interviewed with a video camera and then the interviews were indexed and contextualised within a 'globalisation analysis engine' (for lack of a better description). The video can be searched and arranged and then rearranged to uncover some of the mythologies of Fitzroy within the larger discussions of 'globalisation'.

In essence, the purpose of the project is to create an 'interactive-video-documentary' of a local, inner-city community in a significant period of change and to try and understand much of this change. It is an attempt to critically objectify 'globalisation' at a local level through some of the (heuristic) mechanisms of new media tools and to try and advance the hypertextual practice of using these tools for online oral history.

...the trade of the archivist, especially the urban researcher, necessarily entails a certain capacity for flâneurie… Mike Featherstone

What you will need

In the Local section (progressive streaming) you will need at least a 56K modem or better. You will also need a good set of speakers (the speakers on laptops may not work that well). The movies run at 40kbs and you will have to install QuickTime to view them. Set your screen resolution for 800 by 600. The site should work on IE 4+ or Navigator 4+

As the Global section utilises the analysis engine it will only work on broadband (140kbs). It runs on HTML 4.01 compatible web browser (like Netscape 6, MSIE 5, Opera 5, Mozilla) and a QuickTime 5 plug-in.

Send me an email if you have problems getting the videos to work.

And this site also contains an exegitical-thesis that discusses at length the benefits and hazards of electronic scholarship (if you are into this). proceed to exigetical-thesis>>

You may also wish the read a brief essay titled Why make an Electronic Thesis in the Humanities? >>

"All great dramas are acted locally"

What is a Milkbar?

A milkbar is one of the great icons of the Australian local landscape. It is a small shop that sells lollies, milk, newspapers, fast food, and general everyday conveniences. It is rapidly being replaced by supermarkets and multinational convenience stores. If you have photos of milkbars then send them to me and I will include them in the illustrious milkbar archive>>

Authored by Craig BellamyŠ 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003

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