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ARC Linkage Grants

Article released: Thursday, 29 October, 2009

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Congratulations to COFA staff members Associate Professor Dennis Del Favero, Associate Professor Paula Dawson and Dr Sally Gray on their Australian Research Council (ARC) success this week. Associate Professor Paula Dawson, who already holds a large Linkage grant has secured a Discovery; the iCinema team have a new Linkage; and Dr Sally Gray joins the academic staff as an Australian Postdoctoral Fellow.

Associate Professor Dennis Del Favero, with a team including Emeritus Professor Neil Brown, Professor Paul Compton, Professor Jeffrey Shaw, Professor Horace Ip, Sarah Kenderdine, Tim Hart, Professor Lev Manovich and Professor Peter Weibel, has received over $600 000, spread over three years, to work on Narrative reformulation of museological data: the coherent representation of information by Project Title users in interactive systems.
The proposed research seeks to provide Australia with a long-term opportunity to enhance its involvement in the billion-dollar creative economy by building the world’s first immersive 360-degree interactive data browser. Research into such systems benefits society by providing a cutting-edge development in digital technology and information access that enables a creative innovation culture. Through applied research into the narrative forms that underpin museological archives, this study will ensure that Australia remains at the forefront of the growing world-wide research into interactive technology thereby assisting the global digital media industry to tackle emergent challenges.

Associate Professor Paula Dawson, with a team comprising of Associate Professor M Takatsuka; Dr H Yoshikawa; and Professor RL Gregory, will develop Holoshop: The design, implementation and evaluation of rapid 3D drawing technology or content creation in holograms and other three-dimensional displays.
This project, in developing tools and technologies to enable rapid, free-hand, three-dimensional electronic drawing will give a particular visual impetus to the development of display systems technology. It further strengthens Australia's already strong record of applying aesthetic criteria to technological questions and contributing to the international development of virtual media. The resulting intellectual exchanges will raise consciousness of the crucial nature of representation in spatial imaging display. Collaborating with the world class Media Lab (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) as they invent holographic television for the consumer market will give Australia a key role in the experimental design of 3D content creation.

Dr Sally Gray will be working on Fashion, Identity and the City: Making an 'Australian Style' in fashion, Sydney in the 1970s-80s
The Australian Textile Clothing and Footwear industry provides over 48,000 jobs and contributes $2.8 billion to the national economy. Innovation at the 'high end' or 'designer' end of the market is especially important in establishing and maintaining the idea of Australia as an originator of innovative ideas and desirable fashionable style. Insight into how this happens resides within an historical context and cannot be simply conjured up. The project's findings will enhance our understanding of the conditions leading to Australian design and style innovation, contributing to National Priority Three by creating a better understanding of the conditions conducive to innovation.


The ARC Linkage Projects scheme supports collaborative research and development projects between higher education organisations and organizations typically within industry.  The research projects enable the application of advanced knowledge to problems.