Stans (Constance) van der Veen emailed me pictures of the giant Arum lily, which was supposed to have flowered on the night of my visit in August. Except that they were a day out in their calculations. In any case because I had to get back to Amsterdam I could not have stayed for the duration of what wasn’t the flowering. These plants are famed for their size and the rarity of their flowering and are notorious for the foul odour they emit when in bloom. Stans’ backpack retained the odour a month after the event.

The two parcels I sent via courier, containing the DVCAM master tapes of the published archive, a set of the DVDs, the original revised script and copies of the signed interview releases, have arrived at the National Film & Sound Archive.

It’s taken a long time to reach this point, given that I thought the future of the entire archive was secure in the hands of the State Library of Queensland – even before publication at the end of 2005. A letter dated April 11 from Graham Shirley, Senior Curator, Moving Image, at the NFSA broke the logjam. I await the paperwork to formally conclude the handover of my donation.

I received confirmation that the master disc for The Beauty of Overlooked Things (see blog item: 20 March 2008) has arrived at the production company in Sydney. I am having the DVDs made from a glass master. All being well, they will be ready in time for me to take some copies with me when I leave on my overseas trip to the UK and Europe on July 16.

Steve and I spent a hairy week finalising the soundtrack and authoring – only to discover that the presentation had to be completely changed to allow a seamless transition between the 4:3 footage and the widescreen footage. Christina designed some beautiful graphics for the disc print, the insert and the video titles. I want to explore the possibility of creating a video installation of the Beauty series.

Sandrine Meats, who interviewed me in London in 2006 for her dissertation on 60s and 70s performance art in the UK, wants to interview me on my next trip to Europe for an article she is writing about WHSHT (see blog 11 July 2007) for a leading French art publication. She is also interested in the essay I wrote on the Light/Sound Workshop at Hornsey College of Art, so I mailed her a copy the other day.

I am looking forward to seeing her again. The first interview was lots of fun, though my memory of events 40 years ago was rather hazy.

An email has arrived from Jo Ritale, Manager, Original Materials of the Heritage Collections at the State Library of Queensland, confirming the library’s willingness to house the master edit DVCAMs of the unpublished archive. This amounts to over 40 hours, plus the associated papers. Jo will visit me when we can arrange it, to see what the archive consists of.

The main reason for the protracted negotiations on the best way to preserve the archive has been the need for The State Library to develop protocols on how to protect original digital material. The National Film & Sound Archive was suggested as a better prospect, except that the NFSA regards unedited footage as out-take material, whereas I regard it as additional, useful research material. Fortunately the State Library agrees with me.

At one point, much to my horror and that of both my editors, the library wanted to preserve the archive on analogue tape. Fortunately it has agreed to accept DVCAMs for preservation purposes and DVDs for access purposes.

The NFSA staff have no problem with DVCAMs but it was just as alarming that they insisted access should be… Read Complete Text

I delivered a set of the DVDs to the Environmental Protection Agency in Brisbane with a feeling of great satisfaction, even triumph, following a meeting with the head of the Biodiversity section earlier in the month.

In March 2006 I had written to the then Director General requesting that the EPA buy the archive, only to be turned down by the Executive Director of the Parks Division citing the (to me ill-mannered) non-sequitur that the State Library already had a copy. I felt that my archive showed what was at stake in this part of the world (and still is), that biodiversity was a core concern of the EPA and that for these reasons they should have a copy. I even followed up with a tongue in cheek letter to the Minister asking her to ‘correct an apparent oversight’. It was only after phoning to request a meeting with the current Director General earlier this year that all the pieces for a successful conclusion fell into place.

Received an email from Julian Palacios, the author of Lost in the Woods about Syd Barrett and the Pink Floyd, praising the essay I wrote as part of my BA degree on the Light/Sound Workshop at Hornsey College of Art, of which I was a member. He first got in touch in December 2007, having read this website’s Press page, and asked for my recollections about the Workshop, my memories of Mike Leonard and the ‘boys from the Floyd’. He requested the essay in one of his emails. I knew I had kept it and was able to dig it out.

Mike was an architect and the Workshop’s presiding genius. I shared a flat in his house with Roger Waters and Nick Mason whom he taught at architecture college. The boys from the Floyd would come into our studio at art college and improvise to our light projections.

Wrote a letter to Peter Garrett, Federal Minister for the Environment, following his March 12 reply to the email and brief paper I sent him on January 8, about rectifying the lack of protection of biodiversity in Australia’s inhabited areas. These can be more biodiverse than remote or wilderness areas. I drafted the paper soon after a meeting on the Mountain in June 2007, at which Jennie George, now Peter Garrett’s Parliamentary Secretary, asked what can we do to protect Australia’s biodiversity. I thought his letter glossed over the lack of protection and wanted to tell him so. Much good may it do me.

Today Edward O Wilson, the inspirational conservationist and the first person to use the word ‘biodiversity’ in print, sent an email in reply to a letter I wrote him last week.

I wanted his reflection on my concern about the gap between the widespread use of the word ‘biodiversity’ in conversation and in the media and people’s understanding of its meaning. I suggested that the gap could best be bridged via a blue-chip natural history TV documentary series and expressed puzzlement at this apparent gap in the illustrious record of the genre.

In his generous reply Professor Wilson agreed with my premise and was very complimentary about my archive.

In my letter to him I had acknowledged an immeasurable debt of gratitude to him because, without the word ‘biodiversity’, my archive would be inconceivable.

I also sent a similar letter to Sir David Attenborough who graciously replied by post in beautiful handwriting. He did not refer to my point about the apparent gap in the record of natural history documentaries, but confirmed that my two contacts in the BBC’s Natural History Unit were the people best… Read Complete Text

Steve has started editing The Beauty of Overlooked Things video series. The idea behind the series is to make the archive footage more accessible as art, given the inherent inaccessibility of the published archive.

The series will comprise five 6-8 minute videos. I emailed Christina to ask her if she would do all the graphics. Clive and I had previously discussed on the phone the idea of a book based on the archive and which could include the Beauty series of DVDs. We intend to work on the book during my UK stay in late July, early August.