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Mapping the impact of creative digital industries
By Stephen Cassidy
The Creative Industries Research and Applications Centre (CIRAC) at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane is undertaking a major three-year mapping study of Australia's creative digital industries.
The project will provide vital information on the extent and value of Australia's creative digital industries, including their impact on the Australian economy.
The study will look at the impact of digital content and applications on areas such as art, culture, health, education, business services, defence, agriculture and mining industries.
It will examine the economic activity digital content and applications are generating in other sectors. For example, how digital 3D film technology has been picked up and used by the art and culture, mining and health sectors, and what impact the computer games industry is having on music, film and creative writing.
The project will also look at the effect that products and services developed by the creative digital industry are having on the way organisations and businesses carry out their activities.
Operating from the newly launched Creative Industries Precinct at the Queensland University of Technology, CIRAC will manage the day to day operations of the research project with industry partners, the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts and the Australian Film Commission.
For more information, visit the website: www.creativeindustries.qut.com/research/cirac/
Inset image (detail): 3D interactive display, 'Virtual Zeus', from One thousand years of the Olympic games: treasures of ancient Greece at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, 2000. Photograph: Marinco Kojdanovski
The digital creative content industry is having an impact on the work of Australia's cultural institutions, making collections and exhibitions more accessible to the public.
National Museum of Australia
In one exciting project, multimedia developers are collaborating with the National Museum of Australia to produce educational content for The Learning Federation.
The foundation is a Commonwealth body which commissions national curriculum content for schools in Australia and New Zealand. From its National Historical Collection, the Museum is developing a range of learning materials that focuses on events that have shaped Australia's identity.
Multimedia developers are assisting the Museum to create an interactive online resource for use by students in Australia and internationally. It is also a resource that can be reused by the Museum for its own exhibitions and website.
Powerhouse Museum
Material produced collaboratively by creative industry animators and the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney has been sold to the United States broadcaster NBC Universal.
NBC used the spectacular 3D special effects created by the Powerhouse Museum and animators in a special documentary program on the history of the Olympic Games during the Athens Olympic Games.
The Powerhouse exhibition, 1000 years of the Olympic Games: Treasures of Ancient Greece, which was developed for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, used sophisticated digital animation to recreate the 200BC site of Olympia.
A team of specialist animators, archaeologists and website developers created three-dimensional wire frame and archaeological data sets which the viewer could travel through.
More information about this special digital project is at projects.powerhousemuseum.com/ancient_greek_olympics