Thank you very much.
It's fantastic to be here and, yes, we're so thrilled to be a partner of RMIT, and it's
such a fruitful collaboration.
Before I begin, I too would like to acknowledge that we meet here today on the traditional
lands of the people on the Kulin Nations and pay respects to elder's past and present.
So, obviously, digital media permeates our lives in ways that were unimaginable, even
a decade ago.
Powerful creative tools to make, share, distribute and watch media content now lie in the hands
of the many rather than the few.
And equally, we're in a time of convergence and constant change where, as the previous
two speakers have said, nimbleness and flexibility have become core skills as we move across
platforms and technologies, working collaboratively and across previously siloed disciplines and
as audiences find increasingly inventive ways to consume their content.
Where is my-- there we are.
As we pivot into the new economy, in the economy of the developed world turns increasingly
away from the hard industries, jobs and manufacturing and many service industries will vanish.
The robots or specifically automation are coming.
We've all got different statistics.
I think mine is the most optimistic, probably because it was set up in 2016 by the CSIRO,
but they predicted that 44% of Australian jobs are under threat by the new industrial
revolution.
The robots are coming with us, enabling us to do more, to explore new ideas, and to expand
our creative horizons.
Governments and corporations and policymakers recognise that the soft skills that we've
been talking about so much: resilience, curiosity, entrepreneurial thinking, vision, empathy,
insight will be vital to drive our future, and are skills humans need to learn that robots
can't replace.
These buzz words are absolutely central to the humanities, to the creative industries
and the arts.
They are our DNA.
They've always been us.
We need to invest in these areas of learning and industry, to provide the resources needed
for R&D, to explore and push technology and platforms, to create content with a focus
on science, research and innovation as long-term drivers of economic prosperity, jobs and growth.
And $1.1 billion was committed over four years, which was fabulous.
But it was incredibly frustrating, that as a national agenda on innovation was established,
vital for our nation.
It neglected to propose a focus on and vitally provide investment in leveraging creativity
and the creative industries across our economy.
The new technologies and digital tools that are available to us can be harnessed in creative
ways to break down silos between content creators and platforms, and vitally between disciplines
to remove traditional barriers to access and to foster innovation.
We need to move on from STEM and into STEAM.
From the beginning of the animation of the moving image, media makers, artists, journalists,
filmmakers, and technicians have experimented with these new platforms to tell and share
stories and ideas in new and exciting ways.
Multi-trillion-dollar global industries are not successful just through their technological
innovations, but because of the power of the stories that these technologies deliver to
audiences.
Technology provides a tool and a platform, but it's content that is queen.
Artists and the creative industries push form that take risks, that look at digital tools
in different ways.
They are entrepreneurial, and they are about content.
For the federal agencies that have faced unprecedented cuts in recent years.
Screen Australia, the Australia Council, the National Film and Sound Archive, the ABC,
SBS, it's vital to remember the value-- to remember the value that creative experimentation
and innovation bring to technology.
We've got to ensure that we're supporting and developing those practitioners who've
got the talent to shift the dial and really breakthrough to make new discoveries and find
new and significant audiences.
Creativity thrives on experimentation and risk.
It's not safe, outcomes are not guaranteed.
The cuts for the federal agencies have reduced their capacity to support their-- this experimentation
and it's slowing down the cultural innovation of our nation.
There are fewer opportunities for fewer practitioners.
Barriers are coming up, reducing diversity as choices inevitably become safer, and outcomes
are judged more and more on their quantitative rather than their quality of outcomes.
And when we talk about innovation and STEM, we also need to break down the silos that
separate the creative industries from the STEM disciplines and drive an agenda of STEAM.
And it's fundamental that the university sector is doing this.
It requires a holistic strategic approach across the economy and the education sector
to break down these traditional ways of learning, of researching, of working to create a new,
more dynamic interdisciplinary ecology.
Consider one of the very successful start-up communities in Australia, particularly in
Melbourne right now, the games industry.
The multi-trillion-dollar games industry is now bigger than the global and film and television
industries combined.
And I'm probably speaking to the converted here at RMIT, but let's get beyond the clich�
that games are only for sweaty boys playing first-person shooters.
Video Games are as broad ranging in their form and as creative an industry as film and
television, and they're offering content for everyone and anyone.
While the industry has major issues with gender diversity on the production side, half of
all video game players are women.
So, the audience is very balanced.
The game industry is all about innovation and business, and because the success of a
game is not just code, but storytelling, design, sound, music, user experience design, it's
not STEM, it's science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and the arts.
It's STEAM.
Investing and collaborating with artists can bring exciting new applications of technology
for businesses.
Lynette Wallworth is an Australian artist whose work, right across her career, has been
pushing the boundaries of the technology she works with to tell urgent social impact stories.
Her most recent work, and we're seeing a little bit of footage here, is a work called Awavena.
It's a virtual reality artwork that she made at the invitation of, and the collaboration
with the Yawanawa people of the Amazon basin, who saw the possibilities that 360 degrees
video had to tell their story.
Lynette wanted to scan the forest and the community in incredible detail.
And through her production partner, she was able to take one of only three ultra-high
definition Lidar scanners available in the US at that time.
And this is only about 18 months ago.
She was able to take the Lidar scanner with her crew to the Amazon basin.
A Lidar scanner collects 300,000 points of data per second.
Lynette was seeking a way to harness this brand new technology to create footage that
she says, "was at once completely specific and ethereal at the same time".
To match the vision state, the Yawanawa were seeking in the VR work to express.
Lynette returned to the US, and through Sundance, she had a residency at the Technicolor Experience
Centre in Los Angeles to undertake her post-production.
She worked with Technicolor's team to deliver this very complicated work, and to ensure
its seamless interactivity.
Technicolor saw how Lynette had pushed this new technological tool, and they've now bought
a fourth Lidar scanner in the US, and they're now apply it to many other projects.
A residency of this kind has not only been hugely beneficial for Lynette, but also for
Technicolor.
And that's why this 100-year old company has an artist in residence program to see how
artists experiment with these tools, and then apply them commercially.
At ACMI X, our co-working space, we just completed running an accelerator program for creative
Victoria.
We've rounded in partnership with State Library Victoria.
It's for Victorian start-ups in the creative industries.
Twelve companies were resident of our co-working space at ACMI for a two month program, which
applies tech start-up methodologies to creative businesses.
This is the third accelerator of this kind that we've run in the past 18 months.
And as I understand it, it's one of the first that have ever been run in Australia, and
very rarely run globally.
It's early days but investing in these creative industry companies and supporting them to
build sustainable businesses has huge potential.
Change is really hard.
And we're always happy to go with the status quo, even as the need to change and the opportunities
that offers are staring us in the face.
In 2005, I presented something rather quaintly called, Digi Day, at the Adelaide Film Festival.
It investigated new online, or at that time, cross platform possibilities, and what they
could offer traditional screen practitioners and their audiences.
Not only for marketing opportunities, but for new ways to extend their story telling
and reach, and to get to audiences in new ways.
It was clear at that time, that only a few practitioners in the Australian Industries
were thinking creatively about how to harness the new technologies and digital platforms
for their businesses and their story telling.
A decade later, after commissioning millions of dollars' worth the films, television programs,
animations, shorts and online arts programming at both the Adelaide Film Festival, then as
head of TV Arts at the ABC.
I found that the industry was largely, still in the same place as a decade before.
Old school approaches still ruled the roost.
Unlearning, as Jason was saying before, is absolutely critical.
And it's really, really hard to do.
But what happens when somebody thinks outside the box?
These are images from Barrie Kosky's absolutely extraordinary production of Magic Flute that
was presented at the Adelaide Festival earlier this year.
His company, the Berlin Komische Opera, collaborated with the brilliant theatre and moving image
company in 1927.
And you can see the results.
Essentially, it's a set that's entirely projected onto singers.
And it's so magical and playful.
It's a hybrid work.
It takes a very traditional form, opera, and pushes it together with the moving image in
such an innovative and wonderful way that entirely new audiences discover in the magic
of Mozart's Magic Flute.
It's thrilling.
We need to ensure that our young people are being trained for the new reality.
The traditional model, the auteur, who has a long-term career creating cinematic works,
is still important.
The reality is, that an even rarer few will be able to have a career in this space.
Instead, successful screen and media production practitioners need to be nimble, pushing form,
experimenting with different platforms, finding new audiences locally and globally.
And for many graduates, a future career will be about applying their skills in new contexts,
virtual reality in mining and engineering and aged-care, augmented reality and retail
and advertising, games and defence and tourism, filmmaking and the performing and the visual
arts.
Moving images, the practitioners, artists and industries and the technologies that deliver
the stories and experiences are central to our lives, and to our futures right across
the economy.
We need to embed the creative industries into our national strategy for innovation, education,
research, alongside and with the STEM disciplines.
It's vital not only for the cultural enrichment of our society, but equally, the enrichment
of our future economy.
Thank you.