Tomorrow I leave for Australia. And I won't really stop leaving until Monday, when I land and exit airports. It's a not-so-modest tour, and most of all, a chance to strengthen working relations and friendships with Melissa Gregg, Jean Burgess, and Jane Simon. In Brisbane, I'm visiting and giving a talk to people at Jean's institutional home, Creative Industries Research and Application Centre, at Queensland University of Technology. Then, a brief trip to Sydney for a south hemispheric interlude—in order to see Sydney and to visit with Jane. Then back to Brisbane to attend the Internet Masterclass workshop at the University of Queensland, where Melissa works. And finally, to Perth with the foursome, where we are hosting a panel called "Fields of Uncool: Counter-heroics and Counter-professionalism in Cultural Studies" at the CSAA conference "Everyday Transformations.

[pause for breath] I'm very lucky to be going. And excited. I'll report back in 2005, if not along the way.

-kris

Thanks to Amanda Windle from Wimbledon School of Art for presenting us with a real lesson in how to engage elegantly with ungodly research messes. She's doing a practice-based PhD (or, in the new argot of the art world: she's doing art "research"), which sounds like an exquisite snarl of theory, practice, text, image and all the ways those categories slip their gears. She's working on visualising personal space, but starting to deal with Artificial Intelligence, Actor Network Theory and some pretty heavyweight philosophy. Can't wait to see where she goes with it.

-kris

Two upcoming INCITE events:

1. Monday, 15th Nov.: reading group for John Law's "After Method".

2. Tues, 16th Nov., Amanda Windle, practice-based PhD student from Wimbledon School of Art, will be talking about her work on personal space and Artificial Intelligence/A-Life.

-kris

Monument Erected, History Annexed. Last Thurs, I attended my first public unveiling of a statue, and my first event presided over by a royal. In this case, his Royal Highness, the Earl of Wessex. When he pulled the ripcord, we beheld a statue of Alan Turing, cast in bronze. Monumental indeed, but somehow not large enough. It was several heads higher than most people, but would (if The People decided someday that Alan Turing needed to be overthrown) have looked awkwardly underwhelming were someone to try and topple it. Alan Turing never worked at Surrey as an adult, but had spent a part of his childhood in Guildford, the city which hosts the University of Surrey. So, why not? Apparently, the Earl then visited the dance department at Surrey, the royals not being a family to unveil and run.

-kris