CQU Brisbane International Campus lecturer, Donna Wright, will be presenting a paper relating to her PhD research on intercultural communication, at the 4th International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities, being held in Tunisia in July.

Ms Wright’s research is titled, 'Big Blue Ball: Pictures, people, place – An intercultural playground for creative conversations'.

It is an international project that looks at intercultural communication systems, specifically exploring how young adults across the world today are forming their common impressions as they navigate within a technologically networked and transmigratory, global community.

The project consists of a process of open, creative, intercultural exchange through the interpretation of selected visual texts making use of the communication tools of the visual and creative arts.

There are currently over 130 project participants from 75 nationalities across the globe.

To date, project members have written descriptives, poetry, narratives and free word associations; in English and in their first language.Paintings have been produced, digitised images have been created, images have been hybridised and other pictures and photos have replaced them.

The project is extended, by way of a continuing interchange of ideas through visual dialogue between Ms Wright, as researcher and artist, and project members.

Making specific use of the communicative method of hand-made picture making, Ms Wright’s own creative reflections of negotiated interpretations are recorded on small, magnetic-backed, wooden blocks, 100 x 100mm in size.

By project completion, over 300 blocks will be available as part of a series of public exhibitions.

Piled on a table, spectators can continue the communication process by moving the blocks around on the table and up the wall, constructing new ideas and new meanings. Like fridge magnets or children’s ABC blocks, forming and reforming a continuing and dynamic discourse, both with the original texts and with the cultures represented in the project, spectators get the opportunity to engage in constructing a communication chain around the world.

The conference paper has also been accepted for publication in the International Humanities Journal, with publication date anticipated later this year.