This is a suite of short articles on a videoconferencing project carried out at the University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury, between August and November 1996. Our project was a "teaching and learning" pilot, using funds made available by the University to explore this recently purchased new technology. We called it "Performing Plato: Videoconferencing and the Audio-Visual Classroom". The project was attached to a 200 level subject, Videography, which had previously never been taught. Some 35 students, all with some background in multimedia or video, participated. The pilot was spread over 4 workshop groups, running as pairs across two campuses, Blacktown and Richmond (see "Performing Plato Project Description and Final Report").

The pilot took the opportunity offered by the introduction of videoconferencing at Hawkesbury to question notions of "normal" or "orthodox" practice. We consider our approach "aberrant" in three ways. Firstly, in relation to current definitions of "Best Practice", which construct a normative model for engagement with videoconferencing within the institution (see Barrett). Secondly, in relation to an "enlightenment" tradition of education dating back to the philosophy of Plato. Our "aberrant" reading of Plato proved extremely useful for the analysis of videoconferencing (see Hodge, and Benjamin). Thirdly, our approach deviates from already orthodox ideas about videoconferencing content and performance (see Maras, and Benjamin).

From a teaching and learning perspective videoconferencing is usually seen as a way to transmit the lecturer's spoken and graphic content to the student, with interaction limited to spoken responses. The pilot deliberately sought to challenge the technical and pedagogic limits of the technology by incorporating into all parts of the process the richest possible mix of audio-visual material. The scope of the subject Videography allowed us to incorporate specialised forms of media production (video and multimedia) along with less specialised "guerrilla media" (digital still cameras, VCRs, photos and other found images), with videoconferencing as the format for presentation. The emphasis on "graphy" or "writing" allowed us to combine high theory with technical practices, using a classic of western epistemology--Plato's cave--as an occasion for practical critique. The project enabled a critique of a techno-euphoric conjunction of policy, pedagogy, semiotics and epistemology which we feel to be a feature of the introduction of many new communications technologies, especially in educational institutions.