QPAC presents BU$K – Australian Busking Competition

CALLING ALL BUSKERS SHARE IN $10,000 WORTH OF CASH AND PRIZES

QPAC is searching the shopping malls, street corners and parks of Australia for the most innovative, talented and audacious entertainers in the country.

Whether whimsical, witty, wonderful or wacky, buskers have an uncanny ability to grab our attention, delight us with their antics and then wrangle the loose change from our pockets while we cheer them on!

From amateur beat boxers to virtuosic violinists, clowns to contortionists, and statues to stilt-walkers, this unique breed of performers injects an unexpected burst of entertainment into the daily lives of pedestrians everywhere.

Queensland Performing Arts Centre is making a concerted effort to lure talented buskers from across the nation from the street to the stage as part of the inaugural Australian Busking Competition.

With $10,000 in cash and prizes, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fill your hat with more loose change than you can carry, balance or juggle.

Online applications close 3 July 2009.

NEWSFLASH – BU$K OPEN
In the lead up to BU$K, QPAC in conjunction with Brisbane Marketing and Brisbane City Council will be holding an additional event – BU$K Open! – to be held at Reddacliff Place in Brisbane Square on Saturday 4 July at 12pm. Successful open audition entrants will be fast-tracked into the heats. A last opportunity for musicians, dancers, sincers, jugglers, hula-hoopers, fire-twirlers, contortionists or any sort of performer to fill their hat, guitar case or bank account with a large cash prize. You must register your interest in this exciting extra performance opportunity by email to busk@qpac.com.au or call (07) 3842 9137 by 5pm Wednesday 1 July.

More info: Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Desktop Create Awards

The call for entries in the 2009 create:awards is now open so get cracking and submit your entry before 3pm on July 15th (deadline extended) to share in up to $50,000 in cash and prizes. Now in it’s fifth year the Desktop create:awards have not only spent the past half decade showcasing the best in Australian design from a broad range of industry fields including illustration, photography, website design, animation, print, multimedia, packaging and emerging talent. In 2009 Desktop are looking to take create: to a whole new level by introducing the first ever Desktop design expo to be held in conjunction with the awards event, transforming create: into a huge industry celebration designed to bring together everyone from designers and creatives through to freelance design warriors and advertising agencies, printers and paper merchants, marketing managers and software and hardware developers.

More info from Desktop mag -Create Awards.

Melbourne City Wiki

Tell Melbourne what you hope for it’s future. Write a message or add a drawing; be its voice and imagination. Help craft a future for Melbourne’s next generations.

City Wiki is based on the concept that the future of design for cities will be strongly centered on human interaction supported by multimedia and technology. The interactive installation is a means of recording collective ideas and personal responses. Photos, video footage and comments of City Wiki are posted online daily, promoting ongoing discourse and further involvement in creating a future for our city.

17 – 24 July, 24 hours
Location: Higson Lane, Melbourne
Phone: +61 3 9654 3644
Cost: Free

Source: State of Design

2040 City – Future Visions Forum

This free public forum will bring together leading designers and thinkers to explore the future of the city, presenting a series of compelling and confronting ‘visions’ as provocations or considerations.

What will shape and define the nature and livability of the future city? What are the pressures and circumstances – imminent or distant – that will shape the social fabric of the city in 2040 and the subsequent spatial, physical and ecological realm that 2040 citizens will occupy?

2040 City is a rapid fast paced exploration into emerging opportunities, technologies and necessities.

Speakers include Prof. Tom Kovac RMIT, Prof. Lyndon Anderson Swinburne NID, Michael Trudgeon CROWD Productions.

While this is a free event, spaces are limited so please email 2040@stateofdesign.com.au with the subject ’2040 City – RSVP’ to register. Please provide all names of people planning to attend.

Presented by Design Laboratory and Melbourne Conversations. Melbourne Conversations is the City of Melbourne’s program of free talks.

Wednesday 22 July, 4pm-6pm
Location: BWM Edge, Federation Square, Melbourne
Website: designlaboratory.com.au
Cost: Free, limited spaces, RSVP to 2040@stateofdesign.com.au

More from State of Design Festival website

Leaked Michael Jackon autopsy

According to what the Sun newspapers claims is a leaked autopsy report, the body of Michael Jackson was ruined by starvation, drugs, plastic surgery and a recent fall. According to the report, Jackson weighed only 112 pounds, was nearly bald (he was wearing a wig when he died), had pills but no food in his stomach and had needle marks all over his arms and legs. The report also said that because of plastic surgery to his face, the bridge to his nose was gone and part of his nose had “collapsed.” Adding to the damage, attempts to revive him caused a long list of injuries to his body as well, including broken ribs.

Source: The Raw Feed

Editor’s note: poor poor MJ. Not sure if it’s appropriate to have an AD to lose weight under this article, but I guess Mike Elgan needs to make some dosh somehow! GG

Design for Fire – Challenge Pitch

The 2009 Design Challenge, an initiative of RMIT’s Design Research Institute, brings together research and specialist teams across a broad range of diverse sectors to generate innovative design proposals in response to the issues raised by bushfires. The Design for Fire: Challenge Pitch is the first stage of assessment of the teams’ design proposals, from which a shortlist of finalists will be invited to further develop their ideas. One team will be selected to receive the RMIT Design Research Institute Challenge Award and funding to the value of $25,000 for the next stage of research and development in 2010.

Design for Fire: Forum
A free public forum dedicated to uncovering innovative design solutions that can help communities deal with extreme fire events. Design for Fire will present a range of perspectives, experiences and proposals in response to this urgent and topical issue.
(sic)

As part of the forum our keynote international guest Michael Reynolds – the Garbage Warrior will present his perspectives on designing for extreme conditions, other presentations will draw from the Design Research Institute’s 2009 Design Challenge – an RMIT University-led design challenge that will bring together research leaders and industry specialists to explore how innovative design solutions can help communities deal with extreme fire events.

More from State of Design website

Friday 24 July
Challenge Pitch: 9.30am-11.30am
Forum: 12pm-2pm
Location: BMW Edge, Federation Square, Melbourne
Cost: Free: RSVP to designforfire@stateofdesign.com.au

2009 Alfred Deakin Eco-Innovation Lecture presents Shai Agassi

Electric Horizon

Founder of Better Place, Shai Agassi will share his inspired vision of freeing cars from oil, reducing harmful exhaust emissions, and ushering in a new era of sustainable transportation.  He will discuss the economic factors, industry dynamics, geopolitical pressures, and mounting environmental concerns that are combining to drive this profound change, as well as the challenges we face in realising this vision. Described by TIME Magazine as one of its Heroes of the Environment 2008, Agassi will share his
 vision inspired by a profound question posed at the World Economic Forum in 2005, ‘How do you make the world a better place by 2020?’

22 July 2009
Time: 2:00pm – 3:00pm
Location: BMW Edge, Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia
Phone: +61 3 9015 7501
Cost: Free – RSVP essential: climateandinnovation.com.au or 03 9015 7501

More information: State of Design

Beautiful Losers – Film

Directed by Aaron Rose, Beautiful Losers tells the story of his semi-legendary Alleged Gallery in downtown ’90s NYC. Alleged provided an incubator for a group of taggers, skateboarders and other criminally disposed minds AKA young artists (such as Harmony Korine, Mike Mills, Ed Templeton, Barry McGee etc) who hung/worked and 20 years later became famous and successful beyond your wildest dreams. Tough life huh?

The film covers off their progression from DIY street art twenty-somethings to mainstream success in advertising, film, and graphic design. Even though it somewhat glosses over trickier subject matter about what happens to punk ideals when they meet big bucks – the film does provide nice insights into some of the greater artistic minds of our time. Plus their can-do-art attitude is pretty inspiring.

Where:
ACMI Cinemas, Fed Square, Melbourne
When:
Premiere Thurs July 2, 7pm. Then Fri July 3, 7pm; Sat July 4, 7pm; Sun July 5, 5.30pm.

Website: Beautiful Losers
Source: 3thousand

Civil Disobedience Database

A million copies of a fake paper have been distributed worldwide by thousands of volunteers in order to show what could be achieved at the Copenhagen climate conference that is scheduled for Dec. 7-18, 2009.

The real conference scheduled for later this year, has been criticized for too little, too late!

The fake paper describes in detail a powerful (and entirely possible) new treaty to bring carbon levels down below 350 parts per million – the level climate scientists say we need to achieve to avoid climate catastrophe. One article describes how a website, http://BeyondTalk.net, mobilized thousands of people to put their bodies on the line to
confront climate change policies – ever since way back in June, 2009.

Although the newspaper is a fake (its production and launch were coordinated by Greenpeace), the website is real. Beyondtalk.net is part of a growing network of websites calling for direct action on climate change, building on statements made in recent months by noted political figures. (For example, in September Nobel laureate Al Gore asserted that “we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants.”)

Further information:
* Civil-disobedience database: http://BeyondTalk.net
* PDF of printed newspaper: http://iht.greenpeace.org/todays-paper/
- Online version: http://www.iht-se.com/
* Video: http://iht.greenpeace.org/video/ (coming soon)
* CONTACT:
- The Yes Men, mailto:press@theyesmen.org
- Mark Breddy (Greenpeace), mailto:mark.breddy@greenpeace.org
- Lawrence Bogad, mailto:l.m.bogad@gmail.com

There Goes The Neighbourhood: Melbourne Book Launch

Guest Speaker: Gary Foley

Worried about the gentrification? Rising rents? Apartment blocks popping up on every corner and yuppies taking over your local neighbourhood? Well you’re not alone… There Goes The Neighbourhood: Redfern and the Politics of Urban Space is a book produced in conjunction with an exhibition in Sydney which explores these issues. From Collingwood to Redfern to New York to Copenhagen people the world over are negotiating life in the city – squatting, living space, evictions, rents and so on. Come along to a launch of the book and a discussion about spatial politics in the city.

There Goes the Neighbourhood begins with a close study of Redfern before expanding into international examples to provide a detailed exploration of how the phenomenon of gentrification is altering the relationship between democracy and demography around the world. This book has been published in tandem with an exhibition of the same name and many of the contributions come from participating artists in the exhibition: Brenda L. Croft (Australia), 16beaver (USA), Daniel Boyd (Australia), Temporary Services (USA), Jakob Jakobsen (Denmark), Lisa Kelly (Australia), SquatSpace (Australia), Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro (Germany/Australia), Evil Brothers (Australia), You Are Here (Australia), Michael Rakowitz (USA), Miklos Erhardt and Little Warsaw (Hungary), Bijari (Brazil) and Democracia (Spain). The book also includes contributions from key thinkers about the complex life of cities such as the Situationists, Mike Davis, Brian Holmes, Gary Foley and Elizabeth Farrelly.

There Goes The Neighbourhood
Melbourne Book Launch & Tea Party!
Brunswick Bound
361 Sydney Road, Brunswick, Melbourne (AUS)
Saturday July 4th, 2009
2- 4pm

There Goes The Neighbourhood is edited by Keg de Souza and Zanny Begg from You Are Here, a Sydney based art collective which focuses on social and spatial mapping.

Designed by Tom Sevil (Breakdown Press)
Printed by Break Out
RRP: $15
For more information: http://www.theregoestheneighbourhood.org/book.htm

Email: youarehere@gmail.com