Christina Aguilera Global Spokesperson for World Hunger Relief

Five-time Grammy Award winner Christina Aguilera is giving hunger a powerful voice by becoming the global spokesperson for World Hunger Relief.

Aguilera will help raise awareness of the hunger issue this fall by appearing in a new public service announcement, advertising and posters made possible by KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. She will also get the message out by appearing on the World Hunger Relief web site, FromHungertoHope.com, and in other online hunger relief efforts.

Visit the World Hunger Relief Cause page, http://apps.facebook.com/causes/113795, for more information on how you can join in the fight to end hunger and help save lives.

Thanks for your support.
The World Hunger Relief 2009 Team

Chinese hack into film festival site

CHINESE hackers have attacked the Melbourne International Film Festival website in an intensifying campaign against the screening of a documentary about exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer.

The sabotage comes as festival organisers confirmed federal and state police had been called in, private security guards were being hired to protect film-goers and festival staff, four Chinese-language films had been withdrawn and a long-term Hong Kong-based sponsor had pulled out of the event.

The hackers broke into the festival’s website early yesterday, just hours after Premier John Brumby officially opened the 2009 festival at the Arts Centre.

The hackers replaced festival information with the Chinese flag and anti-Kadeer slogans and were last night continuing to disrupt the site by spamming.

“We like film but we hate Rebiya Kadeer,” one message says and calls for an apology to the Chinese people.

More from The Age

GG note: The controversial “Ten conditions of Love” is Sold Out at the Festival.

Pink Twins plus Vijay Thillaimuthu play Melbourne

PINK TWINS (musicians and video artists, brothers Juha and Vesa Vehvilinen from Helsinki, Finland) build a tissue of connections between their sound work and their visual work, attempting to intimately join mundane fragments usually disjoint. They work from fragments of images, sounds and sensations which our daily life is subjected to in order to break them down into small particles and reunite them once again in audacious constructions formed from chaos, pulverising and rendering them abstract, according to a unified artistic sensitivity. Their concerts are surprising chromatic combinations with strong sonic collusions which correspond to a deep need, with nothing superfluous.

Active since 1997, Pink Twins have played their music to audiences in Europe and Asia, in festivals, art spaces, clubs, churches and outdoor events, and displayed their video works on all continents.

This will be their only Melbourne performance!
http://pinktwins.com/
http://www.myspace.com/pinktwins

+

VIJAY THILLAIMUTHU creates a situation whereby anarchic and defunct technologies democratically combines analogue debris and signal feedback. An extreme environment of sensory stimulation is thuslyengineered through the translation of this voltage into both sound and vision.
http://www.xenosine.com/
www.myspace.com/xenosine

+ some short films chosen by MICHAEL PRIOR between the acts!

@ Horse Bazaar
397 Little Lonsdale Street
Melbourne
Sunday 26th July
7pm start.
$10 (full) + $5 (conc)

Protest slaughter of dolphins in Japan

Just saw a very compelling documentary about dolphin slaughter at the Melbourne International Film Festival. The movie called The Cove is utterly disturbing and you may well want to grimace, turn away or just shut your eyes while the footage of horrific scenes take place. But for how much longer can we turn away from the crimes we perpetuate against animals!?

Thank goodness people care and it’s kudos to the film makers who risked their lives to capture this untold story of how the tiny coastal village of Taiji, Japan is at the epicenter of this dreadful crime.

The website won’t give the plot away and it’s something that the director wants you all to take your friends to see! Who knew! But sometimes it’s not such a bad thing to make money to further influence a cause and get the word out.  I’ve personally learnt that you don’t have enough time to be complacent about the things you believe in, and I am trying to have some conviction and stop in my own complicity of killing animals.

See what you can do to help the campaign to raise awareness of The Oceanic Protection society and help spread the word.

http://thecovemovie.com/

Augmentology project Social Tesseracting Part 3

A working manual discussing the formation and evolution of synthetic environments.

Social tesseracting is a three part series of link-rich blog entries that functionally describe how synthetics – people who explore within and create augmented/cross-reality platforms – operate in emergent social areas. These entries expand upon earlier concepts as outlined in _Augmentology 1[L]0[L]1_, which explores concepts that shape and are shaped by networked encounters:

“These concepts are formed through principles generated internally within specific online environments. The aim of this Augmentology project is to construct a new discipline. This discipline is to be formulated and documented appropriately online. This discipline is not intended for traditional academic ratification. Augmentology does not adhere to canonised standards of referencing and/or validation. All materials linked are accessible online. References are presented in order to encourage link-based – rather than directional – information accumulation. These references include a mixture of verifiable and speculative sources.

Each entry is constructed to reflect how participants absorb information within attention economies and synthetic environments. The entries are designed to function within a system dependent on embedded information streams. Concepts are condensed to reflect this.”

http://arsvirtuafoundation.org/research/

Coolant Green ideas for a greener future

‘Coolant Green’, WWF is appealing to creative thinkers from all over the world to look at our lifestyles and make sustainable living a reality by presenting ideas. These aspirational ideas need to be adopted easily by those who can physically and financially afford it, and should help individuals or communities move to a greener way of life.

You’ll pitch your ideas along side creatives from all over the world. The best idea to  stimulate a low carbon or low-waste mindset will win a $1500 Bounty – and an exclusive feature on the WWF’s website.

• Bounty (for winning idea): $1500.00 USD.
• Deadline: 20 August 2009

WWF website

Hooked on the Net?

The video game market is big business, worth around 2 billion dollars in Australia last year. The best games draw people into an exciting world where anything is possible; demons are slain, riches are made and worries about the real world left far behind. It’s great entertainment, but for a minority of players and net users who get hooked it can be a disaster. ‘Addicts’ deprived of computer access exhibit rage, distress and even violence. Should video game and internet ‘addiction’ be acknowledged as a recognised clinical condition? Pauline Newman’s documentary examines the scale and depth of this worldwide problem, and the drastic measures that some countries are employing to combat it.

Saturday 25th July 12pm
repeated Monday  27th July 7pm
Radio National

Earthlings one for the Animals

EARTHLINGS is an award-winning documentary film about the suffering of animals for food, fashion, pets, entertainment and medical research. Considered the most persuasive documentary ever made, EARTHLINGS is nicknamed “the Vegan maker” for its sensitive footage shot at animal shelters, pet stores, puppy mills, factory farms, slaughterhouses, the leather and fur trades, sporting events, circuses and research labs. The film is narrated by Academy Award® nominee Joaquin Phoenix and features music by platinum-selling recording artist Moby. Initially ignored by distributors, today EARTHLINGS is considered the definitive animal rights film by organizations around the world. “Of all the films I have ever made, this is the one that gets people talking the most,” said Phoenix. “For every one person who sees EARTHLINGS, they will tell three.”

In 1999, writer/producer/director Shaun Monson began work on a series of PSAs about spaying and neutering pets. The footage he shot at animal shelters around Los Angeles affected him so profoundly that the project soon evolved into EARTHLINGS. The film would take another six years to complete because of the difficulty in obtaining footage within these profitable industries. Though the film was initially ignored by distributors, who told Monson that the film would “never see the light of day and should be swept under the rug,” today EARTHLINGS is considered the definitive animal rights film by organizations around the world.

Pizza Hut iPhone App

This is being touted as the best commercial iPhone App ever, hmmm shame about that. However, if you’re interested and you may well want to try and copy the App for good not evil and animal slaughter. Go configure…

More from DigitalBuzz

VictoriaPolice on Twitter

Maybe it’s an experiment that just had to happen. But VictoriaPolice are on Twitter and they’re giving fair warning to possible offenders that they’re going to target you if you act like a road mongrel or moron. Of course, you don’t need a radar to detect these guys or dolls aren’t out to win any literary prizes but hey, if it helps stop road-kill. way to go cop dudes.!!

Tweet:3 booze buses are still testing Casey drivers. We’ve caught drunks, speeding and other dangerous drivers. When will people learn?

http://twitter.com/victoriapolice