Oscar’s Law – end Puppy factories

It’s time to end the shameful and cruel treatment of our companion animals, who are suffering on puppy factories and need our help. Oscar’s law is a very simple campaign: it enables everyone to make a stand and tell the Government that “We do not want companion animals factory farmed anymore” and “We no longer want the pet industry to mislead us about what is acceptable for our pets”.

You can help fight the genocide in Australia’s pounds, promote rescue organisations and no kill shelters as the first option to adopting, and change the way Australians gets their pets. Adoption is the intelligent alternative to impulse buying. No puppy factory whether it is “clean”, “model”, “state of the art” or otherwise is the answer for mans best friend.

Oscar’s Law

The Yes Men create the Yes Lab – helping train you how to become an activist

The Yes men are launching the Yes Lab, a series of brainstorms and trainings to help activist groups carry out Yes-Men-style activist projects on their own. They’ll give advice and facilitate, but participants will carry out actions themselves, without them.

Oil Painting: The Supreme Discipline of Art. The Oil Slick, the size of Peurto Rico is beginning to paint the coastlines

Digital Oil Paintings: http://UBERMORGEN.COM/DEEPHORIZON

The supreme discipline of art – oil painting – is back. It has been 13 days since a BP oil and gas exploration well blew out, setting fire to the drilling rig, which sank, killing 11 people. Ever since, crude oil has been leaking into the Gulf of Mexico, raising the prospects of a historic environmental disaster. Winds from the southeast have nudged the slick northward, where it floated Saturday near the coasts of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi and has begun to paint the coastlines.

Finally oil painting has evolved into generative bio-art, a dynamic process the world audience can watch live via mass media. Never before has this art form been as revelant and visible as today – only 9-11 was nearly as perfect, but in the genre of performance art. An oil painting on a 80.000 square miles ocean canvas with 32 million liters of oil – a unique piece of art.

We exclusively use aerial images from the oil spill. The files are ready-mades but we waived our right to use them “as is” and decided to use a special digital technique to produce a statement about the disconnection of form and color and about contemporary and futuristic imaging procedures. We use a compressor (sorenso codec) and consumer video editing-software and manually loop 2 frames,  the image becomes liquid, transforms and deformes. These visualisations represent the “Verkuenstlichung” of nature and the “Vernatuerlichung” of art. Unedited oil-paintings of the event can be found via search-engines, on boston.com or on the NASA Earth Observatory website.

UBERMORGEN.COM are well known for similar projects. What they wanted to achieve with these alienating and retro-visual “web-paintings”, as they call it, is not clear. “Since we work for digital penetration of the art market ” declared Hans Bernhard “we should get used to radical changes of our networked point of view and in particular about new forms of digital painting”.

even books presents: LE FIRST EVER SYDNEY READERS’ FESTIVAL

even books presents: LE FIRST EVER SYDNEY READERS’ FESTIVAL
Start Time: Friday, May 21, 2010 at 7:00pm
End Time: Sunday, May 23, 2010 at 10:00pm
Location: Sydney

Description.Writers write, readers read. But do we ever get festivals dedicated to us? No! We do half the work, don’t we? And by work, we mean lounge about in bed with a cup of hot chocolate. Le First Ever* Sydney Readers’ Festival will put you centre stage instead of Stephen King or the guy who wrote the Bible, in a series of events dedicated to the art of reading.

*not necessarily a historical fact, what are we, Google?

FRIDAY 21 MAY: THE LIBRARY OF UNWRITTEN BOOKS – a night in honour of Richard Brautigan’s The Abortion, or, library lovers and amateur writers unite!

From 7pm-11pm, ClubHouse @ Performance Space, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh.

Don’t be put off by the title; you only need to be willing to expel stories, not babies! This swinging sixties classic is a parody of the romance genre in which a librarian falls in love with a traffic-stopping beauty. Love leads to sex, sex leads to babies, babies lead to Tijuana … but the real point is the sweet library that Brautigan invents, to which anyone can submit a story; sketched in crayon, daubed with jam, heaving with mathematical calculations. Anything goes! We’ll have a real-live librarian on hand to accept your manuscripts, along with the psychedelic strains of local shoegazers, a listening corner, Tijuana tequila times, human dioramas and more.

SATURDAY 22 MAY: READ THIS SCREEN! Movies that make love to books that don’t star Harry Potter. Or Edward Cullen.

From 7pm, CuriousWorks Studio, 402/11 Randle St, Surry Hills.

A gentle night-time soiree of celluloid curated by the lady who knows Too Much about movies, Sunday afternoon FBi host Kate Jinx. Think soft cushions, strange visions, and a Saturday night you can actually tell your Nana about.

SUNDAY 23 MAY: READING RECLAIMS REDFERN – a roving readathon with prizes per station around the streets of Redfern.

Meet at 2pm @ the big red letters in Redfern Park.

Hey, you, sport-lovers! Look at us read! What up, beer swillers! Watch me skol this Sartre! BYO butt-pillows, blankets and of course books, as we move en masse around various venues in Redfern, reading as we go. We will be accompanied by acoustic sets, some impromptu readings, and hopefully visited by pastry-makers, latte trucks and kindly beer eskies.

ONGOING: READ THIS ZINE! A special one-off publication with reader profiles, how-tos, best places to read in Sydney, lofty excerpts and ruminations on readings.

ONGOING: READER INSTALLATIONS – find yourself reading somewhere? Of course you do, it’s an excellent pastime. Send a picture + brief description to sydneyreadersfestival@gmail.com and we’ll include it on our blog, where people can read about it. Geddit?

Also check out the even books Facebook Page

Victorian Roller Derby League – 22nd May – Dead Ringer Rosies vs. Dolls Au-Go-Go

22nd May – Dead Ringer Rosies vs. Dolls Au-Go-Go

For a truly kick ass evening of fun, come to VRDL’s METAL MAYHEM Puckhandlers, cnr Blake & Davis Streets, Reservoir (Melbourne) Doors open 7pm, game starts at 8pm.

THE VICTORIAN ROLLER DERBY LEAGUE IS UP AND ROLLING! The VRDL is a Melbourne based, not for profit, 18+ women¡¯s Flat Track Roller Derby League.

Roller Derby Girls Wanted

Victorian Roller Derby League is looking for Melbourne girls who want to skate Roller Derby! If you are prepared to get bruised, body slammed, skate fast, dress up in costumes, get sweaty, practice 3 times a week and are over 18 then we want to hear from you.

LOVE THE WEBSITE! VRDL home.

Source: Only Melbourne

Description.WHAT: Un/shore: A beach, denied

Description.WHAT: Un/shore: A beach, denied
WHO: Greg Shapley
WHEN: Opening Wednesday May 12, 6pm, featuring DJ Jack Shit
Thursday May 13 – June 12, 2010
WHERE: Mori Gallery, 168 Day St, Sydney

UN/SHORE: A BEACH, DENIED

Kyeemagh beach, at the mouth of the Cooks River, Botany Bay, has never been a Bondi or Manly, but a couple of years ago this small, working class beach simply disappeared. A victim, not of rising tides and climate change, Kyeemagh beach succumbed to the NSW Government’s desalination juggernaut (whose pipe runs from the plant itself at Kurnell, under Botany Bay to Kyeemagh). Although this shoreline is being rebuilt, the gains have been negligible, and the potential losses, greatly understated.

‘Un/shore: a beach, denied’, a new installation by new media artist Greg Shapley, interrogates what it means to have a security fence surround a valuable public asset, rendering it a private construction site – an eyesore and earsore – an extra blight on an already highly impacted landscape. Shapley takes a stroll round this landscape comprised of surreal juxtapositions, documenting the uncanny moments – the bits between humanity and humour, and the cold reality of business as usual.

In this exhibition, Shapley weaves a tangled web of moving imagery, sound and sculpture using a multitude of overlaid media to portray this sight, so un-Australian, a beach, denied.

Greg Shapley is a new media artist and composer. He has been Director of Don’t Look Gallery and the Sound of Failure Festival and currently teaches at the University of Technology, Sydney. This year Shapley will also be exhibiting at the Newington Armory as part of the Memory Flows project.

The exhibition opening features Jack Shit spinning foxtrots, tangos and sambas for your dancing pleasure.

CONTACT:
Greg Shapley – gshapley@gmail.com,
phone 0401 152 434
http://gshapley.com/

Interactive Screen 1.0:Beautiful Lives #Banff

CANADA – INTERACTIVE SCREEN 1.0: BEAUTIFUL LIVES

Announcing the Banff New Media Institute’s 15th instalment of Interactive Screen. Part new media summit, part project development workshop, Interactive Screen takes place in Banff at the end of every summer. Following on last year’s theme of “The Makers,” Interactive  Screen 1.0: Beautiful Lives looks at the way media and technology intersect with our aspirations and ambitions, individual or collective, for the betterment of life.

For more information see:
http://www.banffcentre.ca/bnmi

Dematerialization – #Melbourne – a sound-image hybrid installation

MELBOURNE – DEMATERIALIZATION
A sound/image hybrid installation by Dinesh de Silva & Marcia Jane
May 11-22 at First Site Gallery
344 Swanston St, Melbourne

Electricity, air, shimmering, falling, light, flicker, sound, energy, suspension, organic, a brief freedom from time and space – dematerialization. An installation of amplified sound and projected light shaped by the surfaces and contours of the gallery. Live performances during the exhibition.
 
For more information see http://www.concealedentrance.com

Tell Obama to keep his promise, save the #whales

I’ve signed, have you?

Dear Friend,

In an altogether shocking move, President Obama’s delegation to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has decided to back a plan that would legalize commercial whaling — including in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary — for the first time since the international ban was passed over 20 years ago.

We only have until the start of the IWC meetings in June to convince the President that this plan is a horrible idea. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

Join me and tell Obama to keep his promise, save the whales.

Greenpeace will be delivering all the names and messages to high-ranking officials in the White House on June 3rd. I’ve already added my name. Add yours today.

The #Melbourne Music Club monthly meetups – starts May 5th

The Melbourne Music Club is a monthly meeting for discerning music fans to discuss music they are passionate about and play a song or two. Held on the 1st Weds of each month between 6-9PM at Off The Hip Records, 381 Flinders Lane (Basement), Melbourne

Bring a couple of your all-time favourite songs to talk about preferably on vinyl or CD.
Inaugural meeting on Weds 5th May at 6PM

Join Melbourne Music Club at Facebook to stay in the loop
http://bit.ly/dbJ4x3
Email: MelbourneMusicClub@gmail.com
Twitter: MelbMusicClub