Digital Fringe is calling for Youuuuuuuuu.

Ferret around your hard drives for (video, stills or audio), dig out those gems and have your work seen on hundreds of public screens in Melbourne.

Uploaded content will play on an extensive network of screens around the world: from retail television display walls to huge urban screens, hospitality venues, galleries, libraries and many other public nooks and crannys.

Visit digitalfringe.com.au to submit your works and for more festival info, or contact us – people@digitalfringe.com.au

Digital Fringe is produced by Horse Bazaar as part of the MelbourneFringe Festival (September 23 – October 11)

Crappy Taxidermy

Wow this is pretty errr interesting. Basically a site made up of photographic contributors who are well – taxidermists. Either that or some people just have a lot of time on their hands, a fascination for death and morose sense of humour.

http://crappytaxidermy.com/

The site operates via a TUMBLR dashboard and I must say all the recent raves about Tumblr appear to be true. It does seem to rival Twitter in respect of what you can post and fashion to customise an individual look and feel! I haven’t sorted mine out yet but I’m working on it. GG

Nicolas Guilbert Animals and Company

The eye of the photographer Nicolas Guilbert takes us on a journey. In some shots, it summarizes the relationship between animals: homo sapiens, that is placed on top of the pyramid of the food chain and intelligence, and others, those he meets, he deals often lovingly, sometimes cruellyThe exhibition coincides with the ‘Open’, during which all the exhibition spaces of the village of Mougins are celebrating.For the occasion, music, theater, dance and performance are part of the program.

Human history is intimately linked to that of animals.The development of societies in the Neolithic age was a leap forward from the time when domestication began. The hunter became farmer, he began to accumulate wealth. Well before urban legend, the myth was strongly present in all civilizations.How many animals have inhabited the imagination of our ancestors with these creatures half men, half horses (centaurs), half man, half bull (the Minotaur was captured with Picasso), and Horus Falcon head up King Kong in our modern mythology.

The meeting between animal and human
Illustration: Nicolas Guilbert Prix d’Amérique, Hippodrome de Vincennes, 2007

Also, the different animals there between countries and often characterizes them. The cow is sacred and untouchable in India, it provides good steaks elsewhere.The same goes for the dog, the subject of attention hovering ridicule care and psychological care, beauty, accessories out of prices and services are regularly incongruous menu emissions sensational. In fact, dogs are also on the menu of some Asian restaurants. What is unbearable for some delicious becomes for others: a question of latitude, history, need also … latitudes, Nicolas Guilbert has traveled more than one. Its purpose is primarily to observe the moment of the encounter between animality and humanity: the man with the animal when the animal with human achievement.

Birds against a background of architecture
Monuments define new areas of development which animals adapt.They are also the structures of the image of the photographer who knows exploit their lines of force.Observe the city is often looked up and often watch the Waltz of volatile agility which contrasts with the architectural hieratic. Nicolas Guilbert shows how the animal is rooted in each of us is part of our daily lives, sharpen our curiosity and feeds our fascination.It also shows the black and white, how humanity can transcribe through each animal and gives this simple fact, new colors to our eyes.

The brilliant work of Nicolas Guilbert.

Covering the Mirrors, roadside memorials project

Covering the Mirrors documents a resistance, a reversal; where each ‘roadside memorial’ undermines the (non-) nature of the motorway space.

The proliferation of non-space seems perversely natural; airports, freeways, shopping centres, stations and hubs appear at each turn and beyond every turn off. These vast areas designed for functionality, supposed progress, in fact programmatically efface ‘the local’ with its community interests and historical presence; this leaves empty meaningless space in abundance.

Contrary to intent the ‘universal network’ actually isolates the individual by atomizing the community. It does this through an expanding ‘grid’ of interstitial non-spaces that affects all aspects of daily life – from our environment through to our emotions. No longer are these in-between zones mere links; they are fast-forming generic centres, places in and of themselves – that control and re-order the social experience.

Yet the presence of roadside memorials somehow resists this deterritorialization. As the visual markers carry with them a sacred significance and a small piece of history, which once situated in monotonous space they activate a subversion of the spatial homogenization. Suddenly these non-spaces are filled with meaning. These shrines with their folk rituals and cult following hint at a growing social dissent – as an emergent material culture they tap into an underlying collective impulse to reclaim lost space.

Taking the roadside memorial as his starting point, Neuman uses a variety of lens-based media, and techniques that span from appropriation to documentary to the staged, to critically respond to physical and cultural changes in the Australian landscape.

Host:
Don’t Look Experimental New Media Gallery
From – Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 6:00pm til  Saturday, July 25, 2009
Location:  Don’t Look Experimental New Media Gallery
Street:  419 New Canterbury Rd, Dulwich Hill, Sydney, NSW (426/428/445 bus)
Phone:  0401152434
Web: http://www.myspace.com/dontlookgallery
Email:  dontlookgallery@gmail.com

Fallen Princesses

Dina Goldstein aka Honey is developing a substantial portfolio of artwork that places Fairy Tale characters in modern day scenarios.

“In all of the images the Princess is placed in an environment that articulates her conflict. The ‘…happily ever after’ is replaced with a realistic outcome and addresses current issues.

The project was inspired by my observation of three-year-old girls, who were developing an interest in Disney’s Fairy tales. As a new mother I have been able to get a close up look at the phenomenon of young girls fascinated with Princesses and their desire to dress up like them. The Disney versions almost always have sad beginning, with an overbearing female villain, and the end is predictably a happy one. The Prince usually saves the day and makes the victimized young beauty into a Princess”.

Source: http://www.jpgmag.com/stories/11918

Neda Agha Soltan and the Ethics of Imagery

Excerpt from an article by Fred Ritchin…

Video of the death of Neda Agha Soltan, who was shot in the chest as she stood near a peaceful protest in Tehran this Saturday, has become a powerful symbol as it has spread worldwide through social websites and news media alike. But for news organizations, this video also poses hard questions: When, how and in what context should we use graphic, violent, deeply upsetting images and video?

In the first in a series of guest posts, author and NYU photography professor Fred Ritchin addresses what journalists need to know.

The 1972 photograph by Nick Ut of children being napalmed in Vietnam, an iconic image that did much to focus the world on the war’s horror, was almost not published because it showed a traumatized, naked Vietnamese girl from the front.

Source Dart Center

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

Changing Landscapes – 10 years of images from Lake Cowal

Changing Landscapes is a photographic exhibition documenting the story of Barrick Gold, the world’s largest gold miner, and their operations in the culturally and ecologically significant area of Lake Cowal. Lake Cowal is an ephemeral lake experiencing periods of flooding and drying in 20-year cycles. The Lake is not only a Nationally significant wetland but is known as the Sacred Heartland of the Wiradjuri Nation.

Covering a 10 year period the exhibition explores the beauty of Lake Cowal and the stark changes on the landscape through gold mining. Exploring the natural changes through drought and the changes created by human intervention Changing Landscapes aims to inform the community and wider public about the environmental impacts of Barrick’s gold mine at Lake Cowal. The photographs tell a dramatic story of struggle and beauty in the face of the resource boom.

Tortuga Studios
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
6:00pm – 10:00pm
Location: 31 Princess Highway, opp BP garage in Sydney Park, NSW, Australia
Phone: 0415380808

‘Stop Frame’ by Samuel Khusunawi, Ching Wern Oung, Madeleine Preston

STOP FRAME

This exhibition came from the desire to work with practitioners from different disciplines, in this case – Samuel Khusunawi a designer/photographer, Ching Wern Oung an architect, and Madeleine Preston an artist. The work in Stop Frame navigates the idea of time based media from its crudest digital frame to more sophisticated technologies.

The three pieces in Stop Frame comprise three responses to the surrounding gallery space:
* Close Up
* Through the imaginary personal space of the surrounding area – intermediate exposure
* An overview of the gallery in a longer shot

Madeleine Preston
Reflecting both the relationship between time and space, Madeleine Preston’s work addresses the intimacy of viewing the detail of immediate surroundings through the reimagining of the digital picture frame.

By repositioning the tiny frame within the standard white cube’s plinth the audience is forced to concentrate on a representation of the gallery space it is in.

The images shown are sections of the gallery photographed and cropped to suggest camera zooms and pans. The tiny screen creates an environment where the viewer is forced to connect with their surroundings in a new way.

Samuel Khusunawi
“Life is too short, I don’t have enough time for this!”
“Only time can heal the wound”
“Oh no, look at the time. We are going to be late!”

Time, what is time? Are our lives governed by time?
Using elements from his surroundings and an emotional response to the topic, Samuel Khusunawi attempts to capture “time” itself by means of photography, illustration and animation, reversing the usual role of time as our relentless master.

After all, one of the early myths about photography concerns its capability to capture the soul for all eternity.

Ching Wern Oung
stop. frame. memory.

you are separated from yourself on the streets,
you become one of them, the many who walk it everyday,
you lose your identity, just as they lose theirs -
a walker, a runner, a stroller, an ambler, a sleeper.

Ching Wern Oung explores memories of the street within captured images – how identities become segregated from the personal and become public personae as one shuffles on.

WHAT: Stop Frame
WHO: Samuel Khusunawi, Ching Wern Oung, Madeleine Preston
WHEN: Wednesday 17 June, 6pm (opening), 18-27 June
WHERE: Don’t Look Gallery, 419 New Canterbury Rd, Dulwich Hill.
CONTACT: email: dontlookgallery@gmail.com, mob: 0401 152 434