Artists Raise Funds for Disadvantaged Kids in Melbourne

Australia’s leading artists including Lisa Roet, Ken Whisson, Sally Smart, James Smeaton, Kim Westcott, Mike Nicholls, Emma Davies, Geoffrey Ricardo and David Larwill have this year donated outstanding art in support of Artists for Kids Culture’s (AKC) annual art exhibition and auction. Artist for Kids Culture raise funds from their annual art auction for arts activities for at risk kids living in disadvantage in Melbourne’s housing commission flats. This year’s art exhibition and auction will take place from 1 – 8th September, 2009 with the exhibition opening held at Brightspace Gallery on Tuesday 1st September and the art auction at St Kilda Town Hall on Tuesday 8th September.

Over the past 14 years AKC has raised over 1.2 million dollars from its annual art auction that it has used to fund programs for disadvantaged kids. More than 600 individuals and groups have been assisted to enable them to participate in music, sport, dance and art classes as well as school camps and cooking workshops.

Artists for Kids Culture

Art Exhibition

Opening – Tuesday 1st September 6 – 8pm Exhibition – Wednesday 2 – 6th September Brightspace Gallery, 8 Martin Street, St Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Art Auction

Tuesday 8th September St Kilda Town Hall, 99 Carlisle Street, (Corner Carlisle Street and Brighton Road) St Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Special Issue of Virtual Reality – “Virtual Reality and Culture Technology”

Most of current information and computing systems are developed to handle logical information, and most virtual reality technology related to culture are mainly related to heritage applications. However these systems and applications do not consider deeply the contents, form, and meaning of cultures. Until recently it has been believed that a complex and non linear system such as culture could not be modeled by computers.

Through culture technology with virtual reality we can develop novel forms of cultural activity in the arts and humanities, for example creating virtual instruments which merge Electric Guitar with Japanese Shamisen. Or combining intelligent virtual characters of different eras or cultures (e.g. Confucius with Plato) and see new types of interaction that is impossible in the physical world. Essentially this could lead to new forms of transformation and blending of the domains of science, arts and humanities.

In this special issue we call for scientific based virtual reality based research which  has a goal to create and disseminate transformative, innovative cultural works and will lead to new paradigms that will positively transform culture.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following areas:

•       VR for modelling culture
•       Using VR to transform historical and contemporary or pop culture
•       Generating new virtual cultures
•       New interfaces that can develop in VR for cultural computing (e.g. new virtual musical instruments)
•       Complex and dynamic systems of cultural computing

The special issue will appear in the Springer journal Virtual Reality (www.springeronline.com/journal/10055).

Please direct correspondence to email address: adriancheok (at) mixedrealitylab.org

Papers should be submitted to http://www.editorialmanager.com/vire/ under the relevant special issue category.

Important Dates:

Deadline for submission of full papers: 24th April 2009
Notification of acceptance: 10 July 2009

CultureTV

Although it is already 2009, we still remember very well the light and media art installation Spots 2007 in Berlin. Watch the impression of this one of the largest media facades. There is also the beautiful animation video ´London after the Rain’ by London based artist Ben Marzys. And discover how Australian photographer Keith Loutit created a Playmobile effect in his video, ‘Beached’ ™. French artist and film director Pierre Wayser has made a very special videomix. And last but not least a personal aesthetical black and white project of Maxim Zhestkov.
  
Enjoy the CULTURETV program!
http://www.culturetv.tv/