skynoise

Those around the world oblivious to the allure of a javelin or shotput, are being drawn to Melbourne by the spraycan. First up, there were the waves of controversy generated around an exhibition and launch for a book claiming Melbourne the stencil capital of the world (book link). As the inevitable wave of Commonwealth Games inner-city ‘cultural cleansing’ kicked in, the book launch and exhibit found itself under harsh tabloid media spotlight, and the brunt of much scorn from authorities.

Stencil capital of the world, or as the local tabloids frame it:
“A Herald Sun investigation has found: MELBOURNE is one of the five worst cities in the world for graffiti.”
( link to pay-for-view article, found via this flickr photo melb graf discussion)

‘The Age’ review of the book, Wooster Collective on the controversy, Ektopia book review.

Then of course, the Graffiti Games (covered here), which parodies the Commonwealth games site, was always going to attract trouble with statements like this :
“During the Graffiti Games, which begin next week and end in April 2006, the entire Central Business District has been declared a “maximum tolerance zone” open to street art of all forms.” Offering medals for events like ‘Most Elaborate Stencil Piece’, ‘Largest Graffiti Piece’, ‘Most Daring Placement’ & ‘Best Caricature of the Mayor or other City Of Melbourne Councillor’ must’ve proved endearing to local law enforcers too.

So it’s no great surprise they have been threatened with legal action, the site currently displaying ‘graffiti games logos buffed due to legal threats’.

Interestingly, the legal threats refer to unauthorised use of the Commonwealth Games logo, but the Stolenwealth Games, which also parodies the Commonwealth Games site, has received no threats of legal action, in their attempts to bring attention to Aboriginal rights. It’d be nice to see them try though, and watch that explode back in their faces.

And it seems, they are paying attention even back in the ‘motherland’, with artist Banksy scribing a Guardian article about the Melbourne graffiti crackdown and what that might mean for London in the 2012 olympics.

“Melbourne and London are genuine epicentres of the skewed human touch that can bring a little sparkle into the drudgery of public space.”

In the end however, the graffiti crackdown was only superficially aimed at the route between the Games village and the city centre, and any zero tolerance approach is doomed, as this Age article explains:

“Artist (but not graffitist) Patrick Jones came up with the idea of a roaming wall of graffiti to take the best of street art to visitors in the city during the Games. Mr Jones and four others yesterday paraded through the CBD carrying photographed stencil art on five big panels. In formerly graffiti-filled laneways that have been painted over by the council, the group showed their mobile graffiti.
“We received a lot of support, especially from international visitors, with lots of people taking photographs and talking to us,” Mr Jones said.”

Says another graffiti artist: “They didn’t really buff that much (only on the routes between the athletes village and the venues) …. and anyway, I consider it all as fresh canvas anyway.”

The Melbourne Stencil Festival 2006 happens in late May.

Alarm clocks transforming into helicopters that fly out the window, meat-heads thumping their steak-as-heads in the shower, fish that jump through the floor, and zooming visual loops all seamlessly splash about the palette of the most relentlessly visual inventive animators working today – Run Wrake. With a decade of illustration work for the UK’s NME magazine under his belt, as well as music video clips for Future Sound of London ( We have explosive & Papua New Guinea ), U2, Stereo MCs, The Charlatans & quite a few for Howie B, Run Wrake has a long tradition of visualising music. A master of mixing together ever eclectic animation styles from photocopied textured to 3D, his work reaches it’s pinnacle in his short films, a collection of sublime and audiovisually intertwined animations ( available in a Run Wrake DVD compilation through Gasbook in Japan ). Most recent of these, his “Rabbit” short film has just picked up a few animation awards, something dwarfed by the arrival of a baby in his world (‘February has been quite a month’). Am most delighted he had time for a brief interview, be sure to catch his work in motion, where there is so much to marvel at.

Where did ‘Run Wrake’ come from?
Actually a nickname earned whilst keeping wicket particularly badly during a game of cricket aged 11. A friend was sent in for sarcastically shouting ‘’Run’‘, as the ball went thru’ my legs for four.

>>What have you worked on since the material in the Runwrake DVD?

I have some vidi-yo plantlife in part of this sculptured space, opening monday….

“Mysterious gardens full of strange, exotic and unexplored delights have recently been discovered in the Melbourne CBD. These Lost Gardens are rumoured to be unlike any other in existence; containing blooming shards of light, ivy sounds around the garden walls, and views to otherworldly landscapes. To see these enigmatic gardens for yourself come to:

LOST GARDEN FOUND
Level 3/ 96 Flinders St
27 – 31 March, 6pm onwards
Special performance on the night of Wednesday 29th March by: Ai Yamamoto, Barrage, Daniel Jentasch and Ross Manning
FREE DRINKS FOR EARLY GARDEN VISITORS

UPDATE : Lost Garden Found videoclip uploaded here.

Just cross-linking to some other web-weavings : my ‘Edu-ark-hive’ blog @ RMIT, mostly covering net/media related tutorials and provocations, – http://jeanpoole.wordpress.com – mostly for demonstrating or testing stuff out, ( wordpress.com is the new free blog hosting service from the makers of the fine blog software ), and Plug N Play, a fresh blog for the weekly Thu nite of AVness in Melbs ( also PNP link in menu bar up top ).

[[column written for recent 800th edition of 3Dworld magazine ]]
Back in the twentieth century, before even, if you can remember the time before, the world wide web, the first issue of 3DWorld magazine appeared. A lot has happened to the world in the 15 years since then, but the next 15 promise to be even stranger. Clocking the 800th issue, who better to predict the next 800, than a magic eight-ball.

The Aeolian Ride came to Melbourne last weekend, having already happened in New York, San Francisco, Cape Town + Los Angeles – thanks to the inspired efforts of Jessica Findley. A day of soil shovelling kept me from being one of the fifty cyclists wearing an inflatable suit, but at least enjoyed these photos of it by Alan “DJ Bags” Bamford, who promises to post more to his Flickr account soon. He also noted “World Nude Bike Ride ( the next day) was not as well attended – maybe 15 troopers in the searing heat..”.

Aeolian bikes in Melbourne has a flickr posse.

Via the wunderbar Undergrowth peeps, this meaningful alternative to the impending and descending glare of International cameras in Melbourne for the upcoming ‘Commonwealth’ Games:

This short documentary about contemporary and historical indigenous issues is narrated by two of the leaders of the Black GST movement, Robbie and Marg Thorpe. It explores the three main issues of unfinished business leftover from Australia’s reconciliation movement.
G- Genocide
S – Sovereignty
T- Treaty
Shot and edited by Tim Parish and Krusty, the guerilla news style documentary is intended as a historical primer for people interested in the issues of Aboriginal rights in the lead up to the Stolenwealth Games in Melbourne 2006.

Warning: video file is 144mb and definitely requires broadband for viewing….

related : March Melbourne Madness, Stolenwealth Games

*Via the VIDVOX User Forums, this useful guide to setting up midi between computers using the built in OS X 10.4 midi networking. Ostensibly for support of their software Grid Pro & VDMX, these forums are also a wealth of information about the nature of passing vidi-yo-yo-yo around machines in real-time.

*Tangentally, via Reverse Cowgirl, this tip-off to Pepper’s Ghost – an illusionary technique used in theatre and some magic tricks to make objects seem to appear, disappear or morph into each other.

The Wooster Collective facilitate an ever-fresh feed of visual street delights, but their recent series of How To Guides is more entertaining than they’ve been in a long-time.
Favourites?
#12 – Blek Le Rat’s How to Survive in the Graffiti World Without Selling Your Soul , #9 – Lepos’ How To Plan A Viral Marketing Campaign, #7 - Flower Guys’ “How to Stretch Your Reach”, #5- Brad Downey’s How To Become Invisible, #3 – Logan Hicks’ How To Make Prison Wine, #2 – Dave The Chimp’s “How To Quit Smoking” and the irresistible #4 – Mark Jenkins’ How to Make a Plastic Bag Eating Giraffe.

Boasting many an award for most subtropical aliases, ever-eclectic Brisbanite MC, beat-producer and gallery curator Suckaphish P Jonez ( aka the Little Plastic Thugdoll, aka the Aquatarian Invader, aka DJ Love Handles, aka MC Lost My Wallet etc ), be a bizzi boi in March:

Curating more ‘White House’ exhibitions in Brisbane, building a ‘White House’ installation at the Next Wave Festival in Melbourne ( both with W.H. co-curators Madeline King & Madeleine Allen-Cawte – pictured with Chopper Read), and while south – hi-jacking every available beat-backed microphone in town. ( plug n play thu 23~! )

Beats & Rhymes : Galleryisms : Next Wave in March :

>>What inspired The White House Gallery?
The directors of the Farm asked if we were interested in taking over their lease / developing our own project – a happy accident, we’ve somehow let loose on the rest of Brisbane. The White House let’s us give a venue to the more bizarre, unclassifiable art forms thriving in Brisbane’s underbelly, with exhibitions, gigs, film screenings and less classifiable events. With plenty of artist run spaces doing professional, clean cut shows, we wanted to do something a little less polished – where boundaries between the art world, music, design and street culture could fluidly vomit on one another and make bastard little babies.

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>>Favourite exhibitions / events there?
‘Spite’ – An evening of derelict electro-pop, slop-hop and mutant-trundle-folk verbal stumbling blocks, howls, moans and convoluted rants & rhymes. Featured: CASIONOVA, THE SCRAPS, MC JULEZ AND DJ SIZZLE, NOBODY’S DREAMBOAT (melburn), THE VIETNAM VETS WITH TOURETTES, live karaoke sessions with TOXIC LIPSTICK.

‘Hoarders of The Absolute’, a collaborative exhibition combusting over a 72 hour period. 7 artists co-created a living, breathing organism with live and live-in performances, large kinetic instruments, 16mm film and video projections, and marathon knitting events. Featured: Sally Golding, David Spooner, Cerae Mitchell, Jacqui Vial, Madeleine King, Joel Stern and Patrick King with help from Beh Wattenberg.

‘Mutantric Love Hotel’: Genetically incorrect alien sex, bipolar mail order Russian brides, the most romantic DJ in the universe, and a good, heavy lashing of morality. Starring: Nina Ulasowski, DJ Love Handles, Ian Haig, Wayne Nelson, Laura Krikke, Sam Kretschmann, Axel Brandle(Team Plastique), Madeleine Allen-Cawte, Sophie Chapman & Thea Baumann. ( The kinked debauchery of this, buzzed around Melbourne! – jp)

>>Difficulties for curating such a wide range of experimental media?
Keeping it all in focus and cohesive. Less about media, more about how it’s used, how it ties into a greater exhibition. Trying to figure out WHY, what makes it different to other exhibitions, gigs, burlesque shows etc? Trying to avoid stagnation, very easy to suffer with ‘experimental’ media.

>>What’s cooking ( in the gallery ) for the next few months?
An expose of Tokyo graffiti, crazy chaotic hand-made kinetic instruments from ex-pat Brisbong artist Ross Manning, and the opening of our specialist sweaty tropical micro-shop, the Cell, selling all kinds of unrelenting unreasonable and uncollectable artists odditiies: CDs, books, toys, mixed tapes, tapered toenails.

>>What are ‘The White House’ doing at the Next Wave festival?
Setting up a very specialised pavillion, exhibiting curiosities uncovered from untamed corners of savage Queensland. The White house ‘Ministry of Leisure, Pleasure, Exotic Feathers and Leather’ is a curiosity chamber of Queensland fauna and flora, its savage peoples and their bizarre, mutating relationships. All harnessed and stuffed for the enjoyment of our colonial masters in cultured Victoria. We hope to illuminate the darker corners of our wide land for these cultured eyeballs.

>>Oz MCees and beat-producers are doing it for you at the moment?
Oz Mcees – so many out there, but have to give props to my man Julez, Dragonfly; the Vietnam Vets With Tourettes in Brisbane are keepin their wordz and beats sloppy and loose; Anal Cookie (also Brisbane) are raw, noisy and grimey; in Melbourne – the Awakenings crew, Curse Ov Dialekt and Combat Wombat etc. are all doin’ great things lyrically. Beat Makers bangin’ at the moment – AOI, Lord Chezwell (both Bris-natives), Pasobionic’s beats are beautiful, 4 Layers of 9 and the nutty DJ Wasabi are only a few greats out there right now, keeping it well twisted and abstract in Oz hip hop.

>>Narrate the first few MC’d lines of a Suckaphish feature film?
It’d be a David Attenborough style documentary, with all Suckaphish MCing voiced over by Attenborough, because no one can ever really understand what the hell I’m saying when I play anyway. Lots of shots of me picking my nose, doing off-tap things to microphones and long winded sequences of me trying to mate with females of the species – often unsuccessfully.

>>Beat technology you’d like next year?
I’ve always liked to keep it simple, using just whats on hand – cheap samplers, eBay casios, circuit bent little presents, the old voice box, records and videos. I’m more into digging up old instruments and recording them, making them twist about and generate some new sounds for me.

>>Suckaphish gigs while in Melbourne?
Tue Mar 14 – Buh Buh @ The Spot 133 Sydney Road, Brunswick
Thu Mar 16 – Uber Lingua @St Jeromes w/ DJs Raseless, BP and more
Mon Mar 20 – Elf Tranzporter’s Radius Rhyme One-One night @ The Evelyn
Thu Mar 23 – Monkey Beatboxing & other Audiovisual Synchrony with Jean Poole @ Kent St Cafe, Fitzroy
Coupla other gigs on the 24th and 25th, details via myspace later.

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