Weblog | Events | Features | Gallery | Links | Consultants directory | Zine | About | Contact Weblog> May 2003 030530: Fri Another Looney Tunes stamp Metro Marrickville Woolworths had this 'Twist 'N Stamp' with 7 different images stamp for sale. There was only one left and it was hanging as one of those 'teaser' buys in a non-toy aisle. It's pretty cool! It's a stamp with a dial and you turn the dial and rotates the stamps so you get a different Looney Tunes character at the base of the stamp in a different colour and then you can stamp away. Pretty cool as I've already mentioned. 030529: Thu St Kilda Film Festival National Tour See a series of short films from the St Kilda Film Festival in your city if you can't make it to the Melbourne screenings. It's touring Sydney on Sunday July 6 at the Chauvel cinema, Paddington Town Hall, corner of Oxford Street and Oatley Road Paddington. For date details around the country go to this link: http://www.portphillip.vic.gov.au/stkff_national_tour.html. Cracker Bag - short film You can catch the short film 'Cracker Bag' at the St Kilda film festival! The Age has an article titled 'A cracking conquest' on Glendyn Ivin winning the Palme d'Or in Cannes for his film 'Cracker Bag' - a coming-of-age story. The Daily Telegraph also has an article with a picture of Ivin winning the award titled 'An Australian takes the show'. Andrew Denton at the Art Gallery of NSW - Wednesday 11 June You can hear Andrew Denton in conversation with Edmund Capon for free at the 'Art After Hours Celebrity Events'. It's on from 6.30pm - 7pm. Enter via the Entrance Court, Ground Level. The Art Gallery of NSW are hosting a number of events as part of their 'Art After Hours Celebrity Events'. On June 11, you can hear a presentation on: "Our Insane Inner World. Andrew Denton, Host of ABC-TV's 'Enough Rope', in conversation with Edmund Capon, Director, Art Gallery of New South Wales. 030528: Wed Extinction crisis grips Australia The ABC site has this article titled 'Extinction crisis grips Australia' which says that a Federal Government biodiversity audit has revealed 3,000 Australian ecosystems are wasting away. Obesity The ABC has put together an informative article titled 'Fighting Fat Kids: Fat Chance?'. There is also a library of articles on Health and Obesity here. 10 ways to reduce your tax bill The MoneyManager site has an article titled 'Elementary deductions' which outlines 10 simple ways you can reduce your tax bill. Tomato Interactive: digital design collective The ABC Online site has an interview with the Tomato group in their 'Space' section. Balzac and the Little Seamstress Watched 'Balzac and the Little Seamstress' at the Dendy Opera Quays last Wednesday night. This was a beautifully shot film and a beautifully told story. It's well worth checking out! The Dendy promotional blurb has the following: "Director Dai Sijie has adapted his own bestselling book into this lyrical story of life in a remote Chinese Village during the cultural revolution. Two teenage friends, sent away to a Maoist re-education camp, keep their spirits up despite the backbreaking toil through storytelling. Infatuated with the beautiful daughter of the local tailor, they begin courting her by reading her stories from a hidden stash of forbidden literature that they discover. Seducing her with tales from Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Balzac, the three discover all the desires that had, until then, been suppressed. This poignant film, which was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film in 2003, is beautifully shot amongst the exquisite mountain landscape of Sichuan and is ultimately a tribute to the enduring transformative power of literature and its ability to provide a means of escape." Imagining Architecture conference Then last Sunday and Monday, I went to the 'Imagining Architecture' conference at the Darling Harbour convention centre run by the RAIA. Ian Moore was creative director of the conference. A number of overseas speakers were invited to give 2 hr lectures. The days went from 10am till 8pm each day with 4 speakers per day. Pretty tiring. It was an interesting format in that you could purchase a single ticket to individual lectures. The 2hr format allowed the speakers the opportunity to take their time to really present their work in more depth so it was good from that point of view. Speakers were: Day 1 Christian Sumi - Switzerland Wes Jones - USA Chris Kelly - NZ Inaki Abalos - Spain Day 2 Waro Kishi - Japan Adam Caruso - UK Sean Godsell - Australia Rick Joy - USA I enjoyed listening to the lectures and learning about their approach to design, the site, clients, planning authorities, attention to detail, their inspiration etc. I particularly enjoyed Sean Godsell's presentation. It was great how he said he hadn't worked a day in his life. He said he felt honoured to be able to do what he's doing and he enjoys what he does so much that he doesn't consider that he's working. It's great to hear someone talk so passionately about what they do. His work was quite inspiring as well. He sounds like a real romantic, idealist, a believer. He sounds like a Victorian version of Peter Stutchbury. I love both of their works. He also talked about trying to find solutions for housing for the homeless and that he designed some prototype ideas to try and get people interested in the issue and to try and promote debate and to get people to look at ways to address some of these issues. But all too often urban space is designed to deter the homeless from the area - kind of like an 'out of sight out of mind' approach. He was interested in community housing and other issues. Adam Caruso talked about entering competitions and that's how they initially got known and got commissions. He says that in the UK, the invited interview is becoming a common approach to getting commmissions. Several firms get invited to pitch to the client their approach to design etc. He mentioned that the competition method of responding to a brief is good in that the client can look at various schemes and so the process for selection is clear from the outset as the panel can question why the architect designed it that way and ask various questions about the scheme. But with the interview approach, the client likes the architects' work and design approach but when the architect actually starts to design the scheme for the project at hand, there can sometimes be some differences in ideas about the expected design outcome. Overall, I enjoyed the two days of lectures. Red Carpet short film festival On the Sunday night, after a day of 'Imagining Architecture' lectures, I went the Red Carpet short film festival at the Vahalla cinemas in Glebe. The festival was divided into two parts. Part 1 was a showcase of mixed short films and Part 2 was the Mini Horror/Thriller fest. Part 1 films: Harvest. Director: James Smith. Producer: Paul Limbrey Do Not Disturb. Director: Shane Coomber. Producer: Rebecca Wong Glitch - Sydney Film Fest 2003. Damien Slevin Effective Towel Flicking - Introductory Techniques - Tropfest Runner up 2003. Mike Sharman and Andrew Tomazos Something Big - Silent Cells 2003. Danielle Zorbas The Bust. Jason Hoeung Crack - Big Issue Film Fest 2002. Ben Cunningham POV's Office Romance - Best of the Rest 2003. Director: Frank Woodley. Producers: Megan Bird and Clem Stamation Part 2 films: Jet Black. Director: Siouxzi Connor Cirque Du Psyche. Director: Peter Sumner. Producer: Hugh Wade The Other. Director: Ben Briand. Producer: Matt Dooley The Snuff Movie. Nick Hansen, Myles Davies and Stuart Subotic Two White Lines. Director: Siouxzi Connor. Producer: Matthew Joyce The Thing in the Roof. Walter Repich I enjoyed watching all the films. I liked the computer animation work in Glitch. It must've taken a while to animate all those characters. Effective Towel Flicking - Introductory Techniques was funny. POV Office Romance was probably my favourite of the night. It was 'interactive' and pretty funny! The Other was very beautifully filmed. Cirque Du Psyche was nicely filmed as well - very theatrical. The Thing in the Roof was pretty funny too. But had me a bit worried and a a bit scared there for a while. Thanks to Sarah and Betty for putting together a great film festival. New temporary robe Got a new temporary robe the other day - it's another mobile one but sturdier than the last one. It's got twin parallel bars. It's tempting to think that you could do gymnastics on it but of course I wouldn't - as I would probably break my neck or back on it, plus it has not been designed for that purpose, of course. Anyway, got it put together and it now the small pile of clothes hangs nicely on the bars. 030521: Wed Looking for a wardrobe Had been making do with a mobile robe for a while. I was warned that it was only meant to take a few items. Last night, after more than a few items were placed on it, the whole thing collapsed onto the floor. So today I did a morning trip to Bunnings to see if they had anything I could put together. Will probably ask the carpenter for ideas and most likely see if he wants to put it together. Wardrobes are pretty expensive! Today's plans Plan to get into some client work today and get that off. Then head into town to see the movie 'Balzac and the Little Seamstress'. Then get home and cook some dinner then bake scones all night. Will probably make 3-4 batches. One batch makes around 10 scones. I volunteered to take scones into work tomorrow for morning tea to raise money for Cancer research. And since there are 30-40 poeple in the office, I thought I'd try and make at least 1 scone for each person to try. See how I go. For now, the bell on the oven is ringing which means my lunch is ready. 030520: Tue New blind for the glass roof Got a new fabric covering for the glass roof installed today! I can now manually pull the blind back to one side by pulling on a rope. This is great as I can leave the glass roof pretty much exposed in Winter so the sun can come into the kitchen and warm up the space through the day, and you can see the stars through the glass roof at night. Then as it gets warm again, I can keep the glass roof covered so it doesn't get too hot. The carpenter 'installed' the covering today as well as fixing up some other things around the house. It kind of inspired me to do some house related chores as well, even though I was initially going to do some client work in the afternoon. I ended up going to look for a wardrobe but everything I thought would do for now was out of stock. Then did heaps of gardening - weeding mainly, picking up leaves, relocating snails from my herb garden, pruning back some chilli plants. I literally have a chilli forest out the back at the moment. Lots of nice red colour coming through. Then went to Bar Italia for dinner then came back and made a batch of scones then had them with strawberry jam and cream, and a cup of tea. Yum. And now it's almost 12am. How quickly time flies. 030518: Sun Weekend Had fish and chips at Sea Cow in Rushcutter's Bay on Friday night. Then got up early to go to a uni friend's wedding on Saturday. Went to the church ceremony in Killara then there was morning tea there where they cut the cake. Then everyone made their way to the Beach House restaurant in Whale Beach. Luckily there was a bit of a break in the weather by this time so the bridal party were able to take some photos outdoors with the beach as the backdrop. The venue had a nice outlook over the beach. The food was nice. There was a skit performed, speeches, and a bridal waltz at the end. I was asked to do some videoing. This time, I got a bit more creative and zoomed in for more close ups at various moments. Wanted to capture the detail and expressions. I usually pick a frame I like and keep very still and just film the event which usually works very well as it's all captured kind of documentary style and will look smooth and consistent. But I saw a couple of others with video cameras who looked like they were filming like that already so I thought I'd go a bit more adventurous. That way, if they want to cut the various tapes together, they've got more varied footage to edit with hopefully. Also took some digital photos and normal film photos. Had my large backpack to put everything into. Then at the end of the day, made the journey home around 6pm. Had a quick look at a bit of the video when I got back home and I think the close-up shots turned out well. Didn't really sleep in on Sunday even though I wanted to. I find I can't really sleep in - I find I just automatically wake up around 7 anyway. So I got up and tidied the lounge area. Still have heaps of tidying, washing etc to do. Went to a streetwear clothing sale briefly in the afternoon. It's at 5-7 Bourke Rd, Alexandria and it says it's up to 70% off retail prices. They sell brands including Stussy, Mooks, Fresh Jive, Sista, Mossimo etc. Didn't see anything that I felt really suited me so I didn't get anything. My friend got some casual sporty/street wear gear though so that was cool. Anyway, a flyer there said that this place is open every weekend. I saw the ad in the Wentworth Courier and thought it was just this weekend only. Matrix Reloaded Watched Matrix Reloaded on Thursday night at midnight at Broadway. Lots of keen beans queuing up to see it. Some pretty cool visual effects and martial arts fight scenes but snippets were shown in the trailers so you kind of recognise them anyway rather than being a huge surprise. The story was a bit hard to follow properly. It'd be nice to get access to the actual script so you can read the whole thing through at your leisure. It felt like the inbetween movie that leads to the conclusion movie. So hopefully the third one will really pick up again. Still thought it was worth seeing though. SMH has a review of the film titled 'Loaded with spectacle, but it's no revolution'. 030514: Wed SMH Young Designer of the Year Competition This year's theme is 'Chill out in white'. There's a quote on the page that says: Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are. ~Chinese Proverb The aim is outlined as: "Using the colour white as a starting point, design an object, environment, implement or piece of furniture that would enhance rest and relaxation within the domestic environment." Entries close at noon on Saturday July 19. "If chosen as a finalist your design will go on display at the Powerhouse Museum during The Sydney Morning Herald Design Week 2003, August 7-17, 2003. The winner will receive a return economy flight from Sydney to Milan for 2 people. It must be taken within 12 months of winning prize." Search for an 'Australian Idol' If you're a singer and you want a crack at getting your own recording contract, and you're over 16 and under 28 by June 30, 2003, you can audition to for a new show called Australian Idol. Heard the American one was pretty successful. Win a Beach House The Big Brother website is running a competition to win a 'Big Brother Beach House' worth $500,000. Details here: http://bigbrother.optus.com.au/comps/beach_house.asp Shopping It was raining heaps today as well. Decided to head into the city to do some shopping. Haven't been clothes/shoes/accessories shopping for quite some time. Probably ended up spending a bit more moolera than I wanted to, but I kind of needed to replace a few items anyway. Got myself a couple of tops and a pair of long/almost knee high black boots. They go well with skirts and are v.comfy too so now I'm all set to go anywhere... Met up with a friend later that afternoon then we literally bumped into another friend from my old workplace so we all ended up grabbing a bite to eat at Tropicana in Darlo. Then went to Broadway to pick up the Matrix Reloaded tickets for tomorrow night. I figure that they'll be a very long queue to get into the cinema tomorrow night so I don't want to have to also queue to collect the tickets as well. Going to see 'Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress' next week at the Dendy Opera Quays. Won a couple of tickets to see it. Wanted to see that anyway. Looks like it'll be a good film! 030513: Tue Matrix article SMH has this article titled 'Love bug bites the new matrix' on their site. Lots of rain today It's been raining hard today and last night. I love this weather. 030512: Mon Space Furniture event Space Furniture had an exhibition of Humberto and Fernando Campana's furniture and launched their 'More Space' magazine tonight at their showroom in Darlo. It was pretty packed. The canapes were v.nice with an Asian influence - things like seared scallops with ginger in an Asian soup spoon, noodles in a small Asian takeaway box with handle etc. The showbag had a bottle of Bombay Sapphire dry gin and a Tiro Grapefruit drink in it. Bombay Sapphire are sponsoring a Design Discovery Award where the prize is $20,000. Details can be found at: http://www.bombaysapphire.com/designdiscoveryaward. Sydney Writer's Festival 2003 The Sydney Writer's Festival 2003 is taking place Monday 19 May - Sunday 25 May, 2003. For more info, check out http://www.swf.org.au Sydney Film Festival The 50th Sydney Film Festival is happening at the State Theatre and Dendy Opera Quays during 6-20 June 2003. For more info, check out http://www.sydneyfilmfestival.org Wealth Creator magazine seminar The 4 presenters for this seminar will be: Domenic Carosa - owner of OzHosting and CEO of Destra Corporation, Jim Penman of Jim's mowing, Justin Herald of Attitude Inc, and Jan Somers - real estate investor and author of a few real estate investment books. Seminar is on the 14th June in Melbourne and the 21st June in Sydney. Cost is $75 including a year's subscription to the magazine. For more info, check out http://www.wealthcreatorseminars.com.au. Part-time work editorial The SMH published an editorial/column type piece titled 'Oh, for a part-time job!' It was a fun read. 030511: Sun Magazines Got the latest Time magazine. Features The Matrix Reloaded on the cover. Picked up the first issue of Fresh magazine - freebie magazine. It says it's co-owned by about 50 people. The first issue features 'Matrix Reloaded', the Spanish film festival and a political piece featuring an interview with Noam Chomsky - coincidentally the same interview I came across and linked to in April that was featured in zmag. The Fresh version is an edited version of it - probably due to space constraints. Also picked up a copy of Lucky Issue 7 - another freebie. The design of this magazine is pretty designy/slick. Volunteer to work for the AFTRS Design Department "The AFTRS Design Department needs volunteers to work as Design assistants, titles designers or costume assistants on the AFTRS short films for 2003. We offer 25% discounts on Design Department short courses to all volunteers. Please call Julia Avenell on (02) 9805 6550 to put your name down. An arts background is an advantage but not necessary, all offers accepted." Glebe markets Walked to the Glebe markets on Saturday from Sydney Park. It was pretty nice, just strolling along King St, and stopping at every few shop windows to check out cool knick knacks. Eventually made it to the markets around 3pm. Saw a stall selling Astroboy bags and wallets and things. Looked pretty groovy! Also saw an original t-shirt stall. A few artist friends design/print etc the t-shirts. These were very original and cool - not your usual t-shirt. Should've got one. Then had a hot chocolate on the footpath outside the Stephen Baker patisserie on Glebe Point Rd. Saw Turkan from Big Brother 2 walking past then walking past again back the other way. After the hot choc, had a quick look at Gleebooks, then walked back. Passed by a dance class in operation opp the park v.close to the Broadway shopping centre. Looked like great fun. The class looked like a funk/jazz class led by Ian Knowles of Whoosh - so that's what the promotion on the noticeboard outside says. May check it out sometime. Really cool Looney Tune stamps I was walking through Marrickville Metro the other night and saw these Looney Tune characters which are stamps. So I bought Sylvester holding Tweetie bird, got home, opened the packet and the stamp is really cool! It's a stamp on a roller so as you roll the stamp across the page, you get like a mini-animation of 3 frames of the characters in action. It was really neat! So I got back in the car, drove to Marrickville and bought Tweetie bird, Bugs Bunny and Taz as well! Got there about 10 mins before they closed for the night. I should take a digital photo of the stamp and the animation some time soon and post it up on the site. Mother's Day today Decided to cook dinner for mum. Had the pork medallion meal with apple pie and ice-cream for dessert. Matrix DVD Got an email to say I was one of the first to buy advance tickets for the Matrix Reloaded movie from Hoyts so I have won myself a DVD of The Matrix. Sweet! 030507: Wed RedCarpet Night launches its first 'call for entries' for the July short film program. "We have already had an exciting year for RedCarpet Night - from a sell-out start-up screening in March to the overwhelming support from filmmakers and audience for our new May screening. We have joined forces with Amnesty International for the first time to do a special fundraising event," said Founding Director, Betty King. "One of the aspects of the RedCarpet Night concept that we are introducing is a theme that compliments what Amnesty International is all about," said Betty King. "The theme for the July RedCarpet Night is 'freedom' - personal freedom, political freedom, social freedoms, sexual freedoms - all the ways that 'freedom' is important in our lives. And we encourage our filmmakers to show artistic freedom by being creative in their interpretation of the theme without detracting from the exigency of the issue," said Betty King The deadline for the submission of films to RedCarpet Night for the July screening is Monday, 26th May. Each filmmaker will be asked to write a 25 word or less statement as to why their film is about, or incorporates, the theme of 'freedom'. Entry forms are available by emailing redcarpetnight@hotmail.com or phoning 0402 107 043. RedCarpet Night is a new and unique concept for giving Australian filmmakers, of all levels of experience, an opportunity for showing their films in the cinema environment and in a non-competitive atmosphere. There is no entry fee for submissions and no genre criteria. The profits of every screening go to a chosen charity. All profits of the Sunday, 27th July screening will go to Amnesty International, a charity tackling worldwide human rights violations and encouraging the development of a 'civil society' through education, intervention and activism. Each filmmaker goes into the draw for a fabulous prize. The screening will be held 7.15pm at the Valahalla Cinemas on Glebe Point Road, Glebe. For Media Queries: Sarah Runcie 0402 107 043 sarahruncie@hotmail.com Red Carpet 'Double Short Special' When: May 25th, 2003 at 7.15pm. Where: Valhalla Cinema, Glebe, Sydney. "The first part of the programme will be our usual style showcase of films spanning from drama to comedy with guest film being this year's Tropfest Finalist "Effective Towel Flicking - Introductory Techniques" along with a mix of films from the beginners through to the established filmmaker. The second part of the night will be a 'mini-thriller/horror fest', featuring St Kilda Festival Short Film "The Other" and 2002 Tropfest Finalist "The Thing on the Roof". Expect the unexpected but expect fun", said Founding Director, Betty King. More info at the CG events page: http://www.chaosgeneration.com/events.htm Star Wars extra Have been meaning to put this link up but haven't got round to it till now. If you want to register your interest to become an extra in the next Star Wars movie, then go to this link. 030506: Tue How much exercise do you need The ABC website has this informative article titled 'Let's Get Physical' which talks about how much exercise you need. Published Art bookshop Came across this link to the Published Art bookshop in Surry Hills, Sydney. Looks interesting. Will have to check it out sometime. Work and money correlation Bought the book 'What Should I do with my Life' by Po Bronson recently. Been reading a story or two each night. The book hasn't been written in the way I thought it would be but it's still pretty interesting reading. Bronson meets up with his subjects a number of times to really get to know them and hear their story - and then he writes the story up in an interpretative style. He puts his own scan of the story or his own assessment of that person's journey into the story. I found that a bit distracting. I realise that the stories are going to be influenced by the author, as there is no such thing as 'pure' objectivity but I found this aspect of the book a little disappointing. Anyway, back to the thought/observation I had about the correlation between work and money. One woman featured was a dancer - she made it to principal dancer in a dance company in the U.S. and she'd be rehearsing and dancing 7hrs/day 6 nights a week and she'd earn around $30k/yr. It was her passion. Yet she'd earn $1500/day being a runway model and she'd do that sometimes to make up for her dancer's pay. Then she studied business for 2 years and stated earning around $120k/yr. So the observation/thought I had is that society places an economic value on jobs/activities which is related to market forces of the society at that moment in time. It has nothing to do with how hard you're working, or the level of social and environmental contribution of your work to society or anything else really. Sure if you're a contractor on an hourly rate, then the more hours you work, the more money you earn potentially, but I'm thinking about it in relation to different type of jobs/activities. Someone could be donating 40hrs/week of their time towards charity work but economically, they're not going to be earning an income from the activity. So the point is, if you want to chase the dollar, then you can look at the market and see what activities are high earners. So even though most people 'work' to earn money to pay for other things, there is actually not much of a correlation between work and money in the strict sense. Another observation is that if making or keeping money is the goal, then there may be other ways to do this anyway. For example if you have a mortgage, you could change your payment format from monthly to weekly and shave a few years of your mortgage through interest savings. Or you could start up a business and be more cost and labour efficient for example and make more money, or produce goods in high demand and make more money... Anyway, in my view more money doesn't equate with more happiness anyway. So you may as well follow your passions and have heaps of fun with every aspect of life. Live for the day, live everyday! Matrix Reloaded Downloaded the various Matrix trailers and watched them 2 nights ago. It looks pretty cool! Had a look at the Matrix site: http://www.whatisthematrix.com and saw there was a 'Philosophy' section. Started reading a bit of it. May read more later. Today Tonight had a feature on the Matrix Reloaded movie last night. Looking forward to the movie on Thursday night. Got to pick up my tickets from Broadway sometime before then, as I imagine there will be a very, very long queue of people waiting to get in so I don't want to try and also get my tickets on the night. Busy week Was pretty busy last week. I pretty much worked 8 days straight. Had heaps of work to get out for various clients. So taking a bit of a breather today. Slept in a bit today just to get my energy back. Sent a few emails off to people I hadn't caught up with in quite a while. Hoping to catch up with some friends over the next few weeks. It's already 4.30pm in the afternoon. Seriously - where does the time go? Can't believe it's already early May! I set up an accounts database the other day in Filemaker Pro. So now I have set up a number of fields to keep track of my incomings and outgoings. It's great as I can search for particular dates or item types and see what's been happening in that area. It's becoming a very useful tracking tool. I can see instantly when I last paid a particular bill or whether I've billed a client yet and when they paid me etc. April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 March 2002 February 2002 January 2002 December 2001 November 2001 October 2001 September 2001 August 2001 July 2001 June 2001

About CG | Editor: Kirsten Lowe | PO Box 559, Broadway 2007, Sydney, Australia Ph: 0410 310 238 | Fax: +61 2 9555 1752 | Email: kirsten@chaosgeneration.com