One Plus One Equals Three

Wurundjeri Way: Where Eagles Stare

Another highlight (see previous post) of our Docklands precinct is Bruce Armstrong's wonderful (25 metre high) sculpture, Bunjil – also the highest sculpture in the Southern Hemisphere. Armstrong's sculpture has a truly captivating and awe-inspiring presence. It looms large on the city horizon and really is a very big and quite beautiful bird.

One per-cent of development costs in the Docklands’ precinct have been put towards towards urban art (the PDF there is worth downloading). Whilst the placement of much of the art in the area seems a little slap-dash and much of it is probably quite a mish-mash of disparate styles – when the art is as terrific as Bunjil, you can't help but be thankful that some interesting art has been given some air in public.

Anecdotally, many friends, acquaintances, colleagues and family members really seem to like Bunjil. Just about everyone is a fan – except perhaps those in the art 'industry'.

Echoes in the Dust

"Dust Echoes is one way that we are bringing everyone back to the same campfire - black and white. We are telling our stories to you in a way you can understand, to help you see, hear and know. And we are telling these stories to ourselves, so that we will always remember, with pride, who we are."

From Central Arnhem Land in Australia's Northen Territory comes Dust Echoes, a series of twelve animated dreamtime stories of "love, loyalty, duty to country and aboriginal custom and law". The stories, collected from the Wugularr (Beswick) Community, were "recorded as audio and then interpreted as short animated movies by some of Australia's most talented emerging animators". Some great stories and beautiful, evocative animation work to be seen here. Richly educational too – with study guides to download as well. Well done Aunty (again). You're light years ahead of commercial media.

Helvetica: A Predominant Character

Review
Character 4: 26 Letters a Second
Helvetica, 2007
ACMI July 22

It's winter in Melbourne, and you know a Character event is just around the corner. Character has been a series of yearly design and typography-based events and forums devised by Stephen Banham in conjunction with RMIT's Communication Design program. This year, graphic design and its relationship with cinema/the moving image was to be explored. Gary Hustwit's new documentary film Helvetica was to be the focus of this always well-attended event.

Staged at an ACMI cinema, which I think Banham jokingly referred to as 'Pat Benatar Theatre' (!), a few cinematic shorts were screened:

Toast by France's Bagard, Dufoure and Harang was a suitable (if effect-driven) opening sequence.

Float by Stephen Watkins, saw typography liberate itself from city signage and hover and glide over Melbourne (shades of Hitchcock's The Birds, but with type).

Kapitaal by Holland's Studio Smack is quite a well-known piece exploring the typography found in advertising throughout a modern cityscape – and was great to see on the big screen.

But the main attraction was the eagerly awaited Helvetica. When I first heard that someone was making a film about Helvetica, I must admit I envisaged something about as dry as eating Salada biscuits in the desert. Thankfully, Gary Hustwit's film is very juicy indeed.

Korean Hwa Tu Playing Cards

Prompted by Joe's post on Boicozine... here are some Korean Hwa Tu playing cards (see continuation). Learn more about what they are, how they originated and how to play with them here. Perfect for a rainy Korean day. Here's some more detailed information on the rules.

They're quite small (33mm W x 52mm H), are almost a millimetre thick, and when slapped or flicked down on the floor or table as you do when playing with them, make a nice, firm slapping sound. The designs are similar to, and are based upon, Japanese Hanafuda cards. The 48 cards in the pack are divided into twelve suits; each corresponds to a month of the year and a particular plant. Each one of the four cards in each suit relates to one of the four seasons as well, thereby graphically conveying the life cycle of a particular plant over the course of the year too.

Hwa Tu cards: fun to play with, graphically interesting and botanically educational! (except if you live in the southern hemisphere, where our seasons are the reverse of these). But you get the idea.

The Liberation of Baghdad

Sandow Birk's recent paintings about the war in Iraq "are based on paintings of the glories of war in Napoleon’s time" and of "Russian socialist images of battlefield glories". The Liberation of Baghdad (detail above) is about “what we were told would happen"... Via Boing Boing.

Pop Goes a Designed Culinary Experience

Spain's Ferran Adrià is recognised one of the world's greatest chefs. In particular, he's famous for his molecular gastronomy. Widely known as the creator of (ahem) culinary foam (do fries go with that?) where ingredients are 'foamed' (?) with with N₂O cartridges creating dishes such as foamed beet, rose foam and foamed mushroom. (No, I don't think fries go with that).

From The Age Good Weekend is a description of a 'dining event' at Adrià's El Bulli restaurant:

(With Adrià's) "cooking of langoustines on a hot grill ... (he) captures the essence in a balloon which is then burst to release the vapour (whilst the diners start to eat the dish)."

(Langoustines are also known as the Norway Lobster). Popping balloons full of grilled lobster vapour whilst eating? Adrià's catchcry is: "the ideal customer doesn't come to El Bulli to eat but to have an experience." I thought all this sounded patently ridiculous until I saw some photos of his meals and read their descriptions.

Bring on the foam!

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Dead: Oz Magazine

Oz magazine bounded out of Sydney in the early sixties, turned up in London, helped define the counter-cultural 'underground press' movement, became the subject of two infamous obscenity trials (one being one of the longest in British legal history) and generally created a furore wherever it went. Oz was edited by Richard Neville, artist Martin Sharp and Richard Walsh (with others later) and featured contributions from Germaine Greer, Philipe Mora, Michael Leunig and Robert Hughes. Oz is now (becoming) available online. And what a visual treat and mind-boggling time capsule it is.

Graphically, Oz truly packed a KO-punch. Clicking through the Oz site reveals a plethora of wild ideas, some wild design and artwork and an outrageous mix of mind-altering commentary and image-making. The 'Oz-zies' exuberantly thumbed their noses at convention and the established norms of the day and all of their work was channelled to the public via some striking, iconoclastic publication design.

Oz, back then, was a wild, wild ride. (But wait, there's more).

Kelly Deconstructs Whaite's 'Roo

Back in the early 80's, famed South Australian designer and educator Lyndon Whaite won the competition to design the logo for Australia's principal arts organisation, the Australia Council. The apocryphal tale is that Whaite dipped a stick in some Indian ink, drew the famous 'kangaroo and sun' mark - job done. (Although I do remember seeing a vaguely more scruffy looking 'roo back then, if memory serves – it has probably been tidied up and tweaked over the years).

Artist John Kelly has taken Whaite's 'roo logo and deconstructed it. Three works of Kelly's – Deconstructed Monument, Big Head and Chasing the Visual Element – are large sculptural versions of the Australia Council logo's kangaroo and sun. In these works, 1.8 metre high metal versions of the logo have fallen to pieces and to the ground, rusting away in the process. (From The Age): "Kelly's ostensible project, sustained for some years in various media, is a critique of the branding of art as state-sanctioned when, as a requirement of receiving funds granted by the Australia Council, its logo is reproduced on printed material produced in relation to the work so funded, such as a catalogue".

There's nothing terribly new in the idea of artists playing with commercial logos (think of the Pop artists) - but for an artist to manhandle the logo of the organisation that often supports him? Must make for interesting conversation at funding meetings!

And Whaite's take on all this? No-one seems to know. It does seem quite appropriate that a logo drawn with a stick, evolves into metal, falls apart and rusts away onto the ground.

Which is exactly where Whaite probably threw that stick all those years ago.

High/Low. Junk/Not.

The Alice is an Australian TV drama series on the Nine Network that is set, not surprisingly, in Alice Springs, the famed 'red centre' of outback Australia. Initially this TV series was very popular but its ratings have plummeted drastically. 'The Alice' may be consigned to the junkheap of failed Australian TV shows and its creators will most certainly have experienced both the highs and the lows of working in a notoriously fickle creative industry.

But it's the branding of the show itself (seen above in the top panel) that reveals 'The Alice's other connections to junkheaps and the highs and lows of creative endeavour.

Young, Australian & Very Conservative

Research by Clemenger Communications, an Australian advertising and marketing communications company, reveals that young, 20-something Australians are significantly more conservative and less idealistic than their parents. The Clemenger Report reveals that religion, spirituality and family values are of importance to todays young Australians.

Clemenger routinely survey and study Australian society to (in their words): "identify social trends and attitudes that will have a direct bearing on the relevance of our marketing communications programmes".

This study surveyed 600 people and found that amongst young people there was a strong return to traditional values. The Report has not encountered such a pronounced trend towards conservative opinion amongst young Australians since its inception in 1978.