Found these just growing out of my lawn one morning..

Ah, SmartRider - my nemesis. I found this one on the ground and in the spirit of scientific enquiry, cracked that sucker open.

Actually, I plan to try and embed this into a nifty resin bangle - or ring? - and I didn’t really ‘crack’ it open, I used acetone to dissolve the plastic card (and most of the chip too - see last photo).

Click the More tag to see some more pics (click to enlarge). (more…)

This morning I got playing with a borrowed 35-105mm lens and my 28-80 sigma lens, and attemped to replicate this trick which I heard about a few weeks ago (The video is embedded after the (more) tag in this post).

My results were pretty sketchy, it seems like there’s some sort of distortion and an amazingly thin depth of field. It also seemed impossible to get everything focussed correctly; I guess it’s going through about 20 lenses!

Click more to see the video how-to and some more photos I ended up with (not edited at all, and sorry about the size). (more…)

This afternoon, I made a USB thumb drive on a whim, while waiting for something to dry in the workshop. It’s a bit rough - I’ll try again soon and make a more refined version :)
Click more to see some other photos and a little bit of words.
(more…)

It’s pretty late, but this is so deserving of posting. The old Arcane Bookshop has been taken over by The Intercollective, who aim to reinvigorate empty, unused (wasted) urban spaces throughout the city. Their first project is SITE FICTION in the Old Arcane Bookshop until 3rd Oct (opp Brass Monkey on William St).
There are performances on every other night and changing temporary installations which greet me each time my inner-city bus crawls past there in the morning. How refreshing to get a fresh dose of public art every morn!
Basically their aim is to get passerby’s interested and interacting with these empty spaces. It’s all very topical for this period of land shortage! How cute is the photo of Claire above interacting with a common face in Northbridge! No amount of colour/light correction will do it justice!

The blog is great, and documents how hard it is to get your hand on land in the inner-city, even disused, empty space.
Here is a small smatter of some of the cool stuff they’ve already done. They are a dedicated bunch, a stroll down William St on any given evening might uncover some surprises… head down! Check out the Blog for more updates.

Playing with light and space.

An installation involving cut hands and salvaged bus shelter glass has an ethereal effect.

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It’s ARTRAGE festival time again and this year ARTRAGE celebrates its 25th birthday!  In celebration, the aptly named and freakin’ HUGE SILVER Festival (link!) will be taking place from the 16th Oct- 9th Nov. Seriously kids, it’s just going to be an awesome few weeks. I love how this festival kicks away arcahic traditions, with not one ounce of ‘Silver’ in its design theme. Instead replaced by the colourful works of Rose Skinner’s (of previous post fame).

Check out the website for the complete programme. Better still, get your hands on the real thing, a beautiful full colour pamphlet to hold in your hands and to cuddle at night. When it’s all over, show the bitterness in your heart by pulling it apart and cutting it up.

Here is a selection of the banners used in the website. Nice… real nice….

There is no more… because the websites are so fresh, they speak for themselves. Navigate and fill your diary! Call me if we want to get a crew going.

This’ll be great - FLEXHAUX is doing a Windows on Williams piece, too - so keep your eyes peeled. - Jeremy

Amanda turned 21 last Saturday so - completely contrary to her instruction - we threw her a surprise party!

From Amanda’s Surprise Party Album

Click more to see a little slideshow : (more…)

I finally got my camera in the same place and time dimension as this cat-themed art.
This stuff has been popping up all over the place (3 at the back of the Bakery alone!). I have no idea who it is, but it’s super rad. Best paste-ups I’ve seen for a while in Perth. I mean, Cat Copy? KILLS ME!

Anymore sightings, please post away! I want to find them,… and talk to them about cats.

Look on! For close-ups… Yeah you know you like it.
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This is a research project initiated by FORM to find out just how dull Perth really is - and most importantly, how to fix it.

With facts and statistics that are just plain sad (such as “71% of Perth’s young talent relocating to Melbourne and Sydney”) this is a bit of a wake up call to government and policy makers, suggesting that among other things we need some good old branding. An informative read for all non plebs, hope you enjoy!

Click to read the survey (new window).

The arrangement and configuration of this passenger’s dormant head results in emission of a pleasurable release of laughter, initiated by the contextual irony implicit in the juxtaposition of said head and the positioning of the advertising material (see diagram) on which it rests.

Position your cursor and depress the button to enbiggen the image

When I see Rose Skinner’s art, I feel like I’m walking through a toy factory in over drive, bubbling under a soup of neon pigments, and I’m looking for my inner child, who I can hear giggling in the distance, but not above the sound of sherbert popping in my ear and an army of small plastic men running over bubblewrap.

She makes really exciting sculptural installation art that makes me very happy to be in Perth.

I wish I could find more stuff on the net about her art, but ripping off her myspace will do for now.

From her time as artist in residence at the Breadbox Gallery.

An installation in the middle of Forest Chase. It drew small children.. like... well... a giant sculpture made of fluro plastics and candy.

One of her pieces was in Hatched, the national grad show. It was like a dome of candy... a DOME people…

Rose recently did a crazyarsehuge installation using popular foods (cheezels, mee goreng) and a whole lot of coloured sugar at the Breadbox Gallery. It smelt like a lolley store. The clean up was icky, but it means we’ll be seeing a lot more of her stuff, and for that, I am glad to haul bins of dubious gook.

Perth illustrator Sean Morris has a knack for wielding a fine tip ink pen and appreciating metal heads with no necks. His first solo show is on now at Behind the Monkey, Beaufort St.

I like this guys stuff, I want to be his friend.

See more at his own website and his blog ‘Paper Shields’.

And a small smattering of more brutal pen driven boganic dreamscapes… by the man (more…)

The obsession with ROBOTS continues! The guy in the middle is made by the crafty Perth gal calling herself Stuff a Duck    The other two are some paper-craft creations I allowed myself to be distracted by during exam period. All you need is Officeworks, glue, scissors and someone who reads japanese to decipher the pdf file. Ro-bo-tu!

My robot collection

(Click to enlarge!)

Edit: On a speeding inter-city bus I saw that Stuffaduck is now supplying to the great retail experience that is William Topp. Their page is currently dismal, but their goods are rad-tastic. Gotta go check out the new flavours. Of robot.

This was on the 28 bus going into Perth the other day. For most of the journey I sat reading it, and silently questioning its existence. Who wrote those words? Are they are real motherfucker? If they catch you, what exactly will they do to you?

I also questioned its effectiveness because as I stared I began to feel irresistebly compelled to scribble something juvenile in cheeky response - like “okay”. Or “Thanks for saving my soul TransPerth”, but I didn’t - If I had it might have raised some crazy chicken-and-egg conundrum. The tone of the writing seems to fluctuate between an exasperated, tired, “we’ve had enough” sort of feel, to sombre, “It doesn’t even, like, really matter” to a slightly aggressive and quietly hilarious “so do you hate the world, or just yourself?” to your standard high-school leaflet “your life, your choice” sort of ultimatum.

It thoroughly entertained me for 20 minutes so I took this photo.

I don’t know how effective it will be on the ‘graffidiots’ - because I think they’ve 1) fundamentally overestimated their audience - that article is wayyyy to long and who can be bothered reading that? and 2) graffiti-ists don’t really do it for the ‘guts’, I think, they do it for the same reason dogs piss on trees or people start useless blogs - they’re trying to make themselves visible. My solution would be to use shatter-proof glass which can’t easily be scratched, or to install some sort of microphonic scratch-sensor on the window that alarms when it’s triggered.

As for it costing loads of money, well, I don’t know. A plexiglas panel has only gotta cost about a hundred bucks or so. I think they real waste of money is probably the riduclously retarded and utterly stupid smartrider system, the actual expense being to great a number to fit on the internet, not to mention the cost of 20 train ‘cops’ to slouch all day at the Perth station and harass me because my Student Card with Photo is not sufficient to demonstrate that I am a student.

That’s all…

Edit : (more…)

Lewis picked me up yesterday and we went and did what I can only describe as rummaging around in a large bin urban scrummaging at our old high school looking for things to remove. They really cleaned the place out .. If the rain/little bastard hooligans hadn’t got to the bin contents first, I think there would have been a lot of stuff they could actually have donated (like PCs and g3 powermacs and imacs, even a few emacs, and about 5 electric pottery wheels..)
Score : 1 x analogue mixing board, 1 x analogue lighting controller :
Click to enlarge : (yup, cameraphone pictures)

Sativa are a (UK?) producer of hemp products including lovely soft bags :

I was looking at a nice padded laptop messenger bag in a shop in Lake St with Zoe but can’t seem to identify it on the site. Pretty pricey bags but really nice - much better than in the photos..

Haha. Still funny. Click for large version.