Interesting Times [Part I]

On Thursday I spent the day/evening at Interesting South. For more info about exactly what that is, go here. Or here. And to find out more about where it came from, go here.

During the day, I joined the wonderful Emily and her band of troupers to help transform the Bondi Pavillion Theatre into a cosy home away from home for those attending the conference. I was hoping that the set would invoke the sense of watching people chat in their own home. Kind of like a super-sized dinner party. With microphones and powerpoint. It seemed to work well and it did feel nice and homely. I even made tea for all the speakers and that turned out to be really fun and a nice extra element to the whole occasion.

I only got to hear bits and pieces of most of the talks because I was fixing tea (and definitely didn’t have time to draw like I did in London, but I still heard some amazing things and met some really lovely people at the conference afterwards.

Here’s a hodge-podge snapshot of what I got:


Dan Hill and his spectacular system for keeping check on energy output:
“I’m not suggesting we all have huge numbers above our buildings, keeping score. Actually that is what I’m suggesting”

Matt Moore’s poetic guide for making a zombie.

Errol Flanagan's fantastic presentation on perception and understanding
"What's green, sir?"

Dr Adrienne Withall’s great study of Happiness parts I and II, including the fact that 50% of one’s happiness is genetic (oh shit) but that 40% is outlook (woo hoo!).

I loved the Happiness Manifesto and the Make Slough Happy campaign, of which I only remember a couple of points:

•Be grateful for at least 3 things a day
•Smile at a stranger
•Reduce your television contact
•Talk to a good friend for at least an hour a week;


Pia, the Sydney Dork-bot Overlord (how cool is that title!) reminded me that I need to go a Dork-Bot meeting in Melbourne, and see people “doing strange things with electricity”;

Adrienne and Pia sipping tea

The 3 Tims:

Tim Baynes, the scientist from an unnamed scientific organisation, who talked about sustainability in terms of the exponential growth, which was scary and exciting at the same time;

Tim Noonan, who is a fantastic performer and who can read people’s voices as a way of knowing more about them (vocal, instead of body language);

and Tim Longhurst, who was responsible for the fantastic Zero Coke Movement which hit big time earlier this year.

and
Juan’s Free Hugs/Free Homes campaign;

The evening went so quickly and like someone on the night said, it didn’t feel like 17 speakers, more like about 9. And the conversations in the club afterwards were similarly fantastic, including how much to reveal when blogging, what others would speak about and whether SARS was worth getting excited about.

Congrats to Emily and the Sydney Coffee Morning* crew for a fab time and keep an eye out for Interesting South 2008


Big thanks to Piers and Richard for these pics on the flickr.

*[watch this space Melbourne bloggy kids, I think I’m going to start a Coffee Morning]

it's official

So, regular readers of this blog will know that I went to Interesting in London this year. I had a ball because it was a fantastic conference featuring a huge range of topics, styles and information on anything that was interesting. It was like the real-time, real-life equivalent of a combination of a library, speed-dating and bloglines and I got to meet up with a whole bunch of bloggery, twittery, interesting types.

Now, the southern hemisphere will be hosting its own version, called Interesting South, held at the Bondi Pavillion Theatre on the 22nd November.

And, I'll be speaking at it.



Eep! I'm shit-scared and excited. All at the same time.

Excited 'cos i'm sharing the stage with some awesome peeps, including Dan Hill from City of Sound and Gavin Heaton - Servant of Chaos and Age of Conversation guy and Pia van Gelder, Dork-bot Sydney Overlord. Shit scared 'cos i'm sharing the stage with some awesome peeps.


Although part of me wants the theatre to be completely empty, I'm still going to encourage you to come along. Seriously, there are some amazing people speaking about some cool shit and if it's anything at all like the London shindig, it will be a great day!

And obviously, go to the website to check out more info.

I'm also going to be helping Emily and the Sydney Coffee morning kids out by doing some backdrop/set design stuff, so when i get some images of what i'm doing, i'll post them on here.

good for a chuckle

not only am i just posting stupid screen captures, links to others' writing and links to other blogs, but now i'm just uploading pics that are doing the viral rounds at the moment! why you bother reading this rubbish blog, i'll never know...

however, these are just too funny to let them pass and i promise i'll write something proper soon.










they do actually relate to study i want to do about the way people interact with their city and for me are an indication of a sense of ownership and (ir)reverence about the place. the modern version of rock paintings, perhaps? but mostly they're just bloody hilarious.









i got sent them on email, so there's no photo/artist credit here, so if i'm contravening your moral/copy rights, sorry.

facebook oracle?

This was the harsh reality of facebook this afternoon...

paris part ii

this post is about a week behind, but I still needed to post it, just to finish off the trip.

A few months ago I went to Paris with my Nanna and had such a great time that when I was planning my trip, I decided to spend almost a week in the French capital to finish off my trip. However, instead of living the high life in numerous galleries, museums, tourist attractions, I had the most amazing time doing close enough to pleasantly sweet fuck all.



On the Saturday night I got there, after I sorted out some groceries, I met my two room mates - American gals who were enjoying some travel after finishing college: Steph and amber. Steph was well keen to hit Paris, so she and I sourced a cool club and went dancing until 3am at Fleche D'Or the club that was open until 6am and free! it was fantastic – played a great mix of brit-pop/indie stuff, dropped with French techno, perfect for dancing on the stage, which is exactly what we were doing. Bloc Party and Outkast have never sounded so damned good. Didn’t get home until after 4am (the night buses are good, but take forever) and was not looking forward to having to be out of the room by the regulatory 11am.




With absolutely no money to my name, I set about on my mission to enjoy Paris for free (which sounds a hell of a lot like the mission of half the American male population too). I spent a quiet Sunday in the lobbies and bookshops some really cool places, largely enjoying the great architecture (new and old) of Paris. I went to the pantheon and drew the amazing neo-classical architecture and inside frescos, then I went to the Institute du Monde Arabe, an amazing building, built on the basis of Islamic tile patterns. Each panel is made up of a series of smaller square panels. Each of the circles is made up of an aperture, which opens right up or closes right down, depending on how much light you want to let into the building, which is fantastic! After that I walked along the banks seine checking out the Tino Rossi Modern Sculpture Park. That night, the American girls and I went looking for a place to go out, but thanks to some hinky guide book suggestions, ended up around the Moulin Rouge, which is the red light district. Rather than clubbing, we ended up checking out the sex shops, brothels and erotic museum of the area, avoiding the crowds of Irishmen drowning their sorrows after a loss in the rugby to Argentina.

The rest of my time in Paris was spent just hangin’ out and chillin’ out. Some of this may have had something to do with having used up having 30 euros to last 4 days. This also had to do with a much cooler reason, which was the fact that one of my awesome friends, Jem, was in Paris with his girl. They were staying in an apartment in the 11th, on their way to a few months in the Netherlands and we just relaxed and hung out with each other, just owning Paris..

On the Monday we wandered around the Bastille and the11th Arrondissement, catching up and wandering about. We stumbled into the coolest café on Oberkampf, where the guy who made us our espressos was obviously a performer and who gave us the most charming performance we’d ever been given – he reminded us of Dominique Pinon from Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Delicatessen/City of the Lost Children and Amelie fame. It was a surprise but an absolute joy – easily the highlight of our trip. After that, we went to the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, the one that Val Kilmer Jim Morrison happens to be buried in, but rather than search for him like the rest of the people there were doing, we sought out the monuments to Edith Piaf and Oscar Wilde, which were surreal and lovely at the same time. For me it was all part of the process I had been going through since the beginning of my trip to the northern hemisphere, which was the realization that people from history were real people, who not only created amazing things but lived and died too. You know, like proper humans, rather than just a name on a book, and in some ways it actually made their greatness greater.



I didn’t go to the Eiffel Tower this time, but on Tuesday night we did walk down L’Avenue de Champs Elysees and head to the Arc de Triomphe. All of us were rather rubbish on our French history, getting quite confused between out Napoleons, French Revolutions 1-3 and the other wars, but we spent a long time there, absorbing (I believe) the true symbol of what it means to be French and certainly Parisian. It’s this political and democratic pride that inspires me in Paris and something that Jem, Sophia and I all wanted to learn more about.

On Wednesday, following on from the heights of triumph, we disappeared into the depths of carnage by going to the Catacombes, where we spent a large amount of time avoiding American tourists and trying to piece together French signs and historical dates. It was absolutely mind-blowing and we felt strangely defensive of the dead. There were a few stupid idiot French juveniles there, taking pics with flash (despite the clear signage) and singing Thriller. Usually I’d be laughing, but something about thousands of bones from years of revolution, disease and war takes the edge of it.

Later that evening I went to the Centre Georges Pompidou and saw the fantastic collection of modern and contemporary there. Initially I headed up to the top floors of the centre to not only see the temporary (but uninteresting to me) exhibition, but also to check out the most amazing view of Paris. The sweeping view from the Eiffel tower to La Defense and everything in between. The great thing about this view, as opposed to the one from Sacre Coeur or the tower is that it was relatively low, so you could see all the big sights, but also appreciate the maze of rooftops and side streets of Paris. In fact it was living proof the building ordinance laws, which restrict the height of city buildings inside the ring road, are bang on. Paris is a beautiful city and while they may be in an economic slump and a political vacuum, the French can be proud of the place.


While I could have spent loads more time in the Pompidou, I concentrated on the Modern art that I really, really wanted to see and a few of the Contemporary pieces. Given that I had seen a whole bunch of contemporary art, i didn't feel too bad about missing out on half the permanent collection.

I absolutely loved seeing a whole room of Matisse paintings, a whole room of Malevich works, including his metropolis sculptures, two rooms of Phillip Starck design works, large Yves Klein and Marcel Duchamp works, some Rothkos (although the paintings in the Tate Modern are way better) and the Jean Tinguely kinetic work. I also really loved hanging out in the the Joseph Beuys' felt roll room, although quite puzzled why him and Cy Twombly were lumped together again, as they are in the Tate Modern - the link seems tenuous, but i guess that happens sometimes.




Time to return to London to begin the trip back to Australia via a ferry ride to Dover, I caught the train from Gare Nord to Calais – a beautiful trip that zipped through the flat and foggy plains of northern France farming land. Unfortunately, I was already having a bad day and when I got off the train at Calais Feymuth instead of Calais Ville and was >< this close to missing my train, I lost it. I burst into tears in the middle of the station and cried like I’ve never cried in public before. If I wasn’t so upset I would have been completely embarrassed, but the people on the station just let me cry, thankfully minding their own business and a wonderful station worker helped me find my way to the ferry terminal, god bless him. I made the ferry with about 2 minutes to spare and enjoyed the really lovely trip back to the island, chattering with a couple of Australians who ended up knowing a whole bunch of the same people I knew (you know, small world and all that). I got back to London, feeling strangely familiar, yet filled with the buzz of being away and having experienced so much that was unfamiliar.

Despite what may or may not have come across on my blog (well, Paul Colman thought I was having a shit time from the constant ‘disappointment’ I seemed to express here), I had an amazing time in Europe. I have to spend a little more time digesting it and I’m dying to post a random post about some of the things I learned, highlights and random tidbits from my trip. I’ll even try to scan in some of the sketches I did of the art and architecture I saw.

But for now, it's back to bed.

PS i've made the pics small 'cos they sometimes look better that way. they still look pretty rubbish, but be patient, i'll get the camera fixed as soon as i can.

back to italy: milano vs torino

**warning: long post, which may offend some northern Italians and bore others. proceed at your own risk**





everybody loves a bit of intercity rivalry, and what better way to somehow digest my time in the north of italy into a local derby between two very different cities.

getting there and accommodation
milano
I arrived in Milano after only a couple of days in Greece and was looking forward to settling in a little for 3 nights/4 days and staying in a comfy hostel. Getting to the Hostel was a nightmare, after having to navigate Centrale Stazione – with no tourist info, no working ATMs, no working ticket machines and amongst a whole bunch of construction, which may or may not have instigated this post. So by the time I got to the hostel I was a little frazzled. And the hostel, while quite well-run (thankfully, after Athens), it was like being back in school – lockers outside the classrooms bedrooms, you couldn’t go into the corridors between 10 and 3pm and the hot water system was at its best at 2am, after almost everyone was asleep, so it was all cold showers in the morning.

torino
Not only was Porta Nuova station easy to navigate, even with their renovations, they had toilets AND a tourist information booth! gasp! AND on a Sunday!,
and then oh my god, what an amazing hostel, up a cute and windy street (and I haven’t bitched about the hill once since I’ve been here), overlooking the amazing houses and with a view into the hills of the city. The people on reception were fantastic, the bathrooms are amazing (hot water all the damned time and without a queue), only 4 in a room and even the beds are nicer (only 1 bunk, the other two are proper beds!). Plus the wi-fi is way cheaper and works in my room, rather than having to sit in the girls bathroom to get power/reception.



art
milano
After the intensity of 2 Bienniales in a row, plus another one on the way, I decided to chill out on the art factor a bit and only see the main galleries and museums. On my first full day in Milano, I was stoked to see that around the Giardini Publici there was the PAC (Pinacoteca Arte Contemporarea), the Natural History Museum and the Museum del Cinema, plus another museum that I can’t remember the name of. So I went to the first museum - closed because of a strike, went next door to the PAC, closed for installation. Excellent. However, thanks to that I met Omar, a Mexican opera singer who had just arrived in Milano for his first season in the Choir at La Scala. We ended up having coffee and then hanging out in Milano together for the rest of that day. We went to the Natural History museum together, which was not only open, but free after 2pm (yay!) and then onto the Museum Del Cinema (also closed for some unknown reason, , surprise, surprise). Ha! By this stage, I was pretty sure I would see fuck-all art in Milano, but it didn’t worry me too much, really, not yet. The Milano Film Festival was on, so we wandered down to the Parco and checked out a really, really crap band playing for free on the Wrangler stage, saw about 10 mintues of a short film before having to head back to our respective hostels. So, for art, Milano is pretty shit. Thankfully, there are fantastic Mexicans in the opera who are great company.

torino
So, my first day in Torino, after checking in, etc, I wander down town to check out what’s around the scene and to go to a contemporary art gallery that I read about in the easyjet inflight mag (which, by the way, is a very, very helpful little thang). I walked half way across Torino trying to find it and when I was told that I got the street name arse-about (Modena, not Modane), I went to the tourist info in the middle of town to find out what the chance was of getting to the gallery before it closed (at 8pm on a Sunday, mind you!). There, I had one of those traveling experiences which just make all the crud worthwhile. There was a couple who were chatting with the info girl (her family) and when they heard I was trying to get to the gallery, they offered me a lift as it was right near their house! What a couple of champions! AND they recommended that I also see Castello di Rivoli too!
And that was just the start of my art experience here. I’ll try to keep the blurb about them all brief, but, to be honest, I could go on about them for fucking hours:



Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo
Silence: a fantastic curated show focusing on sound works and, for someone who thought she knew fuck-all about soundwork, I knew rather a lot of the artists – a few of the list of all-star cast included Vito Acconci, Doug Aitken and John Cage. The way they presented the show was fantastic - I got there too late to reserve a set of headphones (which was the way in which most of the works were projected), but thankfully that didn’t matter – I still got to experience about a third of the show without. A lot of works were played in a surround-sound room, lit with changing leds, from a touch-screen interactive menu – art based juke box styles. and it was amazing. Two other major highlights included Carsten Nicolai – who is an artist I had been keeping tabs on (ish) since seeing his work and performance back in 2000 at the Opera House as part of the Art+Music exhibition. His work floats my art/science/geek boat, and the work he had displayed was a chromographic (colour-based) projection of sound waves. So, each sound wave responds to a wave on the visual spectrum and he developed a sound piece to create coloured waves of a particular tone. OK, yawn if you have to, but I’m sure there are a few geeks who are with me on it.
The other work which was the highlight was Johanna Billings work Magical World again! yay! Twice in 2 weeks I’ve seen that work and I didn’t need the cans to instantly remember the song. I did find out that it was originally written by American songwriter Sidney Barnes.


Castello di Rivoli
While it was a little annoying that this place was mostly closed for installation given how long it took to get there, the permanent collection was easily, easily worth it. The old castle has been restored and extended and combined to make an amazing art gallery which houses some of the best contemporary art (including loads of installation) in rooms of the most exquisite baroque interior designs and tempera wall paintings. It’s combination is a winner and I’ve now got this dream that one day I want a work of mine to be in the collection of the Castello di Rivoli. I loved seeing the two Maurizio Cattelan works, and remembered seeing images of another, where he had made a hole in the floor and had a head poking up through it. The collection also includes site-specific work by Richard Long, the gold needle and rock image by gino de dominics and the none-sing, neon-sign by Bruce Nauman. I can’t convey how spectacular this gallery is and what an amazing collection it has. All about 40 minutes from Torino!

GAM.
I’m off to see GAM (Galleria Arte Moderna) tomorrow and looking forward to seeing some more of Torino’s collection. According to my buddy at the hostel, it’s got some more classical pieces (probably from early modernity), but that worries me not – I’ve seen the sculptures in the courtyard and they’re already great.



architecture
milano

In going to the Milano Film Festival on Friday evening, I got to check out the huge Castello Storzesco in the middle of Milano, the old fortress of the city in amazing condition. It was quite spectacular,the size and the power of the place was evident. Unfortunately, Moët & Chandon had booked out a huge chunk of the place, so you could only go into a certain section and only until about 7pm (instead of the usual 11pm). What was I saying about power?
Of course you can’t talk about architecture in Milano without mentioning the amazing Gothic spectacle that is Il Duomo – something like 325 spires and over 2000 sculptures, it is an amazing sight and I decided to go there on Sunday morning, during service, before leaving town. Unfortunately, I had my big backpack with me and the carabinieri who were searching bags were stunningly unhelpful in helping me find a cloackroom/baggage storage area to leave it because a) it was heavy and I didn’t want to lug it around or up 200 steps to the top and b) while I had nothing to really hide, the thought of 4 smug cops going through my underwear for the sake of church security was decidedly unappealing. So, no Duomo.


torino
*marcus, remember that drivel I was going on about - that great baroque church that I thought might have been in munchen, well, I found it, it’s in fucking torino!

Suffice to say, I didn’t do all that much research into Torino before I got here – it just looked like a good place to go on the map, on my way to Paris, via Lyon. And, half the fun is in the discovery. So, imagine my eyes popping out of my head when I discover that both the amazing baroque churches I studied in first year art history, which were vital points of departure in both art and architecture, are in bloody torino! about 10 minutes walk from each other! and without the need for a bag search in either of them. in fact, I took photos! suck on that one milano!

San Carlo Borromeo, designed as the second church in a pair that overlook Piazza Reale (San Carlo Piazza) has amazing baroque interior, with blue ceilings, gilted edges, all the flows and frills you could want and beautiful tapestries. It’s truly wonderful and the baroque façade, although built later, is an absolute dream to draw.
Unfortunately, it’s completely overshadowed by the ornate and design brilliance of San Lorenzo (Arthur Lawrence, you’re completely right!). San Lorenzo departs again from the usual basilica rectangle model in being designed from a square, but has no straight lines as the main form of the church. The angles of the curves are based on atypical mathematical ratios and the painting/sculpture/detail interior is fucking brilliant. There aren’t any Tiepolo paintings, but there might as well be – the gods look down on you with all the foreshortening you need and the colours are just amazing. It’s also incredibly light, filled with an amazing amount of natural light, way more than any gothic church could hope for, and has a gorgeous pieta sculpture in the chapel. Gush, gush, more gush.


clothes
milano
Of course you can’t go to Milano without mentioning the clothes and, well, while most of the clothes weren’t really my style, the shoes were to-die-for. Fortunately/unfortunately, I only have a small backpack which is already to the brim and a small budget which I’m hoping will still get me home, so no shoes were bought. However, I joined in the joy of my hostel roommates, shoemakers from Norway in Milano for the Shoe fair, and their gorgeous purchases.

The shit thing about that is the Milano is ‘solo di moda’ – only about the fashion. Hell, even the prostitutes at the bus stop outside the hostel looked like fashion models! Seriously, I knew it was big on fashion, but I figured that, not being overly fashionable, I would still find something there, but really, there is nothing. And actually, it’s quite soul destroying. Each day I would carefully choose my clothes, spend a little more time on my make-up, front myself for the day in the spirit of the city. And each day I would come back feeling deflated and full of self-loathing, after getting so many disapproving looks from the fashionistas who run the city, both male and female.

torino
There are many fantastic shoes and clothes in Torino (that’s the Italian way, really, it’s all about the clothes and shoes, people), but to be fair, Milano just kicks arse in that regard. Gucci, D&G, Prada and Louis Vuitton do not have offices in Torino. But while everyone here is still very fashion conscious (like I said, it’s the Italian way), I’ve come back after my days in town still feeling like I deserve to walk on the planet, which is a bit of a relief.



football and music

These two areas I didn’t actually check out in Torino, but did in Milano and they were hilarious. I had the opportunity to go to an AC Milano game at San Siro, which was actually pretty cool – although not quite as good as I thought it would be – Milano played a scrappy game and, naïve or not, I think the MCG and Telstra Dome give San Siro a run for its money. But it was fantastic watching the Italians go mad for their calcio. And at half time to head to the bar and instead of lines of idiots for pissweak beer in plastic cups, the lines were with stylistas for espresso shots and loads of people standing around getting their caffeine fix – it was surreal, but rad!

Being in a huge city like Milano, I figured that there’d be some cool music/clubs on, so after accosting some punk kids in the park for info, I went to Club Zoe, out in the sticks and the ‘home of the alternative’ in Milano, only to walk into a gig for the worst band I have ever seen – Babylon were worse than the worst of synth-rock Eurovision crap and the crowd were loving it. I tried to be open minded, but after the 3-minute mark and a third of my drink gone, I really, really couldn’t sit through it anymore, so left and caught the last bus home, laughing all the way.

people
milano
I found the Milanese (in general) to be the coldest and arrogant people I’ve come in contact with to date, which I was really disappointed about. They’re worse than Sydneysiders, way worse than Londoners and even more arrogant than the French are supposed to be. Perhaps it’s for the same reasons as London and Sydney, that there are that many people in the town and loads of outsiders, that the Milanese have to keep themselves extremely guarded, but it was tough. Kind of sad that the loveliest people I met there were from Norway and Mexico! ha! Asking for directions was like asking to fuck a family member, general chit-chat in shops, etc, was met with indignation and not even me being sick illicited kindness from hostel staff.

torino
However, here, not only were my hostel room-mates friendlier, but also the hostel staff, compresse everywhere, people in the street and those in the galleries. And lets not forget out guardian angels who gave me, a complete stranger, a lift across town, for no other reason than to help another person out.


In spending the time I have in Italy (like I did in Germany), I keep trying to learn what it is to be Italian. Who are these people? I’ve come up with some strange little quirks I’ve noticed, including them always standing with one hand on their hip when drinking espresso or eating gelato at the bar and looking in shop windows. I’ve also realised that the Italians love their comforts, the things that reinforce to them who they are by what they are – their family, friends, food, shoes, clothes, handbags, mobile phones, football and coffee. their ‘casa’ – home. they’ll do anything to make sure that they have them around. they aren’t so good at discovering new things or going out on a limb. nor do they like being alone – in fact I very rarely saw Italians sitting on their own in the piazza and they’re always shocked that I’m traveling on my own around Europe. having said that, that’s just from spending 10 days here – although I’m definitely right with the hand-on-hip thing! ha!


PS just in case you're here for the first time, or you've forgotten, the reason my images are such crud is because my camera is broken. so you get a nicer idea of what's going on, just pretend that i've painted them instead - i know i am!

Four simple steps for city mayors who find themselves with extra people in their cities, otherwise known as tourists

1. Signage, signage, signage!
People, it’s not that hard, really, to spend a little bit of time, effort and money into really developing your signage. And how about, once you’ve put it up, try it out. Get someone to give it a trial run to see if it really works – there’s nothing more annoying than following signage that just fucking ends no where near where you’re ending up.

2. Tourist information booths.
I know they might seem a bit daggy, but honestly, theyr'e fucking vital and they could be really simple. Just make sure they are in key places like Airports, Central train stations and a couple of the main areas in the centre of town. You could even be a bit innovative and have collapsible ones that you could take to specific areas when there’s a big event on (like the Grand Prix, or a Film Festival). They need to give out maps, be staffed by people who at least speak the local language and one other (probably English) and are open at least as long as the plance they’re in (if not 24hours!). In fact, they could just be like John So’s info people that stand on the corner of Flinders and Swanston Sts in Melbourne, giving out info and maps to tourists, so you get to really connect with your tourists, AND you’re employing older people and ex-homeless in the mean time (Rob – do you have any connections with cities looking to refine their tourist industries? Mayor of London perhaps?).

3. Access to Money
Although most of us tourists have money with us when we arrive, sometimes things don’t work out that way and we need to get some, or we need to change it. Make sure that there’s both a Cambio/Wechsel/Change booth in the main Airport and Train Station (and boat terminal, if applicable) AND and ATM. How about one next to the other! That would be kind of sensible – put all the money type places together!

4. Access to transport and tickets
Firstly, read step 1 again.

Go on, read it.... read it!

OK..


Now, make sure it’s easy for both your locals AND tourists (or are time-consuming and bumbling fools, we can’t help it) to access transport system/tickets. Make sure there’s working machines and an open person to talk to, in case something goes awry, as late as the system runs (tourists arrive at all times of the day, usually way after your peak hour commuter has gone home). And always have a daily ticket available – it’s just common sense to be able to jump on an off transport and you’re making your way around town. If you don’t want to make it cheap, fine, be like that, but at least have one.

Extra loving touches

Late night food.
In my experience, Germany (and Austria to some extent) had their priorities well sorted. You can get food and beer at all times of the day at the major stations and airports (including supermarkets!). When tourists have just come off a long haul, or are about to jump on a train across 15 borders, most will want to grab food of some sorts. Be nice and give them a range from cheap, nasty, exlusive’ and healthy (a little from each is always nice).

Easy and affordable baggage storage.
There is nothing more of a drag than having to check out of your hotel/hostel./hovel at between 9 and 12, not leaving until 6 hours later and having no where to store your luggage. Having lockers is a really easy way to go about it, or if you want to really make things complicated, you can have a whole office connected to it (including Lost and Found – that always helps). It means that your tourists can continue to enjoy your beautiful cites, without having to get major back strain, or fuck off your citizens by running them over with those annoying suitcasewheelie things.

All of the above will certainly go some way to a happy tourist and we all know what happy tourists means: they spend more money and tell more people how great you are, which probably gets you either a myspace page/facebook group or re-elected, whatever takes your fancy.

Vienna: MQ

brilliant, i tell you, brilliant

In my original travel plans, I hadn't intended to come to Vienna. It was more of a deviation east than i was intending and i was thinking that i'd rather just spend more time in Venice. Thankfully my best friend Sarah reminded me about Hundertwasser in Vienna, which reminded me about Egon Schiele and The Third Man in Vienna. Phew! I almost missed out on one of the most culturally rich cities in the fucking world, all because it was a 'little out of my way'.

My first impressions of Vienna were absolutely shite. I rocked up at the hostel and all I could see was yet another utilitarian grey block, thanks to Hitler, Speer et al. It was way further out of town than I thought, was full of school kids, the rooms stank, the food was scheiße and Lunchlady Doris was working in kitchen. I just got over all of that, when at 6:30am, our room was woken up by the alarm clock of a girl in the bed near mine, who was in the shower. It went on and on, and on. louder, louder, louder. I managed to turn it off somehow, only to have it go off again 15 minutes later! fuck! so, in the interest of the common good, the alarm clock ended being taken out of the room and flung down the hallway, by someone resembling a tired australian who swears a bit.

So, the first couple of proper days in Vienna have been spent in the MuseumsQuartier, checking out 4 amazing art institution and some fantastic exhibitions.


Yesterday I checked out the abso-fucking-lutely fantastic AzW: ArkitekturezentrumWien and the brillian show a_schau - a survey of Austrian architectural milestones from the 20th/21st Century. The Austrians are well-known for their architecture and it was great to see it all laid out in one show, with images, text and social/political context (including, yes, that ol' WWII thang). And the accompanying typeface was wicked - all architectural like-ish. Grouped into Prologue (from around the time of the Secession, the pinpoint of modern architecture in Vienna), Red Vienna, Landscape, Power (Hitler, etc), Reconstruction, System (post-war economic efficient crapness), Idealism and Collage, covering a generation of architects each time. I found out that Linz was Hitler's favourite city, which put a little bit of a bad-taste tarnish on the fantastic time I had there. heh. The whole centre was great! I couldn't absorb any more architecture, so couldn't check out the Margherita Spillering exhibition, but I did buy a little cut-out plan of the Secession, so i can have my own little model at home! tee hee!




After heading back to the hostel to recharge and regroup, I went back to MQ and went to MUMOK, the MUseum der MOdernKunst (Museum of Modern Art, just in case you didn't pick up on that complex German there...). There were 2 major special shows on at the MUMOK, a Sigmar Polke retrospective and an installation by Austrian artist Markus Huemer, plus the exhibition of their modernist collection on the 8th floor. I went up there first and it was fucking amazing! It was a strongly curated and designed show, with a range of painting, sculpture, product design, architectural models, film, photography, hell they even had typeface design workings by Herbert Bayer (an 'n', 'h', two 'a's and a 'd', for those who have a bit of a font fetish). It really showed the importance and marked interdisciplinary aspect of modern art - Mies Van Der Rohe did buildings and they had his Barcelona chair there. Bayer's fonts and his famous photograph of the guy with the chunk out of his armpit. Mondrian paintings and then the architectural model of the building which replicated them, designed by. Sculpture, replicating paintings, drawing replicating font, line and form becoming theme and content in their own right - such an important collection in terms of understanding the history of art and visual communication! Worth the entry price alone!

After that ecstatic experience, I checked out the 3 floors of the installation by Markus Huemer. He has a thing for blue in the same way I have a thing for red - he uses it as his indicator (or signifier) in a range of methods: A series of blue screens, with subtle differences in resolution and method of projections, a great interactive piece where you could create a Pollock-like Abstract Expressionist work by walking across the room and triggering sensors, and the lowest floor was a series of large paintings depicting half-drawn pictures of flowers and trees - nature, with titles like trojanhorse.exe - the modern plague bacteria.

Sigmar Polke is someone I should do like his use of lacquered tracing paper as substrate (yes Charles, there's that word again), I like his 'not touching the paper' type absorption works and his toner transfer works, but they are only a few aspects of the work and when i see it, all i see are the trillions of naive bitsy shitty works that have been spawned in his wake and I want to vomit. harsh? genau, but i can't help how it makes me feel.



Today, I hit the last 2 big galleries at MQ: the Leopold Museum and the Kunsthalle Wien.

The Leopold Museum houses a great collection of Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele’s work. But to be honest, I only really wanted to check out Egon Schiele. I know he’s a really important artist, but Gustav Klimt still leaves me cold, despite a brief backflip a while back.

But Egon Schiele, man, I could go on about him for days. And days. His paintings are the stuff of love – and I don’t mean gooey Hallmark love, but sinewy, angular, a little bit skewiff, enraptured, awkward love, not to mention pink bits. If Courbet is the king of painting "The Source", then Egon Schiele is the righteous prince. But that’s not exactly what I love about his painting – it's the way he paints, with a great combination of glaze and goop, line and form, soft and hard (and if you’ve ever painted with oils, you’ll know how hard that actually is). He does hands, feet and faces like no other and I can’t do any for shit, which is possibly why I idolize him. And then outside his paintings, he’s got all the hallmarks of a rock’n’roll painting icon – school drop out who drew all the time, went to art school, but fought against it to create the NeueKunstGruppe (New Art Group) and was incredibly prolific before dying a tragic death in the Spanish Flu plage of 1918, 2 months after his new wife and 6 month-old had succumbed to it. If that isn’t beautiful and tragic, I don’t know what is. (A record by The Smiths, perhaps?)

Then, same as before, I went back to the hotel, took time to recharge, organise accommodation/travel for the next week and then headed back to the KunsthalleWien and the show Traum and Trauma (Dream and Trauma - great title)


Holy shit, this was a great show! It's works from the collection of Dakis Joannou, which I didn't realise until I got there - he's known to me as the collector of Tim Noble/Sue Webster's work, whose work I love, so i knew this show was going to be great. There were about 35 fantastic artists, including Kiki Smith, Cindy Sherman, Maurizia Catalan, William Kentridge, Jeff Koons, Gregory Crewdson! Big guns, I tell you, big guns in the contemporary scene. My favourite works were by Noble/Webster - the Black Narcissus (silicon casts of Noble's dick and Webster's fingers, together to make a silhouetter of their Janus-like two-faced head) and He/She - those fantastic sculptures of found objects/welded steel to make the silhouette of them pissing. Shit hot stuff, i tell you, shit hot. And each room had a little tear-off room shit that you could take with you and have your own mini-catalogue. I really, really want to buy the proper catalogue, but as it is i'm carrying around too much crap and have no way to get it home. Amazon wishlist, perhaps.


If you're ever in Vienna only for a couple of days, you could do worse than just spend your time in the MuseumsQuartier. Not only are there those 4 big galleries, but studios for artists, design studios, fashion workshops, art supports orgs, the Design Forum and animation houses. I believe that culture needs to be intergated into the fabric of a city/society, but having it all in one place certainly packs a mean punch.

I've got a few more days here, in which I'm going to squeeze in Hundertwasser Haus (oh yeah), BA-CA Arts Forum and a walking tour of Vienna themed around The Third Man (only one of my favourite movies of all time). I'll keep you all posted about that, don't you worry. Heh.

ars electronica day 2

If day 1.5 was all about virtuality and SecondLife, then Day 2 was all about the tactile and the real elements of art/technology and the way in which humans, human nature and human thinking interact with both of them.

I stayed up way past my bedtime again last night, going to OK Party at the OK Centre, which was pretty good. It was absolutely rammed and I ran into 3 artists I knew/worked with from Sydney, which was quite bizarre, but fun at the same time.

So this morning, when I dragged myself out of bed and into the University for a 10:30am start, I was looking way past my age. However, it was well worth the wait. 2 artists whose work I liked the most from the CyberArts festival of the ARS PRIX, Wim Delvoye and Bernie Lubell were speaking in the two sessions on Hybrid Arts and INteractive Arts, respectively.

Wim's work, Cloaca, is a manufacturing system, based on the human digestive system, whose sole purpose is to generate shit. Literally.

You walk into the room after 'bowel movement time' and it reeks! But the system is great! The work showing at Ars is the Personal Cloaca, a washing machine which uses the same enzymes available in washing powder to break down food into faeces [although is faeces still faeces if it's not from a human? Does it them become 'manure' or 'excrement'?]. The main system uses a series of chemical 'stations' to process the food and takes 30 humans to generate 80 kilos of shit. His talk was fantastic, with exactly the right amount of humour, personality and cultural/theoretical insight about what it actually means to be human. If a major part of our physical nature/purpose can be replicated using machinery (that we actually created), what is left to be human? Can we technologise ["hello, Oxford English Dictionary? I think i made up a new word.."] ourselves out of an identity/purpose?


Bernie 'Blubell" Lubell's work is a low-fi on the technological material (only because it doesn't use metal/plastic, but wood), but hi-tech on the concept and interactivity. His pneumatic system called Conservation of Intimacy is a machine powered by a couple rocking on a summer swing, to generate movement of a pen recording seismograph, while simultaneously creating a breath in the ear of a cycllist who is powering the paper on which the seismograph is recorded. It's bloody brilliant, as are his other works, which he went through in the talk. Similarly, Bernie had exactly the right amount of humour and insight into his own work, where he fits within the Interactive sphere and the idea of 'control' - which, interestingly I feel is the basis of privacy, remember?


There were a load of other speakers, including 2 lots of Australian collaborations, represent! but I'm not going to go into them today.

After the intensity of this listening, I popped over to the Ars Electronica Centre and took part in the interactive technology show, which was fantastic fun. There were several great works including:


Chalkboard, where you had your photo taken, uploaded and you could doctor it, leaving a note on the virtual 'noticeboard'.



Move, a great responsive game between you and a graphic element. There were 3 games on random selection and I was being 'chased' by a red circle, which I found fitting.



Hanahana, a habit/sensor mapping work, in which you chose a 'leaf', sprayed it with the scent of your choice (about 10 to choose from) and you put the leaf onto a sensor pad, which recorded the frequency of the perfume and generated a colour-based flower in response. Interestingly, my flower was red. Seems I smell, as well as see red.

Unsurprisingly, there were loads of kids at the exhibition, which I think is great. Most of these works had a certain level of 'what does this say about me'-ness to them, which perhaps is the crux of interative work, and I think it's a vital element to childhood development to be asking those questions early - saves on the midlife crisis down the track.

After the high-tech digital nature of the AEC interactivity, I checked out/stumbled upon the acar2 low-tech analogue interactive exhibition at the Kunstuniverstät, Campus 2.0.

The best part of it was actually the annexe, which had the 'blogging tag' badge, which told people you'd been saying stuff about the festival, the 'wiki/comments section' - a typewriter on which you could write anything and then leave the paper in there for others to respond to (or not). And the response to the laundry messaging system (boxer shorts on washing line, making words, as seen in the post on Day 1). The return to analogue technology was lovely and their exhibition display was equally cool - lasered lettering out of corrugated card and bubblewrap.


The other cool exhibition was outside the centre, a series of hydroponically-grown lettuces, which were connected via the net to pollution levels of the G7 capital cities (plus Vienna) and had to grow in those levels. It was great to see a representation of our cities sweltering under their own respiration.




The featured artist for the festival is Marko Peljhan and I wandered down to his exhibition on the Danube, which was documentation of a trans-national/nation-stateless project on both north and south poles to develop research centres housing scientists, writers and artists. Although I found the exhibition itself pretty cool (pardon the pun), his talk later in the afternoon was really quite enlightening and proof that artists are vital for innovation across disciplines.

After touching base back at the hostel, I popped back into town to check out the Perfect Strangers concerts at Brucknerhause, the amazing concert hall. I listened to Bill Fontana's Memories of Landscape works, a little bit of Masahiro Miwa's Bolero by Muamatsu Gear Engine (a Bolero tracking the history of a fictitioius folklore from Japan) and then the main piece I was going for, Frank Zappa's Black Page No.1 (that mega drum solo) by The Sancho Plan and his Perfect Strangers/Dupree's Paradise by the Brucknerhaus Orchestra. All of the above were brilliant and having the sound performance aspect of the festival added a real sense of 'well-rounded-ness' ["hello, Lauren, this is the Oxford English Dictionary and I think the word you're looking for is holistic.."]

And, for those who seem to care about my sleeping patterns, I was very good and home again before midnight, ready for an early start in the morning.

ars electronica day 1

I intended to start Saturday up early, breakfasted, dressed and down at the Festival Centre at 10am sharp, ready to face the day. The reality (as opposed to the virtuality) of the situation is that I got up for breakfast (which finished at 9am!) then went back to bed for 3 hours. Finally getting up and out of the hostel, to be down at the Festival Centre at 1:30! Crap!
I was super interested in the Ganz Linz Project and quickly chucked together a small piece that I was hoping to put down for it, but because of the cloudy weather, it was postponed unti next week. Crap! (I’m still thinking of leaving it somewhere to be photographed, but I’m not sure where/how/if.)



There’s so much on that I knew that I would miss something, but I took the time to just dive in and experience things: Augmented Sculpture by Spanish artist Pablo Valbuena, was an installation about sculpture/architecture and time, which I liked – although the relationship to time was tenuous. The Overtures video documentation was great, as part of the Environmental Centre showcasing work by artists whose work mainly focuses on the degredation of the environment. Then I went to WoW, a piece by Aram Barthol, which was so simple, but so damned effective. Second Life avatars have their ‘name’ above their head and this ‘shop’ had people able to make the real life/time equivalent – a headband with your avatar name above your head:


I walked around with it on my head all day and it threw up all kinds of amazing reactions and also thoughts about what is privacy and whether walking around with your name above your head immediately transports you into a game/secondlife/realtime kind of warp – it was absolutely fantastic!


I also went and checked out Australian artist Justine Cooper’s Havidol ‘shop’, which reminded me a lot of Spat’n’Loogie’s New!shop (which I told Justine about too) – it was dedicated to the promotion of her pharmaceutical 'remedy' to social ailments. The commercial was absolutely brilliant – taking the piss out of infomercials everywhere – and the list of side effects of Havidol were similarly fantastic (my favourite being inter-species communication) ha!.


I went along to the jury deliberation of the first architectural competition for SecondLife. It may as well have been a panel, because it was open to the public, with microphones and documentation and it was a fantastic discussion, which hightlighted ideas about the purpose of architecture, the need for constraint, the importance of gravity and what is interesting when there are no boundaries. Some of my favourite quotes from the discussions include:

“Where everything is possible, nothing is interesting” Pascal Shöning
“I’m exhausted by interestingness. The absence of gravity doesn’t necessarily make things more interesting, but actually quite boring” Shumon Basar.

All of these reiterated my belief in the absolute necessity in life (Second or otherwise) for structure in order to create beauty. And as far as second life goes, the structural requirements, as someone on the jury mentioned, are the techonological, financial and the community-based elements of the world. I wonder whether because the basic premise of Second Life is largely the vacuousness of this real life, that trying to fit structure to it only highlights its lack of authenticity as a negative, rather than embracing it. I would have loved to stick around and participate in some more discussion, but I had to get to, what ended up being, my all-time highlight for the day.

Guerilla Radio is a booth and transmitter set up in Hauptplatz, smack bang in the middle of town, and a DJ (or band/combo earlier in the day) plays to the crowd. However, you can only pick up the frequency through wireless headphones that you hire. The platz was filled with a bunch of us listening and dancing to the DJ set, right in the middle of the street. Obviously only those with the headphones can hear the music, so it’s quite comical watching those dancing when you can’t hear the music. Of course I had head phones and of course I danced my arse off – for an hour and a half!




Even though, in the spirit of Goodbye Privacy, we’re all out ‘in public’ and challenging this notion of Private Dancing, it was, actually, one of the most private things I’ve done (others will remain nameless to protect the guilty). There is something intensely private about headphones (as Marcus Brown and his ipod singing sensation will attest to) and then there’s the private nature of only sharing that experience with the DJ and others in cans. I had a great ‘private’ moment with the DJ when, in the middle of his set, while I’m dancing away, he drops the new track which starts with police radio about a ‘disturbance… they’re dancing in the streets’ – which I understood the joke of and acknowledged it so. It was fantastic!!



And while I was grooving away, in private/public, I had so much time to think about the concept of privacy and what it really means, given that I felt like I was in my own private Idaho, in the middle of a plaza and I think that Privacy is the feeling of control you have over your environment. As soon as that control is taken away from you, you feel that your privacy has been ‘invaded’. And even if you put yourself into the ‘public’ domain [dancing/singing in the street, blogging, uploading videos to YouTube, divulging secrets on Myspace, etc], as long as you feel that you have some sense of control over that, you can still maintain a sense of Privacy. I do think a sense of Privacy is a fundamental human need, on some level. And obviously, what that level is, is subjective.

As usual, there are more pics on flickr

linz and ars electronica day 0,5

The theme of this year’s Ars Electronica is Goodbye Privacy and all the work/talks I’ve seen so far has been an excellent perspective on that idea.

Arriving at about 7pm, I wasn’t sure what the hell to do, to start with, but I figured that the information desk was a good place to start. information guy there was very helpful (and has been over the whole weekend), gave me a bit of an idea about what was happening and sent me on my way.

The first thing I checked out was a great video/audio walk (audioweg) through the old area of the Gusen I concentration camp. Unlike all the other Nazi concentration camps, this one has not been made into a memorial, but is a working village now – houses where the Blocks were, people living in the old SS quarters, and Private Property signs to prevent pilgrims. It was an amazing movie and cleverly highlighted the immense power of an area’s history never really lays down to die.

Next I grabbed some food, drink and managed to introduce myself to Raina at Wieden&Kennedy New York (by coincidence!). We ended up going to3rd Life at Second Krebs™ together – a fantastic party/experiential happening taking the experiences of Second Life™ and Web2.0 stuff and creating them in reality: 3rd Life. Second Life features as a subject/motif/starting point very heavily this year at Ars and while I’m not a fan of Second Life at all - in fact, it bores, frustrates, and leaves me cold- as an architecture itself of what is specific about community engagement/user generated content/web 2.0 stuff, interests me as an idea. The concept of it existing and people engaging with it is of immense interest to artists, architects and creative thinkers alike. Not to mention the advertisers and brands who use it to engage people to buy things. And it fun was doing all of those kinds of things in real life/time. Second Krebs was definitely all in good fun, with a bit of interesting critique thrown in and very easy to enjoy.



Raina and I bought a ‘cheap avatar’, had our profiles ‘changed’, had a look at the offline dating room, mailed some spam using the offline outbox, (a box, with a girl and horse delivering mail, after Raina left, I checked out the offline StreetFighter, complete with changeable backgrounds, choosable characters and players who had to shout out the commands “punch!, punch! special weapon! jump! run!”, etc. It was fucking brilliant!


I popped a question into the Google Oracle, but did it wrong and it came up with no results.



The small details were great too – there were ‘pop ups’ around the place:



and apple symbols everywhere:



Then I saw a poster on the wall that said that a great noise band from the states were playing that night at a club not too far. I decided to leg it and took my chances on a) being able to afford to get in with the money I had on me, b) that the band hadn’t already started. I was lucky – got to see most of the support ‘band’ and then The Locust. They’re bloody awesome, intense, not something I have in my record collection ‘cos I like something melodic at home, but so utterly fantastic to see live. I’m not sure whether it was intentional about the timing of their appearance for Ars, but for me it was perfect timing – the Locust all play disguised as Locusts (minus the wings), keeping their privacy – and their music is hugely distorted by all kinds of nutty frequencies. It’s amazing! Being so near the Czech border too, there were loads of crazy Czech doom core kids – it was great to see.

Getting home at 1am, after almost leaving at 8:30 - What a way to start the festival!


As usual, there are more pics on flickr