Awesome Foundation - Projects

Sydney – Under new Management

2012-07-10T00:00:00Z

Under new Management (UNM) is a space for ideas. Located on the busy Oxford St, just down from Taylor Square, UNM is intended to be an evolving space whose function is only limited by my ideas, and the ideas of collaborators. Inspired by NY's Grand Opening, UNM aims to delight, surprise, educate and entertain. I'm taking a 6 month lease from Jul - Dec. The current planned uses are scheduled for a month at a time, though shorter periods will be considered, as will nightly activities not necessarily attached to daytime activities. A team of creatives, industrial designers and builders (cough-amateur DIYers ) will be able to completely transform the space each month, making it seem like its use is permanent and adding to the chameleon reputation of the space. July will be Le Tour Lounge - a relaxed, inclusive space for people to come and go, get updates on the previous day's racing, and watch selected live stages. Coffee, magazines and bikes will be the fare. The end of July will see an installation for the Camping Website, another project of mine. For one week, the space will be transformed into a camping ground, and there will be a launch event complete with tent, film and ofcourse, damper. We're even going to sleep overnight in the tent. August is currently free As is September October is planned to be The Share Market - a promotional month featuring examples of Collaborative Consumption. Car sharing, accommodation, tool sharing, skill sharing will each have a week of activities and displays designed to stimulate. November is free December is free I am confident of curating some great installations and events with collaborators and for generating significant media exposure for the space. Post December, there is also the chance of the lease continuing. If not, having built up a brand, relocating the space might also be plausible. ps. This should go below but we would also display The Awesome Foundation as a partner on the shop window.

Sydney – Australian National Qualifier for breakdancing

2012-04-10T00:00:00Z

Krosswerdz (community programs) is a non profit group that uses hip hop to make a positive difference in the lives of young people. We provide personal development programs in breakdancing, aerosol art, emceeing and DJing. We run a free breakdancing program for 50 young people in Liverpool each week, on a voluntary basis. R16 is the pre-eminent world event for breakdancing. It is prestigous, highly respected and represents the pinnacle of performance for bboys and bgirls around the globe. This year 20 countries will participate, and our organisation has been invited to host the first ever Australian comp. We expect 800 people to attend this free event, and we need your support to make this dream a reality. More than 200 people have registered for the event, we have a venue and leading Australian judges, we have raised money for this event. The winning crew of 8 young people will fly to Taiwan to represent Australia. The event is not only a positive community event, but a once in a life time opportunity for the crew who win the battle to represent their country on the world stage.

Sydney – Chalk & Talk

2012-03-13T00:00:00Z

THE PROJECT: Me and my partner in crime(s of awesomeness) are incubating plans to hatch some interactive art onto the streets of Sydney. The application for this grant is part of a birthday present for the said partner :) Put pithily, our project will involve fixing a “sentence starter” (made from cheap purchased lettering) onto a wall frequented by pedestrians, followed by a blackboard and chalk for people to finish the sentence off in whichever way they choose. Users may even choose to respond in pictures rather than in words. Being dreamers, we envisage this project to eventuate in plural, but for now we are doing our best to play realists and would love a little kick start from your foundation to take our first instance of it out of our multidimensional daydreams and into everyday 3D life. Our first installation will make appropriate use of the “A” word, with the sentence starter being “You are awesome because…” Our sentence starters will in essence be based on “positive affirmations” . For example, “Smile because…” or “Today I will…” etc. But our street art will avoid the cheesefactor experienced in the viewing of motivational posters and the like by being cloaked in a kind of coolness deemed suitable to the tastes of the hipsters of our times. IT'S AWESOME BECAUSE: Even those that don’t put chalk to blackboard are more than likely to finish the sentence in their heads. In this way, the project has the potential to inspire positive thoughts in all passers by. But who doesn’t appreciate their walk towards the daily grind being made that little bit more interesting? The use of a blackboard links to ideas of old school teaching (see “chalk and talk” http://www.thefreedictionary.com/chalk+and+talk). We see anyone and everyone as a potential teacher who has important messages to share with others. Its temporary nature ~ we feel the element of transience, spontaneity, being “in the moment” and non-attachment adds appeal. But users could always photograph their masterpieces if they wish to hold onto them into the nether. Living in the iNfOrMaTiOnOvErLoAd age means we have so many choices of ways to communicate instantly with so many people... quantity vs quality, yadayadayada... but so much weighty stuff is still often left unsaid! Encouraging people to share their ideas, their creativity, and their kindness with each other is important, dontcha think?

Sydney – Hungry Ghost sound walk

2012-02-14T00:00:00Z

A gothic play set in the alleys of Surry Hills uncovering its dark history. It will take the form of an audio walk. A listener will download an audio track or app of the play. Wearing headphones they hear the story play out on the streets they are walking, referencing landmarks and features they pass. The walk will use binaural sound recording. This is made with two microphones positioned near a person's ears so the recording replicates how you normally experience sound. The technique is more immersive then normal recordings enabling the listener to feel that they are walking in the story rather then just listening to it. A man could whisper in your left ear, a horse might suddenly exhale just behind you, the sound of drinking might seem as if it is coming from your own mouth. The setting of the sound walk will be in contemporary Surry Hills but will go back in time to the early 1900s of plague quarantines, rat catching was a lucrative job and the war was seen as a “restricted holiday” out of the Surry Hills slums. The streets were run by fashionable young gang members. And the Chinese living in the area were a dying community following restrictive immigration policies and problems with gambling and opium dens. The walk will follow two cousins of Chinese descent as they try and find the home of their ancestors. They hope to make an offering to be rid of a hungry ghost troubling their families. Hungry ghosts are spirits that return to take what they can if sufficient offerings haven't been made by their living relatives. They recount old family stories to try and locate the home and as the stories are told the listener goes back to the early 1900s. The focus of the story will be on the early Chinese of the Surry Hills community, a point of view rarely explored. When all episodes are completed they will be delivered via mobile app. TEAM Susanna Dowling (Director) Assoc Director at PlayWriting Australia, previously Associate Artist at Company B Belvoir, 2011 recipient of Mind's Eye commission at Bell Shakespeare. Ekrem Mulayim (Sound) Masters Composition at Sydney Conservatorium. 2011 nominee for best score or sound design at the Sydney Theatre Awards. Theatre credits include 'Yellow Moon', 'Cut' and 'The Kiss' at Belvoir, 'Tell it like it isn’t' for Australian Theatre for Young People and 'Vigil' for Spirit House Theatre Company. Mei Tsering (Writer) PlayWriting Australia Salon 2011, Associate Writer at Belvoir St Theatre (current). App developer

Sydney – The Dollar Shop

2012-01-10T00:00:00Z

Our project is The Dollar Shop. The Dollar Shop is a concept developed and curated by us; Alex De Bonis and Louise Helliwell. We established and run Tough Titties (toughtitties.com.au) a website which is dedicated to showcasing Australian female creative talent. At last years Sydney Design Festival we curated an group show with 20 local female artists and designers who all exhibited their work on giant dollies. City of Sydney have recently awarded Tough Titties a short-term lease on an empty shop in the city for a reduced rent, but with no funding or grants to help establish and run the project. So what is The Dollar Shop? It is a multi-purpose space that allows collaboration between creatives and is both an artistic statement, a learning environment (with workshops and talks) and a shopping experience! A reaction to the current economic crisis, the main prerequisite for the shop is that all products, despite having a low price to attract customers should nonetheless allow a profit margin for the artists. It is a unique retail experience that will sell well designed products at economical prices. The idea of The Dollar Shop is that local designers and artists sell their goods under the conditions that items must be sold for no more than $1, $5, $10 or $20. All items must be made or designed by the artist. What makes the The Dollar Shop awesome is that it’s the ultimate low cost high quality shopping experience. It challenges the idea of what a commercial retail space should be. It isn’t just a shopping experience, but is a place of value, not only economically, but in a cultural way to the community that it inhibits. Based on the model used by McSweeney’s Superhero Supply Company in Brooklyn or their Monster Supplies Store in London, The Dollar Shop will also be a space with a dual function. The back section of the shop will be a place for workshops and talks which will also be available at Dollar Shop prices. It is our intention that this space will provide the opportunity for the wider community to learn new skills, listen to talks and participate/communicate directly with artists and designers. The Dollar Shop isn’t about making money – it’s about opening up design to everyone, making it accessible and inspiring; it’s also about learning and sharing skills and knowledge by encouraging people to contribute in many different ways.

Sydney – Guerilla Lego project

2011-11-08T00:00:00Z

We are Nick and Anna: quirky, creative and long time friends with a passion for awesome (awesome is a noun now). We both work at a Medical Research Institute, but there is only so much advancing the cause of human health that one can do without a creative outlet. So we want to start a guerrilla lego project, and we need the Awesome Foundation to help pull it off. This project is inspired by guerilla knitting projects in sydney and guerilla lego projects around the world. The Aim is to use lego to make the world a slightly more surreal, somewhat more hilarious, and certainly more awesome place. To reach this goal we would build temporary lego works in the public space that are influenced by the environment. For example using lego to fill in gaps in walls, creating lego recreations or covers of objects, or building lego scenes inspired by our surroundings. Some of these pieces would be left in place for the public to view and puzzle over, others may be taken down after photographing - the safety of the public of course will always be foremost in our minds. We would also document our exploits with an online photo journal, which we would make available to the pubic and advertise through social media.

Sydney – Compos(ur)e

2011-10-11T00:00:00Z

My name is Peter Wildman and I have been inspired by an experience of being aware of my presence. After being introduced to mindfulness meditation techniques last September I quickly realised how in a fast paced, modern world, we are encouraged to perspire to aspire to be better people. This self reflective and project driven approach is rarely coupled with time to sit with the product of the moment - our presence in this body, mind, heart, soul and environment that is here and now. We can find ourselves reacting to our world because we need to survive. We need to know what every opportunity or threat is present so we can divert or capitalise as we traverse with a spacial velocity set upon the future and sometimes caught up in the past. My project is one that will place our obsession with time travel as close to the present moment that is possible. I am currently studying interactive art at COFA (College of Fine Art) in Paddington. My interest is centred around our mobile phones and how we can reframe the way we interact with them. There is a potential space that can be created when calls to our attention are listened to as calls to mindful awareness. We create space for composure, through being mindfully aware of our presence in each moment, rather than being cramped by reactionary behaviour. Compos(ur)e is a mobile phone application that enables a social network of people to create technological bells of mindfulness for one another. This interconnection is materialised as a network of installations and kinetic sculptural spaces that are composed through these mobile interactions. I have developed a prototype of the application, where you breathe into the phone's microphone and ring a bell for yourself. I am now in need to develop the social network element and also develop it so it is compatible for a wide range of 'smart' phone users. Also the first of the installations will be presented at this years COFA Honours show. The installation will be a proof of concept, a prototype showing the interaction that will possibly take place in the network. This is a link to a concept video that shows what the installation that represents the network usage will look like. http://vimeo.com/28605430 Thanks for the opportunity to put my project out there as a potentially awesome endeavour. Cheers, Peter Wildman

Sydney – Physique Aerobics

2011-09-13T00:00:00Z

Inspired by Jamie Lee Curtis’s immaculate display in 1985’s aerobics flick ‘Perfect’, Physique intends to capture what they knew back then – mirrors, sweat & spandex accompanied by an appropriately cheesy soundtrack. There will be awards for the best dressed, hot pink workout mats and tasty low-carb drinks to cool off afterwards. If you’re not too embarrassed at the idea of getting physical, then the organisers welcome you to sign up. It’s open to anyone, “but particularly those who like to let loose on the weekend and are keen to get active early in the week, are aware that summer is right round the corner but are turned off or daunted by gyms & zumba. The classes will be cheeky but make you sweat. No-one gets shoved out the door at the end of the class, you actually stick around & have a chat & a laugh.”

Sydney – World's smallest patch synthesizer

2011-08-09T00:00:00Z

Hi, my name is Aras and I'm an Artist-Engineer! My main area of engineering is electronics and micro computer systems, and I love make sculptures and small hand sized objects. I love teaching people about how to build electronic instruments and I have produced several workshops for the Electrofringe festival in Newcastle. I'm also actively involved in Dorkbot Sydney where I have presented various projects since it has been running. I'm currently designing and building the world's smallest (and cheapest!) patch synthesizer. This is one of those audio synths where you can plug in lots of cables between different parts and there are loads of knobs that make crazy sounds! Here is an example of what they look like: http://www.synthmuseum.com/ppg/ppg30001.jpg The idea is to make a patch synthesizer that is capable, small, cheap and easily available for people to experiment with and make some great sounds. As with all my designs, I release the circuit diagrams and documents explaining how they work and how to build them. Here is my progress so far: http://i.imgur.com/t5Cda.png This is a snapshot of the printed circuit board. You can see the knobs, the patch bay and the 1 octave piano keyboard. This will be about the same area as two business cards! Some links about me: Electrofringe in Newcastle: http://bock.com.au/electrofringe/?p=111 http://www.flickr.com/photos/electrofringe/4156884894/ Dorkbot/Electrofringe: http://dorkbotsyd.boztek.net/?p=96 http://dorkbotsyd.boztek.net/?p=106 http://dorkbotsyd.boztek.net/?p=67 Engineering robots for Australian artists: http://marynowsky.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/the-hosts/

Sydney – PAN magazine

2011-07-03T00:00:00Z

PAN Magazine is a cultural biannual with a literary bent which includes the work of emerging and established writers. The whole production is pulled together on a shoestring budget, a driving passion for the arts and a whole lotta late nights. Emma Dallas tells the story of PAN Magazine to date, “There are twenty of us working very hard to make this little arts magazine a success. We love magazines but rarely see the kind of content we would like to read. We don’t want to compete with established magazines that focus on ‘how to look good and conform’. We want to offer a magazine with some depth as well as interest, some arts as well as fiction, poetry and essays presented beautifully. We’re on a mission to reintroduce thinking about our culture and specifically our arts in a broad and accessible way. As well as giving new writers and artists a platform to be heard in a way that does not commodify or belittle them. There is so much going on here in Australia, in all our cities. We aim to show people just how good it can be when you engage with what’s being created around you.” With a little help from the contents of a brown paper bag, the dedicated PAN crew were able to publish issue #2, which is now available for purchase at select shops across Australia and online.