mister-ab-blog

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Poem: Towards the end of summer

The evening is still

as the ocean’s swell is low

the heat hangs cotton and westerly swelter

with heads bobbing for relief

from the generating streets of engine heats

february knows no cycle of clearing rain

it’s all bake then dark until the gear shifts

slowly into autumn

the air is hot like an uncle’s breath is too close

covering your face like a mask of temper

thankful clouds curtain the relentless sun

with feathers of ice

this day is a dog

growling at crabs under rocks

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Prose: On this occasion

On this occasion I’m reminded that we are inhabitants of a dream state nation. An invaded dream timeline. Waking in a flood of sweat, I am overcome by her teeming nature, kept small by vast expanses, constrained by oceans, corralled by fauna. Whether cyclone or southerly, we are tossed about by the weather that sweeps us clean. I wake to be found wiped off the map, squinting to see where I am, and what’s happened, stumbling through a dream narrative I can’t quite remember. On our chattering surface we share sentimental images from television, movies and mags, but below our horizon mind there is a deeper connection always building. On this occasion I’m drawn to the scale and dimension of our gathering wonder. 

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Project Brief: The Memory Collective

As Australians, we've all seen the surface of Australia represented in art, design, advertising and media. The objects, icons and above-ground silouhettes of our cities, tablelands and coasts. An external, local, and tourist viewpoint. What The Memory Collective is looking to reveal is an 'inner' Australia. A deeper, more personal and intimate glimpse of our shared Australian experience. A more interior view. We are searching for corners, events, moments of recognition, tiny snapshots of memories. Squints and shadows of radiant episodes with people and things lolling in our weather. Places and corners we yearn to share and uncover between ourselves. Both close and long views of an emotional fable, unforgettable face or tryst. Something we hide away and wait to spring into a loud conversation. A joke lining up to be spun at sundown. A tiny portrait or sketch left in a forgotten coat. A furniture of gemstone letters left in the post box during summer rains. Smells, tastes and textures. This is your private, un-asked for Australia. Your chalk on a tennis ball. A chance to bring a funny little thing to light. Something unsure, a collection of things at the edge of memory, blurred, wet, blinding or burnt. Like a sunburn that won't let you sleep, a mosquito in your ear or a ghost gum in snow. Dreams, trains, roads, shoes, paper. The Memory Collective suite of songs may be a starting point to spark your story, or you may already have something talking inside right now that you're keen to share. Your submission can be a sketch, painting, photo, video, animation, plasticene monster, graphic, typography or prose in text. The Memory Collective is an opportunity to find and reveal something uniquely Australian to you, and to share it with our own mob and the world outside the reef.

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Project progress: The Memory Collective

Great Teabun get together with Memory Collective in Erko. Mighty new ideas that defy formats and industrial production. Strummy event coming in December with an eye to contribution to bespoke artifact and country weekend merry making in 2013! Stand by for submission guidelines dear community of makers.

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Acceptance story: Open Colleges Creative Industry

As fate would have it, I have commenced a new role as Head of Creative Industry. With my new colleagues at Open Colleges, we are developing a new education space for the Creative Industry. Ideas, Craft, Social, Work. A great adventure that will challenge a number of assumptions regarding Creative Education for the 21c. Love to see you soon all in the lower Surry Hills.

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Resignation story: Billy Blue College of design

As of a few weeks ago I have now resigned from the role of Head of College at Billy Blue College of Design. My last day is June 30th. I started lecturing at the Billy Blue Grandstand in 1999 teaching in the Advanced Diploma of Communication Design. We had a total of 230 students. After our move to Northpoint in 2003 I became the first Program Director of Communication Design with the successful accreditation of our first Associate Degrees in 2004. I became Head of College in June 2006 after The Billy Blue Group was sold to Amadeus Education in November 2006. By then Billy Blue had grown to 460 students. Amadeus was then re-branded as Think: Education. During 2007-2012 we as the Billy Blue team have accredited and managed our 6 Bachelor Degrees and Design Fundamentals, grown to 3 campus locations and a total of 890 active email addresses. With the support of my family and colleagues, I have chosen this time to move ahead with my career as Designer, Design Educator and Creative Industry practitioner beyond Billy Blue. I’ve chosen to continue my Creative Industry academic study at the doctorate level and my involvement with the NSW Government Creative Industry task force. I have new opportunities emerging through education, publishing and freelance design practice through Barnum Group P/L and have numerous projects in progress in my art and music practice. Watch this space! I want to sincerely thank the Billy Blue academic team, lecturing staff, Think: supporters, all the mighty Billy Blue students past and present and our loyal community of industry partners for their passionate support and collaboration over the past 12 years. In the future I’m looking forward to a reborn relationship with the Billy Blue family from outside our beloved College. Thanks and best wishes to all!

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Liner notes: Feed the Clouds

These songs are stories and fables from town and country. Real and imagined Australian places with characters holding out hope of navigating the complicated world that spins closely and dangerously around us. The product is proudly Australian.These recordings have taken root in a modest, museum like recording studio high on a hilltop above Little Hartley, New South Wales. A studio called Black Rabbit Recorders.This ‘lifestyle support group’ headquarters sits at the fringe of the Sydney metropolis and to the west of the Blue Mountains between the rendezvous train station of Mount Victoria and the coal and arms city of Lithgow.The Black Rabbit Recorders Studio is a crossroads where the songs and their places manifest in spontaneous performance recording. There are no reception areas or recreation lounges here, only long views, crisp air and a house where a family lives and grows. The normalness of family life lives in these songs.The album’s commentary opens with the turbulence of the terrorist act and its brazen consequences (All). Post 9/11 has put a sharper edge to our co-existence. We can never completely have the certainty or security we once enjoyed. Even as far away as Australia we are now forced to remain vigilant.The real sense of place is revealed through the storyteller’s own adventures in the streets of inner western Sydney (Bougainvillea, Phosphor, Finding your love, Lonesome trouble, Walk with you) to wider locations and their atmospheres. From the southwest slopes of Boorowa NSW where an empty house dreams of loving footprints and gasoline (Petrol) to West Hollywood, California (She likes to cry) where we meet a character addicted to keeping her options open in the pursuit of band personnel, but for how long. Then to where the author, noting that his pathway to any songwriting or performing career (Talent Ranch) is both random and questionable. This song is in the form of a letter home to his family in Sydney. A true story. The other imagined locations are inspired by an expatriate mythology located somewhere in the author’s earliest experiences and reflections of gothic American folk imagery (Nothing). Where a town’s people agree that prosperity in the immediate conditions of community upheaval can be resolved with frugality and honesty. And through distributing these ideas within our communities we can hopefully re-engineer a sustainable future (Carry a word).The selections range in musical style from folk, country-rock and swampy grooves all performed by the core team and the intrepid studio guns who got wet and cold in the process.The playlist travels from city and suburban Australia to the edge of the American west coast where the author recommends a healthy promotion of exercise and the pursuit of memory (Sticky pieces), meanwhile a caged bride breaks free of domesticity and heads for the hills by bus (Wide open spaces). There is personal reflection and recognition here. Commentary and description from the road-trip window. From the solace of the clearing (American Forest), the seekers seat (Back to the breath) or up the garden ladder (Bougainvillea). These stories are from the heart of the author in professional and personal transition (Close at hand was written n Stockholm). We close the edition with acknowledgement of the reality of enduring social and economic conditions (Old days) and end the playlist with the spiritual confirmation of elements included in the creation of these songs with a roll call to work, family and spirit (Higher Ground). The performances captured here are deeply attributed to two of my dearest, long-time music collaborators, Lissa and Boris and the family (Anna, Ruben, Lucius and Stella) and the musicians that make the work conditions conducive and all visitors welcome.The other vote of thanks goes to the inspiring responses from the illustrators. They embody the spirit identified by this interactive production and serve as a model of generous collaboration. To quote from the song Nothing: ‘Your aspirations will bear fruit inside the embrace of others.’ A lot happens during visits between Mount Vic and Erko, and our collective schedules are threaded and needled to provide the availability of time to record, mix and master. Long may we keep this balance alive. Discussion, town visits, domestic banter, eating and sleeping, all contribute to the freedom and ease of the sounds that have eventually gone to tape. This music is baked to an exacting recipe of soul and resistance to time constraint. The work schedule is not a predictable routine, more like a collected vessel of rain. There is an honour system at work here. Leave your money in the tin at the gate. The songs contained here are childlike in the face of the hard heart of any previous music industry. Ultimately lasting, like boots or books. ‘Feed the Clouds’ seeks to keep alive the freedom to create an honest and searching mythology.

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Letter: Barangaroo no vision, collaboration or daring

Dear Editor,

Greetings from Oslo, Norway. A beautiful harbour city. Comparisons are odious but I wanted to highlight the ability to create an iconic building and precinct that's integrated with the cities' cultural identity through the evolution of an idea. In this location it's all about the inherent form of Oslo's glacial nature. This building rises like a vast ice sculpture. It captures the imagination in it's modern forms and shapes. By design it captures a part of what it means to be Norwegian. The people of Oslo co-approved this building's concept and watched it rise. It is now a major part of their global identity. People literally swarm over it's 'slopes' every day.

How is this relevant for Barangaroo? It's the design process, the public consensus and the collective vision at work. The current design for Barangaroo has none of this vision, collaboration or daring.

In today's global age of creativity, culture and ideas, Sydney's built environment is still seems stuck in the outmoded developer/state government quagmire. Hence the under-whelming design process to date. It's not a flowing, creative exercise. It's an ego wrestle.

Let's hear from our designers about local vision and responding to our own environment with a remarkable design that captures our nature, imagination and our identity. We have so much local inspiration to draw from. We also have the talent in Australia to deliver a great idea. We don't currently have the visionary leadership to allow the design process to produce the excellence Sydney and the world deserves. 

Hope you enjoy the photos attached. Please feel free to distribute them.

Yours Sincerely

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Prose: The Blue Datsun Ultimatum

I want to share an inspirational moment and its consequences. A particular instance

on which the future hinged and was transformed into thirty astounding years of

creative enterprise. I like to call this defining showdown, the Blue Datsun Ultimatum.

This occasion was a dare, a thrown down gauntlet. A call to arms that has

since defined a loving, working relationship and has resulted in two peoples’

considerable body of work in design, art and music.

What I want to talk about is the power of yielding to a rare opportunity. An

unequivocal agreement on ‘the way it’s gotta be.’ The Blue Datsun Ultimatum was a

well-spring of chance being revealed. Everything that I’d done before this moment

was suddenly unimportant. I was being invited to take a big, fantastic plunge.

To trust in an instinctive, split second reflex.

“Yes, ok, all right. I agree to your ‘gotta be’ terms.” There was electric destiny

alive in that Blue Datsun sedan. Everything was about to change. Little did I know

that by diving into this deal I would find both true love and a successful, creative

partnership. Destiny and aspiration entwined.

The view through the lens of experience now contains a range of

extraordinary moments of madness, obligation and the guts to believe in your union

when conditions are firmly against you.

Creating anything requires resolve, perseverance and the conjuring of magic.

Success comes from the ability to recognise when a compelling ultimatum is being

offered and a decision must be made. A decision to trust in your innate knowing.

This is what a serious relationship, be it personal and professional, provides. A

combined agreement to endure, with grace. To follow through with a living, breathing

plan.

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Brand: Billy Blue Course Guide Introduction

Billy Blue has continued to grow its influence and relevance through its fraternity of Students, Educators and Industry. 

Since it's foundation 25 years ago, the Billy Blue College model has been based on developing a student's ability to understand, assimilate and then 'live' the skills and attributes required to prosper in a professional design practice. Our mission is to prepare students to Think, Make and Connect.

In recent years the business of professional design has radically changed. The past relationships of a purely service-based Industry has been expanded and is in a new paradigm of re-definition. At Billy Blue we are committed to keeping engaged with these changes. Design today is a dynamic and exciting world where ideas, artistry and communication collide and multiply. There has never been a more inspiring time for design, especially in Australia.

Design today is a complex conversation process that searches for great ideas to solve wicked problems. This process needs hard thinking and sweaty persistence to hatch brainstorms and then craft them to build great brands, campaigns, interactions, spaces or wearable products. Through the influence of the internet and shifting consumption habits, Design is now the key commercial edge in the world of business, user-experience, arts and culture, government and social engineering.

The deeper problems of today's world require ideas generated by individuals and collaborative communities to generate sustainable, and meaningful systems, projects and objects. Design, now more than ever is so much more than decoration and pretty pictures. It's now all about generating ideas as the key currency in solving a broad range of sustainable, commercial, endeavours. Design today is very good for the world. It's renewable, user focused and still has the ability to create wonderful aesthetic innovation. In short, Design can still change the world.

Despite a tsunami of change in conditions, Billy Blue remains a vibrant and relevant community of design practice. Our College is a cluster of young designers and experienced design educators fully connected with today's working Industry. This is not an historic connection, it's a current and relevant one.

This mission has always been what Billy Blue is about, being part of a family of designers who rely on each other to navigate the way ahead for working designers and find opportunities and livelihood. Today without a community to belong to, you can't help but feel isolated. As a Billy Blue alumni you remain connected to our mission. Connected Design education for Designers by Designers.

Today Design students need to deeply engage with the powerful community of ideas. Developing a passion to explore, risk and transform themselves within the Creative Industries of the global society and its connection with the broader economy of opportunity. 

We look forward to you welcoming you to our unique community. A polestar of Thinking, Making and Connecting.

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Poem: Colour newspaper photograph of a car in a suburban swimming pool with irate husband and crane operator (foreground) First published in Quadrant Editor: Les Murray

The husband asks, ‘How long until you can get it 

out of there!?’ The displaced station wagon rests 

like a sculpture under rippling glass. A warm

breeze raises the backyard temperature.

The viewer is unaware of the reckless

plunging explosion of a minute ago.

Driven under, the sunken Suburu is pristine 

below the patio.

In the shadows of the the sliding patio doors

the scene is heated by negotiation.

Submerged pride will not be salvaged this afternoon.

The brick work will be scarred, 

the near new upholstery and engine drowned 

doors will be flung open to drain the curiosity 

of neighbours.

The culprit driver is hidden from our view,

an out of frame witness to the spontaneous 

installation. As the car swims upward cradled 

by a crane the husband never dreamed 

he’d have to hire.

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Prose: On this occasion

The summer rain fills the windows on this occasion. High above the colonial architecture and plastic street furniture the office workers listen to cars and wipers and dream of the sun on shoulders on a warm silicon beach. The road trip impulse north or south from the coastal metropoli of Australia. Summer weather very rarely goes to script, tourism slides show crystalline bays, azure cloudless skies and strolling idyll. On this occasion, locals feel they've been robbed of a summer. The reality is the sub-tropical systems keep the wet skies and muggy rooms a-sweatin'. We're two days out from Christmas and it's all wrap up, slow down, fall apart. All out, all change. It's our natural rhythm, the work build up followed by the collapse. In Europe it's August, in Australia it's January. The country disperses, the trains empty. No one is around. The streets quiet. It's a collective heap we fall into and out of. The northern European colours of Christmas, all red, green, pine, Santa etc superimposed onto the opposite weather of the southern antipodean continent. It's a all space and coast and distance in our heads. Nature boiling and sizzling and brimming over. Surf crashes, thunder rolls the frightened dogs under furnishings. Snakes, bugs, fish, mammals, fungus and water. A lot of things might bite you but never do. This place is an elemental foment machine, part bush, part dust, part empty mind staring at the blue horizon waiting for signals and cargo. On this occasion we speak of the tension between the wild undercurrent of nature beneath us. Dynamic, marching, multiplying under our urban skin of ashphalt, rubber, steel and glass. This is an ancient colony that proceeds undaunted by our invasion and occupation. As the swarming loaf of summer merges with the smart and waking sinuses of autumn , we realise we have barely penetrated the surface culture of our vast, worn flat monolith. On this occasion it's cause for wonder.