monkdogz urban art has set up an art auction to help the survivors of Haiti recover from the devestating earth quake there.

They’re asking artists to send a work of art 5×7inch or 13×18cm.

It can be a drawing, photograph, painting (no stretchers or frames), mixed media or any form of work that can be simply slid into an envelope and sent to them.

100% of the silent auction proceeds will be sent to a reputable organization involved in helping the Haitian people rebuild their lives.

For more info go to the Haiti Art Fund website.

http://haitiartfund.com

http://monkdogz.com

Curbly blogger Plastolux has come up with a simpler way to make glass art, by recycling coloured wine bottles. He cuts the top off using a simple glass cutter designed for wine bottles and then uses a sand blaster to add interesting patterns.

I have access to a sand blaster, so I had some lettering and shapes cut at my local vinyl shop and applied them. I had them blasted then remove the vinyl and I was left these beautiful raised translucent shapes. I really don’t see these as drinking glasses but more for your bathroom toothbrush or a fancy pen holder. Someone suggested you could put a candle in them as well, I think that could look pretty cool with the more detailed designs.

If you don’t have a sand blaster you can use glass etching cream from your local arts and crafts store. Check out the link below for a full tutorial including information about the cutter and more pictures of his neat designs.

http://curbly.com/plastolux/posts/7923-how-to-cuttin-glass-and-taking-names

Via LifeHacker

Ben Eltham points us towards some fascinating research into the Neuroscience of music which he found  on Jonah Lehrer’s The Frontal Cortex blog. A team of Neuroscience researchers from Europe studied our physiological responses to different melodic patterns, and found that ‘low-probability’ notes arouse responses in parts of the brain that process motor movement (let’s dance) and emotion (because it makes us happy!).

The scientists measured the brain waves of a twenty subjects while they listened to various hymns. It turned out that unexpected notes – pitches that violated the previous melodic pattern – triggered an interesting sequence of neural events and a spike in brain activity …

There are two interesting takeaways from this experiment. The first is that music hijacks some very fundamental neural mechanisms. The brain is designed to learn by association: if this, then that. Music works by subtly toying with our expected associations, enticing us to make predictions about what note will come next, and then confronting us with our prediction errors. In other words, every melody manipulates the same essential mechanisms we use to make sense of reality.

The second takeaway is that music requires surprise, the dissonance of “low-probability notes”. While most people think about music in terms of aesthetic beauty – we like pretty consonant pitches arranged in pretty patterns – that’s exactly backwards. The point of the prettiness is to set up the surprise, to frame the deviance. (That’s why the unexpected pitches triggered the most brain activity, synchronizing the activity of brain regions involved in motor movement and emotion.)

Personally, I don’t think that neural activity in these regions necessarily equates to pleasure; whether it is pleasurable or not would depend on what’s being triggered where in the brain, and what we personally associate these experiences with in the past.

None the less this research makes a fantastic contribution to the bourgeoning field of Neuroaesthetics.

The Report: Unsupervised statistical learning underpins computational, behavioural, and neural manifestations of musical expectation

Ben Eltham’s A Cultural Policy Blog

Jonah Lehrer’s The Frontal Cortex Blog

Artwork by Aaron McConomy

Marketing services provider Alterian today released the results of their seventh annual survey on social media marketing adoption.

Alterian found that 66 percent of marketing professionals will be investing in social media marketing (SMM) in 2010.

The survey also found more than a third (36 percent) of respondents are investing in social media monitoring and analysis tools.

Nearly half of respondents (42 percent), however, said they don’t currently incorporate clickstream and web analytics data into their customer and e-mail database.

To get a copy of the full report of the Alterian Annual Survey results, sign up here.

Via TechCrunch

Robert Ashton Floating world 2006 ink-jet print courtesy of the artist

Victoria, Australia

From January to April, the Monash Gallery of Art will focus squarely on the big question of our time: the environment and our impact on it.

January will address the issue of suburbia and urban expansion; Paul Dunn’s photographs in Imagined communities draw our attention to the constructed realities of new housing estates and question their long term sustainability and dependence on car-fuelled transport with a humorous eye.

Building as muse: Max Dupain & Harry Seidler explores the creative collaboration between these two men as Seidler changed the face of suburbia with his Modernist design and ideals. Exploring the fragile coastline surrounding our country, Robert Ashton’s poetic images in Photographs from the edge provide quiet moments to contemplate our impact on these delicate areas.

Upcoming events include sustainable gardening workshops, a poetry evening, forums and guest speakers.
Join the discussions and get involved:

The history of Monash
Wednesday 20 January 2010
Join Jeff Turnbull, Waverley Historical Society, as he discusses the evolution of Mulgrave and Waverley to become the vibrant City of Monash that it is today.
Time:     3.00pm
Venue:   MGA
Cost:      Free
Bookings: 8544 0500

Habitat gardening workshop
Sunday 31 January 2010
Join Sustainable Gardening Australia for a workshop on the importance of protecting local ecosystems when designing your garden. Including suitable plant selection and incorporating a habitat zone into your existing garden.
Time:     1.00pm–3.00pm
Venue:   MGA
Cost:      Free
Bookings: 8544 0500

Monash Gallery of Art

Two projects which were recently created at the third annual Medialab Prado (Madrid, Spain) Visualizer workshop have generated new methods by which to visualize cultural information.

‘What do they have? Alternate Visualizations of Museum Collections’ presents data from several art museums around the world. Inspired by the release of APIs for cultural repositories, including Brooklyn Museum’s API, V&A, Science Museum in London and the release of full datasets like that of the Powerhouse collection, the project aims to motivate the release of cultural heritage data by showing how engaging presentations of already available information can increase the audience’s understanding of Museum content.

The cultural heritage data contains large portions of descriptive text and references to an object’s time, geography, and materials. Some of these lend themselves to established visual metaphors – but the Initially, the focus will be on the production of static and minimally interactive desktop-scale visualizations.

The second project, Kultur-o-meter (pictured above) illustrates the amount of resources that is allocated to each cultural niche of the city of Madrid. By zooming into the graphic it is possible to see, for example, that the Medialab Prado corresponds to less than 0,5% of the total cultural budget of Madrid City Hall.

http://medialab-prado.es/visualizar

http://wiki.medialab-prado.es/index.php/%C2%BFQu%C3%A9_tienen%3F_Visualizaciones_de_las_colecciones_de_los_museos

http://kulturometer.org

Via Infosthetics

To celebrate the first birthday of his blog, Pete of NewCurator.com has launched the first NewCurator awards.

“These awards are for those who are equal parts Now and the Future. Now, they are impressive. In the Future, they are going to make a difference.”

The three awards go to:

Person of the Year – Maxwell L. Anderson from the Indianapolis Museum of art for “an entrepreneurial leadership that allows his stars to shine”.

Museum of the Year – Brooklyn Museum for a massive list of achievements, including an Iphone application, despite the considerable financial hardship they faced in 09.

Website of the Year – Museos Unite for its commitment to “the development of new museum staff.”

Click through to read more about the winners.

http://newcurator.com/2010/01/the-first-annual-newcurator-awards/

Hundreds of hearing and deaf children are enjoying some of the best books every day in sign language, English and animation on the Signed Stories website.

A spokesperson from Aussie Deaf Kids said the website is a “great initiative” for families and teachers who are “starved for this kind of resource”.

Signed Stories is being viewed in classrooms in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia where they are shared by deaf and hearing children, those with special educational needs and those learning English as a second language.

Malcolm Wright, managing director ITV SignPost said: “Signed Stories is a tool that encourages synergy between school and home because all children can use the same stimulating resources. Signed Stories has been designed and built with real inclusion at its heart.”

In addition to stories, the website offers free downloadable resources for parents, carers and teachers, and there’s a forum to encourage interactivity and the sharing of ideas.

For more information and to view the signed stories, go to www.signedstories.com

Via UK Trade and Investment Australia

The Australian Copyright Council has published a practical guide for anyone responsible for getting copyright clearances. It will prove useful for people whose main role is seeking permissions, as well as  as those working on or producing short films, plays, publications or similar projects. It covers issues such as:

• When you need to seek permission
• The sorts of rights you¹ll need to clear (e.g. moral rights as well as copyright)
• Who to contact
• Streamlining the permissions process
• Dealing with common obstacles

AUD $40 (including GST and delivery in Australia)

http://www.copyright.org.au/b132

Other new titles at Copyright Council Australia:

* B133 Copyright compliance guide
http://www.copyright.org.au/b133

* B136 Libraries: a copyright guide
http://www.copyright.org.au/b136

Tale of Tales (The Path) - Auriea Harvey, Michaël Samyn et al

Those of you researching digital art will want to bookmark the Centre international d’art contemporain de Montréal (CIAC).

Running since 1997, the CIAC’s Electronic Magazine is an online and bilingual (French and English) publication, devoted to cyberculture, art and literature in all their connections with new technologies.

They’ve just released a new issue on Games and Interactivity which investigates artists using game technology, particularly within the context of net art. Cindy Poremba’s feature ‘Game Art on a Dematerialized Web’ is a particular highlight.

Magazine: http://www.ciac.ca/en/index.html