Google are using a company called Common Craft to produce short instructional videos about their products. These videos are made with cut out pieces of paper in a way that exaggerate their handmade quality. Interesting to see how the leading edge of online engineering turns to the more analogue of media to present its message.
We're very pleased the three artists from Common Goods are going to the indigenous festival in Hawaii this month:
The proposed 2007 PIKO event is the fifth of its kind of international gathering of indigenous visual artists; following the first in Aotearoa (New Zealand 1995). The first Pacific Northwest America gathering was held at the Longhouse Education and Cultural Center at Evergreen State College, (Olympia, Washington, USA, 2001) and the recent Te Mata gathering was held in Heretaunga Hastings, Aotearoa (New Zealand, January 16 - 22, 2005) this year. In the spirit of its' predecessors, PIKO, the navel of the Pacific rim, will be held in Hawai'i. The event will begin on June 15, 2007 and conclude eight days later on June 22
Congratulations Julie Tipene-O'Toole, Lewis Dick and Treanna Hahn, all artists who were in Common Goods.
An interesting application of 'common' and 'craft' to a very immaterial kind of networking:
Common Craft is a consulting practice and weblog operated by Lee LeFever. The focus of Common Craft is Social Design for the Web.
Pedro describes the orchestra as the musical embodiment of Ubuntu:
This means that no one will play louder than others, and no one will play the same rhythm. What people play will interlock with others and complement what others offer.
A New Yorker article reviews the English movement Mass Observation, which grew out of surrealism and became a kind of art sociology dedicated to exposing everyday life to public gaze as a power of demystification.
Mass-Observation undercut the nationalist message of the coronation. To one onlooker, the Queen seems to have bed head, and the King looks “bony, frozen-nervous, staring.” Another mistakes the Viscount Craigavon for Princess Juliana. Beside a radio in Nottingham, a hairdresser’s mother weeps and moans, “Oh, it ought to be Edward—it—it—it ought to be Edward.”
A woman praises snuff, unforgettably: “Eeee, it’s lovely, makes your navel perk like a whelk!” The book celebrates the pub as an active and social form of leisure, a way of life that, Orwell wrote when he reviewed it, was in danger of being “gradually replaced by the passive, drug-like pleasures of the cinema and the radio.”
In a 1938 radio talk, Jennings had suggested it was no accident that the search for the meaning of everyday life led to history. “Mysteries reside in the humblest everyday things,” he said; they are a kind of legacy, and the poet, by examining them, can extract “an idea of ‘what I am’ from the past.”
Caleb Crain 'The Mass-Observation movement and the meaning of everyday life'
A transformative moment occurs for me when the material ceases to reference itself and begins to take on a formal structure that relates to the natural or built environment
Donovan's work raises a difficult issue with the idea of making the common precious. Most of the artists in Craft Unbound resort to found materials as a form of resistance to consumerism. In Donovan's case, however, the wasteful production is accelerated by artistic excess. This work seems to have nothing else to say other than is sheer spectacle.
While most of the world considers today as the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attack on the New York World Trade Centre, it is also the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Satyagraha, the movement of non-violence that originated by Mahatma Gandhi in Johannesburg, 1906.
Here's an interesting article on the word for common goods, 'staple':
A staple was always held under the command of the king, who appointed officials to ensure trade was done according to the rules, that quality was maintained and—especially—that he got his cut. Because of the great importance of wool, the merchants trading in it became known as staplers.
Here's an interesting installation shot of Chandragupta's Thenuwara's recent exhibition in Colombo. The work, titled Peace, consists of his trademark ceramic barrells, though in this case stripped of their normal camouflage colours. They look almost naked, eh? 
Ananova - Bread statue popular with pigeons
Artists and friends of Common Goods gathered at Craft Victoria last night to reflect on the event and look at the catalogue. The evening evoked many fond memories and a curious exchange of information. One artist had received an email in perfect English from a Rafoogar in Najibabad. Everyone was keen to continue the exchange, and were regretful that there was less time for everyone to spend time together. Let's hope that this is not a one-off. Mark McDean and Mary Louise Edwards can be seen astounding themselves at the Common Goods publication.
If you get the chance, it is worth going to the National Gallery of Victoria Sculpture Garden to catch a glimpse, and 'whiff', of the Borana huts that were hand-made by the Borana pastoralists from Kenya themselves in the weeks leading up to the games.
Following Common Goods, there are more artists arriving in Melbourne from the Commonwealth countries. Khadim Ali is an Afghan-born artist from Pakistan who paints miniature watercolours. This work (Heroes with Weapons I-III) features the dandelion, which during the harsh time of the Taliban was a symbol of hope - a plant that survived even the harshest of environments. As a work, it evokes the barrelism of Chandraguptha Thenuwara
The Rafoogars talk with Wendy Lugg and Priya Ravish Mehra drew a facinated crowd.
The final works at being installated at the museum. Hlengiwe and Lucy are placing their collaborative piece based on the 'ponytail plant'. All will be revealed on Tuesday night.
