Love museums? Love chocolate? Now imagine mini museum collection objects printed IN chocolate! As part of Vivid Sydney Festival, “Eat the Collection” explores the interaction of design, food and technology in glorious chocolate. A collaborative project between the Powerhouse Museum and a select group of the creative industry’s finest; Eat the Collection invites designers to forage through the museum’s extensive online collection for inspirational objects and content. They will then hack, re-mix and design an object to be 3D printed in chocolate and exhibited at the Powerhouse Museum’s inaugural Late Night Lounge event on 30 May 2013.

The Big Egg Hunt is a record-breaking egg hunt currently taking place across Central London.  It features over 200 wildly creative and uniquely crafted eggs, created by leading artists, designers, architects and jewellers, that will be hidden across the city this Easter.  Friends and family can get maps for  12 zones to find the eggs and raise money for Elephant Family and Action for Children.  Eggs are a universally recognised symbol of new life, a fresh start and hope for the future – the bedrock of both the charities’ missions. It looks like great fun!

“Address is Approximate” is the story of a lonely desk toy who longs to escape from the dark confines of the office, so he takes a cross country road trip to the Pacific Coast in the only way he can – using a toy car and Google Maps Street View.

Product by Process is a fascinating compilation of processes, material and interesting stories about products.  It is an attempt to go beyond the polished products and objects that surround us and take a look at how they are manufactured and recycled.  In doing so, the video collection highlights some beautiful craft and design, including everything from jeans, knives, chairs, to handmade wooden sunglasses by Capital.

If Junior Masterchef is kids playing as chefs, then ‘Next: Childhood’, is chefs playing as kids.  Next is an innovative restaurant in Chicago that is reinventing childhood classics like peanut butter and jelly, chicken soup, mac and cheese, Jell-O and hot chocolate.  The dining experience features fun elements like 80’s lunchboxes with Knight Rider and Strawberry Shortcake and a “campfire” to end the desserts. Next changes its menu themes every 3 months, and previous themes have included “Paris 1906” and “Tour of Thailand”.  The childhood theme seems like it would be the most fun for both diners and chefs.  The executive chef, Dave Beran, said, ”we’re trying to find those triggers that have that sense of wonder, sense of discovery, the idea that when you’re small, everything seems big”.  If you can’t get to Chicago, Brisbanites can discover something similar at Esquire, where they have an equally imaginative ‘Popcorn’ dessert.

Amazing stop motion by artist Dropbear (aka Jonathan Chong).

Via Next Level: The idea behind this video was to document whatever sort of culture could be found in Brooklyn within an 8 hour span with literally no pre-production.

via Colossal: Since 2008 balloon artist Addi Somekh and photographer Charlie Eckert have traveled to 34 countries and shot over 10,000 photographs of people wearing balloon hats. After focusing more on balloon twisting than homework in college Somekh began working professionally as a balloon artist, charging wealthy executives up to $150 an hour to make elaborate balloon hats. He also donated the same skill to shelters for battered women and their children where he realized something: both groups, the rich and the poor, were laughing and enjoying his work in the same way. He had struck upon a democratic, neutralizing and powerful force of entertainment and enrichment, and he hatched a plan with his friend Charles to bring that gift to thousands of people across the world.

Spoonful isn’t just a zine, it’s “a happiness companion”!  It is a short and inspiring little publication which, in light of our insanely busy lives, can be finished by the end of a train ride. It’s quick to consume, beautifully soft, & after reading will genuinely make you smile.  I had discovered this and other equally beautiful things it in a cute store called Little Jane St.  It is part of the latest emergence of Brisbane’s laneway culture and is nestled in on Winn Lane (between Ann St and McLachlan St, Valley).

map magazine’s pages are full of dreamers who not only have big dreams and ideas but are powerful in making their ideas happen.  I had once blogged that sharing our dreams to others was important to help find teams, resources and community to rally behind ideas. It is this very idea of sharing, that is behind IfWeRanTheWorld. It is a real-world experiment in tapping good intentions and turning them into tangible, do-able microactions that anyone and everyone can help you to do. (more…)

Skating is occasionally on my ‘things-I-wish-I-could-do‘ list.   For those who can actually do it -  there is going to be skate contests and live music at the Paddington Skate Park (Neal MacRossan Park, Caroline Street) from 11:30am, Sunday 13th February.  This is part of the great work of the Brisbane Skate Cartel, who have been busy repairing the badly maintained facility in the lead up to the event. Many skate facilities, including the Paddington Skate Park, have suffered from under investment over the past decade, despite the growing popularity of skateboarding.  The Cartel will be seeking donations on Sunday and have T-shirts for sale to fund their campaign efforts and to raise awareness and lobby for greater investment in Brisbane’s skate facilities.

Most people might consider portable music as that solitary experience at the end of ipods and white earbuds – but how about portable music that is a shared experience?  How about a portable DJ deck on a bike, that travels around and fills the city with music?  Well, that’s exactly what DJ Trike is.

Designed by Makeuse Studio, DJ Trike houses the essential audio/visual equipment to create sensory-filled social interventions, project onto architecture and infrastructure, and use public space as a play space. ‘Curbside Play Sessions’ is the ongoing project that is taking DJ Trike to streets, parks, bridges and parking garages around Vancouver.  In the spirit of activating and reclaiming public spaces, it seems like DJ Trike just might fit perfectly in a car park space for Park(ing) Day.

A guy was skiing in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and found a roll of film. He had the film developed and this is what what was found…

via GOOD Magazine.  We Patch, is one of a dozen new websites designed to connect wannabe gardeners with landowners who have available garden space. Let’s say you have an unused space that might make a good pumpkin patch, you offer it up on the website. If you’re a gardener without a garden, you can find available space—and contact the landowner. Sometimes, it leads to a rendezvous and a handshake agreement. Other times, gardeners and landowners spell out exactly how they’ll share produce and labor from a shared plot of land.

I feel like this idea linking social networking and greenspace could be expanded to take care of and be used in public spaces and parks too.  It would be interesting to trial.  Recently the idea of turning some of New Farm Park back to its farming roots has been flagged with me, and if anyone is interested in this idea, please contact me.

I had originally posted about Crate Man here in 2007, and lots of people had emailed me about this simple and fun public art.  Crate Man is usually seen around Melbourne, so I was delighted to finally see him in real life and see him in Brisbane climbing around QPAC on Monday.

The sukkah is an ephemeral shelter, erected for one week as part of the Jewish week-long festival of Sukkot.  It is a place customary to share meals, entertain, sleep, and rejoice.  ‘Sukkah City’ is an international design competition to re-imagine these temporary structures  and propose radical possibilities for the traditional design constraints in a contemporary urban site. Twelve finalists were selected by a panel of celebrated architects, designers, and critics to be constructed in a visionary village in Union Square Park, New York,  from September 19-20, 2010.

CitID is a project that is inviting designers to create logos for their cities.  Ambitiously they are trying to create logos representing every city in the world.   There is an especially poor representation from Australian cities, so I invite local designers and illustrators to get one that.

Brisbane Park(ing) Day is happening again this year on September 17th.  This global movement of rethinking car spaces and public spaces continues to inspire both temporary actions on the day as well as exciting new permanent action (example Parklets in San Fransisco).  The day mostly looks at on-street parking, but I also would consider that most shopping centres are over designed for capacity and typically over 65% of their land is car parking, that is often empty for periods of time.  How might these be used better? (more…)