TEDx Sydney

So I just found out that TEDx Sydney is happening at CarriageWorks in May! For those of you who don’t know – TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading.

It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year’s TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize.

The annual conferences in Long Beach and Oxford bring together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

You can apply to be in the select Live Bay17 Audience for the Sydney event on the TEDx Sydney site. The event will be broadcast over the internet if you can’t make it to CarriageWorks on the day.

Check out some of the inspiring talks on TED.com

The Dystopian Oscar Winning Logorama

Logorama was this year’s winner for the Best Animated Short Academy Award, beating out perennial favourite Nick Park (with his latest Wallace and Gromit short), as well as French Roast, Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty and The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la muerte). Produced by the French studio H5, who’s work boasts film clips for Goldfrapp, Massive Attack and Röyksopp, as well as advertisements for Dior, Hugo Boss, Audi and Volkswagen. The film is written and directed by François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy and Ludovic Houplain, and produced by Autour de Minuit, with Nicolas Schmerkin serving as Executive Producer and taking home the Oscar.

Set in a seemingly dystopian Los Angeles city where logos make up almost every image that is shown, two cops (in the form of Michelin Men) chase a psychotic runaway (Ronald McDonald). As a subplot, an Esso girl has also fled with the Big Boy in an attempt to escape this crazy world. Also pay attention for David Fincher providing the voice of the Pringles Original Man.

We see the world full of logos, obviously being an allegory for the world in which we live now, being overtaken by the forces of natural disasters. Have the story rendered in such a form, shows a world not too dissimilar from our own. Not too dissimilar indeed.

Looking at the film, one wonders, how on earth did these guys get permission to use all of these logos. In truth, they didn’t. See the film as being impossible to make if permission had to be attained for each logo, co-writer/director Ludovic Houplain notes (in an article in the Los Angeles Times) that “It’s a kind of time-sensitive snapshot, because in 20 to 30 years, when all of these logos will have been redesigned, the film will be obsolete. So we at H5 said to ourselves that we didn’t have to ask permission since this isn’t a commercial movie but rather one whose goal is to show the freedom of expression.”

From http://portable.tv/film/post/the-dystopian-oscar-winning-logorama/

The Grab Bag

The Grab Bag – mysteriously on now! Click here or the image to get yours while the gettings good.

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