Creative mentorships in the UK ::
Celebrating 10 years of nurturing Australian creative talent, the British Council’s Realise Your Dream awards are now bigger and better than ever.  Realise Your Dream fosters Australian creatives through targeted career development in the UK creative industries. By tapping into a wide network of the UK’s finest practitioners, the British Council helps open doors to the experiences winners most need to develop professionally and creatively while making lasting UK connections that will inform their work for years to come.  So far, over 40 awardees have travelled to the UK with Realise Your Dream, many of whom attribute their continued successes in the creative industries to the learning and connections made whilst in the UK.  Further information about the application process is available on the Realise Your Dream website.

Applications close  3 June 2012
http://artsfrontier.britishcouncil.org.au

The VIDA Award is granted to artistic creations developed using artificial life technology. Among the projects submitted to VIDA, the artists’ ties to this theme and their  choice of media are very diverse. Throughout its history, the competition has welcomed proposals that challenge the boundary between living and non-living, between natural  and synthetic, either by juxtaposing both realities or by creating overlapping spaces for reflection.  A total of 40,000 euros will be divided among the three winning  projects chosen by the jury, as well as a category awarding prizes for projects in development by Latin American artists.

http://www.fundacion.telefonica.com/vida
Due: 23 April to 30 July 2012

Art, Science, Culture Volume 4, Spring, 2013 Published by SUNY Press, TER provides a forum for evolutionary critiques in all the fields of the  arts, human sciences, and culture: essays and reviews on film, fiction, theatre, visual art, music, dance, and popular culture; essays and reviews of books, articles, and  theories related to evolution and evolutionary psychology; and essays and reviews on science, society, and the environment.

Essays in The Evolutionary Review implicitly affirm E. O. Wilson’s vision of “consilience,” and give evidence that an evolutionary perspective can yield a richer, more complete understanding of the world and of ourselves.

http://evolutionaryreview.com/
Due: 21 June 2012

The next issue of ‘Plastik Art & Science’ will be devoted to artists working on and  questioning nanotechnology. What are the new types of relationships that are going to emerge between artists, spectators and the complex physical matter? Can  experimentation on such a minute scale render the macroscopic response of matter tangible? How can one make something that occurs on a scale of a billionth of a metre  visible when the matter itself no longer corresponds to the traditional laws governing it on a larger scale? How should one consider the aesthetic experience of the  spectator when the material of the artwork becomes sensitive to its environment?

http://art-science.univ-paris1.fr/
Due: 15 June 2012

The City of Perth is inviting Western Australian practising professional artists to apply for the Taipei + Perth Artist Exchange Program 2013.  The City of Perth, in partnership with Taipei Artist Village and Central Institute of Technology, provides an opportunity for a Western Australian practising professional artist to travel to  Perth’s Sister City in Taiwan to participate in the Taipei + Perth Artist Exchange Program.  The exchange program between the cities was developed to facilitate the  exchange of ideas and understand between the two cities and to foster the creative development of artists in those cities. The resident artist will be expected to make a  contribution to the cultural life of the host community.

Applications close at 2pm 11 June 2012.

See here for more info:

http://www.perth.wa.gov.au/web/Council/Global-Affiliations/Cultural-Exchanges/?utm_source=City+of+Perth+List&utm_campaign=9a86b50da5-Taipei_Perth_Exchange_Program_20134_17_2012&utm_medium=email

The International Association for the study of Popular Music is calling for papers for their annual Australia and New Zealand conference, located at the University of Tasmania.

This conference invites papers that consider the role of music in the facilitation and disruption of media and cultural flow. In doing so, it considers music as something  that moves between, and within, different spaces, places, texts, communities and technologies.

Abstracts for paper presentations are now invited from researchers with an interest in popular music, regardless of disciplinary orientation. All papers detailing new and established research in the field will be considered, though preference may be given to papers that demonstrate clear engagement with the stated conference theme. Papers with a theoretical orientation are particularly encouraged, as are submissions from postgraduate students.

Conference Title
The concept of ‘flow’ is essential for understanding the fluidity, flux and diffusion of contemporary media and culture. Flow reveals the complexities of contemporary cultural production, consumption and participation. It also illuminates the ways in which ideas, information, culture and technology are exchanged and imbued with meaning and power.

The concept of flow has been influential in the work of Appadurai (1990) and Castells (1996), and in more recent writing on media and convergence cultures. Questions of musical flow, however, remain an under-explored area. This conference invites papers that consider the role of music in the facilitation and disruption of media and cultural flow. In doing so, it considers music as something that moves between, and within, different spaces, places, texts, communities and technologies.

In particular, we seek papers addressing:

1. the flow of popular music within and across different digital and textual platforms, including film, television, journalism, and social media;

2. the flow of popular music between different cultures and cultural formations, such as the local, national, transnational and global;

3. the flow/s of popular music studies, its history and current practices within the academy, as well as its disciplinary, theoretical and methodological futures;

4. the flow of popular music studies outside of the academy, in policy, journalism, and popular understandings of ‘music’;

5. the construction and disruption of musical flow, in musical composition, performance and other artistic arenas.

We also welcome abstracts considering any other area of popular music.

Due: 14 May 2012

See here for more info:
www.iaspm.org.au

Start: 11 Apr 2012 2:00 pm
Paul Thomas Lecture and Exhibition Opening


Paul Thomas will give a guest lecture on his work, New Materialities. Thomas is the Head of Painting at the College of Fine Art, University of New South Wales and coordinator of Collaborative Research in Art Science and Humanity, Curtin University, Western Australia. Exhibition opening to follow.

Time:
Lecture @ 2pm
Exhibition Openings: 5-7pm

Location: Lecture @ UCLA Broad Art Center, room 5240, Exhibition @ CNSI Gallery

http://artsci.ucla.edu/?q=events/paul-thomas-lecture-exhibition-opening

Call for papers: deadline extended to 15 April
27-29 June 2012
Langham Hotel, Melbourne

PopCAANZ is pleased to announce that the deadline for the submission of abstracts for this year’s conference has been extended to 15 April. Please see the Conference Information page for further details. http://popcaanz.com/conference-information/

The Popular Culture Association of Australia and New Zealand (Popcaanz) is devoted to the scholarly understanding of everyday cultures. It is concerned with the study of the social practices and the cultural meanings that are produced and are circulated through the processes and practices of everyday life. We invite academics, professionals, cultural practitioners and those with a scholarly interest in animation and popular culture to send a 150-word abstract (with bio and email address) to Animation: animation@popcaanz.com

Synthetic Biology & Human Health: Myths, Fables & Synthetic Futures

Calling all writers, film makers, animators and artists – do you have a story to tell about the impact synthetic biology may have on future people?

Throughout history people have used their imaginations to create stories. While stories often entertain, they are also used to make sense of human experience and gain insight into philosophical questions. In the 20th century, writers such as Huxley, Orwell, Burgess and Ballard have employed futuristic narratives to explore the philosophical, psychological and moral issues raised by the interaction between technology and society.

The possible health advances from the emerging science of synthetic biology may have a significant impact on both our lives and the lives of future people. It may result in medical applications which affect human experience and the sorts of people who come in to existence. It may lead to new ways of treating diseases, such as targeted cancer treatments, which could radically extend the human lifespan. Or, it could give us new psychopharmaceuticals which allow us, or other people to change our emotions and psychological states. It may also lead to people having new physical capabilities and powers which human beings have never had before

The SYBHEL Project is instigating a short story competition in order to imaginatively consider these sorts of issues through the creation of fictional narratives. We are interested in stories told using a range of different media including, writing, film, animation, graphic novels, spoken word or music. If you would like to enter and see the prizes on offer please visit www.sybhel.org for further information, you can also follow us on twitter @SYBHEL_Project.

Prize:

1st Prize £100

Two 2nd Prizes £50

In addition to the cash prize there will also be an opportunity for shortlisted stories to be published in some form on the SYBHEL website. Winners may also have the opportunity to be invited to the final SYBHEL Project event.

See here for more info:
http://sybhel.org/?p=761

21-23 June 2012
Tarraleah Lodge, Tasmania
Due: 31 March 2012

This interdisciplinary conference will seek to place nature within the context of cultural, political, technological and social change, and to explore emerging images of environment, landscape and place within what is now a rapidly expanding research field. We welcome papers drawing on a range of disciplinary backgrounds and approaches. In particular, we are interested in contributions that consider representations of contested/feral/hybrid landscapes and environments, and/or explore the question: Is wilderness dead?

See here for more info:
http://www.utas.edu.au/ejel/ImagingNature2/index.html