This is a very complex and not random peice of art. If you have a wider view I would be glad to see it.

Les,
The City of Melbourne currently has a moratorium on the removal of street art pieces/murals. They say they give property owners every opportunity to apply for a permit.

Les,
no I don't. That is the image. It is amongst a lot of other images on a laneway wall---its kind of a mural.I will post other images from the Union Laneway project over the Xmas break.

This drawing was most likely done by an Asian student. There are a number of things in it that represent design rather than random art. I would say that it is from a cartoon that the person has been working on for a while.

Les,
some of the figurative work in Union Lane is complex. It is a proper art project and so the work is not something thrown up. I saw an image of people working off ladders somewhere.

Are people invited to put their work there or can anyone?

Les,
It is based on legal street art and there is a graffiti mentoring programe.

The second stage is The Street Art Project in Union Lane, located in the heart of the city. This process demonstrates how ambitious, large-scale and legal street art is possible with a Street art permit, and with permission of the building owners.City of Melbourne is calling for young participants to come to Union Lane and participate in structured painting sessions, mentored by respected street artists. It is hoped participants will bring a range of artwork and many styles to the project.

Next session:To find out abut how to get involved or for more information on the Graffiti Mentoring Program call the City of Melbourne on 9658 9658

Thanks for that Pam
Next time I am in Melbourne I will have a good look at it.
I live on the Gold coast where street art is largely beach based with beach themes.

glad U have fixed the upload-storage thang . . . now get that well-earned break eh!
. . . mal E

Les,
is it legal street art---supported by the City Council, as in Melbourne? Melbourne now leads the way in supporting street art. Adelaide still thinks of graffiti that defaces private property. Brisbane has a graffiti wall. Sydney has a laneway.

Barb/Mal E,
It is not the lack of storage that is causing all the current angst. It is the computer generated comment spam for free music downloads on old entries or posts on my weblogs. -Its anything up to a thousand in one massive hit across the 4 weblogs every 8 hours or so from different bots.

My site becomes inaccessible for two hours or more and the Hosting Company overloads. This has been going on since we went to Wilsons Promontory in early December. There was one attack late last night and another one early this morning.

Some have addressed this kind of problem by migrating their weblog to a new server. Rather drastic. But effective.

I've decided to fight the problem----its close to a denial of service. I upgraded the MT publishing system to give me more tools. But the automatic comment turn off function for old comments is not working as I expected it to. Maybe it only works on entries after installation.

So the comment access function on the old posts has to be turned off manually. It's a tedious, mind-numbing task. Slowly, ever so slowly, the old posts will be closed to the spammers.

I really hate comment spam.

The sculpture side is but being a city of dreams we are a bit over concerned about the look of things so there is no real urban art feel that other cities have. We have a over supply of galleries selling noice things for noice houses but very little from the voice of youth other than tagging which is a castratable offence.
http://www.goldcoast.qld.gov.au/cultural/home/gccc_cultural.asp?PID=3003

Did you try this? It has a Movable type application.
http://akismet.com/development/
Cant remember if I was talking to you about it before or somebody else.

Les,
yes--it's now built into the MT publishing system. It separates the good or authentic comments from the spammer ones, and automatically puts the latter into a junk folder. They then drop out after ten days or so. Nifty idea. It works a treat.

The comment spammers response to this is what I'm currently experiencing--massive junk spam in one hit. The automatic filters ensure that it goes straight into the junk folder; but the attack is so great that everything overloads.Hence the problem for the Thoughtfactory and my hosting company --Hosting Matters.

Movable Type has no answer for this----the automatic closing of old comments function is meant to address this problem --but its not doing its job.

The Gold Coast as the city of Dreams? From the perspective of Victor Harbor it is Gilded Palaces of Sin.

Les,
I had a quick look at the Gold Councils Public Art policy. Any examples of mural art in the city of dreams?

Any visual public expression by those excluded from the dream?

I call it the city of dreams because people bring their dreams here like Hollywood.
They come searching for that perfect holiday that they once had and want it to last forever.
The town eats them or the drown. Others will come, they always come.

I'll have a look around now that I am on holidays to see if there is anything new down in the bowels of southport and surfers where the night creatures roam. Sometimes they paint. Mostly they fall down.

This may be of some help.

http://www.sixapart.com/pronet/comment_spam#recommendations

Les,
thanks. That guide has been the one that I used in the past, and it was used for my MT 3.2 system. Things have changed with the upgrade to MT 4.01, as it is a radical redesign.

MT tech support have advised that Blog janitor will do the trick. I will have to wait until my tech suport comes back from holidays to install. In the meantimne I am closing comments on 3 weblogs by hand----for some reason public opinion will not allow me to do that.

It's tiresome, especially when I get a massive hit that rolls through all the old posts, as happened on Xmas eve and Xmas day. It was eight hours work.

"I call it the city of dreams because people bring their dreams here like Hollywood.
They come searching for that perfect holiday that they once had and want it to last forever."

Les, I'd go further and describe the place as a theme park. It's a closed environment which prizes cleanliness and orderliness and the predictable. The Gold Coast has no sociological understanding of itself.

Am I right in thinking the new foreshore thingo on the Broadwater at Southport will include some kind of arty precinct?

Lyn,
The Gold Coast sounds like a suitable place to listen to Radiohead on an i pod. Maybe the best place in Australia.

Gary,

You're probably right about that. The word 'surreal' is so overused now it's almost lost meaning, but it's an appropriate word for the GC and Radiohead would be a good soundtrack.

It's difficult to develop any kind of fondness for the place. Rather, it invites a sort of ghoulish fascination, like a terrible accident that never ends.

Yes you are right Lyn. I wonder sometimes whether something has been put in the water to keep all those that come with their diversity on the straight and narrow. Dont step outside the lines. Go to the beach. Spend money. Drink. Shop. Leave.
Those that stay become part of the drug.

Yes Art on the Broadwater to sit on. How very unmiraculous.

The Gold Coast sounds like dystopia to me. It's how I've always seen it, despite the big dream of the perfect holiday. Retirees in Victor Harbor spend the winter in the Gold Coast and summer in Victor Harbor.

Isn't the local Council headed by the Clark running guy having big problems with developers? Or are they just concerned about protecting their property from rising sea levels caused by global warming.

Pam,
Clarke is regarded by many as a smiling fool.

There is some angst about the likely hood of Hinze Dam overflowing on a king tide so the wall is in the process of being raised. Its capacity is about 60% at present.
Many people living on canals chain their outdoor furniture up because it floats away during big storms and high tides.
I think it is a matter of when not if in regards to the potential disaster.
There was an article in the paper recently putting a dollar figure on the projects in the pipeline here. I cant remember what the number was but it was in the billions.
Lyn may remember.

Pam, it's only dystopian for people who notice such things, and there aren't many of them. It's a very difficult place to describe because it's not like anywhere else.

The council decided to set up a heritage body a few years ago. A year long study found there was no heritage to preserve. Seriously.

Les, there's the dam on one hand, which would be the end of Carrara, and the tide on the other, which would be the end of the canals and all the low lying areas which flood every January with the king tides. That's pretty much the whole place.

Our family business is waterproofing. Every time someone announces disaster management funding we just laugh.

Lyn,
re your Gold Coast comment:

The council decided to set up a heritage body a few years ago. A year long study found there was no heritage to preserve. Seriously.

Is that because all the building are junk; or because no one recognizes that 60's modernism is heritage; or because the Gold Coast has no historical sense?

If the Australian dream come true is a beachfront house and the sound of the sea, then the preferred development sites in south east Queensland are the flat low lying areas which are probably the most vulnerable to the Venice flooding type syndrome.

Sounds like its already happening. Will it be a new Orleans type scenario---rising sea level combined with a king tide and storm that could result in a six-metre surge that would cause serious flooding?

Maybe the local street artists could do some street art on the topic.

Lyn,
So what is going to happen to the suburbs on the canals? Surely they must see their scary scenario as dystopia? As Christine Milne pointed out in the Senate:

The insurance industry has already said that it will not be responsible in the longer term for ensuring properties that are built in areas that are known to be vulnerable to flooding. Is local government going to be sued by people who get planning permission and then have their places flooded? Who is going to compensate those properties and people?

There will be coastal communities around Australia which will be tagged, as they have been in Britain, for managed retreat.

There’s a crude rule of thumb which applies theoretically just to straight sandy beach, which suggests for every metre rise in sea level the coastline will retreat or go inland by 100m.For every one centimetre of sea rise you get about a metre of coastal erosion.

The 2007 report of the Prime Minister’s Science, Innovation and Engineering Council, entitled, 'Climate change in Australia: regional impacts and adaptation: managing the risk for Australia,' nominated cities and coastal communities as one of the six key sectors at risk in the nation. Five priority coastal regions were identified for particular attention: the Brisbane-Gold Coast-Tweed Heads coastline, the Newcastle-Sydney-Wollongong coastline, Melbourne-Geelong, and Adelaide and Perth.

Gary, all three. The buildings on the tourist strip are spaces of flows - the building itself is beside the point when the idea is to see and be seen. The balcony culture of schoolies and indy are about these flows with vertical and horizontal flows of bodies in variously layered spaces.

It's a linear city, running from north to south, and literally in the perpendicular sense. Both space and time are odd here. It takes hours to get from one end to the other, but minutes to get from one side to the other. I wonder whether that's stuffed with people's sense of history.

The famous Pink Poodle was knocked down and yet another tower resort built in its place. They preserved the neon poodle sign without understanding that without the old matching style building the sign was pointless. It doesn't signify anything any more, not even itself.

The Queenslander style is being preserved in Brisbane, but here they're 'dozer fodder. No sense of history, unless you count the faux colonial street lighting.

We have acreage of cheap housing, often duplex', and street after street of roller doors. The garage faces the street so there's no suburban street life where kids mix and men gather around to peer under car bonnets. They're blank suburbs. How can you get a sense of belonging when there's nowhere to belong, nothing to signify humanity or depth beyond 7 years ago?

A developer buys a chunk of land, clears it, builds as many houses as quickly as possible, then moves on. The first life to move in is the redbacks. The first humans to move in find the doorknobs all fall off within a week, there are no eaves and no insulation and the topsoil is half an inch deep. They're built to last 7 years, which is when the builder's liability runs out.

It's half Disneyland half Stepford. The phone towers are hilarious. They're dressed up to look like palm trees.

Pam, Your scenario is very likely. As Les said, it's a matter of when, not if.

Around these parts we call street artists vandalising scum. And if it hasn't got a dolphin in it, or a flamingo that matches the scatter cushions, or dogs playing cards, we don't recognise it as art anyway.

I honestly don't know how this population manages to produce the kids doing arts at Griffith. They produce some amazing stuff, then nothing happens. I guess they either give it up or move somewhere else.

Gary,

"So what is going to happen to the suburbs on the canals? Surely they must see their scary scenario as dystopia?"

I don't understand this myself. They're a bit like Andrew Bolt on climate change. Ron Clarke, the mayor, is taking it very seriously, but nobody listens. What would he know? He's just a runner. There's a reasonable likelihood the next mayor will be that Elvis impersonator, Dean Vegas. At least we know he can organise a raffle. Anyway, the people who live on canals all have boats.

Insurance companies won't cover whole chunks of this place for flooding, and waterproofers won't give warranties on some work. Builders, council planners, architects and tradies all know the likely scenario, but they build anyway. I reckon about half of the lift pits on the coast would have a pump operating once a week.

You hear people talk about cyclones and floods, but they don't seem to believe it will really happen. They're more likely to complain about their neighbour's unsightly lawn than their permanently flooded basement.

On Milne's compensation, there's a different mindset here. This place celebrated that king of conmen Peter Foster. Businesses go under every day, then they're back the next day under another name. No big deal. We don't do planning or investment here, we do short term. Tourist Mecca remember? Rip em off and send em packing. Half of the population is here on holidays and the other half thinks it is, as Les pointed out.

Loss means a different thing when there's no sense of permanence.

Yes Lyn The GC is very much like Blogworld. Somethings happening every day. You can be involved but not connected. Like walking the malls were people like to watch but never meet eyes.
I would like to see the ocean disappear one day to see how long it would take for people to start smashing shop windows in their white shoes stealing TV's and cappuccino machines.

I have had an interesting new blog interaction today. I have found out that one of my blog buddies has died. Odd! Do I care enough about her to be sad in that she isn't a real friend just a blog friend. Do I organize some sort of blog minutes silence?
Or do I just remove her from my favorites?
I ended up writing a poem about her Blogging in heaven and leaving it in her comments. It was nice but I don't believe in heaven so it was largely just more blog banter.

Les, the loss of a blogging friend is painful even if you've only ever known them as a bunch of pixels. You have my sympathy.

Lyn
your comment below is very Deleuzian.

The buildings on the tourist strip are spaces of flows - the building itself is beside the point when the idea is to see and be seen. The balcony culture of schoolies and indy are about these flows with vertical and horizontal flows of bodies in variously layered spaces.

Flows of bodies, money and energy.

I'd always wondered about the junk speculative buildings and the blank suburbs. It must sour the dream and creat ea lot of unhappy people. Or does consumer society take care of the unhappiness bit with retail therapy.

Les,
I'm sorry to hear the news about your online friend. Online communities do exist. Flickr and Facebook show that they are more than a bunch of pixels.

Gary,

Deleuze is a knowledge gap I mean to fill at some stage.

The seas of cheap housing defeat people in all sorts of ways. Areas develop bad reputations almost as quickly as the houses start falling apart. There's a high level of domestic violence, a lot of juvenile crime, there's a club full of pokies on every corner, no public transport and a very high rate of teenage pregnancy. None of this is part of our public culture, to the extent that the GC can be said to have one.

The imagery is the tourist strip and the wealthier areas which, as my mother is fond of pointing out, prove that money can't buy taste. People who live in the seas of cheap housing service the tourists and the wealthy and clean the rooms at Palazzo Versace and sell overpriced crap at theme parks where they couldn't afford the price of entry.

Yes you are probably right Pam.
I have been thinking on somethings that follows from this today. I have noticed that there is a point of about 1 year that bloggers tend to stop Blogging or dramatically reduce their output/input. I wonder if people relearn their ability to connect with people and the world through Blogging. I wonder if people suddenly regain the desire and confidence to turn to the person sitting next to them on the bus and say hello? Or say have a random conversation with someone who happens to be walking past their house.
I think when some people reconnect with the world and disconnect with their TV and red wine they don't have as much use for Blogging/facebook and alike.