We’re getting slack keeping this blog up to date sorry. Besides romping around the Caribbean seas with a knife in one hand and a bottle of rum in the other, we’ve been busy making these little movies (here’s two in one go for you BAM!) and doing other fun stuff including writing for Whiteboard which is the Rushfaster blog. Go read it!
OK, so i’m pretty sure that nobody reads this blog (and rightfully so, we are pretty drab at the best of times,) but IF you do, and you would like to see the next leg of our quest for world domination, then click the play button below and marvel at our amateur film making skills in AMAZING technicolor©
As you’ll see, we’ve been busy. Well by busy, we mean busy travelling Mexico. It is a particularly fine specimen of a country, but I’m sure you already knew that.
Here is Part Two: Mexico
You may, or may not, have noticed that DAA has been rather quiet over the past couple of months. There are two main reasons: one we were hacked, hence the different layout; and two we are currently making our way around the world. We packed in our jobs and started our travels in the good ol’ US of A. We have been documenting our trip using the great Sony HX9V Cyber-shot and figured it (hopefully) should be more exciting than reading about it.
We bring you Part One: The USA.
Usually it takes someone walking too slowly in front of me at the tube station to really rile me up, but I’ll have to admit, these London riots are just the teensiest bit irritating, and not only because the constant sirens outside my window keep making me lose my train of thought.
The thing that I can’t wrap my tiny squirrel brain around is what it is that is making these people believe in what they are doing. Seems to me, that unless Mark Duggan, the 29 year old father of four who was killed, allegedly by a police officer last Thursday was some kind of fighter for peace, freedom or civil rights for the masses, these riots are seemingly completely purposeless. In spite of the Duggan family publicly admonishing any person who would commit acts of violence or crime in the name of their son and brother, the initial unrest in the man’s local area is almost understandable. Almost. Perhaps the people committing these acts of destruction and violence knew the deceased well and were inconsolably distressed by his death, to the point of inciting riot. It’s not too far-fetched. I can deal with this. I don’t really believe it, but hooded rioters, this I will give you. But fuck. What has gone on in all four corners of London, and even in all four corners of England since then, just isn’t cool.
After the devastating effects of the recent earthquake in Christchurch NZ, the out of luck locals would have been excused for sitting on their arse, feeling slightly defeated.
As you will see from the video below titled QUAKED, these skaters have done the exact opposite and made the most out of a shit situation by using the recently torn up city as a brand new concrete playground, skating the cracks and newly twisted earth to create one of the most original skate vids we have ever seen.
Thats the spirit, we say.
In DAA’s old ‘hood, Darlinghurst, there was a ton of street art, so it wasn’t unusual for us to find similar pieces by the same artists around the traps. One repetitive group of tiles caught our eye though. A (mostly) triangular-shaped plaque that always spoke of Lisa Marie Smith, someone who had eluded the Bangkok Hilton was one in particular that interested us. None of the text ever made any sense to us, we just kept seeing the plaques scattered around the city and inner west and kept thinking that they were works of art based on a fictional person or event.
Every time we saw one of these plaques, we had the same conversation… who is Lisa Marie Smith? And why does someone have such a big beef with her that they plaster Sydney with the afore mentioned placards? After two years, and countless plaques, it finally dawned on us that we should perhaps consult our dear friend Google and see if there was in fact such a person. It turns out there is. And the story, quite intriguing.
Anyone who has spent any reasonably lengthy period of time ‘looking for work’ can tell you that there is a fundamental difference between being ‘unemployed’ and being a ‘job-hunter’. Saying you’re unemployed is a less guilty way of saying “I don’t have to go to work today or any day” It’s like being on a holiday that has no foreseeable end. It’s a world without alarms, fixed time lunch-breaks, and mundane office banter. Being unemployed epitomises the adage of ‘living the dream’. When you’re unemployed, the volunteer work you’ve always felt guilty about avoiding starts to become something that you might actually begin to start to think about considering. When you’re unemployed you can have beer on your cereal when there’s no milk because when you’re unemployed, you’re your own boss. In short, being unemployed gives you the freedom to be master of your own domain.
Now before you all go marching into your boss’s offices brandishing an active fire extinguisher and start yelling obscenities at photos of their children in a quest to make yourself one of the unemployed ‘lucky ones’, there’s something you have to know. There is a catch. Being unemployed quite unfortunately goes hand-in-hand with another fish entirely, known commonly as ‘looking for work’. Whoever the person was who compared this soul-crushing exercise with the sport of tracking and killing living things by referring to it as ‘job-hunting’ will know what I’m talking about. Job-hunting is ruthless, cutthroat, and the punter with the sharpest sword won’t necessarily end up being the one to slay the beast. …more
We know we have been pretty slack the last few months, you’ll forgive us, right? Moving really isn’t all that much fun, and that is exactly what we have been trying to sort out for the past little while… so, now that we are all moved, and somewhat unpacked, we bring you this ode to Darlinghurst, our home for the past 15 months.
What a fascinating suburb. In the heart of the city, this ‘burb has a beat louder than you can imagine. Piqued between Kings Cross and Oxford Street, we sure have had a lot of fun the past year and are definitely sad to have left such a vivacious and uh, vibrant neighbourhood. It’s got the personality of a two year old, it doesn’t sleep, it’s dirty, if you don’t get along you’ll be spat out (or at), it’s not toilet trained (read: homeless lady unashamedly taking an un-ladylike dump in a Chinese food container in the middle of Taylor Square), it chucks a fair few tantrums (prostitutes arguing out the front of your window at 4am) and if you’re not careful your most prized things will get broken, stolen and smashed. Despite all that, actually because of all of that, we loved it dearly.
We love all things creative here at DAA, it’s a pretty broad statement, but if it’s innovative and exciting, then generally we’re into it. We came across these images and were pretty astounded at just how cool the Japanese can make a rice field look.
Inakadate 2010
Every year in Japan some areas, most famously Inakadate, incorporate artwork and agriculture, planting different colours and varieties of rice to create images that on the ground, don’t look much, but from above look plain awesome. Inakadate’s 8000 residents and farmers have worked together to create enormous agricultural works of art depicting various different images since 1993! Varying from the Mona Lisa to traditional warriors and anime characters, all different kinds of images rise from the ground every June and can be seen until they are harvested in September.
Check out some of the other past and present rice field art! …more