TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Recently in Australia there has been much debate about the need to find alternative energy sources to fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas. In terms of generating electricity the so called environmentally friendly Nuclear Power is often put forward as the one, clear and sensible alternative energy choice. However I've always maintained that Nuclear Energy isn't environmentally friendly because no company has found a viable use for the nuclear waste it produces. Nuclear waste is usually stored which, given its radioactive nature and inability to biodegrade safely within a time period of less than before Armageddon, doesn't seem all that friendly to me.

In contrast to my previous post, Thrown out any good art lately? , this story came to me through a members post on Australian Art Forum about the Museum of Bad Art . I just happened to read the backstory behind the museums cornerstone artwork and the similarities with my previous post demonstrate that even bad art placed in the trash may be more valuable than you thought. I'm not going to retell the story of Lucy In the Field With Flowers (pictured) because you can read the details by Susan Lawlor , a family member of the painting's former owner for yourself. Suffice to say that this particular painting was recovered from the kerbside trash on a Boston street by the Museum of Bad Arts founder, Scott Wilson, who was promptly inspired to create the aforementioned museum. The Museum of Bad Art now exists in both online and bricks and mortar form - with the bricks and mortar coming first. Interestingly enough the actual museum is, perhaps appropriately, located just outside the m...

"Tres Personajes" by Rufino Tamayo, a 1970 oil and sand on canvas painting, in an undated image released to the media on Oct. 22, 2007. Source: Sotheby's via Bloomberg News We've all heard stories of people finding extremely valuable items in kerbside rubbish collections but this one might get you taking a closer look at a few discarded paintings. New York City woman, Elizabeth Gibson, was walking past a collection of garbage bags put out for collection one Saturday morning in 2003 when her eye caught a painting sticking out the top. Initially she walked right on by but a short time later she returned for a second look with a hunch that this painting may just be the goods for her apartments living room wall. There must have been something about the painting that suggested there was more to it than would at first appear because Elizabeth began, what would turn out to be, a rather lengthy and difficult journey to find out the artworks history. Fast forward four years la...

The music world and the online world in general is abuzz with Radiohead's decision to let fans decide how much they pay for the bands new album In Rainbows before being allowed to download it via their web site. This simple act has allowed the band to bypass the need for a record company. It's estimated, on average the band will still make about the same amount of money from downloads as they would have going the usual CD release route after the record companies have taken their cut. On average, I've read people are paying about US$8.00 for an album which you can, if you choose, download for free. It's up to you. If you would like to read a deeper article on the repercussions then Maki from www.doshdosh.com has written a great article about Radiohead and Anti-marketing in the music industy . What's clever about their decision is that it completely legalizes the free sharing of music. Something that is very web 2.0 where the new words for sharing on a grand scale ...

In my recent post A Tax on Rainwater I made the following statement: "A tax on rainwater might be valid if we were literally sucking the moisture out of the air. Farming clouds." Watching my local evening news broadcast tonight I was interested in a story about Australian owned company Island Sky who manufacture machines capable of extracting the moisture from the air and turning it into drinking water. Island Sky's technology can be scaled depending on intended usage. From a 'water cooler' style model for the home or office through to being able to adapt the technology for commercial and industrial uses. As much as the concept of Island Sky's technology is fantastic it does make me wonder if this kind of machine could affect weather patterns if implemented on a large and concentrated scale? For example could we see coastal cities sucking a larger proportion of moisture from the air to the detriment of inland towns? The reason why I wonder leads back to my o...

I recently received a message from an admirer of my art who suggested that I should also include the size of my paintings in inches to assist international collectors not familiar with the metric system of measurement. My mind, being the way it is, winked at me and thought, but I only know how to paint in metric? How do you convert a painting to inches anyway? Is there a conversion chart? I found a pretty good conversion tool online but when I typed in the title of my painting it didn't seem to understand and looked at me like I was some kind of fool. Maybe I'll just buy my canvases pre-converted to inches to save me the worry.

A common myth that teenage adults have as they start to get closer to that arbitrary line of being an 'adult' is that adults can do anything they want. I'm sure millions of parents have heard from their teen, at one time or another, "I'm an adult now so I can do what I want." A statement that clearly is a childish justification for poor decision making. Why? Because usually your teen will come out with this statement if you won't let them do something that they really want. To be fair, sometimes it's just the parents being overly protective but, for whatever reason, being an 'adult now' is a childish way to say I don't care for your concern I'm going to do what I want . (Though in that last sentence you can exchange the word 'concern' for 'unreasonable attitude' or more likely yet just insert the word 'sh_t'). Apart from the obvious physical differences the key difference between children and adults is that adult...

I was watching the Jack Nicholson, Adam Sandler movie, Anger Management on DVD and I got to thinking just how good an actor Jack Nicholson is. That's no big revelation really. I'm fairly certain Jack's won a number of awards for his work over the years. However I'll continue on. On the special features of the Anger Management DVD someone comments that almost everyone has a Jack Nicholson impression, because Jack's voice is unmistakably his. Team Jack's voice with the man himself and you have a living icon that few people in the western world would fail to recognise. When you go to see a movie with Jack Nicholson, as soon as he appears you instantly recognise him as Jack, yet, in every single movie I've ever seen him in, he immediately becomes the character. You're no longer watching Jack Nicholson. I particularly like his character, the unorthodox anger management therapist, Dr Buddy Rydell, in Anger Management. Nobody plays a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde char...

The lawyer for the plaintiffs, Agnes Tricoire, presents to the court a reproduction of the kiss mark on a painting by artist American Cy Twombly. Photo: MSNBC In researching this post I'm happy to say that American artist, Cy Twombly's all white artwork, 'Untitled', is an exception to his art rather than the norm. Perhaps that is why the artwork is valued at just over 2.8 million dollars and lays some credibility on my rationale in pricing my own blank canvas in my video guide to Pricing your artwork for sale . Regular readers will know my distaste for blank canvas artworks so I could not pass up this opportunity to comment on Rindy Sam, a 30 year old, female French artist, who loved Twombly's blank artwork enough to kiss it with fully, lipstick loaded, lips. The incident happened on July 19, 2007, where the painting was part of a traveling exhibition on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art in the southern French city of Avignon. The kiss was described as an ...

Photo: Sun-Sentinal.com I'm not one to follow the trials of drugged out celebrities but when someone like Britney Spears is getting so much media attention it's hard not to notice. So, here's a post with a lesson. It seems that not even Britney can get away with doing whatever the hell she likes. According tho this article on E! News, Britney Comes Clean on Drug Test , Britney is finally complying with a court ruling in order to regain access to her children after the courts gave temporary, primary custody to their father Kevin Federline. The lesson here kids is that no matter how much money and fame you have you still can't get away with doing exactly as you please if your actions are illegal or potentially dangerous to those around you. Sooner or later the law will catch up with you and bite you on the... well, if you're Britney it'll take away your children. Because that is one of the reasons why we have laws. They're there to protect you from yourself an...

Popular YouTuber Nalts recently posted this video rant about the planet pluto being downgraded to 'dwarf' planet status. Nalts video opposes the announcement on August 24th, 2006, by the The International Astronomical Union (IAU), that Pluto would no longer retain full planetary status due its size being considerably smaller than other 'planet like' objects found in the same region of space. You can read about the announcement in this article from Science Daily which includes an illustration of other objects, amongst them a larger object called 'Xena', that some astronomers were hoping would achieve 'planet' status. The Nalts video jogged my memory of an article that I wrote way back in 1996 that positioned my beliefs on the question of alien life forms and whether they do or don't exist. What is remarkable about the article is that it puts forward the idea that the planet Pluto may not actually exist. Here is an extract: Just because you haven’t...

I'm not one to write sponsored blog posts so let me assure you this post is simply because I was very impressed with Mr. McGroovy's Box Rivets™ web site and more specifically the cardboard creations within it. Mr. McGroovy sells special kind of Box Rivets™ (pictured) that allow your imagination to run wild on large scale box creations such as the pictured space ship. That thing is big enough to send your child into orbit (well if it had an engine maybe). What I thought was really cool is that Mr. McGroovy provides all the plans you need to make the creations appearing on his site including Pirate ships, castles, fire engines and more. Even a Santa's Sleigh! Check out the gallery of things people have built using the rivets here . I have a big refrigerator box sitting in my studio. I'm almost tempted to buy some rivets to see what I can turn it into. Better put my creativity hat on!

Semaphore Beach, Port Adelaide, South Australia is a favorite place for Enigma and I to visit. Especially around sunset (you know the walk on the beach, kind of romantic type thing that people like). Ever since Enigma bought a professional standard digital camera (of the kind that you can attach all manner of specialized lenses to) we've used our trips to Semaphore as an opportunity to improve our photography. I've had some training throughout my three years at art school on the technical side of working a manual SLR photography camera. Hence I know about apertures, shutter speeds, depth of field and other such technical things but I'm very rusty in applying that knowledge. I never really embraced the idea of me being a photographer even though my teacher said I had a great eye for photos. Tackling the workings of a modern SLR digital camera can be quite a challenge. Most of the principles are the same as traditional cameras but finding your way around digital displays, me...

Over the past year there has been much debate in Australia over the idea of a rainwater tax for residential properties. It all seems to have started over a leaked Federal Government email by National Water Commission chief, Ken Matthews, suggesting that "Legally, all water in Australia is vested in governments." Mr Mathews goes on to say: "Governments have not yet considered the capture of water from roofs in rainwater tanks to be of sufficient magnitude to warrant the issuing of specific entitlements to use this class of water. "However, if rainwater tanks were to be adopted on a large scale such that their existence impacts significantly on the integrated water cycle, consideration could be given to setting an entitlement regime for this class of water." You can read the full article about the email and its subsequent discussion in this report by the Herald Sun dated January 14, 2007. I can certainly understand the logic of Government ownership of rainwater ...

I can't remember the last time I had my own car. I've only ever owned one car, a Mazda 1500ss. I certainly remember buying it for AU$500 (obviously it was second hand at that price) and then spending another AU$500 on it to fix some minor issues and to completely re-detail the interior. I do remember selling it but I don't remember the year. I can safely say it was more than ten years ago. Since then I've either walked everywhere or borrowed cars of people (mainly my sister) that I've lived with. Last month, my partner, Enigma, was looking for a car suitable for her son and came across a great buy. A 1971, Chrysler Galant (pictured). It was recommended to her by her Mechanic who used to do all the servicing on it. In the meantime Enigma's son had found an alternative car that a friend was selling so he went with that. However the Gallant, for which the price had been negotiated down to the price of a fairly flash, brand new bicycle, was hard to pass up. So she b...

The Traveling Painting Project Posted by Daligoddess2006 If you're a YouTube artist and you have a web cam then I strongly encourage you to get involved in Daligoddess2006's , The Traveling Painting Project . It doesn't matter what your skill level is so long as you're over 18 years of age and don't mind spending a little bit of money on postage of a smallish canvas. Considering how popular online video is, getting involved in projects such as this can have a bonus side effect of bringing more profile to your own art. The bigger the project gets the more people will be intrigued to find out more about the artists that have left their mark. So, the traveling painting project is just what it says. A single canvas traveling from artist to artist, with each artist adding something to the painting before passing it along. Watch the video above for more information and visit the Ning network web site set up by YouTube artist Sherri Westfall .