For anyone who teaches in a design school, here is a fantastic opportunity
for your students to play at being subversive:
www.memefest.org

I met the organiser, Oliver Vodeb, when he was in Sydney last year, and
since then have participated in organising the Sydney branch of the annual
online festival:
http://australia.memefest.org/ (please note, no 'www')

Below is some text describing the festival's aims and how to participate,
but please visit either site for more information and encourage students
(and non-students in the 'Beyond' category) to participate, or consider
instigating a local branch in your country.

Memefest, the International Festival of Radical Communication – born in
Slovenia and rapidly reaching a critical mass worldwide – is proud to
announce its sixth annual competition. Once again, Memefest is encouraging
students, writers, artists, designers, thinkers, philosophers, and
counter-culturalists to submit their work to our panel of renowned judges.
This year, jury members will include: P.K. Langshaw, the Chair of and
Associate Professor in the Department of the Design and Computation Arts at
Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec; Jason Grant, Director of
Inkahoots, the adventurous graphic design studio in Brisbane, Australia; Luli
Radfahrer, Professor at the Communication and Art School in Sao Paulo,
Brazil, and founder of Hipermidia, one of the first digital communication
agencies in that country; and Carmen Luke, a leading international scholar
in the field of media literacy and new media, feminist studies and
globalization, based in Brisbane.

Traditionally, the Memefest team has asked participants to respond to a
selected text using the medium appropriate for each category. This year, for
the first time, we have chosen the same text for the academic and artistic
categories. Unlike other years, where the chosen texts were essays, or book
or manifesto excerpts, this year's chosen text is the 1960's movie trailer
for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. This trailer features a cynical and
humorous, yet dark and serious soliloquy by the director himself.

Even more pertinent (might we say urgent) today than when first seen
generations ago in movie theatres, Hitchcok's clever commentary on man's
relationship with nature will no doubt provoke a plethora of unequivocal
responses. And, as always, those whose work does not take a conventional
format can enter the Beyond… category, where the name of the game is
challenging mainstream practices and beliefs! Beyond… continues to grow in
popularity as a category not only because of its avant-garde appeal but
because it is open to non-students as well.

Memefest occurs completely online at www.memefest.org, and all entries will
be available for full access and commentary in the site galleries. In 2006,
Memefest received almost 500 entries from participants of every continent on
the globe ('cept Antarctica). We hope to get bigger, and to spread more of
those good infectious ideas, so keep thinking -- and producing.

*Deadline for submissions is May 20th 2007.*

For more info check www.memefest.org or http://australia.memefest.org

On 4/20/07, Chris Rust <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Jerry Diethelm wrote:
> > Is there an interesting development in design theory taking place
> I think you've pointed to at least two Jerry,
>
> First of all the idea of attending to the social origins of a design
> "problem"  That seems to fit with two different related issues - if
> wicked problems are at work it makes sense that designers attend to the
> social context for their undefinable problem rather than go mad trying
> to define it.  Then there is the reason we are here on this list, the
> rise of research as a valid activity for designers, meaning that there
> are more people in both the academy and in industry attending to the
> background of the discipline.
>
> Then there's MP's issue, which chimes with Clive Dilnot's message at the
> EAD conference last week, that we need to become more subversive (at
> least that's how I read it Clive?) and certainly there are a good few
> people  these days using design for political or other subversive
> purposes. Two of my favourites are Human Beans
> (http://www.humanbeans.net/powerpizza/) and "Love Your Bike"
> (http://www.manchesterfoe.org.uk/lyb/index.php) the website run by
> Manchester Friends of the Earth to promote urban cycling with a message
> based on fun and style rather than good intentions. And the "Man in Seat
> 61" (www.seat61.com) is another gentle guerilla out to subvert us with
> glimpses of a more leisurely way of life. Of course these people aren't
> old-fashioned designers working to somebody else's brief, some of them
> didn't even go to design school (how terrible :o), but they are finding
> new ways to be successful while staying true to their beliefs.
>
> best wishes from Sheffield
> Chris
>



-- 
Zoë Sadokierski

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Research: www.zoesadokierski.blogspot.com
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