CybaFaeries

HOPE

Direct link to these posts below about CybaFaeries. www.cybafaeries.com

Here's my HOPE poster from 2006. It was an artwork I was invited to create for the Colors Magazine http://www.colorsmagazine.com exhibition at the Centre Pompidou. Paris. France. http://www.centrepompidou.fr/  I had designed the CybaFaeries in 1998/99 based on Melbourne Shuffle girls around Flinders Lane.



The CybaFaeries are ROBOTS and I designed them and make them as Fine Art Robots. And I'm currently writing the priority AI. Owners will be able to add their own user programing via tablet/smartphone user interface apps.

More at www.cybafaeriesandwolfdragons.com

Here's some shots of my Nicholas Building studio at the time of the 2006 poster. I was in this studio over looking the Melbourne city Square and the Flinders Lane Swanston Street intersection on the 7th floor, from 1998-2008.

I had open studio 3 days a week when visitors, were welcomed, many staying until late on Friday evenings, when the Lane turned into funky town with all the cashed up suits out for end of the working week drinks.

I remember one night around 10 pm hearing the sounds of two drunks stumbling down the passage way crashing into to the walls trying to hold themselves up. It was a familiar sound and I first thought it was some neighbors maybe in need of directions to their studios, but no, it was some familiar suits, $3000 suits and $500 shoes in fact, slumming down for the lane

They were Queens Counsel QC's top ranking lawyers. And they had stumbled around this square passageway nearly 3 times now, I think I heard them knock them selves out at one time, all went quiet.

I gave them a hand, they were pleased to see a familiar face and  were nearly at their destination, a neighbours studio around the corner, it was Friday night, they would come around every week or so and play roleplaying games, as Fairy characters. Both very straight guys with wife/girlfriends, going through all these adventure type roleplaying games - RPG's after a hard day in the high court or Federal court in gowns and wigs, then a few drinks and turn into fairy's at night.

What do your wife/girlfriend think about your roleplaying I asked them one time, I'd drop by now and then for a chat and a drink.

Oh God no, we don't tell them about the Fairy stuff, We tell them that we're out with the guys from work and play dance music in the background while we're on the phone, and clink bottles and glasses around like a bar, They're sure we're just hitting on some new girl in the office and getting turned down again, and we'll come home with our dented egos and suffer most of tomorrow with hang-overs.

The central Flinders Lane neighbourhood.


Centre Place






Colors Magazine - Centre Pompidou Paris France 2006 Exhibition Video Interveiwer and Producer who flew in from the UK, in my studio filming in 2005.


I would sit in the rocking chair in the afternoon sun, with bare feet running my toes through a tray of bluegrass (pic below) and listen to old 12 in 78rpm recordings of American bluegrass, blues, roots music,  Bill Munroe, Earl Scruggs, Robert Johnson, Carter Family, A Prairie Home Companion etc on the Bakerlite glass valve Radio you can see at the top shelf of the equipment rack behind the rocker. I had it hooked up to cd's but it played thru the single 4 inch speaker which uses the shell of the radio to resonate the bass notes. The old 78 recordings were made for this type of playback, in a small sized room which also resonates the bass, when everybody listening is quiet. The radio was left to me by my irish side grandparents, I remember it sitting on a shelf in the kitchen as a young kid.

All the interior is still intact and the original speaker was on display on a shelf of treasured gadgets and trinkets on a shelf behind the rocker to the left somewhere



Bluegrass




Neighbour Vali Myers in her studio


Some of Vali's work






Lift Operator Dimi

BIG BAD RALPH
Having coffee with Big Bad Ralph in Flinders Lane.






Big Bad Ralph Winning World Iron Palm Championship - breaking 65mm Granite slab with the bare palm of his hand. Ralph holds 2 world titles.



Combat Magazine





Ralph also did movie stunt work, that's him on fire below.





Wings in Progress






My Studio door Sign


My Studio door and fan.


Our Goods Lift, for the 2005 Spring Fashion Week (Melbourne).


80th Birthday exhibition for the Nicholas Building.


Nicholas Building


Same corner in 1875

Some more Flinders Lane Life 2004-2006

Sunrise Over Cathedral Spires From My Nicholas Building Studio


Nicholas Building lift Ladies Joan and daughter Deb


Hey Check It Out


Rooftop Wander


Santa In Summer - Flinders Lane





Milliners Mel and Mandy Nicholas Building Neighbours




Journal Cafe
Journal Boys John, Con and Rabs.


It's gotta be perfect,

Some more shots of the Nicholas Building 80th birthday exhibition 2006

Some more Flinders Lane Life. 


Stu (Corey's brother)



Early Collaborative Lane Art


Vistors message on my studio chalkboard



Coffee with Jethro Cave, Stella and the guy



Party Time





Got ya   Quickest on the camera draw !!







The party was WHEN !?!

A sad day for Pete Jago, moving from the Nicholas Building, and some great bargains




Outside of Journal café during soccer. Prop John is Italian


Degraves Espresso Staff - when Journal John was manager and Journal Con, the owner.




Buskers opposite Centre House



Setting up for the last ever Centre House Party 2006.

Centre House front door.


Inside of front door


Outside of Centre House

This was the entrance to the final Centre House Party in 2006. It's the little known side entrance in Centre Place. It's pretty dark and scary for those who don't know the area, and that's how we liked it. There was no security on the door no ticket or even entry charge for the party, it was free, run by former tenants (such as myself) of Centre House over 20 years. The building was shut down because it's structurally dangerous.




So if you felt confident to enter, you'd go thru the door up the stairs




Then along this back passage way. These posters and flyers on the walls are the typical way we communicate in the underground. Underground promoters would target these types of underground venues and buildings, knowing that mostly underground people would see them and spread the word, without the mainstream knowing about it. Often mainstream audiences brought trouble, racists, homophobes, drunken yobs looking to bash someone for fun. Not nice people and they were not missed at underground parties.

Typical underground parties were free and BYO - Bring Your Own drinks etc. We didn't sell grog (alcohol) or drugs, didn't run a beer-bar at the party, these parties were not for profit, they were for friends and fun.  





Up these stairs




More party pics to come

---------------------------------
Back to Setting up: This was my old studio in the early 1990's and the main room for parties then. It's being cleared out by another artist at the time of the last party.




Someone was giving away their computer. This type of thing was common in the underground. Much of our equipment whether computers or industrial sewing machines for fashion, was and is specialist gear. And we'd prefer that it goes to someone who can actually use it for their work, as a gift from the underground community.






I Just love the color of these  stairs

So after the stairs for a bit you'd be confronted with these instructions.



Get greeted by the Death Valley Virgins



then people like this








and drift off to sleep to some late night classical guitar music from the busker across the Lane from Centre House


more to come

MY COMMERCE HOUSE STUDIO 1995

Here's some video stills of my Commerce House studio in 1995. I was producing TOE - Theory Of Everything then. I'd premiered the weekly 30 min underground TV music/arts/culture show in September 1994, when we (c31) got the fulltime broadcast licence and began fulltime broadcasting, which has continued to this very day 20+ years later.  http://www.c31.org.au/

I was working mostly nights, out 5 nights a week from Wednesday to Sunday filming for TOE, then back to the studio and edit until about 9am then I'd go to bed and rise around 3-4pm and take my daily 'morning' stroll going the opposite direction to the peak hour rush of some 300,000 office workers and city staff making a dash for home.

There was no degraves café or any café in Flinders Lane then, Degraves Espresso with John and Con, the first guys to open a café to specifically serve artists working and living in the area as well as office workers, didn't open until a couple of years after Commerce House was closed down, late 1997 for Christmas office party season and 1998 was their first full year there.

So in Commerce days we went to City Pizza which I point out in GS1 while showing Millie around town. Fortunately they stayed open until 10pm so that's where we got good coffee, great pizza by a friendly Lebanese family who ran the biz.

They also ordered in extra milk to sell to us, you couldn't even buy a litre of milk in the CBD then, you had to travel out of town to supermarkets in surrounding suburbs, hehe, ridiculous

I was in full production mode, no real clue how much work creating a weekly TV show from the ground up took, but I lasted 65 shows and it was repeated nationally on cable TV until 1998.

I'd sit at this antique edit suite and watch the sunrise thru my studio windows knowing I had very little time left to complete the next episode and rush it down Flinders lane to the c31 office which was in Ross House near the Nicholas Building by 9am, and they meant 9AM ! even though it'd sit in an inbox for a previewer who didn't start until 10 am ! looking for me sneaking in subliminal messages - yes I did , more of that another time .

STELARC's 3d EAR

Here's Stelarc wandering around the lane with his 3d ear up his sleave  

I've known Stelarc since he came back from Japan in the late 1980's. We've collaborated on heaps of projects usually with me working on the interactive video area. You can hear Stelarc laughing in the background at the beginning of GS1 when Rainer Linz finishes his improv piece at TVU 1992. That synth and bundle of wires was about to be wired up to Stelarc for a performance.

ALICE EUPHEMIA - ROMANCE WAS BORN (2006)

We see fashion as art in Flinders Lane, to the point where fashion items are displayed as collectable and wearable art. Alice Euphemia www.aliceeuphemia.com  in Cathedral Arcade (Nicholas Building) has championed this form of fashion for decades in Melbourne.

Here's a great example with the Romance Was Born fashion label exhibition and collection August 2006

ROMANCE WAS BORN REJECTS FASHION WEEK

Posted: Thursday, 10 April 2014 at 2:45pm
As Australian designers vie for the attention of international buyers from fashion powerhouse retailers like Harvey Nichols, Net-a-Porter and Selfridges at Sydney Fashion Week, the designers of Romance Was Born have opted to show their new collection as an exhibition with Perth artist Rebecca Baumann.

It’s an unusual business move. And Luke Sales, who with Anna Plunkett designs Romance Was Born, admits it’s “not that sensible commercially”, but the two feel an exhibition format better suits their design sensibility.

“I don’t think we’re really that comfortable working in the fashion industry,” says Sales at the launch of their exhibition Reflected Glory at Carriageworks. “It’s not that we’re anti fashion it’s just not who we really are as designers. I think for us to get creative fulfilment there has to be more than making ready to wear collections.”

read more

http://www.abc.net.au/arts/blog/Video/Romance-Was-Born-rejects-Fashion-Week-to-create-kaleidoscopic-exhibition-with-Rebecca-Baumann-140408/default.htm

MY STUDIO OVERALLS

Here's a recent pic of my studio overalls. note the random sewing, quite difficult to make it all uneven - yes serious

I would often have to spend 10-15 mins sewing up new tears in the already torn bits before going out each day. You have no idea how many things those loose strands catch on  I'd have a repair kit in my bag at all times.

These are the last local made Yakka Overalls then made in Melbourne. Yakka is local slang for physical work, 'hard yakka' is tough physical work.

there's a black layer of patches under red in places, 2-3 layers by the time these retired. I might send them on the CybaFaeries Touring exhibition, maybe try and reinforce them to wear at the underground parties ? hmmm

The local coffee buzz Centre Place

MY AMIGA 500 (Upgraded to 1 meg)

In my Nicholas building studio display case



That's the Roland sequencer below I used to record much of the GS1 soundtrack music done mid 1990's. I forget the model number (I'll check.).

Marcos Davidson Jewellery Studio

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/marcos.davidson


Some of marcos' work






Jeweller Dan Scurry and his latest find


(Drummer) Victor and Marcos



Juan Esteban del Monserrat at Marcos' studio
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/delmonserrat

Drinks at the Nicholas, (blurry eyes)

Maz

Aujie Aspari (Womens Fashion designer)
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/aujie.aspari


Pete Jago (Milliner)
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ExclusiveHatsPeterJago






Studio Supplies

Some nice street artwork in centre place

Sue Barnes (Make Up) and Rohan Donald (Jeweller)

Rohan got to drive around in this Mini during fashion festival. when I asked why, he said 'Because I'm worth it' which was the slogan for L'Oreal then. He thought it'd be more fun to say, but after just 3 stops he was over it
Rohan Donald https://www.facebook.com/endtimeboogie
Sue Barnes Facebook https://www.facebook.com/suebarnesstudio






Kane Greenhatch (Jeweller) out for a stroll around the Lane.
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/kane.greenhatch