Shahneshin Foundation invites all artists to submit a poster manifesto “to promote and divulgate the shrinkage in our daily life and professional thoughts and actions.” The word “shrinkage” is defined loosely, and experimentation is promoted. This is an international competition, and all entries are due on 15 September. Read about the contest on this PDF file.

Muji is launching an international design competition. A project calling for entries from all over the world of designs that shake up and stir people, and entries can be supplied by groups or individuals. The results will be announced at the Milan Salone. The first theme is “SUMI,” where the focus of the design is not on major pieces within a room, but on pieces that are in “the extremes of the space, the unexplored areas of consciousness.” Explore the store, explore “sumi,” and enter - the prizes are substantial. Questions are answered at the contest site. Deadline: 31 August.

The Design and Business Catalyst Award takes traditional design competitions a step further by recognizing excellence in market and financial performance as well as strategic and social impact. Created by IDSA and BusinessWeek magazine, the competition rewards management’s foresight in using the power of design beyond the actual design process. The purpose of the Catalyst Award is to recognize winning design’s business success. Calculated to capture data on design impact, the Catalyst will show companies that design is fundamentally woven into business success. The Catalyst Award competition is open to all designers from around the world with one notable exception: jurors, their employees and immediate family members may not enter the competition. Deadline: 10 July 2006, with a late deadline on 17 July.

The Society for Arts and Technology in collaboration with the Fantasia Festival, presents Anima 06 (The Soul of Animation). This is a video game trailer contest and the entry details are so fresh that they have yet to be translated into English. However, from the PDF application form (which is bilingual), I believe that the application is due on 1 July this year, but the entries might be due at a later date? Don’t count on me - my French is horrid. Read for yourself, or bookmark the instructions and wait for English translation.

Imagine if you lived in a 8-by-5-foot space in a restaurant window that faces a Main Street in a town in central America for a week. Would you consider your every move as art? Kentucky artist Lauren Argo is making an effort to prove that her daily life - as well as anyone’s daily life, perhaps - is art, and her stint in 21C Museum Hotel’s restaurant window in Louisville, KY ends this Saturday, 10 May. From the press release:

Nearly everything the 24-year-old installation artist does for the next five days can be viewed around the clock. From brushing her teeth, styling her hair and putting on makeup to creating art, acting, dancing or sleeping — it’s all on exhibit.

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Applied Arts, Canada’s premier magazine of visual communications, announced their first stand-alone Web Design Awards competiton. Winners from categories including Business, E-commerce/Transactional, Entertainment, Educational/Reference/Self-Promotional, Web Log and Experimental/Artistic will be published in a special section of the January 2007 edition of APPLIED ARTS magazine. They will also be posted online later that month.The Call for Entry will be available on their site to download in July 2006, so you might want to bookmark that page or apply for entry information in any one - or all four - of their entry categories. The entry deadline for the Web Design Awards is 28 August 2006.