At left: Apple Tree, Digital C-Print, 2005, 22″ x 27″, Deborah Hamon, Best in Show 2006.

The Art League of Northern California has opened its photography competition, “It’s Photography I” to all artists, 18 and over nationwide. You are invited to submit up to 3 digital images of your original photographic works done within the past four years, using traditional, digital or mixed media. Deadline: 18 December 2006. Download Prospectus and Entry Form for more information at the Art League site (scroll down to near the bottom).

Kinofilm Announces Call for Entries! The Call for Submissions is now announced for the new biennial Manchester International Film Festival, scheduled to take place 26th October - 4th November 2007. The new festival of Independent Cinema will combine an eclectic mix of Features, Shorts, Animation and Documentary, showcasing exclusive premieres from outstanding new talent especially those having made the transition from short to feature.

Over the last decade Kinofilm have developed a global reputation as the most diverse and challenging short film festival in the UK. Combining an eclectic mix of Features, Shorts, Animation and Documentary, the festival will remain strongly committed to promoting low budget and independent new work from the UK, alongside outstanding new and established International filmmakers, providing the ultimate synergy of ground breaking and vibrant new cinema. Read the rest of this entry »

The Royal Institute of British Architects - USA announces a new international competition entitled, “Building a Sustainable World: Life in the Balance.” This competition is open to any individual from any country. However, an entrant who is not an architect must team up with an accredited (licensed or registered) architect from the locality of the submitted project.

This is an open competition to develop a concept for a maximum capacity sustainable community or an urban subdivision to address shifts in global climate, that have been so vividly demonstrated by increasing numbers of flooding and drought catastrophes. The community must be “off the grid�, in other words as autonomous and self-sustaining as possible. And,
beyond this, they would like to invite you to propose ways of making the community a positive contributor to the natural ecology. Alternative energy solutions need to be fully researched and integrated to identify advantages and to be realistic about risks and disadvantages. Their premise is that the sustainable community should start to reverse environmental damage and not add to it.

This is an interesting competition - I wish I had known about it earlier, as the deadline is 31 December 2006. But, if you already have something on the drawing board, you might want to read the details about what these folks want, and how they want you to submit it. First prize is $10,000.00, so what have you got to lose?

The Civil War Preservation Trust, the History Channel and the Center for Civil War Photography are sponsoring this competition. Amateur photographers are invited to submit Civil War-related photos in six categories: Endangered Battlefields, featuring a battlefield under threat of destruction; Scenic, showing the natural beauty of Civil War sites; Historic, capturing the solemn effect of a historic structure or monument; Close-up, examining a detail of a monument or landscape; Then and Now, comparing early images of Civil War battlefields and historic sites with modern images; and Junior Photographer, a special category for photographers under 18. Prizes will be awarded in each category. $20 entry fee; deadline for entries is 30 November 2006. For contest rules, visit http://www.civilwar.org/photocontestrules.htm.

Coca-Cola and Play Imaginative are calling for designers who can express their passion for design and for the Coca-Cola brand by way of their unique art styles. Using the trexi figure as a canvas (seen here, but without the paint), the challenge is to depict their own personal definition of happiness creatively, and show the world what their vision of “A Better Tomorrow” looks like.

15 of the best designs will be part of a brand new “A Better Tomorrow” trexi series alongside 10 of today’s most celebrated character designers such as Tokidoki, Colorblok, Cupco and Mad Barbarians. Work involves Adobe Illustrator (AI) format and a copy of the JPEG file. Contest runs until 15 Jan 2007: 15 winners will be picked by public voting to join 10 international designers in latest trexi series. Top prize is a cash prize of $10,000 USD. Visit the site for more information.

The polished, heavyweight ADC (Art Director’s Club) Cube is an enduring symbol of creative leadership and innovation. Winners take their place in the industry’s revered archive of the best work ever produced in advertising, graphic design, photography, illustration and interactive media. The ADC Annual Awards has kept pace with the changing nature of visual communications since its inception in 1920.The Hybrid category transcends traditional uses of media, and Playground was created to give great unproduced advertising work a chance at daylight. Strenuously and scrupulously judged, the not-for-profit ADC Annual Awards is one of the most venerable shows in the world. Professional Deadline: 10 January 2007; Student deadline: 31 January 2007. Visit the site for more details.

The International Design Excellence Awards program is the premier international competition honoring design excellence in products, ecodesign, interaction design, packaging, strategy, research and concepts. Entries are invited from designers, students and companies worldwide. New this year - design RESEARCH is now a required part of the submission process and judging criteria.

Winning entries will receive press coverage in BusinessWeek magazine and businessweek.com as well as in hundreds of newspapers and networks, including CNN, NBC, PBS, CNBC, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and the general design press. Regular entries deadline: 9 February 2007 11:59 PM PST; Late deadline: 16 February 2007 11:59 PM PST. Visit the site for more details.

The Nature Conservancy invites you to enter your stunning nature images in their first-ever digital photography competition. They’re looking for beautiful nature photography representing the diversity of life on Earth. Your own original digital images of lands, waters, plants, animals and people in nature are all eligible for the competition. Images can be submitted to one of two categories: Best Nature Photo or Best Photo from a Conservancy Preserve. The competition is open to amateur photographers age 18 or older who are residents of the United States. Photo submissions must be uploaded by 11:59 pm Pacific Standard Time on Sunday, 31 December 2006. Visit the site for more information.

For the third time, the city of Chemnitz honours its renowned daughter Marianne Brandt with the International Marianne Brandt Contest aimed at young artists throughout Europe. As in 2001 and 2004, the contest is entitled “Poetry of the Functional”. The apparent paradox clearly characterises the overall concept behind the creative work of Marianne Brandt and other Bauhaus artists: the most important aspect of an object’s design is its function, usability and effective performance. At the same time, it should have a sensory charm far removed from a cold and calculated rationalism. This ‘poetry’ is inherent to the object, there is no artificial embellishment or styling whatsoever.

The “Product Design” and “Photography” contest categories pay homage to Marianne Brandt’s most important works. The third category has varied; after considering “Collages” and “Clothing”, the promoters have now selected “Regional Design Solutions” having communities and regions as their subject. This may seem a somewhat unusual choice at first but such local/regional-oriented design continues to assume ever greater significance. Works must be submitted between 4 and 17 June 2007. Read more at the International Marianne Brandt site.

My daughter’s going to the Bahamas for Thanksgiving, and I don’t know why I’m not going with her. My sister-in-law purchased a stallion this past week while I visited her. I won’t say how much she paid for it, but he’s a real stud (seriously - he’s a thoroughbred! - No! Seriously!). And, as a final cruel note, I was also introduced to duct tape fashion this past week. I mean, I knew that a duct tape culture existed, but I didn’t know how far this streak had gone:

“Holly Nelson, 17, of Willington, Conn., and Bing Xu, 18, of Ashford, Conn., were named winners of the 2006 Duck® brand duct tape Stuck at Prom® Scholarship Contest, and each was awarded a $3,000 college scholarship. Nelson and Xu designed, created and wore their artistic duct tape attire to the Edwin O. Smith High School prom this spring, and entered the sixth annual Duck® brand duct tape Stuck at Prom® Scholarship Contest.”

Ah, well…You’ve got to check out the links at the bottom of that page. Duct tape togas - all the rage.

Enjoy this week’s interview with Sébastien Théraulaz, and enjoy your weekend as well. I’m taking White Eye for a walk before he eats the horse.

Chow, babies.