Image: Mad John

Terri Mapes from About.com recently wrote an article about celebrating Labour Day in Scandinavian Countries:

Labour Day in Scandinavia (also called May Day) takes place on May 1 every year, following Walpurgis Night on April 30. Labour Day in Scandinavia is a celebrated public holiday - and quite visible. Visitors can see lots of festivities, parades, and other celebrations every year on the first of May in Scandinavia when locals celebrate Labour Day. You’ll find special events in every city on this day.

Read more on About.com: Scandinavia Travel

I can add that in Finland there is a holiday called “Vappu”, it’s mostly dedicated to persons graduated to some high school level, and whole Suomi selebrating this day with special for this day Sima (light alcoholic beverage) Tippaleipä (some kind of cake similar to Funnel cake), donuts and potato salad. People wearing white student caps everywhere and funny masks on parties.

Morten Iveland has added a photo to the pool:

A new rounded display font from Morten Ivelands Infamous Foundry. Inspired by the 1970's tennis, dart and ping pong fashion.

Call for Entries: New Talent Annual 2009: The world’s most respected international student competition and showcase. Entry deadline: May 26, 2008.

Students, Instructors, & Administrators: Submit your students’ latest Design, Advertising & Photography work to Graphis New Talent. Get the recognition you deserve, and share your work with peers and hiring industry professionals. Every student included earns a Graphis Gold Award, and standout instructors earn our Platinum Award!

Register online at: www.graphis.com.

Click on Call For Entry. Complete instructions, forms, art specifications, shipping and payment procedures may be obtained at our online entry website.

Entry fees: $40 a piece for a single entry $120 for a series (3 or more pieces from a single campaign)

All entrants & subscribers are eligible for a 40% discount on New Talent Annual 2009. Get 50% off Graphis Books year after year with Standing Orders. Visit www.graphis.com for details.

“Graphis is mega. It’s the holy grail of Design. The golden rule. The mack daddy. Believe me, you want to be in this.” - Douglas Lloyd, Creative Director, Lloyd & Co.

• Items in this city store so Swede | news-press.com | The News-Press
  Talking Shop with Richard Warren, owner of A Swedish Affair in Fort Myers. Richard and his wife Yvonne opened A Swedish Affair 23 years ago. The store carries all things Scandinavian, including T-shirts, folk dolls, handcrafted items, porcelain and jewelr
  (tags: usa, sw)

Morten Iveland has added a photo to the pool:

A custom font i'm working on.

Known and admired for her multi-tasking talents as well as her signature style, Electrolux announced today that it is tapping Kelly Ripa for the U.S. launch of its new premium appliance line – a stylishly sleek new collection that’s poised to transform America’s kitchens with a fresh jolt of European style and performance, helping today’s busy families do more — better, faster and easier.

As part of its North American launch, Electrolux also announced that it will be joining Kelly Ripa in supporting the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, a cause important to its target consumer and to Ms. Ripa. “Ovarian cancer affects thousands of women and their families each year,” notes Ripa. “That’s why I am so grateful to Electrolux for stepping up and helping me to raise money and awareness to help fight this insidious disease.”

In addition to an interactive web site promotion that will raise money for OCRF while engaging consumers in a fun, first of its kind on-line game where they collect Kelly Ripa’s collection of designer handbags for a chance to win a suite of Electrolux premium kitchen appliances. , Electrolux is also donating a portion of retail sales of select appliances to OCRF, with the goal of raising more than $500,000 over the next two years to help fight ovarian cancer.

Link: http://assets.m80im.com/resources/electrolux/electrolux.htm

The Time of Distance - 10 days of simultaneous precisely synchronized events taking place in both Helsinki and Berlin. These events, which comprise of a visual art exhibition, one-off dance and performance pieces, short film screenings and related gallery talks are scheduled to run like clock-work.

The participating artists exhibit work in both cities concurrently or will make work as a development on the curatorial theme. Examples of the type of work we are hosting are: performances which are live-streamed to the other city, double installations, radio broadcasts, photo’s which only make sense when they are coupled together…

Program Schedule: 18th April 08: Exhibition opening with performances by Arne De Boever and Julia Prezewowsky Berlin(GMT+1) 18:00 FIELD Live / Web-stream Helsinki (GMT+2) 19:00 Maa-tila Live / Web stream Jaakko Eino Kalevi Berlin (GMT+1) 20:00 FIELD Live Helsinki (GMT+2) 21:00 Myymälä2 Web-stream

19th April 08: Exhibition opening with karaoke performance with Patrick Jambon, performance by Linda Franke Berlin (GMT+1) 19:00 Hope&Glory Web-stream Helsinki (GMT+2) 20:00 Myymälä2 / Maa-tila Live

19th- 27th April 08: Mulholland Dr. - Marathon / live performance by Sanni Priha Berlin (GMT+1) ongoing, Hope&Glory Live Helsinki (GMT+2) ongoing, Maa-tila Web-stream

20th April 08: Gallery discussion with Arne De Boever and James Thompson & Guest Berlin (GMT+1) 14:00 FIELD Live Helsinki (GMT+2) 15:00 Maa-tila Web-stream

23rd April 08: Synchronized Gallery Discourse, Residency artist: Mari Keski-Korsu Berlin (GMT+1) 19:00 FIELD Live Helsinki (GMT+2) 20:00 Maa-tila Web-stream Supported by the Arts Council of Finland

25th April 08: Transidency & Future Shorts - Short film evening with Q&A Berlin (GMT+1) ACUD 19:00 Helsinki (GMT+2) Kino Andorra 20:00 Tickets 5 E

26th April 08: Discourse Lab @ FIELD with Christine Nippe, Morton Dysgaard & Guest Speaker (to be announced) Berlin (GMT+1) 19:00 FIELD Live / Web-stream Helsinki (GMT+2) 20:00 Maa-tila Live / Web-stream

27th April 08: Exhibition Finnisage * Berlin (GMT+1) 17:00 Hope&Glory Helsinki (GMT+2) 18:00 Maa-tila *FIELD project space exhibition runs till 10th May

This exhibition is initiated and curated by Kym Ward & Elina Vainio and co-curated by FIELD project space & Transidency

/////ARTISTS Morten Dysgaard, Linda Franke, Christiane Frey, Ailsa Ferrier, Laura Horelli&Anu Pennanen, Patrick Jambon, Jaakko Eino Kalevi, Mari Keski-Korsu, Robert Mathy, Tea Mäkipää, Julia Prezewowsky, Sonya Schönberger, Sanni Priha, Henna&Elina Vainio

/////TICKETS All the events are free unless otherwise stated

/////VENUES Berlin: FIELD, Augustr. 65, 10117 Hope&Glory, Emserstr. 126, 12051 ACUD Kunstverein, Veteranenstr. 21, 10119

Helsinki Maa-Tila, Albertinkatu 19, 00100 Myymälä2, Uudenmaankatu 23, 00100 Andorra Kino, Eerikinkatu 11, 00100

If you’re in London, Berlin, Madrid, Brussels or Milan, keep an eye out for giant AEG-Electrolux posters which are measuring and displaying ambient noise levels. The giant posters created by blowUp media are driving a unique campaign to promote a “silent” washing machine from AEG-Electrolux, a leading European white goods brand. Decibel meters are being installed in and around a number of the sites to monitor ambient noise levels. These are then connected remotely to LED screens embedded in the giant poster creative where the current decibel level will be displayed. The decibel levels at each site location will also be fed to a campaign website (in UK, www.noiseawareness.co.uk) to allow users to compare noise levels in the five cities as well as find out more information on this issue.

CLUB 2008-02-04 Talking, Working or Brandy: Lammhults Club Brings People Together. Design: Johannes Foersom/Peter Hiort Lorenzon

Club, the new chair from Lammhults designers Johannes Foersom & Peter Hiort-Lorenzen, is a comfortable alternative to stiff, formal meeting chairs. Designed to be grouped together wherever people meet for conversation, Club provides a relaxed setting for organized or informal exchanges of ideas and information. Club comfort suits cozy reading of a book at home or waiting for an airplane in a crowded lounge.

Link: Lamhults

Calls for Urban Screens Melbourne 08 – film&video, multimedia projects and poster presentations

Urban Screens Melbourne 08 Conference “mobile publics” 3 – 5 October 2008 Multimedia exhibition 3 – 8 October 2008 www.urbanscreens08.net

Deadline for submission (poster presentations): 24. May 2008 Deadline for submission (fim&video/projects): 31. May 2008

Urban Screens Melbourne 08 is the third, ground-breaking international conference and multimedia exhibition in a series of worldwide events around the redefinition of a growing digital infrastructure of moving images in public space. It will mark the official launch of the International Urban Screens Association and will take place 3.-8. October at Federation Square, Melbourne. Federation Square is a unique cultural and community oriented multimedia precinct, centred around a significant 38m2 public LED screen.

CALL FOR FILM&VIDEO and MULTIMEDIA PROJECTS ********************

The Urban Screens 08 exhibition is looking for Artists, Urban Poets, Filmmakers and Multimedia and Interaction Designers to submit film and videos or multimedia, interactive or participatory screen based projects. A large diverse urban screens infrastructure is available at Federation Square.

Criteria

We are looking for existing and potentially adaptable projects that interrogate screen media as a medium| content and tackle the festival’s key themes of issues of building community and sustainability in relation to water. These two complex themes aim to provoke discussion and spark questions such as: What is community in times of the high-speed, global flows of the new media scape? How can we explore the diversity of water, an element, essential to the existence of life on earth?

For a detailed description of the event and curatorial framework see www.urbanscreens08.net/art-+-events For a detailed description of Fed Squares infrastructure see www.urbanscreens08.net/technical

The projects should preferably employ one or more of the listed existing infrastructure of urban screens of Fed Square and should consider and adapt to the special circumstances of outdoor public spaces, transforming urban spaces to foster dialogue and community engagement. We are looking for:

A) Film and video such as

• Video art, text art, animation, animated slideshows, or fictional advertisements and community information (under 3 min.)
• Silent works especially for the joint broadcasting or daily screenings in-between (under 3 min.)
• Short experimental films, documentary and journalistic content (under 15 min.)
• Small curated programs of the mentioned type of works

B) Interactive, performance based or participatory projects such as

• Interactive software applications for urban screens
• Participatory community projects using creative digital practices
• Live media art merging performance and new media
• Community displays for education and exchange
• Virtual/real world hybrid projects using streaming content
• Real-time generated content
• Screen related sound experiments
• Digital storytelling projects
• Mobile games using urban space as social and educative playground
• Connecting mobile culture of locative media with urban screens

CALL FOR POSTERS ********************

To bridge the Conference and the Multimedia Exhibition, we are looking for posters about the latest development of Urban Screens. They will be displayed in a public exhibition in the Atrium next to the conference venue. Conference will be encouraged to get in exchange with the authors during the breaks. Eight submissions will be additionally shown in an experimental presentation on the four outdoor I-sites around Federation Square. These are equiped with an integrated screen, which offer the possibility to present remotely via scheduled skype sessions, while the audience gathers in groups around them.

Criteria

Posters are aimed at presenting the latest development in this interdisciplinary field of Urban Screens. Posters are ideal for presenting speculative, late-breaking results of ongoing research projects, drawing important conclusions from practical experiments, for giving an introduction to innovative art works or new practical design applications, reports on cutting edge technologies and content management systems under development.

Posters will be reviewed by the Poster Committee, soon to be announced. Authors of accepted submissions must provide a one or two page summary for publication in the conference proceedings. Selected submissions will also be published on-line on the International Urban Screens Association website.

APPLICATION AND DETAILED CALL ********************

Please have a look at the detailed calls and the official online forms for application, available at: http://www.urbanscreens08.net/callforprojects

CONTACT

exhibition@urbanscreens.net
(please use the subject “USM08 - question concerning the CALL”)

MAJOR EXHIBITION SPONSORS

International Urban Screens Association - www.urbanscreens.net Fed Square Pty Ltd - www.federationsquare.com Barco ‘visibly yours’ - www.barco.com Circus - www.circusexp.com Pinnacle ‘Production Services’ - www.pinnacleps.com.