NICK CAVE, THE SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE’S SPIRIT CREATURE. (Photo of Nick soundchecking in the Concert Hall in 2013. I found this on Pinterest without a photographer’s credit, sadly.) . . My book is available at editionsballard.etsy.com . . One of the strongest threads running through the book is how the Sydney Opera House has become … Continue reading Nick Cave, the Sydney Opera House’s Spirit Animal
MY SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE BOOK CHAPTER-BY-CHAPTER … The title is part of a comment made by architect Jorn Utzon in an interview he gave in 1970, three years before the building, completed by Australian architects Peter Hall, David Littlemore and Lionel Todd, opened. When Utzon was re-engaged as the Sydney Opera House’s architect in 1999 … Continue reading Sydney Opera House Book. Arup Chapter
THE ENCYCLOPAEDIC REACH OF MY SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE BOOK. (Image: Walsh Bay from Dawes Point by Reg Mombassa) The Opera House’s renewal is happening within a citywide renewal that I cover in my book. The expanding of the experiences at the cultural institutions around the city is connecting them up as if there’s a force … Continue reading Walsh Bay Renewal
THE NOTEBOOK AS MUSICIAN’S TOOL AND USEFUL MERCHANDISE … The photograph above is of Nick Cave using one of the bespoke notebooks that I make for him. The spine construction, which is inspired by the steps on the deck of Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House, which just seem to float, allow the book to … Continue reading Dreaming of Music Merchandising
Get Smart Season 1. Wile E Coyote. Experiments with Simple Machines by Mark Weakland. Wile E Coyote and the engineers in the C.O.N.T.R.O.L. Laboratory that created the devices that backfired so spectacularly on Agent 86 Maxwell Smart may not be the engineers to emulate but just thinking back to them makes me remember how much … Continue reading Engineering in Art, Engineering as Art
Press Release written by me, with Nick. He wrote the lyrics to this album in a notebook I made for him. (Facsimile shown here, that was part of a deluxe boxed set of the album) Also shown fully waterproof "rock writers reporters notebook" manufactured by me. Nick using one of my notebooks on the inner … Continue reading PUSH THE SKY AWAY ….
First published on the Huffington Post on 08/17/2010 Grinderman is the first great band of the Anthropocene Epoch. Their music is wild, primal, charming and funky and their lyrics are witty and clear-eyed observations of where we stand as a civilization at this moment in geologic time. “All of a sudden it seems impossible to … Continue reading Grinderman is the First Great Band of the Anthropocene Epoch
