A band that formed based on what should’ve been an empty promise, rehearsing at ridiculous hours of the night, unsigned, without an EP, describing their genre as Raverocktroscolotsastuff (a combination of rave, rock, electro, disco, and lots-a-stuff), have skyrocketed to the top of charts, winning Australian youth radio network Triple J’s unearthed, playing at Splendour in the Grass and now getting ready to rock out at Parklife, Meet ART vs SCIENCE.

Four months ago, a member of former rock outfit Roger Explosion promised a Sydney gig booker that they had a band to play a set at a Sydney club. By the time of their first gig later that week, they had sat down and written 7 songs in just 48 hours.

ART vs SCIENCE has three members, a set of drums, two keyboards and a guitar. Their sound is a little like The Presets or Cut Copy but not as serious, while at the same time like Daft Punk or Justice but not as electronic. Essentially it’s live dance music, their diverse influences ranging from Aerosmith to Justice and from The Hives to Michael Jackson, creating a very unique sound.

All three members went to high school together playing in the ‘nerdy school Jazz-band’. After school, having limited success with their rock band Roger Explosion they drastically changed their sound to cater to the growing dance/club audience.

Uni students in their spare time, the band was named because one of the keyboard players is pursuing a science degree, while the other is chasing an arts degree. Rehearsals are chaotic and lacking punctuality according to members, they are…

“Spontaneous. Dan will usually phone me up at 3am and yell at me until I agree to jam, whereby he comes over and bangs his hands on the keyboard until the cassette tape agrees with him.”

In their short existence, ART vs SCIENCE has won Triple J’s Unearthed competition, earning them a berth at Splendour in the Grass 2008. They received excellent reviews and you can see them at Parklife later this year.

With all this publicity and air time, amazingly, they remain unsigned, relaxed about not wanting to rush into things. They are planning to release their debut album in late November.

Their attitude in all this is refreshing, they say that they have no challenges, only fun. And their message to the masses … ‘Join Us’.

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In a world steered by trends, it’s easy for individuals to be consumed by the norm. But there are few creative groups pioneering a new style of non-conformist mobilization. They are known as a ‘flash mobbers’. A flash mob is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public space, perform an unusual action (usually freezing in motion) for a brief time, and then quickly disperse.
Bill Wasik, senior editor of Harper’s Magazine, created the first flash mobs in America at the turn of this century as a social experiment to highlight the atmosphere of cultural conformity and to poke fun at those wanting to be an ‘insider’.

No-longer used to poke fun at its own participants, the flash mob has turned on the masses. Flash mobs have been appeared everywhere from Beirut to Boston, and from Stockholm to Shanghai, and on the 24th of June this year, in Sydney.

On that date, over 1000 flash mobbers assembled to synchronize watches before taking positions at the staging point. The young and the old, those in hoodies and suits, large groups and solo performers; they all took Pitt St. Mall and Martin Place by surprise. Crowds of city workers looked on in confusion as their common surroundings froze in time.

But apart from being just a prank, flash mobs laugh at our conformity by showcasing the general public as oblivious. The confused public are forced to both comprehend that they have been taken by surprise, and also that the mimes are reflections of their own daily conformity.

‘A city of anarchy is a city of promise’, says the American novelist, Mark Helprin. And after seeing the response of Sydney to the flash mob, I’d have to agree.

You don’t have to venture far in Bangladesh to encounter a rickshaw, the nation’s most popular means of transport. Powered by the pedalling of wallahs (rickshaw men) through rain, hail or shining humidity, rickshaws are truly all purpose vehicles. The number of rickshaws in Dhaka (the capital of Bangladesh) is well over 600,000, and this makes for some stiff competition for business. But the crowds of rickshaw wallahs that glide through intersections and sit poised at shopping mall entrances posses a unique weapon in the conflict for customers — art.

Rickshaws in Bangladesh are decorated from bumper to bell with paintings, engravings, tassels, embroidery and even gold leaf in an attempt to attract customers. The art must be eye-catching but not too elaborate in case it disappears in clouds of exhaust before it can be fully appreciated. And rickshaw art is incredibly diverse as the rickshaw fleet owners, the ‘maliks’, each have their own tastes and budgets. This is contemporary art at its most contemporary: commercial, competitive and on a massive scale.

The centrepieces of these commuting creations are the backboards. The backboards are the largest blank canvases available and painted vibrantly with rural scenes, animals, the rich and the famous, great monuments and religious symbols. The artists that are commissioned to paint these scenes are known as ‘mistris’.

Rickshaw art is not just a form of expression, it’s also highly competitive. The mistris want contracts to decorate rickshaws and the maliks want to own the most elaborate vehicles in their quest to attract customers.

At peak hour in Dhaka you find that as the gridlock closes in, you can just lean back and appreciate the visions of thousands of maliks and the expressions of thousands of mistris that turn the streets into a vibrant canvas in the fading light.