A new friend in NYC just sent me the link to the Chalkbot created by Deeplocal for Nike and the 2009 Tour de France, the idea lives on the website ‘Wear Yellow’.

In short you can send a message of hope and inspiration to cancer survivors and suffers. The idea is brought to life by placing that message in front of Lance Armstrong as he rides. The message is printed on the road, photographed and then sent back to a gallery where the author can forward to friends.

A brilliant example of digital physical ideas.

The video explains it better than I do.

Woke this morning to discover I’m being followed by ‘Lost in Bondi’, thought it might be a backpacker, but no its the beautiful looking ‘indie’ the cat – who is sadly lost. Tweet, blog, put up posters – spread the word. Let’s find ‘indie’.

20/12/2008, UPDATE: Indie has been found… !!!!

Support and do more at XDRTB.org

The split screen shows a day in the life of two kids, in such different worlds; one in the comfort of a typical western home and school, the other woken with a kick and set to work in a factory. Makes you realise how fortunate we are to be able to nurture and grow our children in relative comfort and safety. The clip raises awareness of the issue of child exploitation and human trafficking that needs our attention and support.

The idea was from Sydney agency Colman Rasic Carrasco. The video was created by Revolver Film, the left-had split screen was filmed at my partners little boys school, right here in sunny old Sydney.

Lets hope more bands see the value in letting their songs be used for good. The power and the reach of this collaboration will no doubt be astounding.

It was raining, but it didn’t deter 20,000+ Sydneysiders from making a united stand on Global Warming. The national peaceful protest was organised by Climate Movement and through the Walk Against Warming website to get involved, visit these sites and sign the petition.

Its never to late, and lets face it – we can all help.

The secret’s out. Climate sceptics being funded by ExxonMobil can no longer hide behind the name of a front group. A new website – www.exxonsecrets.org – exposes the links between ExxonMobil money and the think tanks, associations and individuals denying global warming.

Don’t buy Mobil. Don’t buy Esso.

Via Greenpeace.org, attention drawn by information aesthetics, powered by They Rule

I ended up on a bit of a Google session and discovered that BrazilianArtists.net had details on the origin of the work.

Quote from Icaro Doria on ‘Meet the World’ campaign: “We started to research relevant, global, and current facts and, thus, came up with the idea to put new meanings to the colours of the flags. We used real data taken from the websites of Amnesty International and the UNO.

The campaign has been running in Portugal since January 2005. There are eight flags that portray very current topics like the division of opinions about the war in Iraq in the United States, the violence against women in Africa, the social inequality in Brazil, the drug trafficking in Columbia, Aids and malaria in Angola, etc.

With regards to the email presenting the campaign as being done by a Norwegian diplomat, this information is completely wrong. There is no Norwegian diplomat called Charung Gollar, there was no presentation in the UNO, and the campaign is not called ‘The Power of the Stars’. This was all invented and is going round the world via email.”

For a moment I thought the Norwegians had someone special on their diplomatic team, alas no, its the artists that find clear and simple ways to express whats happening in these countries. Massive shout to Icaro Doria, Luis Silva Dias, João Roque, Andrea Vallenti and João Roque of the ‘Meet the World’ flags campaign, its amazing what brilliant creative can do to create awareness and word of mouth.