While Noosa might be most well known internationally as a tourist destination, it is also advancing its profile as a place where people come to learn and be creative. The ‘Balance-Unbalance 2013' International Conference is a landmark event for the region, building on our reputation as a hub of green art and community action.

International, national and local artists, academics, scientists, philosophers, politicians, policy makers and community activists will descend on Noosa in late May to participate in the Balance-Unbalance 2013 conference. The conference program will feature over 100 different papers and activities which will investigate and act on sustainability and environmental issues through the arts, science and technology. The conference grew out of the academic and seminar program component of ‘Floating Land' - expanding to become the complementary event that is the ‘Balance-Unbalance 2013'. The conference goal is to explore intersections between nature, science, technology and society as we move into an era of both unprecedented ecological threats and trans-disciplinary possibilities.

The concept for ‘Balance-Unbalance' was developed by Dr Ricardo Dal Farra, multimedia artist, researcher and performer based at Concordia University in Canada and he continues on as one of the conference convenors. Previous ‘Balance-Unbalance' events were held in Argentina in 2010 and Montreal in 2011. Noosa Biosphere recognised the value of Balance-Unbalance and, in 2012, was successful in its bid to host the event. A range of partnerships, including local ones, with CQUniversity, Sunshine Coast Council, Tourism Noosa and the Sunshine Coast Creative Alliance have led towards Balance-Unbalance 2013 being hosted in Noosa Biosphere, Queensland's first UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. The 2013 conference theme, ‘Future Nature, Future Culture[s]' is aimed to provoke discussion and reflection around what our future might hold and how trans-disciplinary thought and action could be used as tools for positive change.

The conference organisers have reviewed submissions from 24 countries to shape up a most dynamic program. Features of the program include over 120 presenters, three keynote panels, 12 Pecha Kucha presentations, 60 papers, 25 performances/installations and 30 panels/trans-disciplinary activities.

Participants will get to hear about what cities might be like in the future, how the Red Cross uses the arts, and even gaming, to explore climate change and disaster management, and how Gubbi Gubbi people are reviving Indigenous knowledge through the Gun'doo Yang'ga'man ark canoe project. Attendees can also experience installations such as ‘Audio Peacocks', ‘Listening to Mountain's', ‘Hug@tree' and ‘Haute-Couture Horticulture'.

The three-day conference will take place 31 May to 2 June 2013 at The J (Noosa) and CQUniversity Noosa, with participants also visiting Lake Cootharaba for the Floating Land 2013 opening.

Registrations for the three day program are now open. A limited number of one day tickets will also be available for the Friday program at The J and also for the Pecha Kucha Night event. These will go on sale later this month, links for ticketing are on the website (www.balance-unbalance2013.org).

Full Conference: $350/$250 Concession

Friday Registration: $130/$100 Concession

Friday evening Pecha Kucha Plus: $25/$20 Concession

Join us at The J in Noosa Junction for a dynamic day of keynote presentations, interactive artist forums and performances from leading international, national and local presenters.

Keynote snapshots

Andrea Polli (USA) is a digital media artist living in New Mexico. Her work with science, technology and media has been presented widely in over 100 presentations, exhibitions and performances internationally, has been recognised by numerous grants, residencies and awards including a NYFA Artist's Fellowship, the Fulbright Specialist Award and the UNESCO Digital Arts Award. She currently works in collaboration with atmospheric scientists to develop systems for understanding storm and climate through sound (called sonification). In 2007/2008 she spent seven weeks in Antarctica on a National Science Foundation funded project -www.90degreessouth.org. As a member of the steering committee for New York 2050, a wide-reaching project envisioning the future of the New York City region, she worked with city planners, environmental scientists, historians and other experts to look at the impact of climate on the future of human life both locally and globally. Andrea will explore the conference theme through the presentation of her practice and key projects including ‘Particle Falls'. This project creates visual waterfalls drawing on real-time data about the atmosphere.

Tony Fry (Australia) is Professor of Design Futures at Griffith University, Queensland College of Art, Brisbane, Australia. He is also an award-winning designer, a theorist, a farmer, and director of a project developing an academy of Indigenous-based creative practices in East Timor. The author of nine books, Tony is regarded as one of the most progressive thinkers on design in the world today. Of his acclaimed book, Design as Politics, a reviewer commented: "To say it's ‘timely' is an understatement. Fry offers us one of the most prescient theses for the design of a different possible future." Tony Fry's keynote will focus around the concept of the ‘Future of the Human', future settlement and exploring exactly what will need to change and how we ‘create' it.

Ramon Guardans (Spain) - Artist and scientist Ramon Guardans traces pollutants and their effect on local and global populations, health and environments and examines the relevance of different ways of life in understanding exposure. He has been involved for 20 years in international action on atmospheric and marine pollution including the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) and the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP). Ramon's keynote will provoke new ways of understanding Atmospheric and Marine Pollution through art and trans-disciplinary thinking.

Fee Plumley (Australia) is an artist, creative producer, consultant, speaker, blogger and self confessed techno-evangelist. At university her experience in Theatre Design and Technology was side-lined by a growing interest in the (then) quite new phenomenon known as the Internet. Seduced by this new digital culture, she went on to obtain a Masters in Interactive Multimedia Production. This kick-started (trans)media arts practice as a creative producer, combining technology, performance and literature. As co-founder of UK based company the-phone-book Limited (2000-2008), she was best known for encouraging people to be creative with their mobile phones at a time when most people didn't realise the power they carried in their pockets. Now undertaking a ‘reallybigroadtrip', she is travelling around Australia in her ‘bus' blogging, tweeting and teaching as she goes. She eagerly awaits the arrival of the National Broadband Network and the chance to endorse its wealth of creative opportunity across Australia.

Chair: Leah Barclay

Tony Fry (Australia), Michel Tuffery (New Zealand), Fee Plumley (Australia)

Chair: Ricardo Dal Farra

Andrea Polli (USA), Ramón Guardans (Spain), Nina Czegledy (Canada)

Chair: Lisa Chandler

Pablo Suarez (USA/Africa), Sue Davis (Sunshine Coast), Feral Arts (Brisbane), Shakthi Sivanathan (Sydney)

Come and meet selected 2013 Floating Land lead artists and Balance-Unbalance presenters from across the world and hear about visions for the future at our Pecha Kucha Night! Hosted in collaboration with the Sunshine Coast Creative Alliance, this event will showcase the core ideas of Balance-Unbalance through a series of dynamic visual presentations. The night will also include a curated selection of performances from leading local and international artists responding to the conference themes. Presenters will include:

Michel Tuffery (NZ) / James Muller (AU)

Pablo Surez (USA/Africa)

Bianca Beetson (Qld)

Ricardo Dal Farra (Montreal / Argentina)

Shakthi Sivanathan (AU)

Fee Plumley (AU)

Andrea Polli (USA)

Ruth Irwin (NZ)

Linsey Pollack (AU)

Kate Chapman (Indonesia/USA)

Vanessa Tomlinson (AU)

Paul Bishop (AU)

Pablo Suarez is the Associate Director for Research and Innovation at the International Red Cross / Red Crescent Climate Action Centre. He leads the team's initiatives linking applied knowledge with humanitarian work - as well as new approaches to climate risk management, including participatory games for learning and dialogue. Pablo is based in Boston, USA, and oversees the Climate Centre's work in Africa and the Americas. His work as a researcher focuses on the integration of climate information into decision making, and on institutional integration across disciplines and geographic scales. He has consulted for the United Nations Development Program, the World Food Program, Oxfam America, and about twenty other international humanitarian and development organisations, working in more than 50 countries.

Bianca is one of the Gubbi Gubbi people of the Sunshine Coast. Her work is instantly recognisable, as she always uses the colour pink. She is a member of the Campfire Group as well as the ProppaNOW artists group, both based in Brisbane. She has shown her work in a number of exhibitions including the '2nd Asia Pacific Triennal' at the Queensland Art Gallery in 1996/1997, ‘Black Humour' at the Canberra Contemporary Art Space in 1997 as well as the 2001 exhibition "Gatherings, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art From Queensland Australia" in Brisbane. Furthermore, Bianca's work is concerned with her individual identity as an indigenous Australian, as well as the identity of Australia as a nation in terms of its history and governance.

Linsey Pollak is well known all around Australia as a musician, instrument maker, composer, musical director and community music facilitator. His work as Community Music advocate has taken him all over the country for the last 20 years working as Musician-in-residence in communities from Hobart to Broome. He has also performed at most major Festivals around Australia and recorded 21 albums with various groups. He has worked as a musical instrument maker for over 20 years and has designed a number of new wind instruments as well as specialising in woodwind instruments from Eastern Europe. Linsey has a reputation for making and playing instruments made from rubber gloves, carrots, watering cans, chairs, brooms, bins, and other found objects. More recently he has played and looped samples of everything from voices to frogs, as in his current solo show "The Extinction Room" which creates music from the sounds of endangered and extinct animals. A version of this work has been redesigned for Floating Land as ‘Cries Across the Water'

Kate Chapman is the Acting Director of Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. Over the past 10 years Kate has mapped all sorts of things. Everything from mosquitoes, to individual houses for e911, to hurricanes and, occasionally, even things that don't exist, such as augmented reality games. A traditional geographer by training, she switched to the neogeography realm a couple years ago. Currently she is one of the individuals behind the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT). HOT utilizes the tools and techniques of OpenStreetMap to help community prepare for disaster and rebuild when a disaster does strike.

Paul Bishop is an Ecological Actor & Agent of Change. He is Chief Inspiration Officer of Arts Evolution. On One Hand Arts Evolution is inspiring an 'evolution of the arts'; on the other it is enabling 'the art of evolution' for individuals and groups, by communicating the values of social, economic, environmental and cultural change, toward sustainable human futures. Despite general beliefs, there are many stories in this arena that are breathtakingly uplifting. Bishop is also an acclaimed Australian television and theatre actor and has recently shifted into politics as the Division 10 Councillor for Redland City Council in Queensland.

Saturday 1 June, 8:30-3pm & Sunday 2 June, 8:30am-6pm

Two days full of papers, posters, trans-disciplinary activities, artist panels, installations, performances and virtual presentations will be staged. Artists from Floating Land 2013 will participate in conversations about their work in a series of featured panels alongside other international artists, scientists, philosophers and community practitioners. The diversity of parallel sessions focus on specific themes including art/science collaborations, creative ecologies, green art, environmental sonic art, environmental philosophy, community engagement and biosphere reserves and more - there should be something to interest everyone. Installation snapshots

Audio Peacocks by Benoit Maubrey and Audio Gruppe - Live performance with electroacoustic instruments shaped into a peacock's fan-like plumage that is highly directional - projecting the sound into a space like an oversized radar dish.

Hug@tree by Mónica Mendes, Pedro Ângelo and Nuno Correia - A real tree instrumented with a microcontroller and sensors detects participants' hugs and transmits a video loop of each hug to a real-time video interactive tangible interface or projection, all linked to an online platform.

Haute-Couture Horticulture by Alicia Marván - A site-specific installation and performance project bridging dance, sculpture and fashion.

For further information contact:

leahbarclay@me.com 0410 435996

balanceunbalance2013@gmail.com 0415 416 434