Latest news with #PeterNoble
Sydney Morning Herald
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘It's a clarion call': Bluesfest boss delivers update on festival's future
Byron Bay Bluesfest will return after all, bucking a global industry trend and despite its director's claim that the 2025 edition was its last. More than 40 music festivals across Australia have been cancelled since 2022 after the COVID-19 pandemic decimated the live music sector. Bluesfest appeared set to join the list when it announced its artist line-up in August, with bombastic festival director Peter Noble declaring the 2025 event would be the 'last ever'. That announcement proved marketing gold, with 97 per cent of tickets snapped up – and Saturday entry sold out – before gates opened on Thursday afternoon. 'We've had the highest attendance of any Australian festival since pre-COVID at 109,000 attendances – the third-biggest event we've done in the history of the festival ... festivals are back,' Noble said in a statement on Tuesday. 'Bluesfest fans have kept this dream alive. It's a clarion call for me. People want this event. People want it to continue.' Bluesfest is among festivals to benefit from the NSW government's $2.25 million contemporary music festival viability fund. 'The festival circuit is a vital part of the live music industry which employs almost 15,000 people,' Arts Minister John Graham said on Sunday.
The Age
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
‘It's a clarion call': Bluesfest boss delivers update on festival's future
Byron Bay Bluesfest will return after all, bucking a global industry trend and despite its director's claim that the 2025 edition was its last. More than 40 music festivals across Australia have been cancelled since 2022 after the COVID-19 pandemic decimated the live music sector. Bluesfest appeared set to join the list when it announced its artist line-up in August, with bombastic festival director Peter Noble declaring the 2025 event would be the 'last ever'. That announcement proved marketing gold, with 97 per cent of tickets snapped up – and Saturday entry sold out – before gates opened on Thursday afternoon. 'We've had the highest attendance of any Australian festival since pre-COVID at 109,000 attendances – the third-biggest event we've done in the history of the festival ... festivals are back,' Noble said in a statement on Tuesday. 'Bluesfest fans have kept this dream alive. It's a clarion call for me. People want this event. People want it to continue.' Bluesfest is among festivals to benefit from the NSW government's $2.25 million contemporary music festival viability fund. 'The festival circuit is a vital part of the live music industry which employs almost 15,000 people,' Arts Minister John Graham said on Sunday.
ABC News
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Bluesfest goers say they feel betrayed by 'final festival' marketing
Byron Bay's Bluesfest has been resurrected for Easter next year, but it is leaving a bitter taste in the mouths of music lovers who bought into the 2025 event believing it would be the last. Local Jeff Barnes said he stopped attending the festival years ago because it had gotten too big but bought tickets this year to mark what he thought was an historic event. On Good Friday he said an "unbelievable" announcement rang out over the festival grounds spruiking 2026 ticket sales. Jeff Barnes (left) at the festival in earlier times with friend Mick Gunn. ( Supplied: Jeff Barnes ) "I just thought, 'We've been screwed over'," he said. "Officially this was the last ever Bluesfest and we felt like we had to be a part of it. " We just feel like we have been totally betrayed. " Bluesfest founder Peter Noble has previously said 2025 could be the last Bluesfest event. ( Supplied: Bluesfest ) In a statement, Bluesfest said this year's event had attracted 109,000 patrons, the third largest crowd in the event's 35 years. Festival director Peter Noble said the support of patrons and artists since the announcement that 2025 might be the final year had been a "clarion call". "That support means Bluesfest fans have kept this dream alive," he said. "People want this event, people want it to continue." Marketing strategy Ticket sales to the 2025 event gained momentum after the announcement in August last year it would be the last. By October, the promoter was advising its mailing list that 80 per cent of tickets had been sold. Speaking at a federal parliamentary inquiry into the live music industry in October, Mr Noble conceded the suggestion Bluesfest might be ending was part of a strategy to sell tickets. "They're going to sit on that money unless you find a way to make them spend it," he told the inquiry. "It's Taylor Swift coming, it's Cold Chisel's tour which is once every five or 10 years, or Bluesfest might just be ending." The festival's director says good ticket sales for 2025 were a "clarion call" to run the event again. ( ABC North Coast: Hannah Ross ) Mr Noble told the inquiry the tactic had helped the festival sell tickets. "We made very sure underneath that we said, 'We don't want this to be the last festival, we're doing everything we can for it not to be', but in the end that's the sort of stuff you've gotta do nowadays," he said. " And is that right … [that] people have got to be coerced to spend their money? " Boon for business The news Bluesfest will be on in 2026 is music to the ears of the Byron Bay Chamber of Commerce. President Matthew Williamson said the event was a vital part of the region's economy, particularly following the demise of other major festivals in Byron Shire. "These types of events allow businesses to keep their heads above water," he said. Matt Williamson says news of the 2026 event is welcome, despite "vaudevillian" tactics. ( Supplied ) Mr Williamson said he hoped public sentiment over the "final Bluesfest" marketing would not deter people from attending in future. "I think Mr Noble's approach to marketing is his own business," he said. "There has always been a little bit of a vaudevillian nature to Bluesfest, and its promotion, so if people choose to not respond to that, well, then that's up to them. "He's free to promote his business as he sees fit." Traffic woes Byron Shire Council said it was aware of reports of problems with patron transport, parking, and pedestrian control. The council said it would be meeting with festival organisers to look at the event's management and what needed to be improved or changed prior to the next event. Mr Williamson said the situation was disappointing. "A lot of people come from out of the region and they want to enjoy the beaches and go to the shops and have a nice meal on town, and also go out to the festival," he said. "People being able to move back and forth between Byron town and the festival is really important to local businesses." Coronavirus restrictions have hit live music and festivals particularly hard. ( ABC: Margaret Burin ) Mr Noble said there were always aspects of major events that could be improved, but people had been warned to book bus tickets and parking ahead of time. "It's very difficult. We don't know how to plan if we don't know what's happening," the festival director said. " Every single week we said, 'Buy your bus tickets so we know what to put on'. Then people don't, and then that entitlement jumps up at you. " ABC North Coast — local news in your inbox Get our local newsletter, delivered free each Friday Your information is being handled in accordance with the Email address Subscribe
Perth Now
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
The beat goes on as Bluesfest back in business
Thousands of adoring music fans will see their favourite bands take centre stage again as the iconic Byron Bay Bluesfest confirms it will return for an encore despite fears it was folding for good. More than 40 music festivals across Australia have been cancelled since 2022 after the COVID-19 pandemic decimated the live music sector. Bluesfest appeared set to join the list when it announced its artist line-up in August, with bombastic festival director Peter Noble declaring the 2025 event would be the last. The "last ever" announcement ignited demand, with 97 per cent of tickets snapped up - and Saturday entry sold out - before gates opened on Thursday afternoon. "We've had the highest attendance of any Australian festival since pre-COVID at 109,000 attendances - the third-biggest event we've done in the history of the festival ... festivals are back," Mr Noble said in a statement on Tuesday. "Bluesfest fans have kept this dream alive. It's a clarion call for me. People want this event. People want it to continue." The NSW government has also stepped in to disburse $2.25 million in emergency funding as part of its Contemporary Music Festival Viability Fund, with five festivals including Bluesfest to receive up to $500,000 each. "The festival circuit is a vital part of the live music industry which employs almost 15,000 people," Arts Minister John Graham said on Sunday. "It's too important to lose, that's why we're backing festivals with emergency funding and reforms that bring down their costs." The festival funding will also benefit Lost Paradise on the Central Coast, Your and Owls in Wollongong and Listen Out and Field Day in Sydney. Australian Festival Association managing director Olly Arkins said the financial shot in the arm could not have come at a better time. "At a time when costs are up and ticket sales are down, there was a huge risk we wouldn't see some festivals continue in NSW," they told AAP. "This funding package is really about trying to keep as many of our favourite and loved festivals going but ... hopefully that provides an environment for new and upcoming festivals where the regulatory burden will be lower." A report from the Bluesfest organisers estimated the 2024 festival alone contributed more than $230 million to the NSW economy. Credited with breaking artists including Jack Johnson, Ben Harper and Michael Franti's Spearhead in Australia, Bluesfest relocated from the centre of Byron Bay to a permanent home at Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm in 2010. This year's line-up featured headliners including Crowded House, Tones and I, Gary Clark Jr, Tom Morello, Hilltop Hoods, Missy Higgins and Rag'n'Bone Man.
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Some Scientists Say Our Cells May Be Conscious
The biological cycle of our existence seems relatively straightforward: we're born, we live, we die. The end. But when you examine existence at the cellular level, things get a bit more interesting. You, me, and all of the 108 billion or so Homo sapiens who've ever walked the Earth have all been our own constellation of some 30 trillion cells. Each of our bodies is a collective organism of living human cells and microbes working in cooperation to create what our minds view as 'life.' However, a growing number of new studies have found that, at least for some cells, death isn't the end. Instead, it's possibly the beginning of something new and wholly unexpected. A growing snowball of research concerning a new class of AI-designed multicellular organisms known as 'xenobots' is gaining scientific attention for their apparent autonomy. In September 2024, Peter Noble, Ph.D., a microbiologist from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, along with Alex Pozhitkov, Ph.D., a bioinformatics researcher at the City of Hope cancer center, detailed this research on the website The Conversation. Xenobots are cells that form new roles beyond their original biological function—for example, using hairlike cilia for locomotion rather than transporting mucus. Because they appear to reassemble into this new form and function, the authors argue that xenobots form a kind of 'third state' of life, wherein cells can reorganize after the death of an organism to form something new. These forms likely wouldn't materialize in nature, but xenobots show that cells have a surprising ability to adapt to changes in their environment. Experiments with human cells, or 'anthrobots,' exhibit this behavior, too. 'Taken together, these findings … challenge the idea that cells and organisms can evolve only in predetermined ways,' the authors write in The Conversation. 'The third state suggests that [an organism's] death may play a significant role in how life transforms over time.' The implications for these cellular robots, or biobots, are pretty big—imagine tailor-made medicines crafted from your own tissues to avoid a dangerous immune response. But they also form a complicated picture of what a cell actually is. At least, that's what evolutionary biologist and physician William Miller thinks. He's the co-author of the 2023 book The Sentient Cell, which explores ideas found in the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) theory suggesting that cells retain a kind of consciousness. Miller believes that xenobots are just another example of how we don't give credit to the inherent cognitive—or even conscious—abilities of the cells that make up our bodies. 'The organism as a whole no longer responds as it had, but subsets of cells are active, decision-making, and problem-solving,' Miller says. 'So this fundamentally reconstitutes how we see the living frame … the fundamental unit of biological agency is the conscious cell.' Consciousness is a notoriously slippery term, and one whose definition can change based on fields of a study, context, or even across time. Famously, the 17th century philosopher, mathematician, scientist, and all-around smart guy René Descartes thought only the human mind was conscious (which led to some inhumane experiments). Thankfully, today science recognizes various types of consciousness throughout the animal kingdom, but when it comes to forms of life fundamentally unlike us, human biases of what can be conscious or intelligent slowly creep in. 'We, as humans, have very limited capacity and finely honed ability to see intelligence in medium-sized objects moving at medium speeds through three-dimensional space,' says Tufts University developmental and synthetic biologist Michael Levin, Ph.D., in a video exploring cellular intelligence. His lab constructed xenobots, and he says human beings are bad at recognizing intelligence when it's 'extremely small or extremely large.' For Miller, the concept of a sentient cell is a fundamental sea change in biology that challenges some Neo-Darwinian ideas like 'survival of the fittest.' Because cells must work in concert to be successful, a more accurate microbial catchphrase might be 'I serve myself best by serving others,' Miller the intelligent cell at the center of biology 'spills out an entirely new biological narrative where genes are not controlling, genes are tools. In which we understand why organisms choose to stick together in their trillions, to solve problems, [for] decision-making, mutual support, partnerships, synergies, co-dependencies, collaboration—it's not survival of the fittest,' Miller says. Many scientists aren't sold on this brave new future for biology. A 2024 letter published in the journal EMBO Reports describes CBC theory as 'merely an intellectual exercise without empirical evidence' and the authors remain equally skeptical of consciousness claims regarding xenobots or other 'third state' organisms. 'It's been known for maybe 75 years or more that cells can be induced to develop abnormally when taken out of context and cultured in vitro. This is nothing new,' University of California, Santa Cruz plant biologist Lincoln Taiz, Ph.D. and co-author of the letter, said in an email. 'When an insect herbivore secretes hormones into plant leaves, causing the leaves to form galls [abnormal growths] that serve as houses for the insect, is that a 'third state' of life?' Taiz has also tackled what he describes as 'myths' surrounding plant consciousness and co-authored a review in 2019 titled 'Plants Neither Possess nor Require Consciousness.' And for Wendy Ann Peer, Ph.D., a biologist at the University of Maryland who also served as co-author of the dissenting CBC letter, the idea of cellular consciousness simply lacks the scientific rigor necessary to be considered a theory. 'With the scientific method, there has to be a control and a hypothesis that's clearly tested,' Peer says. 'And the key for your hypothesis is that it has to be falsifiable.' When cells are taken out of context and are no longer exchanging information or signals from nearby cells, different genes can be expressed than what's normal, Peer says. Simply put, the xenobots are an advanced version of 'animal caps,' a well-known technique in developmental biology in which cells retain the ability to differentiate into other cells. While some experts say cells are more than just automatons following strict genetic orders, scientists still overwhelmingly define consciousness as pertaining to something with a nervous system and a brain capable of yielding a subjective point of view. However, despite this disagreement, both groups agree on at least one important point—understanding cells and exploring their many capabilities is a huge opportunity. Taiz compares the potential use of anthrobots in medicine to humans behaving as their own 'gall-forming insects in plants,' via altering the development of stem cells to create particular cell behaviors. Meanwhile, Miller agrees. 'Levin's work is a good example of trying to discern how to partner with cells to create living forms to help humans,' he says. 'We're learning to do what cells do, and we're going to partner with them if we're smart.' Conscious or not, it looks like cells will undoubtedly play a starring role in the unfolding future of human health. You Might Also Like Can Apple Cider Vinegar Lead to Weight Loss? Bobbi Brown Shares Her Top Face-Transforming Makeup Tips for Women Over 50
