Almost 100 street performers and buskers auditioned for 3 minutes each for a spot in this summer's Grate Performances series in the Big Apple's Duffy square.

Billed as the "crossroads of the world", the Times Square Alliance events are scheduled to start May 28th.

Sadly, New York City performers are usually restricted to performing underground in the city's dark and dirty subway system. This time, however, they were allowed to perform in the sunshine and be viewed by the general public.

Revealing some fresh faces, there were some old familiar ones with even the Naked Cowboy "butting" in.

See a Daily News video here.

(SWEDEN) Buskin' City is a unique busking development for Sweden with a soon to be launched website for pro street performers. Every participating city provides a pitch for an artist. It can be a street corner, on a square, or on a main shopping street.Bringing culture to unused public space is the main theme. National and International buskers book themselves easily on a city's calendar.

Halmstad, Varberg, Kalmar, Kristianstad, Jonkoping, Landskrona, and Vastervik are among the 7 cities that have signed up with more expected to join the movement. Each city grants a travel refund up to 1500SEK.

With new approximations about busking popping up almost daily, be sure to include this in your book of ideas. See if you can dream up new and interesting approaches to busking like the one above.

For more information,...

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(PRAGUE) Two installation artists have demonstrated a new technique for the ancient display of levitation. Here, we find the forces of physics re-worked in street-performing and busking.For centuries, Indian yogis have claimed to have mastered the powers of levitation. In reality, they've simply managed to tap into fundamental design principles and basic physics. The optical illusion results in a stunning presentation of levitation.

A few weeks ago, Michael Shermer, founder of Skeptic Magazine and the Skeptics Society, posted a photo on his Twitter account resulting in this world-wide revelation of clever busking feats.

While the installation art of the single guru floating has already been seen, we now have not one but two gurus on display without the need for any installation....

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(HONG KONG) A social-psychological study by the College of Professional and Continuing Education has shown some intriguing results when it comes to perceptions of public space.An affiliate of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the study revealed that public space was perceived as more restorative with street performance than without street performance. In addition, people who had engaged with street performance in the space perceived the space as more visitable, more restorative, and more preferable than people who had not engaged with street performance.

This can have an interesting and dynamic influence when it comes to public policy-making. When updating areas in need of an overhaul, busking and street performing can only help in restoring run-down regions.

Some scientific assumptions and limitations...

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(WWW) Every once in a while, the topic of how many buskers there actually are comes up. A few years ago, there was some discussion about the chaps who filmed their performce in Antarctica. It mentioned that all three almost froze as part of a world-wide performance. This only goes to show that buskers are on every continent.How many buskers are there in the whole wide world? Nobody really knows. We can only make an educated estimate based on limited data. An article at AskWonder.com tackles the issue although with certain assumptions. Do the math.

At sometime in the early 1990's, there were approximately ten thousand buskers in Europe alone. This would account for the majority of the planet. The rest of the continents would then total the answer.

Check the link below for more data on the global number...

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