Paola Talbert

 Kairos Moment of Truth, 2006

http://www.unitedgalleries.com.au

PROJECT: SUBNAMBULISM
 
A new collaboration between a band, a photographer and a VJ taking you deep into the ocean. This project explores the swirling imagery of Paola Talbert’s underwater photography projected by VJ Jax onto the mighty Figureight Dome with an oceanographic soundtrack by Psychic Date.

About the Artists
Psychic Date is one of Sydney’s prime exponents of 21st century ambient psychedelica having existed in one form or other for 12 years. Its current line up is Pete Jones, Hiske Weijers and Adam Roche.
Paula Talbert is a Sydney based photographer who has exhibited work since 1989 and is represented by United Galleries in Sydney and Perth. Her photography featured at Underbelly comes from an ongoing series that began in 2000.
VJ Jax aka Jack Barton is a Sydney based visual artist exploring the correlations and conflicts between the organic and mechanica, fusing analogue with digital!

Paola Talbert

Paola Talbert is a local artist who has been exhibiting her photography in Sydney and regional NSW for the past twenty years. Her underwater figure photography is part of a continuing series that has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne since 2001. In 2007, she was invited to exhibit in the exhibition ‘Faccia Lei – Portraits in Transition’ at the Spazio Thetis, Arsenale Novissimo, Venice. She lectures in Photography at Tin Sheds Artworkshop, University of Sydney and City East Community College. Currently Talbert’s photography is represented by United Galleries.
paola__t@hotmail.com
www.readbeard.org/beard/index.html 

integrity

http://www.sarahjanepell.com/Hydromedusa.htm

http://www.sarahjanepell.com/

Ikelite!!!! arrived

the dome arrived ... big eye on the underworld!

universal water west marrin

To what degree do we try to manipulate nature so that we can live where we want to, and how much do we go back to a system where we live where the earth supports us and the water supports us? 
In an age where we see water as a commodity to be bought and sold and we attempt to control it in the hope that it will serve our immediate needs, Dr. West Marrin invites us to reexamine our relationship to this substance, which the ancients viewed as a sentient being. He brings both his scientific training and his passion for surfing to explore water's geological and biochemical properties, its mystical qualities and the ecological issues that we must address if we are to survive.

free floating

Large bodies of water are frequently symbols of the unconscious
http://www.ted.com/speakers/roz_savage.html
We are proud to be able to say that our top model Napali is not only the sole transparent foldable kayak in the world; it is also among the very lightest, weighing only 26 lbs. The Napali masterpiece is an unrivaled blend of function and style. Voted by Fortune magazine as the top outdoor product of the year 2003 and by Time magazine as one of the coolest inventions of 2003, it was also nominated for the prestigious SGMA award ‘Sports Product of the Year 2004’, the Academy Award of the sporting goods industry.

The Napali is supported by a high-tech, durable and corrosion-resistant internal Carbon Kevlar frame system that comes equipped with a transparent military-grade Urethane skin, keeping the weight at a minimum. The leading-edge innovation allows the kayak to fold up small enough to fit into a hiking backpack, yet still offer the endless possibilities for discovery that transparent kayaks give. This makes the Napali the ideal kayak for long-distance touring, backcountry kayaking and vacational travels that require easy transport.

One may think that the high functionality and light weight of the boat were built at the expense of design. However, when you look at the Napali, you’ll soon forget the meaning of the word “compromise”. The Napali even offers extraordinary visual appeal with a dazzling look and graceful, elegant presence that is unparalleled in the world of kayaking. The sleek lines and soft curves of its streamlined body radiate pure dynamic energy, even when the Napali is only hanging on its rack, motionless. Outstanding quality and craftsmanship can be seen and felt in every detail of the Napali’s construction.

What has been accomplished in the engineering of the Napali is a new, fully versatile breed of kayak that is exceptional from any perspective. Clarity is its core, intelligent design its gift. It is not without a cause that the Museum of Modern Art in NYC decided to feature the Napali as a permanent piece of exhibition starting in Fall 2004. 

s k r y i n g

Scrying Water

Scrying comes from the Old English word descry meaning "to make out dimly" or "to reveal." Adding the prefix/suffix 'be' (often 'gye' in Germanic languages), gives us the modern word 'describe'. 

The technique of deliberately looking for and declaring these initial images aloud, however trivial or irrelevant they may seem to the conscious mind, is done with the intent of deepening the trance state, wherein the scryer hears their own disassociated voice affirming what is seen within the concentrated state in a kind of feedback loop. This process culminates in the achievement of a final and desired end stage in which visual images and dramatic stories seem to be projected within the mind's eye of the scryer, like an inner movie. This overall process reputedly allows the scryer to "see" relevant events or images within the chosen medium.

Scrying has been used for thousands of years by different cultures. Ancient Egypt used scrying in their Initiations. This included water scrying, dream scrying, oil scrying, and mirror scrying.

Ancient Persia -- the Shahnama, a semi-historical epic work written in the late 10th century, gives a description of what was called the Cup of Jamshid, used in pre-Islamic Persia, which was used by wizards and practitioners of the esoteric sciences for observing all the seven layers of the universe.

Ancient Greeks and Celts practiced scrying using beryl, crystal, black glass, polished quartz, water, and other transparent or light catching bodies. Nostradamus is believed to have employed a small bowl of water as a scrying tool into which he gazed and received images of future events.

Scrying has been used in many cultures as a means of divining the past, present, or future. Depending on the culture and practice, the visions that come when one stares into the media are thought to come from the subconscious.  

The Ganzfeld experiment is a sensory deprivation experiment inspired by scrying. According to the small community of parapsychologists

Parapsychology

Parapsychology is a controversial discipline that seeks to investigate the existence and causes of psychic abilities and life after death using the scientific method

Ganzfeld experiment

A ganzfeld experiment is a technique used in the field of parapsychology to test individuals for extrasensory perception . It uses homogeneous and unpatterned sensory stimulation to produce an effect similar to sensory deprivation. The deprivation of patterned sensory input is said to be conducive...

Sensory deprivation

, it provides the best known evidence for psi

Psi (parapsychology)

Psi is a term from parapsychology derived from the Greek, ψ psi, 23rd letter of the Greek alphabet; from the Greek ψυχή psyche, "mind, soul". -Etymology: abilities in the laboratory.

Scrying into bowls of pure water is a very old method of divination and vision seeking. Some people prefer to use clear crystal bowls; some prefer white bowls, and some prefer dark. It is important that the bowl be very clean prior to filling with water; a rinse with ammonia after cleaning is appropriate. The bowl is filled with pure water, and then is positioned so that light is not directly reflected onto the surface. The querant then gazes into the water until he or she sees, or otherwise senses, the desired information or contact. Similarly, natural bodies of water like lakes, tidal pools, ponds, and some moving water can be gazed into. Sit calmly at the water's edge, and gaze into the water. This requires a passively expectant, patient mindset.

Finally, wells can be used for scrying. One method involves leaning over backwards as you bend your head into the well, looking down at the water below. It is said that you will see your future. This method is often employed to see one's future spouse.

1% water exhibition

Opening to the Awe[full] ~ opening inner spaces

archetypal: Artemis, Shaman, Healer

a rift in the surface towards numinous corporeality

Yearning for Nature

Nature Deficit Disorder? The podcast/downloadable version of the show is about 15 minutes longer than the broadcast/streaming edition will be. I've popped in an extended version of the Richard Louv interview knowing he'll probably prove to be popular. Download it directly from the All in the Mind website
http://www.abc.net.au/cgi-bin/common/player_launch.pl  


The sublime involves a longing/yearning for the awe[full] an Opening to the Awe[full]

the way of water

This book maintains that early Chinese philosophers, whatever their philosophical school, assumed common principles informed the natural and human worlds and that one could understand the nature of man by

Allan on Google Books

studying the principles which govern nature. Accordingly, the natural world rather than a religious tradition provided the root metaphors of early Chinese thought. Sarah Allan examines the concrete imagery, most importantly water and plant life, which served as a model for the most fundamental concepts in Chinese philosophy including such ideas as dao, the "way," de, "virtue" or "potency," xin, the "mind/heart," xing "nature," and qi, "vital energy." Water, with its extraordinarily rich capacity for generating imagery, provided the primary model for conceptualizing general cosmic principles while plants provided a model for the continuous sequence of generation, growth, reproduction, and death and was the basis for the Chinese understanding of the nature of man in both religion and philosophy.

Sarah Allan the way of water 1997 State University NY

Longhurst + Grosz

Bodies: Exploring Fluid Boundaries

Robyn LonghursAccording to Longhurst, negotiating hegemonic discourses of geography means moving through and beyond these post-structural and postmodernist conceptualizations of bodies as sites of textual inscription. This is not to say Longhurst denies the discursive, political, and theoretical importance of theorists such as Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Rather, Longhurst allies herself with fellow feminist critical geographers with interests in theorizing a corporeal, messy material body - Rose and Elizabeth Grosz - thus privileging embodiment that does not "[take] flight from fluids and mess" (p. 133), which locates fluidity as a subversive borderline, liminal state. In thinking about fluids and corporeality, Longhurst also develops the thinking of both Grosz and Julia Kristeva around abjection. Abjection comes to mean exclusion and Other for Longhurst, the thing that is ugly, evacuated of pleasure, and disgusting in the face of more culturally desirable bodies in space. It is something that describes both an object and a zone. In this, disgust and desire are dialectically related, and in relation become a consideration that material bodies intentionally and unintentionally negotiate in spaces of cultural and social circulation. Abjection also allows Longhurst to set up the binaries she seeks to undermine and question in discourse: solid/fluid, mind/body, rational/irrational, public/private, concept/corporeal, male/female, desire/disgust, enunciation/ erasure.

Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol 28, No 4 (2003)

from ~ http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/viewArticle/1394/1477