Thursday, October 7, 2010

links + islands

Drift consists of numerous floating islands of grass positioned in a grid formation on the surface of a pond. The influence of wind and water currents and the action of wildlife will rapidly disrupt this orderly placement and form the basis of a series of drawings that explore the interplay between order and chaos.
Drift is both playful and experimental. It mimics the conundrum of the man-made versus the natural apparent at the site of the exhibition. The ponds at Donkleywood appear to be natural but are man-made. Drift is composed of grass it looks similar to the surrounding meadows except it floats and moves.

Picture extracts of "BLUSH" (2004)
A dance on screen production by Wim Vandekeybus and Ultima Vez Dance Company






http://minoutsambika.blogspot.com/2010/04/research-inspiration.html

http://miwa.metm.org/PET_project/ 
Picture extracts of "Dido & Aeneas" (2005)
A stage production by Sasha Waltz & Guests








Invertigo Dance Theatre and their performance "REELING" (2009)
Photos by Taso Papadakis








 
Images Available at:

http://tasopapadakis.blogspot.com/2009/10/blog-post.html
http://www.sciapode.net/index.php?/projets/-blush/
http://www.imz.at/index.php?id=289
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/923,arts,underwater-opera
(Accessed: 7.10.2010) 

Thursday, September 30, 2010

woman is the sea

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne 
WOMAN IS THE SEA 

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

beloved lorikeet is


Irony
In the 2010-11 financial year, the  Steering Committee will spend a total of $4.2 million on dredging activities in the Broadwater, the Seaway and Jacobs Well. Current dredging operations at West Crab Island are expected to wrap up by the end of October 2010.
The Gold Coast Waterways Steering Committee was established by the Queensland Government, Gold Coast City Council and Marine Queensland on 15 July 2010. The Committee and its Working Groups were established to improve outcomes for Gold Coast waterways and the marine sector by combining resources, networks, knowledge and interests between state agencies, local government and industry.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

psychogeography + loci

Psychogeography was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as the "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals." http://www.psychetecture.com/

loci ~ the Roman mythological 'Spirit of the Place'

http://makingmaps.net/2009/06/22/making-psychogeography-maps/
http://makingmaps.net/book/

Psychogeography: discovering the mental terrain of the city 

http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2009/09/aim_20090905.mp3

Saturday, July 24, 2010

synaesthesia - fresh water lens

Judy Watson and Wes Skiles link
http://www.karstproductions.com/image_gallery/gallery_2.html
Inland blue holes are unlike any other environment on Earth, thanks largely to their geology and water chemistry. In these flooded caves, such as Stargate on Andros Island, the reduced tidal flow results in a sharp stratification of water chemistry. A thin lens of fresh water—supplied by rainfall—lies atop a denser layer of salt water. The freshwater lens acts as a lid, isolating the salt water from atmospheric oxygen and inhibiting bacteria from causing organic matter to decay.
 "All of a sudden, it's got you," says photographer Wes Skiles of the "insanely dangerous" vortex in Chimney Blue Hole off Grand Bahama. Like a giant bathtub drain, it sucks down millions of gallons when the tide comes in. "It's like going over a waterfall—there's no escape."
Wes Skileshttp://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128704761&sc=fb&cc=fp


http://synaesthetical.blogspot.com/2010/07/blue-holes-of-bahamas-wes-c-skiles.html

Freshwater Lens | Judy Watson 

http://uapmarker.com.au/2010/03/23/freshwater-lens-judy-watson/

Heron Island artworks ~ http://www.uq.edu.au/news/?article=19810

Judy Watson pictured with her Freshwater Lens artwork, suspended beneath the Turbot Street overpass in Brisbane.


Monday, July 12, 2010

body ~ fluid


The Shape of Water SDC

Nascent, 2004
Directed by Gina Czarnecki, choreographed by Garry Stewart

find ~ The Shape of Water

Narelle Benjamin, The Shape of Water, featuring Alexa Heckmann with The Sydney Dance Company   Was shown on ABC1 @ 2pm Sunday/Monday 12 July, 2010

AUS, 2007 Sydney Dance Company
Director: Cordelia Beresford
Choreography: Narelle Benjamin
Time: 14 minutes
The Shape of Water is a journey of sensory perception in which the symbolic bond between the human spirit and the flowing of the sea is explored. Is our thinking consistent and straight or does it flow, like the tides? Featuring in this film are the dancers of the Sydney Dance Company and their performances are combined with digital computer animation technology.


Also


Friday, June 11, 2010

similacra of the body

water skin; permeable penetrable liminal
debris and light shift surfaces and open holes that seal as soon as they are made
digging in water - sifting sight 
revealing relics of sediment layered in unnavigable spaces

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Sunday, May 30, 2010

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 


Saturday, May 29, 2010

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

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.

Friday, May 14, 2010

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. 

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

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

, 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 ĻˆĻ…Ļ‡Ī® 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

Monday, May 3, 2010

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]

Saturday, May 1, 2010

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
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

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

ni on water

New Internationalist     378     May 2005Click here to search
 the mega index.
Ecosystems / Water
WATER










Water is a necessity for life. Yet, though life first evolved in the oceans, most terrestrial organisms cannot drink the salt water that makes up over 97 per cent of the world’s total. Of the fresh water that makes up the rest, more than 90 per cent is locked away in glaciers and ice sheets, or hidden deep underground. Only 0.0001 per cent of fresh water is easily accessible; human settlements are clustered along the waterways and fertile floodplains.
This is all the fresh water available to us. It is not created anew but recycled, as the sun evaporates the oceans and water falls back to earth as rain and snow. What we drink is made up of ancient molecules of water that have fed rainforests, slaked the thirsts of dinosaurs and prophets, spent millennia frozen in glaciers. There is enough water in total for us all, but it is unevenly distributed. While the rich world uses more and more, many countries, particularly in Asia and Africa, suffer shortages. A third of the world’s people live in dryland regions that have access to only eight per cent of the world’s renewable water supply.
For centuries humans dumped waste in the nearest watercourse and drank from it too, but this works only when the waste is small and the people are few. The pollution of waterways by toxic industrial waste and sewage is one of the biggest environmental challenges of our time.
Modern improvements in human health are largely due to great public municipal works of sanitation that provide people with clean drinking water. Access to clean water is still one of the major distinctions between the world’s ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. The wars of the future are likely to be over fresh water – and sooner than we think.
Meanwhile, as the Earth heats up and the polar ice caps melt, the rising, warming oceans are washing inland, salinizing freshwater tables and flooding human settlements. The oceans are the engines of global weather systems: as they warm, they are not only killing whales and coral reefs, they are triggering storm surges, droughts and new unpredictable weather patterns right across the planet.
New Internationalist


Ship 
cemetery, Aralsk harbour, Kazakhstan A beached ship in what remains of 
Aralsk harbour in the dry bed of the Aral Sea. In 1964 the rivers 
supplying the sea were pumped dry to irrigate cotton crops – ā€˜white 
gold’ – in Central Asia. Now the water has receded by over 100 
kilometres, leaving a legacy of pollution that will severely damage the 
health of many generations to come. Photo: Paul Howell / UNEP / Still 
PicturesShip cemetery, Aralsk harbour, Kazakhstan A beached ship in what remains of Aralsk harbour in the dry bed of the Aral Sea. In 1964 the rivers supplying the sea were pumped dry to irrigate cotton crops - 'white gold' - in Central Asia. Now the water has receded by over 100 kilometres, leaving a legacy of pollution that will severely damage the health of many generations to come. Photo: Paul Howell / UNEP / Still Pictures
Homes on 
reclaimed wetland, California, US Draining, filling and conversion to 
farmlands or cities destroyed an estimated half of the world’s wetlands 
in the 20th century. Photo: NRSC / Still Pictures

‘When I was a boy, the ponds and waterholes used to last the whole year through. Now they are dry and empty. When the rains came and filled the oshanas (streams), we used to take our baskets and go fishing. Now the fish baskets hang from the roof poles as ornaments.'
Abraham, from the Cuvelai basin in Namibiaz
Flooding near
 the Bay of Bengal In South Asia alone, half a billion people irrigate 
their crops with glacier-fed river flows from the Himalayas. But as the 
glaciers retreat, the spring meltwater will first surge, causing floods;
 and then, when the glaciers are gone, stop completely. Photo: Trygve 
Bolstad / Panos

Bleached coral, Maldives Coral reefs, one of the richest ecosystems, are suffering the effects of tourism, overfishing, pollution and disease. The bleaching of coral tends to be caused by rising sea temperatures - themselves the result of global warming. Some 20 per cent of the planet's coral reefs have already been destroyed, with another 20 per cent badly degraded. Photo: Pascal Kobeh / Still Pictures



Bleached 
coral, Maldives Coral reefs, one of the richest ecosystems, are 
suffering the effects of tourism, overfishing, pollution and disease. 
The bleaching of coral tends to be caused by rising sea temperatures – 
themselves the result of global warming. Some 20 per cent of the 
planet’s coral reefs have already been destroyed, with another 20 per 
cent badly degraded. Photo: Pascal Kobeh / Still Pictures

Flooding near the Bay of Bengal In South Asia alone, half a billion people irrigate their crops with glacier-fed river flows from the Himalayas. But as the glaciers retreat, the spring meltwater will first surge, causing floods; and then, when the glaciers are gone, stop completely. Photo: Trygve Bolstad / Panos

Tree roots, 
French Guiana The northern coast of South America has important forests 
and the Orinoco-Amazon mangroves and coastal swamps. The region is an 
ideal resting place for migratory birds such as scarlet ibises, herons, 
frigatebirds and greater flamingos. Photo: Fred Hoogervorst / Panos

Tree roots, French Guiana The northern coast of South America has important forests and the Orinoco-Amazon mangroves and coastal swamps. The region is an ideal resting place for migratory birds such as scarlet ibises, herons, frigatebirds and greater flamingos. Photo: Fred Hoogervorst / Panos

WATER – THE FACTS
• Water withdrawals from rivers and lakes for irrigation, household and industrial use have doubled in the last 40 years.

• In some regions, such as the Middle East and North Africa, humans use 120% of renewable water supplies, due to the reliance on groundwater that is not recharged.
• Between 1960 and 2000 the storage of water in reservoirs quadrupled, so that the amount of water now stored behind large dams is estimated to be 3-6 times the amount held by natural river channels (excluding natural lakes).
• The construction of dams and other structures along rivers has affected flows in 60% of the large river systems of the world. Water removal for human uses has reduced the flow of several major rivers, including the Nile, Yellow and Colorado Rivers, to the extent that they do not always flow to the sea.
• As water flows have declined, so have sediment flows, which are the source of nutrients important for the maintenance of estuaries. Worldwide, sediment delivery to estuaries has declined by roughly 30%.
• Since about 1980, approximately 35% of mangroves have been lost, while 20% of the world’s coral reefs have been destroyed and a further 20% badly degraded.

Monday, April 26, 2010

susan griffin woman+nature 1978


PROLOGUE
He says that woman speaks with nature. That she hears voices from under the earth. That wind blows in her ears and trees whisper to her. That the dead sing through her mouth and the cries of infants are clear to her. But for him this dialogue is over. He says he is not part of this world, that he was set on this world as a stranger. He sets himself apart from woman and nature.
And so it is Goldilocks who goes to the home of the three bears, Little Red Riding Hood who converses with the wolf, Dorothy who befriends a lion, Snow White who talks to the birds, Cinderella with mice as her allies, the Mermaid who is half fish, Thumbelina courted by a mole. (And when we hear in the Navaho chant of the mountain that a grown man sits and smokes with bears and follows directions given to him by squirrels, we are surprised. We had thought only little girls spoke with animals.)
We are the bird's eggs. Bird's eggs, flowers, butterflies, rabbits, cows, sheep; we are caterpillars; we are leaves of ivy and sprigs of wallflower. We are women. We rise from the wave. We are gazelle and doe, elephant and whale, lilies and roses and peach, we are air, we are flame, we are oyster and pearl, we are girls. We are woman and nature. And he says he cannot hear us speak.
But we hear.
This round cavern, motion turned back on itself, the follower becomes the followed, moon in the sky, the edge becoming the centre, what is buried emerges, light dying over the water, what is unearthed is stunning, the one we are seeking, turning with the ways of the earth, is ourselves.
This cave, the shape to which each returns, where image after image will be revealed, and painted over, painted over and revealed, until we are bone. 

Where we touch the ones who came before and see their visions, where we leave our mark, where, terrified, we give up ourselves and weep, and taken over by this darkness, are overwhelmed by what we feel: where we are pushed to the edge of existence, to the source which sounds like a wave inside us, to the path of the water which feeds us all.
The way of the water we follow, which has made this space, and hollowed the earth here, because the shape of this cave is a history.
from: http://allecto.wordpress.com/2009/04/05/caves-the-eeriness-of-reading-susan-griffins-woman-and-nature/ 

LINK ~ http://www.american-buddha.com/lit.womanandnatureroar.toc.htm
a review of Griffin's woman and nature: http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/eng384/ongriffin.htm

Bachelard ~ water + dreams Dillard

"Like any child, I slid into myself perfectly fitted, as a diver meets her reflection in a pool. Her fingertips enter the fingertips on the water, her wrists slide up her arms. The diver wraps herself in her reflection wholly, sealing it at the toes, and wears it as she climbs rising from the pool, and ever after." Annie Dillard (An American Childhood

Bachelard 'to see' ~ he claims, we must go beyond our own narcissism
 Source: Photograph courtesy of Sean McPhail Lake Pedder
"The world wants to see itself"
  Water reveals, reflects
" the Lake is a large tranquil eye"