Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Music Video: CocoRosie "Lemonade" directed by Emma Freeman





Watch music video "Lemonade" directed by Emma Freeman

Sierra was born in Iowa, and Bianca was born in Hawaii. When Sierra was about 5 years old and Bianca 3, their parents separated. The girls lived with their mother, an artist and singer of Native American and Syrian ancestry. They moved to new towns almost every year, living in Hawaii, California, New Mexico, and Arizona. Because their mother believed that the girls would learn more doing art in the "real world" than in school, neither sister finished high school. Their Mother nicknamed her daughters "Rosie" (Sierra) and "Coco" (Bianca), from which the musical act takes its name. Their father, an Iowa farmer interested in Native American spirituality spent summers with the girls on various Native American reservations taking part in gatherings and ceremonies. In 1998, at about age 18, Sierra moved to New York City, then to Montmartre district in Paris two years later to pursue a career as an opera singer, studying at the Conservatoire de Paris. During this period, Sierra lost contact with Bianca, who was living in New York City studying linguistics sociology, and pursuing her passion of visual arts and writing. CocoRosie started making music together in Paris in 2003. Their first album, La Maison de Mon Rêve came out in 2004, then Noah’s Ark in 2005, The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn in 2007 and then Grey Oceans. They like to explore the world, travel and create.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Video: "Orca LIVE net and OrcaLab (study of sound, echolocation, sonar and linguistics of dolphins and whales)







Orca Video: Guardians of the Sea
The study of sound, echolocation, sonar, acoustic data and linguistics of dolphins and whales.

Dr Paul Spong  and OrcaLab and Orca LIVE - net

Paul Spong was born in Whakatane, near the north-east coast of New Zealand, in 1939. He studied law at the University of Canterbury New Zealand. In 1963 Spong enrolled in the Brain Research Institute (BRI) at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) for post-graduate studies in psychology. His work at the BRI included analysis of human brain wave patterns and tracking information pathways. Spong's doctoral thesis was on sensory stimulation, perception, and human consciousness.In 1967 Dr. Murray Newman, of the Vancouver Aquarium, asked Dr. Patrick McGeer, head of the Neurological Lab at the University of British Columbia (UBC), to find a "whale scientist" to assist him at the aquarium. Dr. Spong was selected as the candidate to work at the Vancouver Aquarium with orca whales (Orcinus orca) after a successful interview and a recommendation from the head of the lab at UCLA.

In 1970, Dr. Paul Spong founded OrcaLab, a small land based whale research station nestled against the evergreen forest of Hanson Island in the waters of the "Inside Passage" of northern Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada.

The work of OrcaLab is centred on the philosophy that it is possible to study the wild without interfering with lives or habitat. A network of hydrophones, positioned around the orcas' "core habitat", helps us monitor their movements all year round. Supplementing the acoustic data are visual sightings of orcas as they pass OrcaLab, and reports from land observation sites staffed by OrcaLab volunteers during the summer "season", as well as reports from other researchers and whale watchers who share observations and information. Since 1994, OrcaLab has operated a video monitoring station on Cracroft Point in Johnstone Strait that allows the unobtrusive collection of both surface and underwater images of orcas and other ocean life.

Beginning in 2000 and continuing through 2005, OrcaLab and Japan's NTT Data Corporation brought the everyday beauty of the orcas' lives to the Internet via www.orca-live.net. Plans for this project now include creating a production studio in a new operations base in Alert Bay. This will monitor and control a network of video cameras, enabling us to bring live imagery as well as live sounds to a worldwide audience via the Internet.



Friday, November 18, 2011

Space Video "Time Lapse View from Space - NASA Fly Overs" captured by International Space Station Crew



Watch "Time Lapse Video from Space - NASA Fly Over" Time lapse sequences of photographs taken with a special low-light 4K-camera by the crew of expedition 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station from
August to October, 2011.  Plus short film from 2014 of views from Space.















Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Moving Art TV and TED Talks: "Hidden Miracles of the Natural World", "Gratitude", "The Hidden Beauty of Pollination" by Louie Schwartzberg (Time Lapse Photography Short Films) + "Super Soul Sundays" Louie with Oprah Winfrey


Hidden Miracles of the Natural World TED Talk 2014

 “I hope my films inspire and open people’s hearts.  Beauty is nature’s tool for survival – you protect what you love.  If I can move enough people on an emotional level, I hope we can achieve the shift in consciousness we need to sustain and celebrate life.”





Gratitude (short film) Time Lapse Photography 

The Hidden Beauty of Pollination

"Super Soul Sundays" Louie and Oprah Winfrey


Moving Art TV: It's not TV it's moving art by Louie Schwartzberg
An award-winning cinematographer, director, and producer whose notable career spans more than three decades providing breathtaking imagery for feature films, television shows, documentaries and commercials. As a visual artist, Louie has created some of the most iconic and memorable film moments of our time. He is an innovator in the world of time-lapse, nature, aerial and "slice-of-life" photography - the only cinematographer in the world who has literally been shooting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week continuously for more than 30 years. Louie was recognized as one of the top 70 Cinematographers for the On Film Kodak Salute Series. He is a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Friday, November 4, 2011

Film Trailer ~ The Lady (Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma Freedom Advocates)




Trailer ~ The Lady
This feature film directed by Luc Besson is the story of pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi and the academic writer Michael Aris; a true story of love set against political turmoil. The film stars Michelle Yeoh as Aung San Suu Kyi. I enjoyed the film very much. I was reminded of the human emotional thread, that ties us all together, and unites us all in the same right as human beings to lead the life within us. Each one of us freely, creative and unique, leading our self in own personal life journey. 

Aung San Suu Kyi in Burmese àuɴ sʰáɴ sṵ tɕì - born June 19, 1945. T
he third child, only daughter of Aung San, considered to be the father of modern-day Burma. Through historical events she became the Burmese opposition politician and the General Secretary of the National League for Democracy. In the 1990 general election, Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won 59% of the national votes and 81% (392 of 485) of the seats in Parliament.  She had, however, already been detained under house arrest before the elections. She remained under house arrest in Burma for almost 15 of the 21 years from 20 July 1989 until her release on 13 November 2010.


Aung San Suu Kyi received the Rafto Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. In 1992 she was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding by the Government of India and the International Simón Bolívar Prize from the government of Venezuela. In 2007, the Government of Canada made her an honorary citizen of that country,one of only five people ever to receive the honour.

Video: Oscar nominated "Burma VJ"
Photography: Burma Images by Tim Hetherington (photo-journalist killed in action April 2011)