Dreaming

Dreaming is dependent on the quality of waking experiences for its content and emotion. Not just experiences of the previous days but from long ago in one’s life flow into dreams without regard for time.

Different cultures dream differently. Contemporary dreaming can range from stressful anxiety to the experience of gliding through space or water. Sometimes we dream of traffic accidents, workplaces, journeys in vehicles, machinery, traumas and social discomfort, with roots ranging from experiences in early childhood to the immediate present. Such dreaming may end in waking shock, a welcome escape, or just grind on in disturbed sleep. At other times dreams are relaxing explorations inspired by people, safe social ambiences and remnants of nature.

Indigenous dreaming cultures, which are known for their orientation to dreams, used to have a different waking context to the one they cohabit today. Prior to being colonised, their everyday was shared with a rich array of animals, birds and plants and was set in a clean natural surrounding of biodegradable objects and connected natural systems. Life was generally predictable. Without chronic stress and machinery, the animals of everyday life appeared in dream world experiences in different forms and emotional contexts. Waking memories of dreams had a different quality to those of the present time, often expressed as meetings with ancestors and totemic beings in animal form. Dreaming was a total environmental experience. Such dreaming is unachievable today.

While dreaming, a person experiences his/herself as a butterfly. S/he wakes and believes s/he is a person. Or is s/he a butterfly dreaming it is a person?

The belief that the dream world is more real than the waking world because it is not finite or functional suggests, if it is true, that the modern consciousness is far removed from the real because of the quality of dreams which are experienced. Everyday hectic and degraded nature hinder our contact with the real.

New calendar year

After to failure of the Copenhagen Climate Conference to agree on a plan for a liveable future for the planet, the new calendar year was initiated across the world with a massive display of waste and pollution. Birds everywhere were driven from their habitats at night and many killed by explosives and disorientation. Toxic substances were spread over cities and scenic locations in the air and water ways, leaving contaminated rubbish seeping into the ground water. An ambience of urban warfare was ubiquitous throughout the night and subsequent days.

As a simple gesture of goodwill, the people of the world could agree to abolish this one type of waste, pollution and destruction as a symbol to inspire the protection of the planet against the larger scale catastrophes such as global warming and flooding which are similarly caused by massive wasteful consumption.

Instead of representing the war against the planet, the end of the calendar year could become a symbol of peace with ourselves and the creatures we share the Earth with. It could become a time symbolising regeneration of the conditions supporting life on Earth for another year.

Ocean

Ocean is taken for granted from the human life perspective as something which does not change, a stable force although sometimes unpredictable for short periods. As the waves pound the beach it appears to embody perpetual motion, a constant movement of cool salt water advancing and retreating forever.

Although salt is continuously washed from the land into the ocean, the level of salinity has been stable for billions of years. As much salt is removed by ocean processes as is deposited.
However within a very short time period the ocean is now changing its consistency. It is becoming increasingly acidic. Since industrial times the acidity has increased by 30% and the trend is accelerating. Shells are 30 to 35% lighter now. Increasing acidity threatens the existence of coral reefs and the fish that depend on them. Marine wildlife is massively threatened by an acidic living environment.

The ocean is being acidified “many times faster than anything experienced over the last 55 million years”. Combined with ocean temperature rises, acidity reduces the ocean’s ability to absorb CO2, adding to global warming with a possible chain reaction scenario emerging as the oceans further warm.

This planet is predominantly water, and the human body also. Water, including ocean water, deserves respect. Let’s see if the Copenhagen Climate Change summit can agree to stop the acidification of the oceans by modifying human activity patterns.

Exhibition in Radolfzell

A very diverse and exciting exhibiton was held at Drei Art Galerie in Radolfzell from 15 to 22 November 2009. The offering was greatly varied including jewellery, musical instruments, new media, paintings, photography, pottery, sculpture, and wood carvings. Works from the following artists were exhibited:

• Herwig Bayerl (Salzburg)
• Lena Bosch (Salzburg)
• Marianne Hagemann (Allensbach)
• Beatrix Hardt (Allensbach)
• Matthias Holländer from Allensbach
• Neil Horne (Sydney/ Berlin)
• Klaus Küster (Radolfzell)
• Dieter Metzing (Bonn)
• Manuela Metzing (Bonn)
  
• Martine Metzing-Peyre (Bonn/ France)
• Andreas Müller (Höri)
  
• Geru Müsch (Radolfzell)
• Grit Roth-Spanknebel (Reichenau)
  
• Mike Roth (Reichenau)
• Franzis von Stechow (Constance)

Many friends and guests were also present at this event which the realisation of a great idea of Grit Roth-Spanknebel.

Night flight

Somewhere between the Pacific and the Atlantic flying westwards high above the Earth.
A flash animated version of Night flight can be viewed here.

Dream

Dream was inspired by a dream so it is a realisation of a dreamy unreal space. The interactive soundscape is made with Flash. It consists of two parts, forest and beach. It may be extended in future to include cosmos.
The design is experimental. It uses programming techniques with Flash to create continuity whilst distributing loading time. This is necessary as it is resource intensive. That does not mean that it loads quickly! It loads in segments initiated by the user. With slow connection speeds there is a delay between segments until it is cached, so the best effect is then achieved when it is played a second time.
Some of the programming with ActionScript3 was tricky to get the sequential shockwave films to load comfortably with appropriate user messages, as well as making the sounds load and switch off at the right time/space. Copies of scripts are available on request.
The graphics are largely sourced from Australian nature, mostly from the Manly area. The audio effects are the calls of various individual east-coast birds (black cockatoos, wattlebirds, magpies, lorikeets, kookaburras, figbirds, currawongs) and the sounds of the surf at Manly beach from different angles and in various conditions. Sounds respond to mouse movements and so are combined through user interaction. They create an auditory ambience to complement the dreamy animation of forest or beach images.

Human habitat

Trees are the “natural” companion plants for humans. Unlike four-legged animals which are focused on the two dimensions of the land surface (or other surfaces), the upright human is 3-dimensional in focus. Like trees we stand up and have limbs. We stretch upwards and look towards the heavens with eyes at the top of our bodies. Our limbs are inclined to grasp the limbs of trees as our primate ancestors did and move into the vertical dimension.
The idea that savannah is the natural habitat for homo sapiens denies the physiological inclination to live among trees. Although savannah with hills may offer strategic advantages for hunter gatherers vulnerable to attack from their competitors, this type of landscape is more suitable for horizontally-oriented four-legged species. This is a suitable place to find such animals and hunt them or domesticate them as cattle.
The forest is the true human habitat, as enjoyed for example by Saxon tribes in pre-Roman times. The modern preference for flat, cleared land and lawns is physiologically inappropriate for our species which evolved with trees.
Eradication of trees on planet Earth is the elimination of the human habitat. As in the microcosm of Easter Island it will lead to global disaster for our species as well as all the others living in the ambience of trees.

The sounds of Manly

Manly beach is a unique natural system under increasing strain from its urban setting on the edge of central Sydney. Despite this it has remnants of natural significance including a vivid bird life, sizeable frog populations and a long and remarkably resilient beach.

This latest Flash application is made from collected sounds taken from the nature of Manly associated with images produced over recent times. It is designed for enjoyment and should be approached at a suitably relaxed moment.

Images of Manly are presented. Click on any one and a sound from the environment will play. It may be a parrot calling, frogs creating a rhythm, or the flow of the ocean meeting the beach sand. Another click will turn off the sound before it is complete. Completed sounds can be replayed with double clicks.

Sounds can be played simultaneously to create synergies of birds and ocean, frogs and cockatoos, or ocean and ocean. Use good quality sound gear or headphones to appreciate the quality. Compose your own ambience.

The sounds collected here and the images, represent a time when these things still exist in this place. The black cockatoos may have already gone. Already population explosions of humans and dogs are reducing the habitats of the others, including penguins. Sadly, one day this application will be just an echo of more diverse times.
Birds include:

• black cockatoos
• kookaburras
• rainbow lorikeets
• wattlebirds
• magpies
• currawongs

The frogs are the Common Eastern Froglet.
The ocean is the Pacific.

Perseid meteor shower

The Perseid meteor shower, one of the highlights of the cosmos as seen from Earth, is at its peak at present. Tonight in eastern Australia, it will begin at about 1 am but viewing conditions will not be optimal because the moon rises shortly before midnight.

The meteors appear to come from a radiant which is in the star constellation Perseus. In fact they are remnants from the tail of the comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle which the Earth passes through each year in its journey around the sun.

Estimates of the number of meteors per hour vary from 50 to 80 (Science Daily) to 110 (Vienna planetarium).

The Earth will be showered with the substances from the comet which is largely composed of "dirty ice" which is transported from the outermost parts of the solar system or interstellar space.


Search for #meteorwatch on Twitter or follow @NewburyAS and @astronomy209uk.

Listening to birds in their environments.

At the atelier a new activity is developing where users can listen to bird sounds in their environmental settings. Visually, you are presented with small animations which play together with different bird songs or background sounds in response to mouse movements. The user can move the cursor around the space activating different images and sounds creating a consonance of birds.

In keeping with the concept of an atelier, the page is in a state of change with new elements appearing and existing ones being modified through time.