Traveller’s Teacup

I just remembered a teacup story to share. One of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen was when flying high over the Himalayas on a clear full moon. It was a May night in my 33 rd year and I was on mission from Abu Dhavi to Tokyo. Strangely, also not sleepy at all. I opened my portal blind and peeped down at the world blow. There under a big bright chinaball moon, I was blown away by jagged mega peaks, glaciers and even the rising plains. For miles and miles, I was transfixed by the sheer beauty of our planet from semi-space.

Eventually I was distracted by another passenger turning in their seat. I looked around and noticed everybody else on the plane was fast asleep. I look back out the window and the world smiled at me.

God, do I really need to be there… ?

check this out….

“We live in public” a documentary by Ondi Timoner

Ten years in the making and culled from 5000 hours of footage, WE LIVE IN PUBLIC reveals the effect the web is having on our society, as seen through the eyes of “the greatest Internet pioneer you’ve never heard of”, artist, futurist and visionary Josh Harris. Award-winning director Ondi Timoner (DIG! — which also won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize in 2004 — making Timoner the only director to win that prestigious award twice) documented his tumultuous life for more than a decade to create a riveting, cautionary tale of what to expect as the virtual world inevitably takes control of our lives.

Harris, often called the “Warhol of the Web”, founded Pseudo.com, the first Internet television network during the infamous dot-com boom of the 1990s. He also curated and funded the ground breaking project “Quiet” in an underground bunker in NYC where over 100 people lived together on camera for 30 days at the turn of the millennium. With Quiet, Harris proved how we willingly trade our privacy for the connection and recognition we all deeply desire, but with every technological advancement such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, becomes more elusive. Through his experiments, including a six-month stint living with his girlfriend under 24-hour electronic surveillance which led to his mental collapse, Harris demonstrated the price we pay for living in public.

http://www.weliveinpublicthemovie.com/

In Mongolia this week, I have been attending a conference on desertification of the Gobi region. Its a very interesting topic and with a group of Young Japanese scientists, I will be going on an expedition to the Gobi tomorrow.

Being around all these boffins, one sometimes feels slightly inadequate for conversation at the dinner table. So, in order to have a base level knowledge of these topics, (and also to drip feed my secret desire to be a paleo-climatologist), I have been exploring Meteorlogy, Hydrology and Geology education websites.

да! Its slightly left field, but for those interested in understanding Meteorlogy & Hydrology cycles, take a look at this great resource which has free interactive learning modules. http://www.meted.ucar.edu/

Artists are always looking for new strategies to communicate their message. On this day in 2003, the grand opening of the “ČESKÝ SEN (Czech Dream)” was staged. Two “student” filmmakers had created a nation-wide advertising campaign selling to the Czech public a hypermarket called “Czech Dream”. The only thing was that it didn’t exist! The grand opening attracted thousands of people… and their documentary crew filmed on.

“… Czech Dream has been called a hoax, a sociological experiment, a “provocumentary,” and a “documockmentary,” among other things. As far as I know, though, it has not yet directly been referenced as a culture jam or an adbust…” – Stephen Harris, Bright Lights film journal

The documentary raises interesting questions about today’s nature of consumerism, advertising and the manipulation power of the media. Here’s are some excerpts from the grand opening:

And here’s the “official trailer”