View allAll Photos Tagged Songlines
Usually in winter, I photograph birds outside, but the kowhai tree flowering last spring was incredible... and the best view is from inside, where it's elevated and I can photograph straight into the tree. So I spent some time photographing through double glazing! Not my favourite glass... but... the glimpse into birdworld was too strong to resist :-)
Silvereyes are very communal birds, often visiting in small family groups and pairs. Some preening pairs are family, some couples, and some just dating ;-) If one preens too roughly the moment is soon over!
I glimpsed this pair through my lcd quite far back in the tree... I didn't see them at all with my bare eyes. They were there maybe only a minute, but seeing minutes like these makes a lot of happiness :-)
Here's to the world beyond the window...
and to moments of joy 🌼
whether quiet or aloud
my thanks for being here
on the other side of the glass!! :-)
there are things we live among
and to see them
is to know ourselves
excerpt from George Oppen's poem 'Of Being Numerous'
I've used this quote before... and there are many others I'd like to be able to remember ;-) that speak of the beings of this earth as relations. Maybe someone can remember them for me.
here's to the neighbourhood of souls
to kindred spirits
to sharing the earth
hffff ;-)
forgive me for deleting group comment codes...
they're not my thing.. tho I do appreciate the visit!
otherness/relatedness
even in the back yard
worlds interwoven
whether quietly or in words
thank you very much for the company here!
and happy free from fences friday
(it starts early on this side of the planet :-)
so many lives
lived parallel to our lives
and sometimes moments
being to being
when the weave opens
to recognition
wonder
a glimpse of
redemption
in the garden
with my thanks for the company here :-)
It's winter here. I'm almost living with the birds in the garden.
It's somewhat limited my ability to keep up here.
But spring is on the way... and soon I'll be relieved of my duties :-)
Once I begin feeding the birds I feel obliged to continue until they disappear. They never get addicted to sugarwater or peanutbutter, or sugar-rice or apples or... As soon as wild food is available they leave. I'd hoped this year would be quiet. It's exhausting being a birdwoman. It's not quiet... however it's wonderful for bird watching and photography :-)
Over the years I've learnt that although there may be hundreds of tauho/silvereyes here, and they have some flock behaviours, (like responding to alarm signals, and some collective cacophony) they essentially live in smaller family groups. During the day whanau/family have spots around the garden (and neighbourhood) where they go to rest, cuddle (especially if it's cold) and preen. It seems to me that spot is their's for the whole winter.
At night they all leave. I don't know if they sleep in larger flocks, but sometimes, while photographing stars I've heard one flock calling and another, some distance away, answering. I've even heard them fly over as a flock, calling though the dark. I didn't know they could do that!
In late winter a bit of dating goes on. I've seen some awkward moments :-) But not every pair is a couple. From what I've seen over years, many are family: sisters, brothers, parents, aunts... kindred spirits.
Comments off for this one.
Hopefully I'll have some energy soon to catch up a bit.
In between now and then... I'm grateful for the quiet company :-)
a friend drops in ;-)
another from the flock in the hard drives...
my thanks for the company here whether spoken or quiet... it's much appreciated.
last part of the song for today ;-)
with my thanks, whether quietly or in words,
the company here is very much appreciated :-)
photographing these birds most sunny winter afternoons
has become an addiction... and a meditation of sorts.
while I'm out there with these small beings and the light
everything else disappears... or maybe I do... briefly ;-)
often I look at particular branches where the light is special...
and hope hope hope one lands there...
but then a bird lands somewhere else...
and I find something I hadn't even imagined blooming...
so here's to the unexpected light
may it find us all :-)
forgive me for deleting group comment codes...
they're not my thing.. tho I do appreciate the visit!
building trust
building trust with these tiny birds, through food, being reliably gentle, quiet and open... means sometimes they come too close to photograph ;-) and wonder, laughter, healing in the garden.
comments off for this one as I'm so far behind...
thank you for the quiet company :-)
Vivid is an annual festival in Sydney, Australia, which includes the illumination of buildings such as the Sydney Opera House. This year six Aboriginal artists designed the artwork for lighting of the Opera House's sails.
This design is in the style of Aboriginal dot painting. Dot painting on canvas emerged in central Australia in the 1970s as a result of Aboriginal people working together with a white art school teacher, Geoffrey Bardon. It is known as the Papunya Tula art movement. The simple dot style as well as cross hatching are very attractive but they also have a hidden meaning and deeper purpose; to disguise the sacred meanings behind the stories in the paintings.
From where I took the photo you could see the light being projected onto the sails.
Thanks for visiting. I am very grateful for the kind comments and faves which have been left.
f/4 1sec ISO 640 50mm Pentax DA 16-50mm f/2.8 Pentax K-5
digital 3/5/2014
(Thank you for your wonderfull comments,
awards,invites and faves...
all are very much appreciated....!)
(large is cool)
Aboriginal songlines light up the Sydney Opera house during the Vivid festival with a spear wielding hunter taking centre stage. One for NAIDOC week this week! Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
www.robertdowniephotography.com
Love Life, Love Photography
Story of a journey along my inner Songlines
PhotoAwardsCounter
Click here to see the awards count for this photo. (?)
Yesterday I had a most wonderful and magical walk through the forest.
It was really cold and frosty - yet all over there were these warm autumnal colours.
I just love to experiment with this "tree panning" - leaving the result to
serendipity. This is part of my "Songlines" series.
"Connection: Songlines from Australia's First Peoples". National Museum of Australia, Canberra.
* In explore.
[...] The men of Ancient Time traveled the whole world singing; they sang rivers and mountain chains, salt pans and sand dunes. They went hunting, they ate, they made love, they danced, they killed: in every point of their tracks they left a trail of music.
They wrapped the whole world in a singing network; and finally, when they had sung the Earth, they felt tired. Again they felt the cold immobility of the centuries in their limbs. Some sank into the ground, where they were. Others crawled into the caves. Others still returned slowly to theirs
'Dimore Eterne', to the ancestral wells that had generated them.
Everyone returned 'inside'.
Bruce Chatwin 'The Songlines'
(in principle)
Listen: youtu.be/7jFmwI_LCAQ
" though the verge did seem dreamlike on account of that frosting"
with apologies to James Taylor for never knowing the correct word in this songline :)
have a fabulous weekend y'all.
Something a little different at Vivid (hard to do these days)! A handheld shot of the actual projectors when they are displaying block colours on the opera house. More than a dozen projectors erected on scaffold towers in front of the Overseas Passenger Terminal in Circular Quay almost 500m away will beam their art across the water to light up the Opera House.
But the beauty of this year's Lighting of the Sails is more than skin-deep. As Roberts puts it: "Nothing gets programmed because it's pretty."
Songlines was devised by Roberts, the head of Indigenous programming at the Opera House, to reflect cultural knowledge and rites.
Story of a journey along my inner Songlines
See also my video on YouTube: youtu.be/lMxt5pfT3i8
Highest position on Explore: 27 on Saturday, September 14, 2013
PhotoAwardsCounter
Click here to see the awards count for this photo. (?)
Just back from Sydney's Vivid light festival.
The theme was our indigenous people.
The Sails are illuminated with the work of six Indigenous artists, celebrating the celestial Songlines of Australian Aboriginal astronomy.
More information here : www.sydney.com/destinations/sydney/sydney-city/vivid-sydney
This one is from across the water just below the cruise ship terminal.
Like the previous 2 years, we absolutely loved it and Sydney people really well behaved in big crowds.
Thank You Sydney!!!!
Thanks for looking and have a great week.
Norbert
Dawn projection onto the Sydney Opera house sails of the Ngintaka Inma songline by David Miller, a senior Pitjantjatjara man. Image shot on Gadigal land.
Story of a journey along my inner Songlines
...e il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare...
that is to say...and foundering is sweet in such a sea
Highest position on Explore: 11 on Wednesday, September 11, 2013 (WOW!!!)
Hi everyone, time to show more of the 2016 Sydney's Vivid light festival.
The theme this year was our indigenous people.
The Sails are illuminated with the work of six Indigenous artists, celebrating the celestial Songlines of Australian Aboriginal astronomy.
I loved this year's display, seeing the Opera house covered in aboriginal art was something very special.
More information here : www.sydney.com/destinations/sydney/sydney-city/vivid-sydney
Like the previous 2 years, we absolutely loved it and Sydney people really well behaved in big crowds.
Thank You Sydney!!!!
Thanks for looking and have a great weekend.
Norbert
This exhibition is on at The Box in Plymouth until the 27th Feb 2022.
The exhibition features over 300 paintings and objects by more than 100 artists. Songlines takes visitors on an epic journey that traverses three states, three deserts and some 500,000 square kilometres, travelling from west to east: to places in the deserts of the Martu, the Ngaanyatjarra and the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) peoples. Using the power of contemporary art, performance, song, photography and multimedia, the exhibition shares ancient stories from the world’s oldest continuing culture.
Songlines are a map of the land as well as a pathway for complex spiritual, cultural, political and historical truths or knowledges – and so much more. They crisscross the land, creating a network of stories that ‘map’ the Australian continent, linking narratives to geographical features and serving as vehicles for naming and locating sites critical for survival physically and culturally. It is through Songlines that Aboriginal people can locate and learn from significant sites and pass on laws, ways of living and moral codes to the next generation.
The theme this year is our indigenous people.
The Sails are illuminated with the work of six Indigenous artists, celebrating the celestial Songlines of Australian Aboriginal astronomy.
More information here : www.sydney.com/destinations/sydney/sydney-city/vivid-sydney
and more about Aboriginal culture here: www.aboriginalculture.com.au/introduction.shtml
As far as I know, this painting represents some of the ancient ancestors of Australia's Indigenous people.
If anyone knows there exact name, please let me know! I would like to state that here
Thank You Sydney!!!!
Thanks for looking and have a great weekend.
PS. Today is the last day of Vivid.
Norbert
The light show on the Opera House this year was titled 'songlines', put together by indigenous artists.
Sydney, Australia, becomes a showcase for 'Art works of Light', during the Vivid Festival. Throughout the city light sculptures and interactive light features are every where! The show case is the Sydney Opera House. For 2016 the theme for the lighting of the sails is 'Songlines' by Australian Indigenous Artists.
The art work go through a complete Animated cycle with many images transforming the Opera House.
Vivid Festival also features Music concerts.
The Free festival has appeared in The Times' top 50 UK Festivals, Songlines' Top UK Summer Festivals for the past 10 years.
Fantastic displays on the Opera House sails this year. Songlines celebratis the First Nations' spirituality and culture through the songlines of our land and sky.
This will be the last one I post for a little while.
Off to get some (hopefully ) exiting underwater photos.
The theme this year is our indigenous people. I guess Colours are a big part of that.
The Sails are illuminated with the work of six Indigenous artists, celebrating the celestial Songlines of Australian Aboriginal astronomy.
More information here : www.sydney.com/destinations/sydney/sydney-city/vivid-sydney
Thank You Sydney!!!!
Thanks for looking and have a great weekend.
See you in a little while.
Norbert
The light show on the Opera House this year was titled 'songlines', put together by indigenous artists.
The theme this year is our indigenous people.
The Sails are illuminated with the work of six Indigenous artists, celebrating the celestial Songlines of Australian Aboriginal astronomy.
More information here : www.sydney.com/destinations/sydney/sydney-city/vivid-sydney
Thank You Sydney!!!!
Thanks for looking and have a great week.
Norbert
Acrylic on canvas
122 x 183 cms
I have to say this is one of my favourites from the Glover Prize finalists of 2021. Perhaps it is the stylistic elements that one also sees in the work of Tim Storrier, one of Australia's leading artists. But Neil Taylor, who like Storrier is from NSW, has made this very much his own work of course. The theme of fire and starry skies is consistent with Storrier's earlier work, but here the Milky Way takes on elements of the indigenous imagination, and of course in Tasmania we have our very own Bay of Fires.
So here is what the artist has to say:
"This image of fires and rising oceans from the North East is not a contemporary response - its source is millennia old - the end of the last Ice Age. It came to me (close to its current form) while I was researching in preparation for a trip to Tasmania that eventually had to be Covid-cancelled. The immense fluctuations in sea level over geological time have always fascinated me - the drowning of land bridges is comparatively recent history and deeply effects our mythology and all evolution. Under these straits lie fireplaces and campsites and middens and hunting grounds and songlines and paintings and carvings and burial grounds as well as the once fire red rocks on the North East."
Sydney Opera House Vivid Festival.
'Songlines', the theme for 2016,' Lighting of the Sails'.
Sydney Opera House is transformed into an animated canvas of Australian Indigenous Art.
Just back from Sydney's Vivid light festival.
The theme this year is our indigenous people.
The Sails are illuminated with the work of six Indigenous artists, celebrating the celestial Songlines of Australian Aboriginal astronomy.
More information here : www.sydney.com/destinations/sydney/sydney-city/vivid-sydney
Like the previous 2 years, we absolutely loved it and Sydney people really well behaved in big crowds.
Thank You Sydney!!!!
Thanks for looking and have a great week.
Norbert
There are a few spectacular moments in this year's Opera House projection 'Lighting the sails' which features work from six indigenous artists - Karla Dickens (including this image), Djon Mundine, Gabriella Possum Nungurrayi, Reko Rennie, Donny Woolagoodja, and the late Gulumbu Yunupingu - selected by the Sydney Opera House's Rhoda Roberts. Artists in Motion (who did the excellent Play animation for 2013's Vivid) created the visual content and animation.
This projection is my favourite out of all the high quality images on the Opera House.
This projection is my favourite out of all the high quality images on the Opera House.
Some of the photographs of Melbourne artist Reko Rennie's work displayed on the Iconic Opera House at this year's Vivid Sydney. Reko Rennie (Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay/Gummaroi)
Through his art Reko explores what it means to be an urban Aboriginal in contemporary Australian society. Rennie received no formal artistic training but as a teenager discovered graffiti which became an all-consuming passion. His art and installations continually explore issues of identity, race, law & justice, land rights, stolen generations and other issues affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in contemporary society.
Vivid Sydney is a 23-day festival of light, music and ideas. Vivid Sydney features many of the world's most important creative industry forums, a mesmerising free public exhibition of outdoor lighting sculptures and installations and a cutting-edge contemporary music program.
Vivid Sydney is a 23-day festival of light, music and ideas. Vivid Sydney features many of the world's most important creative industry forums, a mesmerising free public exhibition of outdoor lighting sculptures and installations and a cutting-edge contemporary music program.
VIvid. A whole lot of projections this year features indigenous art which is a highlight!!!
Vivid Sydney is a festival of light, music and ideas.
Vivid Light transforms Sydney into a wonderland of 'light art' sculptures, innovative light installations and grand-scale projections for all to enjoy - for free. It is a magical celebration of light-design excellence and the world's largest outdoor 'art-gallery': a unique Vivid Sydney experience.
Vivid Light engages lighting artists, designers and manufacturers from around Australia and the world to illuminate, interpret and transform Sydney’s urban spaces through their creative vision.
Granite Well at The You Yangs
This week is NAIDOC Week. I thought i would report a story I recently learnt, as told by Uncle Bryon Powell. He is a Wathaurung Man and this is Wathaurung country.
The You Yangs are a granite outcrop that form part of a songline that goes from South Australia to Wilsons Promontory. Along this songline are other granite outcrops including The Grampians and Arthurs Seat. The songline was in important trading route and one of many other interconnected routes that provided commerce for aboriginal people for hundreds and thousands of generations.
What you can see here in the foreground is a well that was carved out of the rock. Typically these also had a granite capstone to keep the animals and birds out to protect the water from contamination. This well is over a metre deep and one of a series throughout the location.
Once early settlers figured out the purpose, they smashed the capstones and salted the well so that they were unusable, toxic etc.