View allAll Photos Tagged processart
Very deliberately after a piece by Brian Eno and Cluster called "Broken Head". This is one of my very favourite Brian Eno songs and it really captures the essence of his incredible talent for an arresting collaging of musical and lyrical images.
The song is from the 70's and sounds completey fresh and still way ahead of its time. It's a great Dada-esque assemblage of images, weird, disconcerting, fascinating and bewitching. To me it seems like a Dada critique of Western culture and a personal confession of a deep interest in the tiny, odd corners of our world.
Music Link: "Broken Head", from the album "After The Heat" by Brian Eno and Cluster. www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyLXZGTwQOg&list=PLEB7D69247C...
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A series of layered, "surrealist" pieces, part of my "Process Art" work, this time done in black and white. Why should powerful and unusual pieces always be in vivid colours? I wanted to try my hand at B&W surrealism as a way to expand my vocabulary - and hopefully come up with something effective.
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An arcane and hidden entry becomes visible to one who can see. For them it shows itself after a long, difficult effort. It is for no one else.
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Titled after a piece of electronic music wonder by Mexican composer Fernando Corona aka Murcof. The album containing this piece was a commission for a special performance of music, sculpture and light installations at the Palace of Versailles. The event happened at night and was lit in very unusual ways, transforming the gardens from beautiful, manicured geometries into strange and uncanny plays of light and shadow.
Corona's piece, performed on period instruments with electronics and processing, starts out with wonder and light and gradually morphs into a mysterious, then disturbing, even frightening atmosphere of uncertainty and dark imagination. It's an extraordinary piece on an extraordinary album. This image is my riff on the music and an homage to Corona.
Music Link: Murcof - "Spring in the Artificial Gardens" from his album "The Versailles Sessions".
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDHQi-5EnuY
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Titled after a musical piece by UK electronica duo, System 7, "Varkala". From their album "Seventh Wave".
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kZkvXwL8AQ
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Sacred geometry has long been about encoding higher levels of esoteric knowledge within the basic forms of circle, square, triangle and then the more complicated 'hedrons'. Such completely balanced circles, as are seen here in the church window, are also seen to be visual representations of entire world systems - mandalas in the East. Here these 3 worlds "rain" out 'benedictions' of flowers into the universe. View Large on Black
Old, hard, 'concrete' forms, in crisp black and white, give rise to a more fluid form, unbounded, more amorphous and shining with colour. Shifts from an old into a new - it's time.
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This Tibetan Buddhist Rupa, or Buddha statue, beautifully illustrates the Buddha's ability to see through all forms of distraction, illusion and the riotous mental jungle ... and maintain clear and undisturbed in peace.
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Music Link: TUU - "Rainfall" from their album "All Our Ancestors". Probably the most beautiful and successful of the TUU recordings, "All Our Ancestors" offers up an exotic, hushed and mysterious atmosphere that really seems to harken back to the ancients. An exceptional recording in its genre.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGWwgY4r-ic&playnext=1&li...
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For the "Hypothetical Awards" "Take a Walk on the Dark Side" challenge.
This 'elemental' appears almost buried in stone and water, or is that a life mask at the head of a sarcophagus that is immersed or submerged? Eyeless in death, nothing of this world appears to it but the flush of flush of colour suggests some form of sentience yet. A swarm of serpentine dreams constellate around the face. Is death the end, then?
The long hair cut with forehead bangs, the hanging jewels on necklaces and the psychedelic colours around and "in" her are echoes of the lysergic 60's. The image of her itself then, and the colours and shapes around her, even though they were created now, all produce, or are the result of the, echoes of the summers of the late 1960's - '67, '68 & '69. We still have a fascination for the psychedelic today. The forms of it's expression have changed, the technologies for creating it too. But the heart and soul of it still finds resonance, or, echoes in many today.
Music Link: Pink Floyd - "Julia Dream". A rare track found on their rarities compilation "Relics" from 1971. The song dates from 1969 and is a good example of Roger Waters working to move the band out from under Syd Barrett's considerable shadow and still appeal to their audience's taste for continued psychedelia of sorts. One of his best songs, actually. Young, naive, full of imagination it's the youthful Waters deeply committed to being an artist, before he began his gradual shift to acerbic anti-war rants and social criticism.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz01PGyqFR4
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# 2 of 3 experiments with a new photo-processing program recently obtained. Effects can be built up over and over again and tweaked with adjustments. A new fun thing from Apple. Here the foreground and background play at an ambiguous dance or unity. Original shot on my camera by Robin Morewood.
This self portrait sees me indulging my fascination with Shamanic cultures. Rather than seeing themselves as cut-off, separate beings in a foreign world of Nature and it's "wildness", Shamanic cultures literally experience the world as part of themselves and their individualities as points of crossing forces in the entire ebb and flow of energy. They might be onto something.
Shamanic Music Link: Steve Roach - "Tantra Mantra" - edit from his album "Fever Dreams". Roach beautifully straddles the worlds of shamanic instruments and contemporary electronica. He's worked with Lights in a Fat City, as well as people like Robert Rich, Vidna Obmaana and Robert Fripp.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozEHTIjX19o&list=PL0E8FDFB2D1...
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Qur’ān Gate (Persian: دروازه قرآن Darvāzeh Qor'ān) is a historic gate in the southern-central Persian city of Shiraz, Iran. It is located at the northeastern entrance of the city, on the way to Marvdasht and Isfahan, between Baba Kouhi and Chehel Maqam Mountains near Allah-O-Akbar Gorge.
Feeling a Surrealist influence, particularly that of Max Ernst, again, this combination of church and old leaf looking like an African mask seemed to satisfy my love of striking juxtapositions. The meeting of Christian and Pagan references sparks some provocative thoughts.
Music Link: Keith Emerson - "Clotho" from "The Three Fates" originally on Emerson, Lake & Palmer's debut album, "Emerson, Lake & Palmer". Here the pipe organ piece, the first of the Fates, is interpreted brilliantly by Marco Lo Muscio in Norway. This powerful piece of music suggests an otherworldly or divine power that is as dark as it is light. I thought it suited this image.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK3nS31SMyo
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On the verge of the Quantum Age we find ourselves still largely locked, bound, almost strangled by old systems of thought. We've almost mummified ourselves in old systems which once supported us. Now they have us tied tightly to ways that no longer serve us, or the planet.
Are we ready to break free?
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The great Pandit Ravi Shankar passed from our world this week leaving a gigantic musical legacy and influence that literally re-shaped the course of music in the Western world. Huge cultural figures as diverse as George Harrison, Philip Glass and Yehudi Menuhin all worked with him, learned from him and were profoundly affected by the classical Indian music Shankar was an unparalleled master of. Each spoke of a soft-spoken man who also maintained an air of quiet authority and wisdom. He was as much a Guru, as he was musician.
Would Indian music, and indeed even the culture of India, have translated so well into the west if Shankar, a great educator, had not been open to being it's greatest cultural ambassador?
His mastery of the Sitar is deservedly legendary and anyone who ever had the great fortune to see this great Master completely immerse himself in the grand ragas of the North Indian tradition, to breathtaking effect, count themselves as extremely fortunate.
I've done this tribute in the 4 'movements' of North Indian raga: Alap, Jor, Jhala and Gat.
Blessed re-birth to you, Ravi !!! And Thank you !
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Shiraz is the sixth most populous city of Iran and the capital of Fars Province. In 2009 the population of the city was 1,455,073. Shiraz is located in the southwest of Iran on the Roodkhaneye Khoshk seasonal river. Wikipedia
Created for the Vivd Imagination challenge "Vivid Graffiti & Street Art".
Language gives us access to each other, to basic levels of common human experience. Language can also become a barrier to direct seeing, with all it's naming and categorizing, it can lock the mind into habitual patterns of judgement.
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Biomorphic forms, anthropomorphic references, myth and archetype, fear and wonder all flow together, in and out of each other in a constant flux. A ritual, a continuum, the seamless ambiguity of dream. As many things to see as one can imagine. The act of seeing itself can be a ritual itself to bring about different levels of seeing.
I went with a grainy, more 'dirty' effect as I wanted this series not to have so much of a crisp, tight digital look as much as a more organic character to better fit the idea of "nature spirits".
Musical Link: Robert Rich - "Moss Dance" from his album "Numena". Rich is one of the great American electronic music masters known for his ambient, dark ambient and somnient pieces, genres he, Steve Roach and B. Lustmord helped create and define.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIkBAR77eaQ
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Water nymphs in Greek mythology, Feminine, semi-mortal and whiley, the Naiads, lived in quite waters that were not to be disturbed. One demi-god Hermaphroditus made the mistake of doing so and was soon met by the Naiad Queen, Salmacis, who by divine decree joined her body literally with Hermaphroditus out of sheer love for him. From then on they lived as one being, of both sexes, deep in the lake.
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Another tribute to the Humanity-loving Hindu God, Krishna, who came to Earth to live among human beings in order to love and teach them.
Here the predominating colour is his natural blue, the colour of space or akasha. Blue is also associated with the deepest reaches of the mind.
So Krishna plays his flute in secret, encoded ragas to open up the wisdom and feeling of the human beings he loves.
May something of Krishna's love permeate this next age, bringing to bliss the divine Feminine of his myth. An electronic image for this electronic age and the coming quantum paradigm.
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A line taken from a Mike Pinder song on the Moody Blues' "A Question of Balance" album. The song, "Melancholy Man" is a dark, prophetic song about some unspecified future "when all the stars are falling down, in to the sea, and on the ground"... Perhaps it also refers to a state of mind as opposed to world events.
The song reflects on a time when darkness is all around but into that darkness comes a "beam of light" illuminating all the great truths that are universal. Maybe that 'beam' is simply the critical mass of intuition that breaks through one's own dark.
I've heard it said that light is alway more powerful than the darkness. If you have two rooms, one in total darkness and one brightly lit and you open the door between them, the darkness does not flood the lit room and extinguish the light.
Music Link: Ship of the Desert - System 7
Created for the Hypothetical Awards Challenge "Me, Myself and I". .
These 5 images are shots of me in my annual Hallowe'en costume, which is a riff on or fantasy of a Mayan King or Nawab. Having delved deep in Mayan studies my fascination is more than superficial. I've been building this costume since 2005 and each year it gets bigger and more complex. I think it ironic that I post these images publicly this year, 2012, a significant date in the Mayan Calendar.
1 of 5.
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Working now with a multi-effects program that's easy to use with it's many presets. However several of them have sliders for adjusting and then there are the usual controls like contrast and saturation. The great thing is that you can shift back and forth between effects building on their results leading to a really rich and complex texture. If you're willing to push it, it really responds well. Thanks again to Ira Dick.
What would a true Shaman be without the use of psychotropic plants? Here our Shaman peeks back at us from the other side of the "veil" while deep in his ayahuasca vision. This is not a pleasure ride for him, but a vehicle for stepping outside of the 3D box and navigating the quantum multi-dimensionality reality, or, dreamtime.
Shamanic Music Link: Lights in a Fat City - "Tjilpi" ( pron. "Chill-Pea" ), Aboriginal for "Elder", from their album "Somewhere". Solo Didgeridoo by Stephen Kent.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfFIFxEDt7M
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Nathan Mabry's sculpture, Process Art (Dead Men Don't Make Sculptures) is on display at the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System's, America Plaza, next to the San Diego Museum of Contemporary of Art. It's a bronze sculpture that captures your attention as soon as you see it. Kind of a...Shrek meets The Thinker. You can read more about it at;
www.mcasd.org/artworks/process-art-dead-men-dont-make-scu...
www.skny.com/artists/nathan-mabry/
Click on the image to see it large.
© Tom Odaniell - All Rights Reserved - No Unauthorized Use
While living in India, many years ago, I witnessed a full moon that was so intensely bright it literally covered everything in sight in a rich, shimmering cast of slightly bluish silver. I was so much in awe, virtually dumbstruck, that I sat in our back yard, which was very deep into village Tamil Nadu, and stayed there for hours scarcely believing my eyes. The light was so bright and clear that I sat on the back porch and read from a volume of Attar, a Sufi, without the slightest strain to my eyes. I would periodically put the book down, though, and spend long, meditative stretches quietly but almost madly, drinking in the wonder before my eyes and feeling the vast kind of peace that provided. The moon was directly overhead.
This image is in memory of that extraordinary night with me, alone, witnessing this breathtaking magic while the whole village slept in peace.
Music Link: Brian Eno & Harold Budd - "Their Memories" from their album "The Pearl".
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpB9MR0RIFg
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Created for the Hypothetical Awards Challenge "Me, Myself and I". .
These 5 images are shots of me in my annual Hallowe'en costume, which is a riff on or fantasy of a Mayan King or Nawab. Having delved deep in Mayan studies my fascination is more than superficial. I've been building this costume since 2005 and each year it gets bigger and more complex. I think it ironic that I post these images publicly this year, 2012, a significant date in the Mayan Calendar.
4 of 5.
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The Greys, or Grays, diminuitive but legendarily emotionless beings of super intellect who are said to have been here, on this world, interacting with classified levels of government and science, are the stuff of fascinated legend and great fear.
They are the 'abductors', the ones who've appeared in countless reports as having spirited away many a human being for gruesome experiments. The Travis Walton case in the 1970's is one of the most famous.
Are they here or is it a hoax? The Walton case is hair-raising and points to the very real possibility that Walton was not lying.
It is said, though, that these beings want something that we have and they do not - emotion. They are trying to acquire it through genetic splicing, so it's said. Whatever the case, it indicates that the intuitive and emotional, that we often place as secondary to reason, is the secret to our advancement as a species as reason, by itself, can become almost monstrous. The Greys may be a perfect metaphor for understanding the dangers of the extremes of rationality.
Or, they're just great fun to scare ourselves with .....
Shiraz
Shiraz is the sixth most populous city of Iran and the capital of Fars Province. In 2009 the population of the city was 1,455,073. Shiraz is located in the southwest of Iran on the Roodkhaneye Khoshk seasonal river. Wikipedia
The simultaneous deep underwater and sky references in this image led me nowhere else but to Pink Floyd's infamous masterpiece, "Echoes" for the title. The next line goes " and call to you across the skies". This grand, even epic, piece of music was, for a generation, pretty much the pinnacle of profound musical expression. It certainly stands out for me, as a long, long-time devotee of the band, as one of their greatest creations ever. The title also refers directly to opening oneself up to wider and deeper things, to the universe even, with it's implied open arms. For Paul Thomson of New York City.
Music Link: David Gilmour ( and RIchard Wright ) from Gilmour's album "Live in Gdansk". The You Tube video is mistakenly credited to Pink Floyd. Half of Pink Floyd is indeed represented but it is not officially Pink Floyd. This is probably the greatest version of the song ever recorded. Gilmour and Wright in particular are on fire here. The irony is that it is also pretty much a farewell to Wright, who very sadly died not long after. It is a powerful and moving swan song to the incredible musical partnership that Gilmour and Wright developed over decades.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq_bITDr_90
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