A (much needed) departure from the Korean psyche…
I just can’t get enough of these kids.
All Is Full of Love – Björk
I’ll Be Your Mirror – The Velvet Underground
Jóga – Björk
Archive for the ‘in the world’Category
On the Way to Mara-do
click on image to play.
10
05 2010
Hooray!
In the spirit of evolution…
From the White House blog:
The President met this morning at the White House with His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama. The President stated his strong support for the preservation of Tibet’s unique religious, cultural and linguistic identity and the protection of human rights for Tibetans in the People’s Republic of China. The President commended the Dalai Lama’s “Middle Way” approach, his commitment to nonviolence and his pursuit of dialogue with the Chinese government.
19
02 2010
No words to describe…
Tags: wonder
18
02 2010
Mapping Whale Songs
“When you see what whales are doing with sound, or begin to see what they are capable of, it is clear that humans are not the only artists on the planet.”
Minke ‘boing’ moving image visualization.
Humpback moving image visualization.
More can be found here.
From NY Times (2006):
Subtle Math Turns Songs of Whales Into Kaleidoscopic Images
By GRETCHEN CUDA
What do whale songs and wavelets have in common? Quite a bit, and the wavelets have nothing to do with water.
In a Northern California studio, Mark Fischer, an engineer by training, uses wavelets — a technique for processing digital signals — to transform the haunting calls of ocean mammals into movies that visually represent the songs and still images that look like electronic mandalas. (His art can be found at aguasonic.com.)
Mr. Fischer learned about acoustics by developing software for Navy sonar and the telecommunications industry. Years later, a serendipitous brush with whale researchers in Baja California led him to take a closer look at whales and the diversity of their intricate underwater communication. “I don’t think anyone has ever spent even a little time around a whale and not been amazed by it,” Mr. Fischer said in an interview.
Mr. Fischer creates visual art from sound using wavelets. Once relatively obscure, wavelets are being used in applications as diverse as JPEG image compression, high definition television and earthquake research, said Gilbert Strang, a math professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an expert on wavelets.
They are popular now in part because they can capture intricate detail without losing the bigger picture, and when presented in circular form (using a cylindrical coordinate system), repeated patterns are even more evident. By stringing successive images together, Mr. Fischer transforms still images into animated audio files that bring the sound to life.
Among whales, certain sounds and patterns are unique to different species, and even individuals in a group — something like an auditory fingerprint, Mr. Fischer said. “To anyone who doesn’t listen to it on a regular basis it sounds like a bunch of clicks,” he said. “But if you’re a whale — or someone who studies whales — it becomes clear that they have their own dialects.”
Wavelets are capable of picking up those distinctions, Mr. Fischer said, nuances that may be missed by the human ear or less detailed visualization methods. “You can pick out any one of those movies and I’ll tell you what it is without hearing a thing,” he said. “The differences are that dramatic.” He envisions a day when researchers may be able to use images generated using wavelets to identify and track individual whales.
Peter Tyack agrees that the technique has potential not only as art, but as a scientific research tool. A senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Dr. Tyack studies the way humpback whales communicate, trying to show that the repetitions in whale songs follow grammatical rules similar to those of human language.
“Looking at those figures, it looked like you could see a lot of repeated units,” Dr. Tyack said of the images. “It looks like he’s visualizing some of the points that we made in the paper about humpback song.”
Despite having analyzed recordings from at least 16 species of whales, Mr. Fischer said he had just scratched the surface. “It’s still a wide-open world out there,” he said. “You think you’re in the 21st century and we have the means to get anything, but when it concerns the deep ocean there is still quite a bit of mystery.”
In the meantime, Mr. Fischer hopes that by merging science and art, he will inspire a greater appreciation of whales among both marine biologists and the public, as he gives many people a glimpse of a world they would otherwise never experience.
“It’s a very rare opportunity to be in the water listening to a whale,” he said. A picture, on the other hand, is something you can hang on your wall and look at every day.
“When you see what whales are doing with sound, or begin to see what they are capable of, it is clear that humans are not the only artists on the planet,” he said.
17
02 2010
Journey to the Ethnosphere
A friend sent this video over, and it’s too good not to share.
TED talk from anthropologist and National Geographic Explorer Wade Davis on the ethnosphere, the cultural and spiritual web of life of the planet; “the sum total of all thoughts, and dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, intuitions brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness…humanity’s great legacy,” and why protecting its diversity is so critical.
16
02 2010
Righting the Wrongs of History
Recently was talking to a friend in the US about Korea and global political history, or something along these lines. I was a bit surprised when, in passing, said friend mentioned, among other things, Korea’s role as colonizer in the context of historical global relations.
Surely, I did not just hear that, I thought. Surely, this person doesn’t believe Korea, of all the countries of East Asia, once colonized some other country? And if so, what country would that have been?? In my remote and lurking Korean (American) national pride, it was kind of like a little bit of salt on my race’s historical wounds (I realize I am conflating nation and race here, but that’s how insidiously unconscious this stuff can be. Kidding…Not kidding.). I was sadly reminded of how so many people in the West — and a lot of people I know — actually don’t really know jack about Korea and its history. And what they do know is abstract, vague, generalized at best.
And I guess, why should they? Much of Korean historical scholarship is written and consumed by those with a particular specialization in Korea or East Asian Studies, Korea has traditionally not been perceived as a major global power nation, and because of Korea’s history of invasions from outside forces, as well as a period of incredibly brutal colonization by the Japanese – Korea has been just a little bit protectionist, and also because of these factors, so much of written Korean history has been lost; documents pillaged and records destroyed (or stolen, see below), not to mention the systematic cultural and religious oppression by Japanese colonizers in forbidding the study of Korean history, art, and language, as well as making worship at Shinto shrines compulsory.
I tried delicately mentioning some of these things in response to my friend, since I was not in the mood for critiquing, and also wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. (I take this as part of my humble role as a “cultural ambassador.”)
This is really Korean History 101. Pick up any book on the subject and one of the first things it will talk about is Korea’s unfortunate geographic location and the subsequent history of foreign invasion that’s descended upon “the Land of the Morning Calm.” Of course, much more could and should be said about this, but for now what I wanted to share was this opinion article from the Joong-Ang Daily: “Winning Back Stolen Culture”.
Case in point, this article states:
According to a recent survey by the Cultural Heritage Administration, a total of 107,857 Korean historic properties are scattered over 18 countries. Japan holds the largest number with 61,409 items, followed by the United States with 27,726 items. Some items, such as Uigwe, were confiscated by foreign invaders while others fell into the hands of collectors through trade.
France, Japan, the US — all have historical and cultural artifacts that were stolen during invasions and occupation currently displayed in their own libraries and museums. Koreans want them back. Why can’t these people return what is not rightly theirs? (This is all really working up my haan.)
Righting the wrongs of history in Korea has undoubtedly been an ongoing and deeply-rooted psychological, cultural, and emotional process that plays out on so many levels – from reclaiming stolen cultural artifacts, to former comfort women protesting every Wednesday in Seoul, to trying to correct the misconceptions of the outside world. Every nation has its own demons to exorcise, its own psychological and collective healing it must do. These are just a few examples of contemporary (south) Korea’s particular situation, and this is something that Koreans themselves will continue to negotiate and work through for a long time coming…
09
02 2010
Haiti & How You Can Help
14
01 2010
Wild dolphin spotting off Moreton Island, Queensland Australia
click image to view
Tags: ephemera
12
01 2010
Happy 2010!
The New Year’s full moon in Australia.
