Species Watch

I recently posted a new entry at Mark Amerika Nature Photography featuring the Hawaiian black-crowned night heron.


Color Me Ready

An excerpt:

There is some ritualistic stretching and hissing and then when push comes to shove their legs turn from red to pink and soon the new season's brood is upon us. At Mark Amerika Nature Photography, we fight against our temptation to exploit the sexy image reservoir provided by the ongoing origin of the species. Even big gorgeous birds, exhibitionists at heart, deserve their right to privacy.

Also, I have a sad update on the Hawaiian Monk Seal I wrote about in January. The beast on the beach whose rare and elongated molting process on our local beach triggered this:

As we all continue shedding away layers of old skin with increasing gain, force, speed, and intensity, and our "outer self" keeps disappearing faster than ever before, we inevitably become hyperaware of the fact that we will never really truly get to the core of the matter because the core of the matter does not exist as a core but is an all-encompassing source material that we thrive in. These layers of past life as manifested in the skin we keep wearing and keep shedding and discarding over time, suggest a creative molting process that becomes a never-ending quest to reveal to ourselves everything we don't know and will never know until there is nothing left but the sensation of dreaming-molting, of continually searching for what hides just underneath the surface of our role-playing avatar as it shakes everything off and goes back to first skins, best skins, every only skins. Meanwhile the rumble of our deep interior anticipates our next inside-out creative eruption and somewhere in the middle of this molting-lava striptease where our inside is out and our outside is in, we ask ourselves "What is it that seeks?"

was found dead on nearby Rabbit Island. Cause of death unknown, but some new disease seems to be the culprit. Similar "unknowns" are causing the bats in upstate New York to die off en masse as well as the bees whose colony collapse disorder we have covered here before.


R.I.P.

All images by Mark Amerika Nature Photography

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Metadata: Hawaiian Monk Seal, Hawaiian Black-Crowned Night Heron, bees, bats, art, nature photography, mating, species

Late at Tate

If anyone is in London on Friday night and looking for something cool to do, you may want to check out the Late at Tate AV Social featuring "some of Europe's finest VJs and audiovisual artists." My colleagues at VJ Theory who are developing a multimedia publication on -- yes -- VJam theory that will include some of my own artist poetics, are part of the mix this week and the evening's event will feature some of the hottest AV talent in the UK plus a screening of Society of the Spectacle (A Digital Remix) [SOS] as well as clips from Debord's "original" SOS and the rare live viewing of Call It Sleep as part of a presentation curated by the Narrative Lab with selections from the editors of the VJ Theory book.

Of course, you could start your culture crawl in the late afternoon by going to the FILMOBILE event and then eventually make your way over to the Tate Britain for the social mixer.

(Aside: four years and over 40 exhibitions/screenings after its initial release, SOS still has legs and will be on display in other venues throughout the year. Check out the DJRABBI website for updates or to buy your own copy. Our work will also be featured later this month in Sao Paolo and Rio at "que situação, hein, debord?", yet another gig that I had to graciously decline the offer to fly out to due to intense postproduction on my Foreign Film Series and the general need to curtail travel from the distant South Pacific but that native son and quick-change artist Satellite Jockey will be attending).

make it REal.

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Metadata: Society of the Spectacle, VJ art, DJ RABBI, film, exhibition, VJ Theory, London, Tate