WATERBLOGGED

Mark calendars here...
Presenting a WATER from 4:00 to 5:30PM on Saturday, September 27th as part of the the open studio "Poetic Art", which runs in the Segal Center from 4:00 to 10:00PM, along with artists Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Jenny Schwartz, and The NYC Players....

Restored Photos from Image-Restore.co.uk

2008-06-29T19:59:00.003-05:00

Current TV - 3 questions about flooding

2008-06-29T18:40:00.002-05:00

Current TV Iowa flood footage

2008-06-29T18:40:00.001-05:00

Current TV Iowa flood footage

2008-06-29T18:38:00.003-05:00

Current TV Iowa flood footage

2008-06-29T18:37:00.002-05:00

More Object Exploration...

2008-06-16T07:29:00.003-05:00

Let's start falling down the rabbit hole of objects and how they are cherished or destroyed - you HAVE to read this...

http://imagerestoration.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/photo-restoration-water-damaged-or-flood-damaged-photos/
Restoring any photo should be pleasure not a chore. If a water damaged photo should need restoring, perhaps one recovered from a flood or a rainy camping trip then provided it is dry it can be scanned and restored like any other damaged photo. Of course the extent of damage may mean you have to replace an entire background by using the method of selection I described in the importance of selection . Once you have cut out you subjects you can choose and replace the background. Should the subject not be a person but a landscape then it may be better to approach the restoration from another angle.

See if you can find out when the scene was, what country and what time of year, this may help with the types of trees, flowers and surroundings you may need to research before restoring the flood damage. You may even find a similar scene in a reference book or even live near by where you can glean clues as to what things may have looked like.

If it is an old photo with people in a scene and the water damage means some of the clothes or objects have been distorted or lost altogether within the image then you can again get researching. Perhaps the owner knows what the people were wearing or have another photo that is not damaged you can use for reference. Photos of the period will give you great references to fashion and clothing and what types of hardware was around at the time. You may need to replace a car, rake, wheel barrow or pram, get as inventive as you can.

You may well be up against some really challenging colour bleeds and awkward colour fades, but with the usual patch tool and some selective feathering around the bled colour on a separate layer you should be able to colour correct these fairly easily.

Remember with the power of Photoshop and your skill anything is possible, the pleasure will be in knowing that you can restore it no matter how bad it is and you tackled and conquered something you wouldnt normally have taken a second look at.

Once again good luck and remember, flooded photos are not flushed away memories but restorable ones.

---
other interesting articles...

From the NY Times - "If These Refrigerators Could Speak" - http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/opinion/29codrescu.html

From the NY Times - "Memories of World War II, Still Fresh in Collectibles" - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/business/yourmoney/18war.html?sq=collectibles%20flood&st=nyt&scp=2&pagewanted=all

Diving into the Secret Life of Objects Part of WATER...

2008-06-16T07:12:00.003-05:00

NYTIMES - Survivors in China Sift Rubble for the Past
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/world/asia/08scavengers.html?pagewanted=all

What the people digging through the rubble here at the center of the earthquake zone are pulling out now is entirely inanimate. There are car parts and real estate deeds and clothes for infants. A woman scours the debris every day for firewood to carry back to a tent where 13 families have taken refuge. Another leafs through her son’s wedding photo album, dust-filled and lifted from the ruins of her home.

They are what the survivors need to carry on with their lives, to piece back together some of what was snatched from them by the earthquake on May 12.

Sang Yuping spreads out a half-dozen photographs on a mattress in the tent that was given to her by the government. Across the road lie the remains of her one-story home. Long wooden planks protrude from the pile at every angle like whale bones.

There on the mattress is a photo of her daughter, her son and his wife. It is April. They are smiling and dressed in Tibetan robes and dancing at a festival at a primary school here, weeks before the school is to collapse and kill most of the children inside.

“This is the thing I was happiest to see,” said Ms. Sang, 54, a corn and soybean farmer. “I lost everything in the earthquake, and when I found these photos, I felt better. Because from these photos, I can see what life was like before the earthquake.”

She added, “I look at these photos when I’m sad.”

Small objects, some sentimental, some practical, are all that most survivors from Yingxiu have left of their lives. The town lies deep in the mountains of Wenchuan County, at the epicenter of the quake that has killed nearly 70,000 and left 18,000 missing across southwestern China. Most of what is left of Yingxiu is piles of brick and concrete. More than three-quarters of the town’s 10,000 residents were killed.

Chinese soldiers here are demolishing building after building, blowing up teetering structures with explosives. Soon bulldozers will clear away all the rubble, leaving no chance to salvage the past. Survivors are venturing back to scavenge while they can.

At 2 p.m. on Wednesday, soldiers detonated explosives in a building on the far bank of the muddy river coursing through Yingxiu. The blast echoed through the valley and sent a cloud of dust over the town. Then people carrying backpacks, wooden baskets and plastic bags streamed across the bridge to the fields of debris on the far side.

The soldiers and police officers here do not care who takes what. Most of the people who owned these things are dead, they say.

Ms. Sang said she and her son came back specifically to look for the family photos. But anything they could find would help. There was, for instance, her 2-year-old grandson to think about. She had been cradling him in her arms outside when the earthquake struck. He and his mother are now living with relatives in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, three hours south.

“I found some of his clothes in the rubble and brought them down to him,” she said.

Her tent was littered with other things that had mattered enough for her to dig out. A jar of liquor with a crack in the glass. Two wooden chests that held quilts and blankets. Jackets and sweaters still coated with dust.

“I’m still looking for things,” she said. “Today I found a door. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with that.”

Down the street, a woman in a purple sweater and straw hat stood in the rubble putting handfuls of wood into her basket. She did this five or six times a day: dig in the rubble, gather wood, carry it across the river. She lived in a tent with 40 people from 13 families. They used the wood to make fires to cook.

“We’re all refugees, and we don’t have anything,” said the woman, Zheng Xiaoqiang, 40. “We depend on each other. We all cook together, eat together, live together.”

Her son, Zidong, 13, was sifting through the debris looking for more wood.

“He has nothing to do these days,” Ms. Zheng said. “I want to get him out and send him to school. His teachers took some of his classmates down to Chengdu. But he’s afraid to go on his own.”

She pointed to a rubble heap at the foot of a mountain that looked like any other rubble heap.

“I want to go back to my house to look for things, but I don’t dare because the rocks fall from the mountain at any time,” she said. “I ran out without shoes. Someone gave me these shoes I’m wearing. Now, maybe rocks don’t fall anymore, but in my head, at night, they’re still falling.”

Three men were digging in the same pile of debris as Ms. Zheng. One of them found a wooden door and gave it to her. Then he began pounding on a slab of concrete with a sledgehammer, trying to get lower into the mound.

“What we’re looking for is my son’s college graduation diploma,” said one of the men, Jing Liangwen, 64, a former member of the National People’s Congress. “He’s been teaching in a middle school for 10 years, but without the diploma, it’s hard to get another job.”

He pointed to a red photo album that on its cover had a picture of his son in a tuxedo and his daughter-in-law in a white wedding dress. “Finding this has made me happy, but maybe the diploma would be more important,” he said.

He ticked off other paperwork he needed to find: a real estate deed, a work license, health insurance documents, a proof of retirement certificate.

Without the last one, he said, he would not be able to collect his $290-a-month pension. Getting official documents in China can be as arcane a process as deciphering classical manuscripts.

Scattered around him were the fruits of the day’s labor: a DVD player, balls of yarn, jackets, blankets, pillows, two women’s handbags, two issues of “China Automobile Pictorial.”

“I’d love to find a table and some chairs,” he said. “In our tent, we have no place to sit.”

From the rubble he picked a small lapel pin, a red flag with the Communist Party hammer and sickle. He held it up.

He was asked whether it was important to him.

“How could it not be important?” he said, stuffing it in one of the handbags.

Along the main road, a man in a red T-shirt was tinkering with the battery of a pickup truck. He said the engine was still good. The truck could be driven out.

Another group of men was excavating what used to be an auto repair shop. One of the men, Tang Jianhua, had opened this shop to service construction equipment used by workers building a tunnel through a mountain here. Mr. Tang walked out of the rubble carrying two red hydraulic jacks.

“This repair equipment is my livelihood,” he said. “If they come back to work on the tunnel, I’ll reopen my shop.”

Twilight was coming, and rain clouds had drifted in. The wind picked up. Soldiers warned the salvagers that another building would be demolished with explosives in a few minutes. Ms. Zheng came back to collect her last batch of firewood for the day.

Mr. Jing walked over to a tent for dinner with friends. He had found all his certificates in a desk drawer in the rubble. He would be able to collect his pension. His son would be able to find another job. Life would go on.

Garbage Island Part 1

2008-06-09T18:05:00.001-05:00

Facebook celebrates Earth Day with a water fight.

2008-05-09T10:34:00.000-05:00

UK Daily Mail

Gotta Mow The Lawn No Matter What

2008-05-05T13:12:00.003-05:00

The Telegraph/JOHN BADMAN

The Real Cost of Bottled Water

2008-05-05T13:10:00.002-05:00

From www.environmentalgraffiti.com -

As John McCain and Hillary Clinton tell Americans tales of a gas tax holiday to relieve us of a whole 20 cents per gallon this summer (we’re paying more than four dollars anyway) it’s probably worth discussing one of the other reasons that gas is so darn expensive…

Of course, the reason is demand. Although developing countries such as China and India take the blame, there are other forces at work. Bottled water for example, which despite being past its peak, consumes roughly 17 million barrels of oil every year, not including transportation. The worst part of it is that that’s not even half the problem.

In addition to the 17 million barrels of oil (equivalent to just under the GDP of the Cayman Islands at today’s prices) used in production, bottled water consumes gallons and gallons of water.

Three gallons of the wet stuff is required to produce one gallon of what you will happily pay a dollar for, largely because of the length and complexity of the various “purification” processes and the evaporation loss that takes place while the water is in the plant. This is quite an ugly statistic, when juxtaposed to the fact that less than one percent of the water on our planet is both accessible and potable.

Besides the extravagant amount of oil used to make the bottles and large volumes of water used in the bottling process, there are of course, several other considerations. Firstly, there are the transport costs - by the time you transport every bottle by rail or truck and keep it cool, you may as well have filled it one-fourth of the way with oil. Let’s also not forget the operating costs of the factories themselves and the profit the bottled water companies have to make for their shareholders.Therefore, purely from an economic standpoint, if you only drink bottled water, you’re a mug.

Beyond that, there is also an environmental impact from production. This in fact, is quite simple to calculate: every ton of PET plastic for the bottles produces 3 tons of carbon–adding 2.5 Million tons of carbon dioxide emissions to the 17 million barrels of oil.

Dean Kamen // Stephen Colbert // Water

2008-04-04T19:21:00.001-05:00

Antarctic Ice Collapses (CNN)

2008-03-26T05:20:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A chunk of Antarctic ice about seven times the size of Manhattan suddenly collapsed, putting an even greater portion of glacial ice at risk, scientists said Tuesday.

Scientists flocked to take pictures and shoot video after a massive chunk of the Wilkins ice shelf collapsed in Antarctica.

Satellite images show the runaway disintegration of a 160-square-mile chunk in western Antarctica, which started February 28. It was the edge of the Wilkins ice shelf and has been there for hundreds, maybe 1,500 years.

This is the result of global warming, said British Antarctic Survey scientist David Vaughan.

Because scientists noticed satellite images within hours, they diverted satellite cameras and even flew an airplane over the ongoing collapse for rare pictures and video.

"It's an event we don't get to see very often," said Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. "The cracks fill with water and slice off and topple... That gets to be a runaway situation."

While icebergs naturally break away from the mainland, collapses like this are unusual but are happening more frequently in recent decades, Vaughan said. The collapse is similar to what happens to hardened glass when it is smashed with a hammer, he said.

The rest of the Wilkins ice shelf, which is about the size of Connecticut, is holding on by a narrow beam of thin ice. Scientists worry that it too may collapse. Larger, more dramatic ice collapses occurred in 2002 and 1995.

Vaughan had predicted the Wilkins shelf would collapse about 15 years from now.

Scientists said they are not concerned about a rise in sea level from the latest event in Antarctica, but say it's a sign of worsening global warming.

Such occurrences are "more indicative of a tipping point or trigger in the climate system," said Sarah Das, a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

28 Billion Bottles of Water

2008-03-05T10:47:00.000-05:00

Rivers of Garbage

2008-02-12T15:51:00.000-05:00

From the Daily Mail -

It was once a gently flowing river, where fishermen cast their nets, sea birds came to feed and natural beauty left visitors spellbound.

Villagers collected water for their simple homes and rice paddies thrived on its irrigation channels.

Today, the Citarum (in Indonesia) is a river in crisis, choked by the domestic waste of nine million people and thick with the cast-off from hundreds of factories.

So dense is the carpet of refuse that the tiny wooden fishing craft which float through it are the only clue to the presence of water.

WATER (the secret life of objects)

2008-01-12T12:00:00.000-05:00

Workshop presentation at HERE's CultureMart Jan. 8/9, 2008.

Video and production stills -

The Flood

Rachel

The Crafty Cook

Liv

Public Access Comedian

Global Warming Scientist

song

2008-01-01T18:34:00.000-05:00

The Water by Feist

**PLAY ME!!**

some old or broken objects....

2008-01-01T17:56:00.000-05:00

Korean Beach

2008-01-01T16:38:00.001-05:00

Garbage Water

2008-01-01T16:34:00.000-05:00

Footprints

2008-01-01T16:33:00.001-05:00

Trash Continents

2008-01-01T15:40:00.000-05:00

Since stories have started surfacing more recently, many have wondered if the rumors are true. Are there really ‘continents’, or massive floating garbage patches residing in the pacific ocean? Apparently, the rumors are true, and these unsightly patches are reportedly killing marine life and releasing poisons that enter the human food chain, as well. Indeed, the human race has really made its mark. One plastic patch is estimated to weigh over 3 million tons and covers an area twice the size of Texas.

But if there are massive islands of junk out there, why doesn’t everyone already know about it, and why aren't we doing something about it? Well, there are several reasons. First, no one is keen to claim responsibility for these monstrosities, which exists in one of the most remote spots on the planet. It’s easy to ignore than deal with, at least in the short term. Clean up is nearly impossible at this point, so many have adopted the famous ostrich saying of burying their heads in the sand. Even so, this polluted, chemical filled junk is finding it’s way onto our dinner tables.

From The Daily Galaxy

Water Dress

2007-12-29T23:10:00.001-05:00

True or False

2007-12-19T10:08:00.001-05:00

True or False: We need more water than we currently have to grow more food.

The answer is FALSE

According to the WWF, it's not the total amount of water that is the problem - it's how we are using it.

Currently the world is drawing on 54 percent of the world's accessible freshwater, says WWF, with 70 percent of that used by the global agriculture sector. But 60 percent of the water the sector uses, or 1,500 trillion liters, is "wasted through inefficient irrigation methods", it says.

Take rice, for example, which half of the world depends on for food - every kilo of rice produced requires 3,000-5,000 liters of water. Alternative methods of farming can remedy this, says WWF, citing 'system of rice intensification', or SRI, which it says in trials have show increased crop yields while using 30 percent less water.

(WWF; Environmental News Network)

Bridge over water

2007-12-09T14:42:00.000-05:00

From www.xepic.com....

Water Sports

2007-12-04T11:15:00.000-05:00

2007-11-04T09:50:00.001-05:00

the television of the future?

the kitchen of the future?

what does the future look like?

2007-11-04T09:44:00.000-05:00

Floods in Mexico / Droughts in Tennessee and Georgia

2007-11-02T07:21:00.000-05:00

how do you show pictures of an urban drought? i just tried and failed to find any of note or that spoke the volumes of the photos above. and then i found this one ---

which could just be a creepy add for poland spring, until think for a second and realize this dude's in a fallout shelter. doesn't really scream drought, but gets the idea of impending disaster across. i like this image of a man surrounded by bottled water.

palace bottle

2007-09-30T09:44:00.000-05:00

It's the future... "luxury water"...

http://www.evian.com/us/index_palace.php

water bridge

2007-09-29T08:36:00.001-05:00

Water forms floating 'bridge' when exposed to high voltage

By Lisa Zyga

When water in two beakers is exposed to a high voltage a floating water bridge forms between the beakers. Credit: Elmar Fuchs et al.
When water in two beakers is exposed to a high voltage, a floating water bridge forms between the beakers. Credit: Elmar Fuchs, et al.

While it's one of the most important and abundant chemical compounds on Earth, water is still a puzzle to scientists. Much research has been done to uncover the structure of water beyond the H2O scale, which is thought to be responsible for many of water’s unique properties. However, the nature of this structure, governed by hydrogen bonds, is currently unknown.

“Water undoubtedly is the most important chemical substance in the world,” explained Elmar Fuchs and colleagues from the Graz University of Technology in Austria in a recent study. “The interaction of water with electric fields has been intensely explored over the last years. We report another unusual effect of liquid water exposed to a dc electric field: the floating water bridge.”

When exposed to a high-voltage electric field, water in two beakers climbs out of the beakers and crosses empty space to meet, forming the water bridge. The liquid bridge, hovering in space, appears to the human eye to defy gravity.

Upon investigating the phenomenon, the scientists found that water was being transported from one beaker to another, usually from the anode beaker to the cathode beaker. The cylindrical water bridge, with a diameter of 1-3 mm, could remain intact when the beakers were pulled apart at a distance of up to 25 mm.

Why water would act this way was a surprise, Fuchs told PhysOrg.com. But the group’s analyses have shown that the explanation may lie within the nature of the water’s structure. Initially, the bridge forms due to electrostatic charges on the surface of the water. The electric field then concentrates inside the water, arranging the water molecules to form a highly ordered microstructure. This microstructure remains stable, keeping the bridge intact.

The scientists reached the microstructure hypothesis after observing that the density of the water changes between the beaker edges and the center of the bridge. A microstructure consisting of an arrangement of water molecules could have a similar density variation.

In their experiments, the scientists also discovered the existence of high frequency oscillations inside the bridge, and they observed corresponding inner structures with a high-speed camera and visualization system. Unlike the much slower surfaces waves, these high frequency oscillations weren’t caused by surface tension. Rather, the scientists predict that the oscillating structures were triggered by the waviness of the voltage supply itself.

The researchers noticed a pattern with the inner structures: every experiment started with a single inner structure, which then decayed into additional structures after a few minutes of operation. The group thought that this decay might be caused by either dust contamination or the increasing temperature of the water bridge under the electric field. As the water temperature increased from 20 degrees Celsius to more than 60 degrees Celsius—which took about 45 minutes—the bridge collapsed.

The scientists explain that the unusual effect of the floating water bridge, as well as the microstructures they observed during the interaction of water with electric fields, could be another piece to the puzzle of the structure of water. The group said that they are currently investigating how highly ordered microstructures may explain the density change in the water bridge, with the results to appear in a future publication.

---------

Citation: Fuchs, Elmar C., Woisetschläger, Jakob, Gatterer, Karl, Maier, Eugen, Pecnik, René, Holler, Gert, and Eisenkölbl, Helmut. “The floating water bridge.” J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 40 (2007) 6112-6114.

Copyright 2007 PhysOrg.com.

Japanese Water Painting

2007-09-13T09:33:00.000-05:00

A different, graphic aesthetic -

From the floor to the roof in 3 minutes

2007-08-30T10:05:00.001-05:00

Ravaging Tide

2007-08-19T18:18:00.000-05:00

http://www.amazon.com/Ravaging-Tide-Strange-Katrinas-Americas/dp/074329470X

Flash Flood

2007-08-08T20:58:00.000-05:00

Water Levels

2007-08-01T16:58:00.001-05:00

How a mature man deals with a serious weather catastrophe.

Helicopter and flooded road (from NY Times).

2007-07-18T00:34:00.000-05:00

2007-07-18T00:28:00.001-05:00

water coming out of the strangest places...

2007-07-18T00:23:00.000-05:00

Global Dimming

2007-07-11T10:46:00.001-05:00

Rain + Truck + Storm Sewer =

2007-07-11T01:32:00.001-05:00

2007-07-07T16:02:00.000-05:00

2007-07-07T15:50:00.000-05:00

2007-07-07T15:47:00.000-05:00

2007-07-07T15:41:00.000-05:00

Ok - recently found this artist - Gordon Matta-Clark - I'm a bit obsessed with his use of objects/perspective...I found a bunch of images that seem interesting...

2007-07-07T15:37:00.000-05:00

Monsoon in India

2007-07-06T18:46:00.000-05:00

NYT - 7/6/07

Daily Mail images

2007-07-05T00:09:00.000-05:00

Floods are judgment on society, say bishops

2007-07-02T10:17:00.000-05:00

Telegraph.co.uk - 7/2/04
By Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Sunday Telegraph

The floods that have devastated swathes of the country are God's judgment on the immorality and greed of modern society, according to senior Church of England bishops.

One diocesan bishop has even claimed that laws that have undermined marriage, including the introduction of pro-gay legislation, have provoked God to act by sending the storms that have left thousands of people homeless.

While those who have been affected by the storms are innocent victims, the bishops argue controversially that the flooding is a result of Western civilisation's decision to ignore biblical teaching.

The Rt Rev Graham Dow, Bishop of Carlisle, argued that the floods are not just a result of a lack of respect for the planet, but also a judgment on society's moral decadence.

"This is a strong and definite judgment because the world has been arrogant in going its own way," he said. "We are reaping the consequences of our moral degradation, as well as the environmental damage that we have caused."

The bishop, who is a leading evangelical, said that people should heed the stories of the Bible, which described the downfall of the Roman empire as a result of its immorality.

"We are in serious moral trouble because every type of lifestyle is now regarded as legitimate," he said.

"In the Bible, institutional power is referred to as 'the beast', which sets itself up to control people and their morals. Our government has been playing the role of God in saying that people are free to act as they want," he said, adding that the introduction of recent pro-gay laws highlighted its determination to undermine marriage.

"The sexual orientation regulations [which give greater rights to gays] are part of a general scene of permissiveness. We are in a situation where we are liable for God's judgment, which is intended to call us to repentance."

He expressed his sympathy for those who have been hit by the weather, but said that the problem with "environmental judgment is that it is indiscriminate".

The West is also being punished for the way that it has exploited poorer nations in its pursuit of economic gain. "It has set up dominant economic structures that are built on greed and that keep other nations in a situation of dependence. The principle of God's judgment on nations that have exploited other nations is all there in the Bible," he said.

He urged people to respond to the latest floods by turning away from a lifestyle of greed to instead live thinking of the consequences of their actions.

Global warming has been caused by people's lack of care for the planet and recent environmental catastrophes are a warning over how we behave, according to the Bishop of Liverpool.

"People no longer see natural disasters as an act of God," said the Rt Rev James Jones. "However, we are now reaping what we have sown. If we live in a profligate way then there are going to be consequences," said the bishop, who has previously been seen as a future Archbishop of Canterbury or York.

"We have a responsibility in this and God is exposing us to the truth of what we have done."

The Rt Rev Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, said: "We are all part of the problem and part of the solution. Instead of living as if we owned the earth we need to recover a sense of being participants in a web of life with responsibilities to other life forms and to our children."

The Bishops' warnings came as flood-hit communities were being warned to brace themselves for more torrential rain this weekend, with the Met Office issuing a severe weather warning for large areas of England and Wales, with up to 50mm (2in) of rain forecast.

Aid battle for flood-hit Pakistan

2007-06-30T22:41:00.000-05:00

BBC News 6/30/07

Rescuers in Pakistan are struggling to bring aid to more than a million people hit by storms that have also struck many other areas in south Asia. Army helicopters and transport planes are dropping aid to the homeless in Pakistan's Balochistan province.

Officials say fewer than 20 people died when Cyclone Yemyin struck on Tuesday but poor communications and remoteness mean an accurate figure is unavailable.

A key Hindu pilgrimage in Kashmir has been suspended due to heavy rain.

More that 140 people have been killed in storms and floods over the past week in India.

In flooded parts of Afghanistan, more than 80 people have died in recent days.

If Fire Were Water

2007-06-28T17:00:00.001-05:00

Referenced from http://www.boredstop.com

German Newscast

2007-06-28T03:21:00.001-05:00

Amazing Katrina Video

2007-06-27T22:22:00.001-05:00

BBC Flood Images

2007-06-27T22:05:00.001-05:00

Flooding in Texas

2007-06-27T14:07:00.001-05:00

NYT - 6/27/2007

Heavy rains caused flooding in parts of central Texas and Oklahoma today, forcing some residents to climb to the tops of their vehicles, houses and trees to await rescue.

Montauk 6/26/07

2007-06-26T23:36:00.000-05:00

UK Floods force thousands from homes

2007-06-26T22:28:00.000-05:00

BBC News 6/26/2007

Thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes amid severe flooding across England and Wales that is now believed to have claimed four lives. Hundreds of families in Lincolnshire, South Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Shropshire have been moved to safety.

In Worcestershire police searching for a missing motorist have found a body.

On Monday, a man and a teenage boy were swept to their deaths in Sheffield and another man died after becoming trapped in a storm drain in Hull.

7th Plague

2007-06-25T09:25:00.000-05:00

Plague mythology ought to figure into our constructs of global warming and floods. The two go hand in hand...

And now, a hailstorm -

Sand Storm

2007-06-25T09:17:00.000-05:00

All this talk about water... what about the places that are drying up?

Proof that Global Warming is a lie

2007-06-25T09:08:00.000-05:00

The genius who created this video is obviously not taking into account the fact that the majority of polar ice caps lie above sea level. It's a worthy attempt, though... and I hope it comforts people for at least a little while until they realize it's totally wrong.

Drowning Image

2007-06-23T23:39:00.000-05:00

To link to a pre-existing image: right click the images and select 'copy image address' and then paste that into the URL text field that appears in the pop-up window for inserting picture hyperlinks... the image option is represented as a little landscape icon right above where you type the blog entry, next to the spell check icon.

Great image, Daniella!

Things I'm Obsessed With After Our Last Videotaping...

2007-06-22T19:50:00.000-05:00

Language - Can't stop thinking about it. And how we want to use multiple languages in the piece - and play around with how they are used and misused and misunderstood. But not only that - what about the world of EXTINCT LANGUAGE? What causes a language to be washed away? Just like the internet and the dot com madness has added so many new words to our vocabulary - what words will wash away in this flood that we are creating? Ah - and Wikipedia lists recently extinguished languages (or they call them "modern" languages).

Rhythm of Global Warming to match the rhythm of our piece?
Is that possible? To take an image like - http://www.actewagl.com.au/education/_lib/images/Sustainability/Sustainability06%20-%20Global%20mean%20surface%20temp.jpg (sorry - can't figure out how to post images directly onto this note) - and have the rhythm of the overall piece happen in relation to this graph?

Some Drowning Images -
http://riannanworld.typepad.com/my_weblog/images/drowning.JPG
http://www.portlandmercury.com/binary/ca4b6c71/ex-11014.jpeg

Ah - and a Shirt Strangulation Image -
http://www.sphinx-sanitarium.com/straightjacket.jpg

notes for the opening

2007-06-15T22:05:00.001-05:00

OPENING:
-Lobby, gallery (exhibits, science fair, art fair)
-Pre-show, drink water, nametags?
-Cyc rise, audience gets flooded, actors come on
-Rooftop dying (thoughts projected?), dies throughout the scene
-Faux fish
-Couple cooking fish
-Rope- dead girls, live man

Shots of erupting volcanos set to psychedelic music

2007-06-14T00:31:00.000-05:00

Soft Construction With Boiled Beans: Premonition of Civil War

2007-06-14T00:29:00.000-05:00

Crazy Article about the Moken who Survived the Tsunami

2007-06-12T09:31:00.001-05:00

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/18/60minutes/main681558.shtml

Sea Gypsies Saw Signs In The Waves
How Moken People In Asia Saved Themselves From Deadly Tsunami

This article is a fascinating example of how the Moken People survived - and the history of their people, as well as the use of language...

Action or Inaction?

2007-06-11T15:07:00.000-05:00

Imagine watching this ten years in the future, after the world has flooded and depression has taken over.

flood animations

2007-05-30T10:24:00.000-05:00

Washington DC:

Miami:

Boston:

New York:

London:

And here's a little dramatic statement about how man-made global warming is a myth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIuNxy6i1o0

flood mythology

2007-05-30T10:21:00.000-05:00

From the Hmong...

"Similiar to Noah's Ark,"Txoj Dab Neeg Kawg" (The Last Myth) is an animation set in the old world before the great flood . Two villagers,Yer and Ker, are chosen to be saved and create a world anew with the help of the shaman Chong SeeYee. With supernatural monsters on their tail, the trio must face death defying moments all in a race against time. This photoshop animation explores the life history of the Hmong people, and allows Hmong individuals to realize where they stand."

Audio Recordings

2007-04-30T23:56:00.000-05:00

Here are my favorite excerpts from today's first session -

COPY AND PASTE THE LINKS INTO YOUR BROWSER FOR NOW...

http://www.boysandmurderers.com/audio/Opening.mp3

http://www.boysandmurderers.com/audio/Cooking.mp3

http://www.boysandmurderers.com/audio/Song.mp3

http://www.boysandmurderers.com/audio/Glasses.mp3

disaster theatre

2007-04-22T12:46:00.000-05:00

From a review of En Un Sol Amarillo at the Under the Radar Festival this year...

"One of the most effective aspects of the play, in fact, is the dust—dust as a central prop and emblem of what happens during an earthquake, of the way all crumbles to rubble, to dust, to dust that is everywhere and inescapable. Dust is the play's most effective and striking prop—used to draw a stick figure of a dead child on a wall, which then crumbles away; dust sprinkled on a prone actor as he recalls his burial alive, dust clouds erupting from a drum as it is beaten; pools and swirls of dust on the stage floor as the play draws to a close."

Here is the rest.

from the HARPers

2007-04-11T15:18:00.000-05:00

what is your first memory of water?

beach
jumping into a swimming pool
bathing with siblings
japanese bath in okinawa
trying to shampoo
drowning in a puddle
bath tub with cousin
brother peeing on me
black rubber boots
mississippi river

what is the feeling that water gives you?

fresh
strong
warm
hot
shampoo
cold
brecht
stings
fun
fear
wonderful

new text

2007-04-09T14:44:00.000-05:00

monologue from a pair of girl's eyeglasses:

I've never told anyone this before.

That's not true, actually.

I told my mother once, when she was in the hospital after her radiation. But she wouldn't remember. I told Gunnebo Wickett from the John Deere store—that's not the name of the store, that's what we call it—Gunnebo was a friend of my mother's, um but their idea of friendship was a little uh, different than others'. Slippery. Is that right, slippery? Peculiar word. Like you can almost hear the oil in it. Gunnebo anyway. Real skinny guy, big purple nose like an autumn gourd with hair coming out, growing down into his moustache. That moustache was always shiny, look like he glued it down with epoxy, suppose he used moustache wax, which is, I mean where would you even find moustache wax, maybe on the internet, but he was kind of old, maybe he had some lying around, and he smelled too, like sometimes like the inside of an old car, like that kind of stale, not sure if it was his breath or his clothes or both, but boy was he skinny. Mom fed him a few times a week when she was well but she was a horrible cook because of the one-hand thing, she lost the other hand when she was a girl, some farm accident she never talked about but secretly I think it had something to do with sex.

But anyway when she'd cook stuff would stick to the pan and set off the smoke alarm so we took the batteries out. She just couldn't the pan off the flame fast enough. Be chopping something and then BEEP BEEP BEEP. Maybe it wasn't the one-arm thing… I'll bet other one-armed people can cook. Maybe she was just inept. But that didn't stop Gunnebo from coming around. Three nights a week, sitting his stinky lanky self at our table and scraping the plate with his knife in his fist and saying Amelia this is delicious and he'd leave the black parts on the edges of the meat like it was that way on purpose. Not me. I'd cut them off and give them to the pigs.

I didn't hate Gunnebo per se. Except when he made her cry. But that was only a few times and I'm pretty sure he didn't mean to. She wouldn't cry in front of him. Not in front of me either. She cried in the shower. I guess because he tears would go down the drain rather than into the skillet or on the counter or her jeans, or whatever. Because then they'd be part of her space, like molecules of sorrow embedded in her daily life but in the shower they get drained into the sewers or wherever, as though they never had anything to do with the her at all. You could tell how sad she was by the length of her showers. Long after the hot water was gone. When she was dying she showered every day, for hours and hours. So much water.

Gunnebo still came three nights a week then, but there were no dinners. We got KFC or Pizza hut. Gunnebo liked the crusts with the cheese inside. I'm not sure why he kept coming when she stopped talking. One night he fell asleep on the couch with his mouth all slack and that's when I told him. Then mom was in the hospital two weeks later and that's when I told her. And now, well. I'm about to tell you. I'm not sure why. I think it's because of your eyes. They remind me of, of leaves, of light coats and cold afternoon breezes and pumpkin patches and apple cider. Your eyes, and the fact that you haven't stopped holding me since I asked you to.

What I'm about to tell you is. I'm allergic to bees. Just kidding. I mean I AM allergic to bees, but that's not what I told Gunnebo or mom. I told them the story of how I feel sometimes when I think of death. Like I'm sitting crosslegged at the bottom of the sea, and looking at starfish and stingrays and all sorts of sea animals floating and resting and swimming, and there is no noise, none at all, and my hair is lifting all around my head like a net, and I'm calm. I'm calm.

(beat)

I'm not afraid of dying, Jimmy.

(beat)

What do you think of me now?

Hurricane Katrina

2007-04-02T20:28:00.001-05:00

Worth watching in fullscreen view. Click the YouTube logo and then full screen it from there...

More images referenced from Digg

2007-04-02T20:19:00.000-05:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alternate/sets/199123/

Time Fountain

2007-04-02T20:15:00.001-05:00

http://cre.ations.net/creation/the-time-fountain

Macro Water Photography from www.frogview.com

2007-03-18T22:58:00.000-05:00

Some images of water posted on www.digg.com --

No Surprises

2007-03-17T20:56:00.000-05:00

I don't mean to pepper this blog with Radiohead videos (they are so like five years ago, ew!) but they seem to really apply in a lot of ways. This is a video from their album OK Computer.

early text

2007-03-17T12:10:00.000-05:00

Text I initially created for the Ibsen festival can be found here:
http://www.sheilacallaghan.com/water_final.doc

Document of flood mythology:
http://www.sheilacallaghan.com/Floodmyths.doc

Notes I took from our reading at New Dramatists last year:

Lights up. Water everywhere. Clothes float in. Actors bring microphones in, place them near the clothes, and objects. The clothing sings. Then actors climb into the clothes, objects take on lifes. Certain objects have more than one life.

START PLAY WITH ARIA OF A FLOATING SHIRT
TWO MONOLOGUES START THE PLAY
INCORPORATE NOAH'S ARC AND FLOOD MYTHOLOGY
TRACK THE LIFE OF LOST OBJECTS THROUGHOUT THE PLAY
CHANGE THE GENDERS OF THE CHARACTERS

first thoughts

2007-03-17T11:55:00.000-05:00

- the films you posted bill are great. it made me think of a couple of things - the first is the transformative nature of water. how do we show that? how it transforms the characters but it is constantly transforming - like time does. crazy idea but we could have a large block of ice on the stage that melts during the course of the show....or the opposite - we are watching water freeze during the show...can we suspend water mid-air? kindof like freezing time?

- i was also thinking about the whole idea of experimenting with water...the role that a "scientist" can play - taking water and objects (used in the piece) and seeing how they morph - or even disintegrate over time. maybe we have objects collected from audience members each night and keeping various vials of experiments going so that by the last show we have a whole wall of vials?

- ok- just watched the radiohead...it's amazing...it's absolutely fascinating. i love the way it captures the floating feeling of being deep underwater. i love the details on the dishes at the table (still scraps of food there) as if life was severed abruptly...i love the spotlight - and the idea that objects can be captured through light and how they tied that in to the sky at the end...

random chatter

2007-03-15T00:14:00.000-05:00

NOTES FROM THE WAVERLY...

-swivel chairs
-body as body of water (70% of earth, of human)
-endless ocean, no beginning, no end
-locales: underwater aria, cloud aria
-grief: water as escape for survival
-flooding of the gorges in China, ancient underwater cities
-apathy from abroad... what can I do to help? nothing. shutting out tragedy, different perspectives on the same event, empathy vs. safety
-the contemporary vs. the historical, the quotidian vs. the epic
-playing with scale
-temporary distortion blog - http://temporarydistortion.blogspot.com/
-audience involvement-all drink water together; all hold breath together; different ticket prices; ways of approximating experience and involving an audience viscerally (event theatre), cell phone or computer usage during the show, audience determines how the show goes
-first memory of water (nearly drowning, learning to swim)
-fake news cast... is the world drowning while we all sit in a theatre? What is being buried, and why, and how will we deal with it when we open the doors and the water pours in?

Water in Zero Gravity

2007-03-11T12:14:00.001-05:00

Look around you - Water

2007-03-11T12:12:00.000-05:00

Radiohead

2007-03-11T10:09:00.001-05:00

First Post

2007-03-11T09:58:00.000-05:00

From Jason's blog:

"In the near term, however, the answer seems to be pursing a sort of event-driven theater that does what only theater can do, something akin to the crowds that have sprung up around Spring Awakening, Rent, The Blue Men, or Cirque du Soleil. The Denver Center did an amazingly effective job of this with 1001. The local papers were very kind to us, and an overwhelmingly large number of the older audience were very responsive, but reaching out to younger audiences via the local club scene and word of mouth made all the difference. The DCTC publicist told me that the cheap seats were sold out for much of the run, which is unusual for them - usually they're full for a week or two and that's it. This tells me that we need to take a page from hip-hop, punk rock, and the indie and rave scenes and reach past traditional media outlets, which are usually prohibitively expensive anyway, and we need to put something on stage that makes a difference in the lives of people our own age. I see too many plays by my peers that seem specifically intended to digestibly package the lives of twenty- and thirty-somethings for an older, wealthier crowd, one that might be liberal it its beliefs but is deeply conservative in its tastes and actions. Fuck that."

From my friend Deron's blog:

"Placebo Sunrise was a show that was so incredibly good that when I saw it I immediately regretted it was closing that weekend, because everyone who was important to me wouldn’t have a chance to see it. When I think about what the theatre experiences that have knocked me out have in common two thing comes to mind: 1)Their ability to wholly transport you to another world with its own unique rules and life and 2) Their robust theatricality. Placebo Sunrise had both of these attributes from the very moment you set foot in the theatre and walked down the long hallway to sit down in what appeared to be a mock up of a traditional vaudevillian theatre. A host named Louis greeted you and pulled off that rare feat of being utterly charming while still in character. He gave you a refreshing orange and vodka infused drink and immediately convinced you that you were staying at some weird and wonderful resort. When the show began the heroes, Garvey and Super Pants were hanging from their feet by bungee cord in front of a backdrop that was sketched on white butcher paper. Totally surprising, totally hilarious. They didn’t have to say anything at all before we were laughing and on the edge of our seats. But then the scene ended and the butcher paper backdrop was ripped down to reveal this huge two story set of a 1920’s hotel. It was amazing, it was magic, it was a totally minding blowing moment which is so incredibly difficult to pull of genuinely in theatre. I can’t really remember what exactly happened in the rest of the play except that it was little like a Marx Brothers movie directed by David Lynch and that’s the kind of show I had always wanted to see. The other moment that sticks with me is that this woman, maybe a mermaid even was pushed out on this giant turtle in the midst of this hotel farce and sang this gorgeous torch song. And the whole piece was hilarious, I think any art that really works for me is something that has a generous sense of humor. This show was MOMENTUOUS."