From the youtube description: "This rare film stars Orson Welles and features a dramatic recreation of a meeting between Nikola Tesla, Industrialist J.P. Morgan and Thomas Edison, that would decide the fate and future of today's Electric Power Industry in America and the world."
The Missing Secrets
Was Nikola Tesla the greatest genius of all time? Find out here. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4.
Tesla: The Race to Zero Point Free Energy
A feature length documentary about decades old outlandish claims of Tesla inspired free energy devices. Features yet more Edison bashing.
Guitar Solo!
You've gone... but your memory lives on like electricity! Yes, it's almost six minutes long.
Bonus Vid: The Other Tesla
Modern Day Cowboy. The difference between the previous guitar solo and this one is the difference between cookies and freshly baked cookies.
Browsing google video for science documentaries, I recently happened upon a Discovery Channel/BBC documentary from 1998 called The Aquatic Ape. Endlessly fascinated by the story of human evolution, I found it entertaining and informative. Part 1 is posted below with links to the other four parts.
The documentary traces the history of the aquatic ape hypothesis without the polticking scorn heaped on the subject by the scientific establishment. Its beginnings as a feminist reaction to early notions of man as vicious hunter led by a British housewife with no scientific training made it easy to shrugg off. But as more fossil data were collected throughout the 70s and 80s, the concept of open savannah as our only ancestral home was dispelled, and the idea that large bodies of water and the shores thereof could have played a crucial role in early human evolution gained validity with some scientists. The thoery remains mostly untestable and holds little to no weight with today's anthropoligsts, but it does provide an interesting perspective from which to consider our origins. From the wiki:
The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis (AAH): The hypothesis that water has acted as an agent of selection in the evolution of humans more than it has in the evolution of our ape cousins. And that, as a result, many of the major physical differences between humans and the other apes may be explained, to a large extent, as adaptations to moving (wading, swimming and/or diving) better through various aquatic media and from greater feeding on resource that might be procured from such habitats.
I of course remain skeptical, but I also find the theory holds some intuitive value and is worth tossing around as speculation despite lack of factual evidence. One worthy argument in my mind is that a diet high in fish, enriched by those Omega-3 fatty acids we've been hearing so much about, may have enabled our brains to grow as rapidly as they did. Another interesting thought is that human babies are the only ape babies with enough body fat to make them buoyant in water. As far as hairlessness is concerned, the well-recieved explanation - that hairlessness was sexually selected for because less hair meant less biting insects and mites on a potential mate - seems more plausible than the erroneous idea that it was necessary to streamline movement through water.
After watching the program, you may find yourself seriously considering some aspects of the widely dismissed aquatic ape hypothesis. Enjoy.
Here is my favorite print from Chris Jordan's recent show, Running the Numbers, An American Self-Portrait. Titled Plastic Bottles 2007, it "Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes." Every five minutes! Pretty effective. You can hear him talk about how he uses Photoshop to make such prints on the Moyers segment posted below.
I was lucky enough to catch the tail end of Bill Moyers Journal last week, and saw a wonderful segment on corporate lawyer turned photographer Chris Jordan whose huge digital prints bring out of control consumerism into focus. Here's a bit of what Mr. Jordan had to say to Mr. Moyers:
One day, I found a pile of garbage that was really beautiful, I thought, and so I photographed it. And I made a big print and hung it on my wall. And people would come over and look at it and they would start talking about consumerism. And they'd walk up and say, "Oh, look, there's an Altoid's can." Or there's a, whatever particularly consumer product that they recognized in the photograph. And then they would start talking about garbage and waste and they would tell me, "Chris, this is a different kind of image that you haven't made before." And they would sort of urge me to follow the thread. And I told them "I'm not interested in all that. Like, don't talk to me about modern art. And don't tell me to come up to date. Just check out my cool cosmic color theory."
And it really took a while for me to assimilate that this was a new kind of path I could follow. And as I look back, it's something that I truly cannot take credit for -- is finding my way to consumerism as a subject, because it found me. My own idea of it started to change. And it went from these brightly colored things, and it slowly started to get a little darker.
You can watch the segment here, and below are two shots with captions taken from the transcript of the show.
Cell Phones #2 Atlanta 2004
There's this contrast between the beauty in the images and the underlying grotesqueness of the subjects. And it's something that I put there intentionally because I was using beauty as a seduction, to draw the viewer in to sit through the piece long enough that the underlying message might seep in. It was frustrating because I would show my work to people and they would tell me how beautiful it was. But, they wouldn't get that it's about consumerism. Then, I would think, okay, I can go further. I wanna make an image that is affirmatively ugly.
Cell Phone Chargers Atlanta 2004
A visceral pile of twisted wires is supposed to look like monster guts, or something like that.
I couldn't really show the scale of American mass consumption - I could only hint at it. I would always have to say, "And this photograph only represents a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the actual quantity of things that we use or we discard." And as it came time for me to start thinking about doing a new series, it occurred to me, what if I could show the actual quantities of the things that we consume? One of the dilemmas I faced was that there's nowhere where there are massive piles of the actual detritus of our entire country's consumption. And so the only way I could possibly depict those things was to create digital images that put together lots and lots of little photographs.
Thanks to Jonathan for turning me on to this BBC documentary from 2004, What We Still Don't Know: Are We Real?, an entertaining piece that honestly considers the "simulation hypothesis," a Matrix-esque premise, asking: are we currently living in some kind of computer simulation. Hosted by Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Reese (excellent TED presentation), it's a playful program the marvels at the mystery of existence. From the website:
In Are We Real? Martin Rees navigates the extraordinary territory between science fact and science fiction. He reveals the logical steps that have led cosmologists and philosophers to the shocking conclusion that The Matrix scenario cannot be safely relegated to our storybooks. Whether it’s true or not, and it might be, here is a story that is altogether more serious and more deeply disturbing than any sci-fi fantasy could ever be.
I've been back in the big city for nearly two months without a single GD post. I apologize to all (any?) who have actually been checking in. I have plenty to share, but I'd like to do so from a new venue. Eventually, I'll put up a link to the new incarnation of Get Dirty, but until then I'll be posting interesting online media periodically right here at the blogspot. Please enjoy.
