visual language and its power to communicate influence and hopefully change us

The Language of art 1.5
A small sidetrack

I just saw again this wonderful short talk and video presentation of "Ashes and Snow" and it got me thinking further about the idea of visual language and its power to communicate influence and hopefully change us.

Please click the link to Ted.com below and enjoy.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/15

“Ashes and Snow”
A journey to “Ashes and Snow” is a journey to a world beyond—exotic, ideal, natural, foreign and fantastic.

“In exploring the shared language and poetic sensibilities of all animals, I am working towards rediscovering the common ground that once existed when people lived in harmony with animals. The images depict a world that is without beginning or end, here or there, past or present.”—Gregory Colbert, Creator of Ashes and Snow

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/15

Gregory Colbert: Gorgeous Video from

“Ashes and Snow”
Canadian photographer Gregory Colbert collaborated with animal species around the world to create "Ashes and Snow," a groundbreaking exhibit of photographs and films that explores humanity's relation to the natural world.

In a rare public appearance, photographer Gregory Colbert talks about the creation of his exhibit "Ashes and Snow." Colbert's work, which he calls "a 21st-century bestiary," captures the poetic beauty in our relationship to the animal kingdom. Colbert shows an 8-minute film, from the exhibit, of his epic swim with whales off the coast of the Azores. He then announces his new initiative, the Animal Copyright Foundation, which aims to collect royalties from companies using images of nature in their ad campaigns.

Despite the focus of the exhibition’s publicity on its documentary-like aspects—these are photographs and videos taken on his travels through more than forty countries and regions, images that have no been manipulated by digital technology, images exhibited in a “nomadic museum”—Colbert’s images are far from a documentation of human interactions with animals. Rather, the images are sculpted and arranged to suggest through form and tone a vision of cohabitation, an ideal in which humanity does not dominate the earth, but celebrates it together with its other residents.

The experience is religious and fantastic. Gazing upon images of an ideal from the darkness sparks the imagination to dream of adventures to an exotic, foreign world that is purer and more innocent than our own—an Eden from which we were banished, a paradise to which we aspire. In the darkness, we retreat into reverie, imagining ourselves as limber in the water as our brother whales, imagining ourselves conversing with the wisdom of elephants, imagining ourselves side by side with the dignity of the wild cat.
-Ian Chun.

All the best, Michael Orwick
www.michaelorwick.com