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Free Tix for Terra Nova at BAM

Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky
djspooky.jpg

Hey people -- as you may know, I've been touring my Antarctica project, Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica, for the last year, and December 2nd, 4th, and 5th are the premier dates at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in NY. It's a special event--we're performing the whole symphony with one of NY's premier ensembles, the International Contemporary Ensemble, ICE, and they just did a festival based on Iannis Xenakis, one of my favorite composers.

Antarctica is one of the most remote places on Earth, and it's the only landmass with no government. My music piece is a reflection of those kinds of issues, and some of the other more concrete things facing us -- climate change, rampant pollution, and the way art, music and literature can raise awareness about these issues.

Here's the description of Terra Nova from the BAM website:

"Based around DJ Spooky's sound recordings in the Antarctic that explore the acoustic qualities of ice, Terra Nova allows us to encounter the climate crisis with unprecedented intimacy, giving voice to the groaning landscape as it undergoes irrevocable change. Members of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) perform live with DJ Spooky's hip-hop and sample-infused soundscape to create a riveting electronic symphony as live video projections reconstruct Antarctica—the real and the imagined—in this acoustic portrait of our embattled Earth."

I'm inviting the Reality Sandwich crew to check out the premier and the other concerts.

We're doing a ticket give away for two shows, Dec 3rd and 4th. A pair of tickets for each night. To win, post a poem in the comment box below about Antarctica and climate change. A panel of Reality Sandwich poetry experts and I will pick the prize winning poem! Submit a poem on Antarctica or climate change to win tix! (Submission deadline is Thursday, December 3, 2009, 4:00 pm ET. Make sure your RS account email address is correct, so we can contact you with the tickets.)

For more info about the BAM performances, go here: http://www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=1273

 

Image courtesy of http://djspooky.com/

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Comments

Homework

Submitted by ecoblips on Mon, 11/30/2009 - 17:52.
Normal 0 0 1 234 1335 11 2 1639 11.1282 0 0 0

Through curious eyes you peer out into the great unknown

Great child of this maddening city, I watch you pace back and forth

Is the weight of the world on your shoulders or do you lay your head in hand and pray for chocolate pretzels and one more hour of tv time?

I ask you, young man, with the puffy cheeks and the future of us all in your hands,

Do you watch American Idol?  Did you vote last night?

Pacing back and forth in spontaneous frolic, did daddy tell you how the antarctic sheet is thinning?

Better tell your kindergarten teacher to put it on the homework list.

 

Through curious eyes you peer out at my brownstone

Business plans and consulting gigs and networking events dissolve into drivel as I look out and penetrate your living room.  You are so close, but lightyears away...

I see the crescent moon on your pj's and wish I could scoop you up, and your whole class too, up and out to the starry sky for a journey into denial -

We don't ever have to come back, I'll tell them.  Rest assured, everything will be fine, our parents will be very...WARM.

Just keep bouncing around on your tippy toes, and show me how...I've forgotten.

 

Through curious eyes, our gazes meet and the fate of the universe is united.

All of my work is to preserve your ocean, your forest. 

If we still have the green, will you teach my children-to-be, how to swing from a tree?  Oh wise sage of generation z, what will become of you, and me?

Will you be my partner in crime, turn back those hands of time.

His hand drops from his cheek and affixes to his hip as we both look outward and upward, peering out into the great unknown...

 

 

Antarctica tourism

Submitted by cdcaleo on Tue, 12/01/2009 - 10:45.
The type of tourism that allowed Mr. Miller to visit the ICE and inspired his work is strongly opposed by the grantees and science support staff who call Antarctica home for various parts of the year.I lived and worked at McMurdo station for 6 months, and will be deploying to the South Pole in 2010. In the past 10 years parasitical tourism has brought 40,000 people to the periphery of the ICE, and South Georgia island. Whereas true Antarcticans ( contractors and support staff ) follow strict codes of low to no impact, and scrupulously recycle everything, tourists like Mr. Miller regularly disrupt the local ecology and interfere with local wildlife. All grantees and support staff that I know are attempting to BAN all tourism, or at least strongly curtail it. Tourism has already resulted in an oil spill off the coast near S. America, and as more tour ships make landings, a larger disaster is inevitable.

Continuing...

Submitted by cdcaleo on Tue, 12/01/2009 - 11:08.
If Mr. Miller really wanted to understand the ICE, he would join the United States Antarctic program and apply for a contract to actually live and work on the ICE. But of course that would involve working 60 to 70 hours a week in a support position and giving up your privacy and comfort by living in a cramped dorm room with 4 other staffers. And only showering 4 times a week and sharing 4 toilets with 100 other people. Yeah, that might be too much to ask. Better to just hire a scab to sail you from Argentina so you can make landfall near a penguin rookery and have a neat photo taken and tell everyone you've been to Antarctica. Mr. Miller, unless you get a job here, you will NEVER see the interior of this vast and beautiful land. Only by living there can you even begin to get an inkling of how overwhelming and haunting the ICE truly is. For those of us who have lived there, Antarctica leaves a wound on your soul that will NEVER heal. Thankfully, the U.S.A.P. won't allow tourists at any of the stations under most circumstances. And for the few who get through the net, just know the general staff despises tourists who BUY their way onto the ICE. Support staff have to EARN our way onto the ICE. Don't be part of the problem Mr. Miller. In the end, Antarctica always wins.

dcc: antarctica

Submitted by animoforest on Wed, 12/02/2009 - 18:36.

arctic antarctic

an antarctica no more

 

drivencooledchilled

drivencooledchilled

 

we are warm

no more

we endure

no more

 

drivencooledchilled

drivencooledchilled

 

comfort for today

for Discomfort to stay

an antarctica no more

Penguin Rhetoric (poem)

Submitted by Jared Rinaldi on Wed, 12/02/2009 - 23:04.

Flightless bird at water's edge

Reflection between two webbed feet

Ebbing and flowing, the coldest water growing.

The shore seems closer this year

Says mother to her pregnant sister

Ebbing and flowing, her knowing eyes probing.

Brother is sick, and thinks of leaving

For Argentina. Or Chile. A dotted line Earth

Ebbing and flowing, penguins all throat sing

Grandfather's voice catches, cracks like ice.

We all look up on his sagacious advice.

The sky is blue-hot, smoky rolling moan

Antarctica's aflame, our land, our home.

Poem for Antartica

Submitted by juliefrancine on Thu, 12/03/2009 - 04:47.
Seemingly you stand sleepily aloneIsolated Beautiful in extremes Mythic some place great and distant Surrounded by ocean watersDark cold icyDevoid of the traps of the human nettingFree of urban mess, mall mesh,Infestation known as human being;Yet, you are strainedUnable to isolate yourselfOur ill balance glancing on your shoresYou reflect back to us our poisonsDrifted there on currents of air or water The delicate balance that you loseReveals our future perilAs your ice melts and falls away, we glimpse in a moment what tookMillions of moments to evolve melt and drift away,Perhaps foreverTeach us great teacher of the ways to healMay we not lose all of you May we understand our interconnectedness May we gently mindfully restore balance

Spooky ICE

Submitted by Nathan Clark on Fri, 12/04/2009 - 16:09.
Grinding, Groaning, Creaking, Moaning, A colossal being speaks , Sometimes violent, Sometimes silent, Words beyond speech , Churning, Crashing, Burning, Smashing, Crystals into the sea , Aching, Shaking, Quaking, Breaking, My god the earth and me

Deadline

Submitted by Nathan Clark on Fri, 12/04/2009 - 17:41.
Dang! I didn't read the instructions and missed the due date. :( Never liked deadlines in school. "Professor, you gotta believe me! I was kidnapped right before I could hit submit and have my work in on time! I fought through legions of zombies, tuna, and pokemon just to get back to my computer today which those environmentally ignorrant kidnappers left on all night! Costing me on the electricity bill but thankfully saving my work. Don't believe me?!?!? Look! I'm covered in green zombie blood, scales, and poke balls!"