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December 20, 2006
A Day At NHK
Rigging overhead cameras. Very improvised.
Final setup. We were shooting Hifana.
Davi is many things, amoung them an excellent photographer, and great appreciator of the NHK employee cafeteria...although he later threw-up the food.
Curry that I ate.
Posted by shane at 01:41 PM
December 06, 2006
Podcast Volume 11
Slowly and quietly, a new podcast creeps it’s way into my collection. Get it on the podcasting page, where else?
Plans are in the works for after I hit volume 12. That will mark a full year of podcasting. Without some kind of interesting change I’m not sure that I feel the need to keep on producing it. So after that expect either something new, or nothing at all. Haha.
Posted by shane at 02:40 AM
Meanwhile In Kyoto
All photos by me and my more than satisfactory EOS Digital X.
Posted by shane at 01:51 AM
December 05, 2006
I Am Alive
I didn’t pass away, I’ve just been gone a lo-ng time.
The following is something I often think about, but recently it came to a head, that there are too many things in my life. Probably a lot of people in large cities consciously pushing a boundary on how they can live feel the same way, but there is simply just too much information, and furthermore too much access to it in this modern world with its fancy digital gadgets, social networks, and superfluity of printed, motion, and aural pleasure-matter. Try keeping up with all of it, and then on top of that, try being a creative person: At once knowing about everything, and yet then making something; the tiniest melodic blip in that noise-abyss.
On top of this, how about living in a foreign country in which curiosities abound in a large percentage of the contents that your eyes run across daily, demanding your attention and skill at decoding. (As opposed to the native who is completely bored and disobliged to it). On top of this, there is of course, language study, which can take up as much time and mindspace as you want to dedicate to it. And furthermore you have a job whose every project demands higher and higher standards, always pushing closer to making the best thing ever.
I’ve noticed signs of over-stimulation and lessening of attention span in everything I am doing. I have no patience with computers, which I use for massive amounts of hours every day. I get more and more music, much of which is really, legitimately good. Honestly, things that deserve all kinds of attention and repeated listening, and yet I don’t give it the time it deserves before being buried in the next deluge of content.
On my recent trip to Kyoto I was separated from all media, internet, and connectivity. Furthermore I was surrounded by ancient and peaceful beauty, simplicity, nature and elegance for about four days straight. And it was wonderful. A thousandfold reduction in connectivity and stimulation from my usual day to day environment, and yet it was far more comfortable and easy to focus on details. I found myself taking macro photographs of spiders in forests, tasting the bitterness of fresh matcha, and looking up at the curvature of lush green bamboo as it reaches skyward. Life can go on (and it does) without all-knowledge and all-connectivity all the time. Minute revelations like this lead me to see a certain path far in the future of my life that is very much disconnected, more ignorant of context, and information.
In the future of humanity information will always be around anyways, in larger and larger more brain-crushing degrees. The internet is already essentially the repository for all current cultural knowledge, and increasingly, all available entertainment. And it will still be accessible, growing and mutating, for even as long as you stop looking at it. Why try and hold it all in your head when its in our collective head and just a keystroke away. Let it be. Secede and let the expulsion of human information and expression burst forth and conquer all without you having anything to do with it.
Posted by shane at 11:46 PM