nokami

Collaborative project with peter Leeuwerink (Chaometric)In Flanders fields the poppies blowBetween the crosses, row on row,That mark our place; and in the skyThe larks, still bravely singing, flyScarce heard amid the guns below.We are the Dead. Short days agoWe lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,Loved and were loved, and now we lieIn Flanders fields.Take up our quarrel with the foe:To you from failing hands we throwThe torch; be yours to hold it high.If ye break faith with us who dieWe shall not sleep, though poppies growIn Flanders fields.John McCrae 1915In the second week of fighting during the Second Battle of Ypres a Canadian artillery officer, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, was killed on 2 May, 1915 by a German artillery shell. He was a friend of the Canadian military doctor Major John McCrae. John was asked to conduct the burial service owing to the chaplain being called away on duty elsewhere. It is believed that later that evening John began the draft for his famous poem ‘In Flanders Fields’.Tomorrow will see the 75th Anniversary of Britain and France declaring war on Germany once again seeing the world thrown into turmoil, I hope and pray we will never see dark days like those again.

Wake turbulence is turbulence that forms behind an aircraft as it passes through the air. This turbulence includes various components, the most important of which are wingtip vortices and jetwash. Jetwash refers simply to the rapidly moving gases expelled from a jet engine; it is extremely turbulent, but of short duration. Wingtip vortices, on the other hand, are much more stable and can remain in the air for up to three minutes after the passage of an aircraft. Wingtip vortices make up the primary and most dangerous component of wake turbulence.

Wake turbulence is especially hazardous during the landing and take off phases of flight, for three reasons. The first is that during take-off and landing, aircraft operate at low speeds and high angle of attack. This flight attitude maximizes the formation of dangerous wingtip vortices. Secondly, takeoff and landing are the times when a plane is operating closest to its stall speed and to the ground — meaning there is little margin for recovery in the event of encountering another aircraft’s wake turbulence. Thirdly, these phases of flight put aircraft closest together and along the same flightpath, maximizing the chance of encountering the phenomenon.

The Concept of Hikwsi in Traditional Hopi Philosophy

Scholarly efforts to understand the Hopi concept of hikwsi were rather unilateral and led to the oversimplified conclusion that hikwsi is a Hopi linguistic equivalent for the soul. This article attempts to shed some light on this important philosophical concept in a Hopi language perspective, particularly as applied in an explanation of human structure and behavior.

In the Hopi belief, death does not end a person’s presence in the physical world, but marks a transition from one state of being to another or, in other words, from one form of experience to another. On the fourth day after death, a person’s breath (hikwsi) leaves the body and goes to a place which represents the other realm of existence, not separated from the world of the living, but different in that this realm is unmanifested, unseen, and not accessible to the senses. In ethnographic and anthropological literature this symbolic place has been described as the Underworld, Lower World, Third World, or the World of the Dead (maski; mas-ki, “corpse-home”). According to Emory Sekaquaptewa, this concept can be expressed by a Hopi word, atkya, which literary means “down below.”

The word atkya can refer not only to an area at the bottom of the Grand Canyon (Ongtupqa) called Sipaapuni, from which the Hopi came out of the Underworld, but also to an area seen from the tops of Hopi mesas in the southwestern direction. This area is marked with kiikiqo (literally, “ruins”; metaphorically, “footprints”), places inhabited once by Hopi ancestors (Hisatsinom) before they arrived at Hopi present settlements, such as, for instance, Homol’ovi, Wupatki, Tsor’ovi (Tuzigoot), and others. hikwsi of the dead is believed to have the ability to return to the Hopi mesas in visible forms of clouds, rain (or katsinam) and act as an animating force in the sensuous world of the living.

Many researchers of Hopi culture considered the term hikwsi as the Hopi name for the soul which was said to live forever after the body dies. As Fewkes notes: “The modern Hopi recognize in man a double nature, corresponding to body and soul, and to the latter they… give the expressive name breath-body [hik’si]… It is the breath-body or shade of man which passes at death through sipapuh, or gateway, to the underworld…” The Underworld is perceived not only as “the ultimate home to which the soul of the dead person must go,” but also as “the place of its [the soul’s] genesis before it was embodied.”

By Maria D. Glowacka
American Indian Culture and Research Journal
23:2 (1999) 137-143

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Photo/Video shooting:
19 sept. / 03 Oct. 2008

Location:
New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Utah

White Sands (New Mexico)

White Sands (New Mexico)

White Sands (New Mexico)

White Sands (New Mexico)

White Sands (New Mexico)

Arches National Park (Utah)

Arches National Park (Utah)

Arches National Park (Utah)

Arches National Park (Utah)

Arches National Park (Utah)

Bryce Canyon (Utah)

Bryce Canyon (Utah)

Bryce Canyon (Utah)

Grand Canyon (Arizona)

Grand Canyon (Arizona)

Grand Canyon (Arizona)

Grand Canyon (Arizona)

Grand Canyon (Arizona)

Grand Canyon (Arizona)

Canyonlands (Utah)

Canyonlands (Utah)

Canyonlands (Utah)

Canyonlands (Utah)

Canyonlands (Utah)

Dead Horse Canyon (Utah)

Dead Horse Canyon (Utah)

Dead Horse Canyon (Utah)

Dead Horse Canyon (Utah)

Dead Horse Canyon (Utah)

Monument Valley (Utah)

Monument Valley (Utah)

Monument Valley (Utah)

Monument Valley (Utah)

Monument Valley (Utah)

Potash Road (Utah)

Potash Road (Utah)

Potash Road (Utah)

Potash Road (Utah)

Potash Road (Utah)

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Music:

Michael Trommer

Michael Trommer is a Toronto based producer and visual artist who has recorded for such top electronic music labels as Transmat, Wave, Truffle, Stasisfield, Interchill, Monocromatica, Thinner and con-v. He records under his own name, as well as aliases such as ’sans soleil’, ‘minidisco’, ‘Hydraulic’,and ‘Manitou2′.

Broad-minded in his approach to electronic music, Michael also creates gallery-based audio installation work. 2005 saw him creating a site-specific sound installation for Australia’s ‘Liquid Architecture’ exhibition. Another of his recent works was a net-based audio-manipulation project which was part of the ‘from 0 to 1 and back again’ exhibition at Kunsthalle Schirn in Frankfurt; this became the subject of many radio specials on both Deutsche Welle and Hessischer Rundfunk. In 2000, his work was nominated for the Prix Italia for experimental music. His field-recording based material has been featured on London’s Resonance FM, www.vagueterrain.net, www.insine.net, www.monocromatica.com, and www.stasisfield.com. A site-specific field-recording based installation is being exhibited in New York state’s upper Catskill forest (www.restlessculture.net/deepwoods) from the end of May.

Contact:

trommer@sympatico.ca

http://www.myspace.com/mtrommer

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Video:

Part 1 (New Mexico - White Sands)

(4:00 mins. - HD)

Music: Michael Trommer

Part 2 (New Mexico - White Sands)

(4:00 mins. - HD)

Music: Michael Trommer

Part 3 (Arizona)

(2:15 mins. - HD)

Music: Michael Trommer