aesthetics of joy

I love love love these wonderful videos of flowers growing and blossoming in time-lapse. I get a visceral wave of joy watching each one.

Above, the ornithogalum reminds me of popcorn popping open. Below, the tiny blossoms of the eremurus sparkle like firecrackers, stamens bursting out of their centers all right on cue. And last but not least, the daisies, which remind me of that beautiful Mia Michaels piece danced by Jeanine and Kayla on the So You Think You Can Dance finale (which I watched in its entirety at 1 in the morning the night I got home!). The way that they rise and bend, growing in bursts, the struggle palpable yet  beautiful — it may sound silly but they make me feel inspired.

There are more on munich timelapse‘s page, and each one is captivating in its own unique way.

Ornithogalum blossom one after the other / timelapse, Three flowers dancing / timelapse and Eremurus flower / timelapse from munich timelapse on Vimeo.

Colorful installation by Jessica Stockholder called Flooded Chambers Maid in Madison Square Park playing with the innate geometries of nature and the tension between man-made and natural in an urban park. Stockholder narrated a nice audio slide show offering her inspirations and interpretations. Not sure I’m feeling a cohesive logic here (the half-buried plastic drums?) but Madison Square Park is one of my favorite parks in the city (not just for Shake Shack) and I like the way this installation alters the energy of the space.

It departs this week so get there by Saturday if you want to check it out!

Thanks to Maggie for the tip.

Image: 16 Miles of String

Perhaps it’s a bit of an adolescent male’s vision of joy, but the bevy of bikini-clad models taking part in electronic musician Calvin Harris’s Humanthesizer (human + synthesizer) look like they’re having a pretty great time.

I love the use of technologies like conductive paint and Arduino to integrate a new level of play and freedom into the process of making music. You see a lot of these types of music and technology explorations at the twice-yearly ITP shows, but this is a level of human integration I haven’t seen before, and it strikes me as the beginning of a wonderful new genre of musical performance, involving beautiful collaborations between dancers, designers, artists, composers, and musicians.

Well, I’m back! And as hard as it was to say goodbye to my family and those magical, remote islands, I must say I did feel a rush of joy walking into my apartment late last night. I was exhausted from dawn-to-midnight travel, but it sure felt good to be home.

The Galapagos are everything people say and more. Their relative isolation for thousands of years means that you can observe at very close range all kinds of animals that anywhere else would flee in fear. It’s a little like scuba diving, that way, and it creates opportunities for all sorts of joyful encounters.

Take these sea lions, for example — our welcoming crew at the port on Baltra island. Most animals used to human presence become opportunistic; trained by handouts of food intentional or accidental, they are reduced to beggars. But the Galapagos sea lions greeted us with a disinterested sigh and the occasional snort. Napping on the benches and the steps of the pier, they made evident that this was their home and that we were free to come and go as we pleased but they were not going to trouble themselves about it one way or another. They let us get so close to them, closer even than one could get in a zoo, and with that physical proximity came a sense of almost spiritual closeness, because there was mutual trust and respect, so rare among man and wild animals.

The sea lions are the hedonists of the Galapagos, lolling around in the sand, napping for hours on sun-baked rocks, their eyes nearly always drowsily half-open. They cuddle, these sea lions, in twos or threes or eights or tens, their smooth fat bodies massed together, an occasional fin draped over one’s neighbor. You see so many sleeping sea lions in the Galapagos, you might wonder if they ever do anything else. But then you see them in the water, utterly transformed.

As indolent and awkward as they are on land, they are exuberant and agile in the sea. I was lucky enough to get to play with one while snorkeling, entirely on her terms, which left me equal parts terrified and delighted. The game she plays is this: she swims full speed from ten or so yards away, her snout aimed straight at my mask, looking with full determination like she’s headed for a collision. At the last second, she ducks under me, turning, swimming away for half a minute or so, leaving me a few breathless moments to get ready for the next round.

Over and over this happened, and I felt what I have so often tried to describe on this site — the repeatable rush of true joy. Each pass the sea lion made gave the same rush of delight, over and over again, and I know that were I to zip on a wetsuit and get back in the water tomorrow or twenty years from now, I would still feel that same wonderful feeling.

More photos and stories to come. I took over 500 pictures, so I have a lot of work to do before I put them up! Stay tuned….

xx Ingrid