Symphony of Science: spreading scientific knowledge and philosophy through musical remixes

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

Paul Sagan

Or, if you are a talented specialist in audio remixing with a passion for science, all you have to do is mix electronic music of your own produce with extracts of scientific television series, to create videos that explain why you must first invent the universe. It might seem like something cool and hype to get the kids all excited, but in reality it is quite profound and moving. I admit my opinion might be biased, as I have grown up watching these sort of series and never gave up the habit. In great measure, I share the enthusiasm and passion of those science luminaries, and they are largely responsible for my continued fascination with science. I cannot possibly imagine how can anyone not be touched and praise by the message these brilliant scientific minds convey.

The project is called Symphony of Science, and is lead by the Washington-based electronic musician John Boswell. The goal of this enterprise, says Boswell, is "to bring scientific knowledge and philosophy to the public, in a novel way, through the medium of music". For the making of videos, Boswell uses pitch corrected and auto tuned audio and video samples from television programs featuring scientists and educators, such as Carl Sagan's Cosmos, Richard Dawkins' TED presentation on our "queen" universe and series The Genius Of Charles Darwin, Richard Feynman's 1983 BBC interviews, Stephen Hawking's Universe series, Jane Goddall's TED presentation on What separates us from the apes? (in no particular order, and just to list a few).

Ever since their launch, in December 2009, Boswell has created 6 videos: A Glorious Dawn, (featuring Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking), We Are All Connected (featuring Bill Nye, Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman and Neil deGrasse Tyson); Our Place in the Cosmos (featuring Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku); The Unbroken Thread (featuring Richard Attenborough, Jane Goodall, Carl Sagan), The Poetry of Reality - An Anthem for Science (featuring Michael Shermer, Jacob Bronowski, Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Jill Tarter, Lawrence Krauss, Richard Feynman, Brian Greene, Stephen Hawking, Carolyn Porco, and PZ Myers); and The Case for Mars (featuring Robert Zubrin, Carl Sagan, Brian Cox, and Penelope Boston). The videos have attracted over 8 million views online, contributing to the release of the first song, A Glorious Dawn, on a special 7" 45rpm vinyl single.

If I had to choose a favourite - and indeed I have to pick one video only to show here - I would go for for the Poetry of Reality. It was one who made me think that this was why I had studied science in first place. And, and in this strange days I have to live, that speaks volumes.

A brief story of Microbiology

Another Brickfilm release for a RevMen Studios production: A brief story of Microbiology. Why bother going through endless hours of intense tedium when Lego can say it all in less than 10 minutes? It is directionally correct - and it was a global project.



By the way, can anyone please help Mr Leeuwenhoek with his animalcules? He seems to keep on finding them in rather suspicious places...

Star Wars in 2 minutes

Why bother watching 6 3 long and tedious progressing very slowly Star Wars episodes, when Lego says it all in 2 minutes (and 12 seconds)?

Thank you, Hundreth!

Edit - Ricardo was kind enough to let me know that this is only a brief summary of episodes IV to VI. So, to be factually correct, this video only refers to the second part of the Trilogy (also called the "classic"). In Lego time, the whole series would take an estimated 4 minutes (and 24 seconds).

Not yet in the soundtrack of my life: Natalie Merchant brings back to life old poems

Natalie Merchant was the voice of 10,000 Maniacs from 1981 until she embarked on a solo career in 1993. For the past five years, she has been researching, writing and recording a collection of songs adapted from the works of classic and contemporary poets.

"This new collection of songs, Leave Your Sleep, is my first studio album since 2003. It is the most elaborate project I have ever completed or even imagined" she says. Something very special, I would dare to add, and I have only seen the performance she did during last TED 2010. The two-disc set was released today, but TED video was made available a few days ago:

The Sound Track of My Life IX - Every Breath You Take by The Police and True Colors by Cindy Lauper

And Joana asks me - don't doubt about the coolness of cucumbers or the freshness of lettuces, but maybe it a bit too cheeky for you to deny you might allegedly hypothetically have been in garage parties?

Indeed, it is correct. Though my Mother was convinced I was at library, I might have allegedly hypothetically probably been in couple of parties or high school events, even. I might have listened to this couple of songs, or in an excess of modernism, the New Romantics. Allegedly hypothetically. But, it was dark and nobody remembers for sure.

The Sound Track of My Life VIII - Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm by the Crash Test Dummies and More Than Words by The Extreme

It was a bit far from my intentions to post about these couple of songs, but I sort of owed it to the lady without whom I wouldn’t never have never started the Soundtrack of My Life. The whole thing started a few days ago, when much to much to my dismay, Joana posted on her Facebook a log about Mmm mmm mmm mmm’s by the Crash Test Dummies. A very short comment followed the song: Do you remember this one? This was the slow music by excellency... Oh, so many garage and basement parties… oh, so many first kisses...

Of course we don’t remember this song…. It was something we heard on MTV playlists and generalist radios, and thought it was for fools (and kid sisters). A tune that made critics wonder whether the world in general and the pop music in particular was close to an end. I mean, after the almost poetry of the Beatles songs, what could we make out of such inspirational words as Mmm mmm mmm mmm? Indeed, not much.

I have to add that Joana is a few years younger than myself. Though in general, we like the same music and share favorite bands, sometimes we fall into a generational gap like this one. The Crash Test Dummies’ Mmm mmm mmm mmm single was released in late 1993. By those days, I was day in, day out in Fragil, cool as a cumcumber and fresh as a lettuce. In all my coolness, a song had to be dark and obscure, preferably electronic to be heard. And, the grungier, the better. An order too tall for Mmm mmm mmm mmm and the Crash Test Dummies.

I would be insincere if I said Mmm mmm mmm mmm was not on the Soundtrack of My Life. In fact, I admittedly bought a Crash Test Dummies CD, just because I like its singer voice (True story. I have to say that disc is not bad at all either and has traveled well). I can recognize the song, but I cannot attach it with a story or a moment even. But, ask Joana, and she will tell you a whole different story. She might even say this is a true pop song, with simple and touching lyrics, that was heard by a whole a generation while falling in love for the first time.

Shamelessly, I asked Joana, about another song my sister used to like: More Than Words, by The Extreme “Oh, yes”, she answered. “that was another one!”. And indeed it was another one. My sister also used to sit and watch it on MTV on every possible occasion. Apparently, it was just to check the Portuguese flag on the background.

The Soundtrack of My Life VII - Mahna Mahna by Mahna Mahna and the Snowths

Sesame Street is celebrating its 40th birthday this year. While it might have been originally designed for pre scholar students, I have to admit that I keep watching it until well past that age. And, as you know, my chronicle incapability to tell left from right is not my fault at all. I missed the show where they explained it, and somehow never catch up with the contents.

One thing leading to the other, it came to my mind that one of the very first albums I ever owned was The Muppet Show (1997). I listened to it until the grooves disappeared, and still keep it together with all my old records. The Mahna Mahna song was strategically placed after a heated row between Miss Piggy and Kermit (Kermit got smacked at the end, if I remember well). Once Mahna Mahna and the Snowths said their goodbyes, Gonzo came up to stage to try eating a rubber tire to the sound of The Flight of the Bumble Bee (What do they know about art?!).

Mahna Mahna was played on the very first show of The Muppet Show in 1977. It was originally titled Mah-Na Mah-Na, and written by composer Piero Umiliani for an Italian documentary about life in Sweden, titled Svezia, Inferno e Paradiso (Sweden, Heaven and Hell).

Please welcome Mahna Mahna and the Snowths! Whatever that means.....

Partly Cloudy

Everybody knows that storks deliver babies, but.... where do the storks get their babies from?

Thank you, MJP!

Para mim o mundo bastava ser este cantinho (de calor)*

Sometimes, because we know someone for so long, we believe we everything about that person. But, the truth is that old friends still have something new to show and might just surprise you on a lazy Sunday morning.

The video is in Portuguese language. It is called filme agua (water film). Music is All I need by AIR.

*To me the world would be enough to be just this little corner (of warmth)

24h of worldwide commercial flights in less than 2min

I am a certified Frequent Traveller. At some point in my life, I spent more time in airports and plans than home, and most of my shopping came from free shops all over the world. My office was so close to the airport that I could tell the time of day by looking to the sky - if this is a Singapore Airlines flight followed by a Japan Airlines one, then it must be 13h45.

So, when a friend sent an animation with all scheduled civil flights over a 24h period boiled down to less than 2 min, I was in a bit of a shock. Statistically, every day 93 000 flights are starting from about 9 000 airports. At any given hour of the day, you can find between 8 000 and 13 000 airplanes in the air. A lot of things going on in the sky above us...

Note: This animation is a part of joint project between the Swiss Science Center and the Institute of Applied Information Technology InIT (Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Winterthur, Switzerland). It was produced to be shown on the high definition 3D-Globe Orbitarium in Technorama

The Danish Poet

The Danish Poet is was written, directed, and animated by Torill Kove and narrated by Liv Ullmann.It has won an Academy Award (2007) and a Genie Award (2007) for best animated short film. It follows a poet called Kaspar, whom his psychiatrist suggests to travel to Norway to meet a famous writer called Sigrid Undset. Little was he to know that the bad weather, an angry dog, a slippery plank, a careless postman, hungry goats and a broken thumb would change his destiny.... Or, how seemingly unrelated factors might play important roles in the big scheme of things after all.

Borrowed ideas - Case Studies from the Groat Center for Sleep Disorders and Her Morning Elegance

Intertextuality as a concept was first introduced by Bulgarian-French philosopher Julia Kristeva in 1966. Kristeva didn't believe a text could be an isolated entity which operates in a self-contained manner. Any text, she said, is the absorption and transformation of another. Meaning, it could be an author borrowing and transforming a prior text, or a reference to one text in doing another. However, intertextuality is too often used to excuse plagiarism, as one of my favorite Spanish writers, Lucia Etxebarria, has done on a couple of occasions. I still like her books, but one does wonder where true creation begins and "inspiration" ends.

Her Morning Elegance was the release single from the album The Opposite Side of the Sea (2009) by Israeli artist Oren Lavie.; the video was directed by Eyal Landesman and Yuval & Merav Nathan:

When I start looking for trivia of Her Morning Elegance video, I was far to imagine that I would bump into yet another intertextuality case. It turns out the makers of Her Morning Elegance had taken one of Mitchell Rose's films as a source for their own video, borrowing more than a couple of ideas from it. Rose, was not to happy about it and bitterly said: It does matter where you “TAKE this from.” Intellectual property — ideas — are all an artist has.

The film is the award winning Case Studies From the Groat Center for Sleeping Disorders (2002), and in Rose's own words is a faux scientific investigation study of ASDICT (Adult Sleep Disorder Induced by Child Trauma), showing glimpses of rare archive footage from the renowned - but fictional - Groat Center for Sleep Disorders.

The future is coming - and it is only 498 years away

In the future almost nothing will be as it is today. It will kind of look like an iPhone, but with an extra piece you can lose sometimes.... At least according to this Sarcastic Gamers parody of Microsoft's future visions series:

And the original Microsoft's vision of 2019:

Mad World - A Michel Gondry video for a Gary Jules song

The French director Michel Gondry started his career making musical videos. As an in-demand professional, he worked with everyone from Björk to Massive Attack, including Beck and The Rolling Stones. In 2001, he directed his first film, Human Nature, scripted by Charlie Kaufman. They collaborated again on 2004's Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, which won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar . He also made commercials for Gap, Smirnoff, Air France, Nike, Coca Cola, Adidas, Polaroid and Levi - the latter making him the most highly-awarded director for a one-off commercial.

Gary Jules is an American singer-songwriter, best known for his cover of Tears for Fears single Mad World, which he recorded together Michael Andrews for the film Donnie Darko.

In 2004, the two artists got together to produce the promotional video of Mad World. The clip was done in a single-shot. Sitting at the rooftop of a school building in Brooklyn, Jules watches children choreographing simple, child-like pictures on the pavement: a car, a house, a boat:

A story of mixed emoticons

:-)

Thomas Dolby - from I Scare Myself to La Vie en Rose

Thomas Dolby recorded I scare myself in 1983, as a track of the album Flat Earth (1984). This recording was made on the tube around those days:

In 2001, Dolby was appointed Musical Director of the TED - Ideas Worth Spreading. He performed live La Vie en Rose, together with Rochelle Garnier in 2004:

I look forward to seeing what he will be doing in 2024...

The front fell off

On August 19th 2007, an oil tanker off the coast of Australia split in two, dumping 20,000 tons of crude oil.

Senator Collins, a member of the Australian Parliament, appeared on a TV news program to reassure the Australian public.



It is of course better to take other ships - those which front doesn't fall off.

Oktapodi

I just found out into this video in one of the newspapers I normally read. Two octopuses fight for their lives with a stubborn restaurant cook in a comical escape through the streets of a small Greek village, which reminded me of Santorini.

 

 It turns out that Oktapodi (2007) had won a number of awards as well as an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short Film in 2009. A whole achievement, considering it started off as Graduate Student Project from Gobelins L'Ecole de L'Image. It was directed by Julien Bocabeille, François-Xavier Chanioux, Olivier Delabarre, Thierry Marchand, Quentin Marmier, and Emud Mokhberi; the music was composed by Kenny Wood.

Aren’t them adorable? Or, how they would say in German, so suuuuuuuuuuuuuss.