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Posts Tagged ‘animals’

Camera as anaconda

Posted in Cinema, Eco-culture, Music & soundscape, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 8, 2021 | Leave a Comment »

To say that Billie Eilish’s “Your Power” video is intended to get under your skin (as many online commenters have suggested) is understating things. First, there the topic of the song itself (which I won’t comment on). Then there’s the interspecies intimacy (which I also won’t comment on, except to say, I can’t imagine doing […]

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The semio-ethics of Coke’s polar bear mascots

Posted in Eco-culture, Media ecology, Visual culture, tagged , , , , , , , on October 16, 2014 | 2 Comments »

A journalist asked me to say something about the use of animal mascots for commercial purposes. In an email, she wrote: “What does a brand owe an animal mascot, especially one at risk? For instance, polar bears face rapid habitat loss, yet Coke has only donated $2 million to the WWF for conservation efforts. There’s also Kellogg’s […]

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Thinking forests & animals

Posted in Philosophy, tagged , , , on December 1, 2013 | 2 Comments »

Here’s one of the participants at the AAA’s ontology panel, McGill anthropologist Eduardo Kohn, applying ontological speculation — including Peirce and biosemiotics — to animals and forests:

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ways to shoot starlings

Posted in Cinema, Eco-culture, Media ecology, Visual culture, tagged , , , on January 18, 2010 | 2 Comments »

“Shoot” as in film, photograph, capture and display, but also fly with them, shoot the rapids of their movement, accompany them, become starling. These mesmerizing videos of moving masses of starlings, “murmurations” as they’re called, like other YouTube animal videos, tell us as much about the phenomenon being watched as about those watching it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH-groCeKbE&hl=en_US&fs=1&

It all gets going here at around the 3’20” mark. But it would be nice if we were given some alternative soundtrack options. Like this one, with no commentary, just a few intertitles, set to the music of Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble:

[. . .]

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secret language (of scientists) going public

Posted in Eco-culture, tagged on January 3, 2010 | 8 Comments »

At a time when so many social mammal species are in crisis, it’s at least heartening to see news like tonight’s 60 Minutes segment on “The Secret Language of Elephants” or today’s Times Online article “Scientists say dolphins should be treated as ‘non-human persons’.” The scientific taboo on anthropomorphism is finally lifting, and animal behavior studies are becoming more like anthropology — something that only the lone rogue anthros like John Lilly or Barbara Noske would have dared call for not too long ago…

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polar bag

Posted in Eco-culture, Media ecology, Visual culture, tagged , , , , on April 1, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

Ambient electroacoustic artists Stars of the Lid do a beautiful job with thisEnvironmental Defense Fund NYC subway ad campaign video. The other ads in the series can be viewed here.

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