Hoysaleswara Temple
The Hoysaleswara Temple was built by “Kettumalla” one of the ministers of King Vishnuvardhana during 1121 A.D. It is believed that it took nearly a century to complete the temple, there are still some unfinished portions.The ground plan is the characteristic star shape common to all Hoysala Temples. Continue reading
Wayanad, Kerala
Cycle 2, Version 3 by Sopheap Pich, 2008. Photo credit (c) The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
For the next several months, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (aka The Met) has quite a few great special exhibits open that I would recommend seeing. My two favorites from a visit to The Met last week are titled “Cambodian Rattan: The Sculptures of Sopheap Pich” and “Birds in the Art of Japan,” both on the second floor in the Asian Art section.
In the first exhibit, Pich uses wire, bamboo, rattan, and a couple other materials to craft beautiful abstract or representational sculptures, which are presented, as you can see in the picture on the left, with great lighting to create superb shadows around the piece. Pich and his assistants had to boil the rattan and bamboo cane in diesel oil to remove insect eggs, prevent fungal damage, and preserve the cane from discoloration.
When our new contributor ÉA Marzate wrote about a recent film festival it had the added benefit of providing the incentive to explore similar festivals worldwide. I’d nearly missed the DC Environmental Film Fest, which boasted documentaries that overlapped with those screened in Paris as well as some that touch a direct personal chord with RAXA Collective. (As I live in India, I use the word “missed” figuratively of course!)
I’m referring to the U.S. Premier of the 2012 BBC film Lonesome George and the Battle for the Galapagos. Continue reading
Elephants near periyar lake
Mr. Douglas, who is staying with us from Ghana, visited the Periyar Lake this morning and has shared some of his photos with us.
We have mentioned this fellow more than once, and we have an ongoing thing for libraries (thank you Toronto Public Library for making this possible, and may you do the right things in order to live forever!). Now we must mention the journalist who conducts this “interview” by asking few questions, brilliantly, and then brilliantly getting out of the way and letting his interviewee speak. And speak he does. If you have a better definition of art, operatic or otherwise, please let us know. This is worth every minute, so wait until you have time to watch it from beginning to end.
Thamarapally
San Jose, CA
view of Kumily town and Thekkady
Ottakathalamedu is situated about 4 km from Thekkady at an altitude of 1300 metres above sea level, which provides an excellent view that includes Kumily town, the Periyar National Park and even the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu State. Continue reading
In my last installment of a trio of posts on the 2012 Net Impact Conference, I want to draw our readers’ attention to a keynote panel that included the CEO of Coca-Cola and the president of Honest Tea. The topic of this panel centered on healthy eating and consumer choices. By way of background, Honest Tea is an organic tea company that was founded by Seth Goldman in 1998. Honest Tea is a poster child of socially responsible innovation: the firm sources herbs/plants from developing countries, supports poor farmers, uses organic ingredients, and provides sustainable product packaging. But in 2011, Coca-Cola bought a majority share of Honest Tea.
Leaders from Honest Tea and Coca-Cola sparred over a variety of issues, but they agreed that consumers were ultimately responsible for their own health.
The 30th edition of the International Environmental Film Festival closed in Paris a few weeks ago. The selection of rare, beautiful and eye-opening films was a treat so I wanted to share some of the goodness with you.
Grand Prix: The Fruit hunters by Yung Chang
Inspired by Adam Leith Gollner’s book of the same name -that also inspired a post in these pages – Canadian director Yung Chang (Up the Yangtze) enters the world of fans of rare varieties of fruits. As he follows fruit hunters’ travels and meet-ups, he finds the tree of an almost extinct mango, comes across actor Bill Pullman and interviews many of these unsung heroes of biodiversity. The aesthetics of the cinematography makes those fruits and those characters irresistible. Continue reading
Photo credit: John Mason
Alex Counts spoke at the Net Impact Conference in 2010, which took place at Cornell University during the spring semester, while I was teaching a course there. I had the good fortune of being recommended to listen to his talk. Today I had the good fortune of encountering him again, on this podcast series that I have so far been batting 1,000 with:
Microfinance lending, the practice of making small loans to individuals who would otherwise not qualify for traditional loans, has been a proven method of nurturing entrepreneurship in developing countries. As a college student, Alex read about the work of Noble Prize winning Dr. Muhammad Yunus and his efforts in microfinance. Continue reading
Bringing Them Back to Life.
The revival of an extinct species is no longer a fantasy. But is it a good idea?
One of our favorite science writers brings interesting ideas to life, weirdly but masterfully. And fun. But this one tilts heavily to weird, except for the fact that this is real:
On July 30, 2003, a team of Spanish and French scientists reversed time. They brought an animal back from extinction, if only to watch it become extinct again. The animal they revived was a kind of wild goat known as abucardo, or Pyrenean ibex. Continue reading
Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor
Wayanad is located on the southern tip of the magnificent Deccan Plateau, known for its picturesque hill stations, sprawling spice plantation and luxuriant forests. Thamarassery Churam is the gateway to Wayanad. This pass through the Ghats, consisting of nine impressive hairpin turns within 14 km, connects the Calicut district to Wayanad. The view from the top provides an excellent view of the green patches beneath. Continue reading
Nagarhole National Park, Karnataka
Brazilian artist Vik Muniz has been on our radar for quite some time. Partially because his work redefines the concepts of waste and the proper “mediums” in art, but mostly because his work is just plain fun. While some previous series have used medium as bizarre as dust, granulated sugar or melted chocolate, the prints exhibited at the 2013 New York Armory Show were created with the metal waste of the modern world.
Muniz is not only a master at recycling but at keeping his viewer completely off balance with his sense of scale. His 3 dimensional collages, whether made of scrap metal like the ones in the slideshow above, or with more “generalized garbage” as in the pieces depicted in the documentary The Waste Land, are orchestrated piece by piece from a 20 meter vantage point. For example, at first glance the hummingbird image looks as shimmeringly delicate as a Hupert Duprat/caddisworm collaboration, but wait! Are those paint cans, bed springs and automobile tire hubs I see? Continue reading
Photo Credits: Ramesh Kidangoor
Lotus, the national flower of India, symbolizes beauty, majesty, spirituality, purity, wealth, serenity and knowledge. It is an aquatic plant that belongs to the Nelumbonaceae species with broad floating leaves and bright aromatic flowers that grows in shallow waters. Its seeds, leaves, flowers and roots are all edible and used in a variety of medicines. Lotus is also a sacred flower for Hindus and Buddhists. Continue reading
Mysore, Karnataka; Photo credit: Ramesh Kidangoor
Photo credit: John Mason
Organikos 