There are untapped universes like this all around us outside in nature, waiting to be discovered. Look around. Can you tell there's more that meets the eye? 🌌🌳
Animators Brett Foxwell and Conor Grebel (Bedtimes) created this video through a stop motion process, capturing sections of wood as they were thinly shaved away by a milling machine.
Brett Foxwell wrote: I became fascinated with the possibilities of a sci-fi world based on the alien forms to be found within this material that grows all around us and that we sometimes take for granted. While brainstorming this world, I came upon the concept of the WoodSwimmer. It was a challenging technique, but once perfected, I was able to shoot short sequences that move the camera through chunks of hardwood, burls and branches. The result is hauntingly beautiful imagery that is both abstract and unquestionably real. In the twisting growth rings and the swirling rays, a new universe is revealed.
Today is less a celebration, and more a remembrance. A reminder that we are not apart from nature, but a part of it.
The awe that envelops us as we gaze at a periwinkle sky or into the face of a flower is actually a recollection of who we really are, a reunion with the forgotten. So — today we wish you a day full of memories. Of waves chasing your toes on sanded beaches, wind cupping your cheeks, earthworms crawling between your fingers and ladybugs grazing your wrist. Witness how these memories rest in your body. Then ask yourself, do they feel any different than the hug of an old friend?
🌏🩵💚🤲
📸: #vivekvadoliya for story mfg
#earthday
Landscape has the primordial ability to infuse us with a sense of reverence, wonder and awe. And studies show that a sense of awe enhances creative thinking.
Carl Jung, as he stood on the snowy slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro enraptured with awe, wrote: Standing on the hill...I had the feeling of being the first man, the first being to know [this landscape]. The whole world around me was still in the primitive silence and knew not that it was. In this very moment in which I knew it, the world came into existence, and without this moment, it would never have been.
A question to ponder... How can you incorporate landscape into your creative practice?
🎨: Light & Energy Works, Brent Wong 1978
#carljung #brentwong #naturelovers #landscapes
Play is an inherent part of life and evolution across the animal kingdoms (for us humans, too!), according to Diane Ackerman, author of the book ‘Deep Play.’
She writes: The spirit of deep play is spontaneity, discovery, and being open to new challenges. As a result, it allows one to happily develop new skills, test one’s limits, stretch them, and then maybe refine the skills and redefine the limits.
What is it’s biological purpose? Not basic survival. It carries one across fear and uncertainty toward the slippery edges of possibility, where one must use oneself fully and stretch limits to achieve the remarkable. It encourages discovery and growth. One can see how important this trait must be for our own evolution.
📸: Dmitry Deshevyk
#deepplay #naturelover #dianeackerman #offlocation
This week, we celebrate the change of our Gregorian cycle and the shifting of the season. This is a special time — of rest, of slow moving, of germinating new seeds of creativity for spring’s inevitable harvest. A time of thoughtfulness, reflection and self-care.
Today we remind you that we are nature, and that our flora and fauna friends are shedding leaves, going dormant, hibernating, nestling into safe shelter.
Throughout this inward season, we wish you peace and rest, and look forward to what all that will be cultivated in the year to come.
📷: "Snow Lovers" by Ernst Haas, 1987
#OffLoWorld is a series of conversations with people from around the world that illuminate our unique connections to nature and its significance in our lives.
🌐🔊🌳👤📡 [sound on]
@mylesgouveia is a Seattle-born, Japanese-Portuguese designer & founder of @zabu____ , living in New York City. Here he talks to us about his connection to the natural world through his heritage, lifestyle, and creative practice.
#offlocation
The role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) 🧠 is to concentrate, search for existing information stored in your memory, and create new ideas. When we are too focused or stressed, the PFC becomes strained, and innovative thought is limited. The creativity we are working hard to access feels fragmented and out of reach. 😶🌫️
When immersed in nature🍃the PFC is freed up, allowing it to rest and other parts of brain to take over. Your sensory experience shifts. Sight, smell and hearing become more acute. Your mind moves toward empathy and productive day-dreaming. It is from this place of peace and alignment that creativity flows. ⛅️
#productivedaydreaming
#prefrontalcortex
#naturefix
#offlocationvocab
"By bathing in the mud in its natural context, you are actively reconnecting to nature, and that whole process of being under the sky, in the sun, and with others, brings you joy as well. It heals you physically and mentally, " says @emmalathamphillips , whose project 'Therapy' (made in collaboration with photographer @sophiegreenstudio ) explores the age-old practice of mud bathing.
Earlier this summer, we began our journey of traveling to faraway places to capture stories about nature’s special influence — on creativity, on well-being, on connection to ourselves and each other and the deeper world around us. 🗺️
Our team waded through windstorms and climbed up mossy mountains, protected tarantulas and made friends with birds to get the perfect shot.
A big ‘thank you’ to everyone involved in shooting these first three stories. We love you...and we can’t wait to share the finished stories with you all!
#offlocation #offlocationwith
So much of the nature x human connection is comprised of an inexplicable felt sense - it seems to transcends time, logic, and many other modern structures of thought and perception. We’re here to help put language to the experiences that feel strangely indescribable.
The perceptible shifts in feeling state, in thought patterning, and orientation that occur after time spent outside, hiking, walking, or just observing a flower or a cloud.
There are measurable changes that happen within us when we spend time in nature; it's where we came from, it's what we (still) are apart of.
👤🌿✨
#offlocationvocab #softfascination #offlocation #nature