Music; the universal language.

This post begins with what is in my opinion, one of the prettiest, most amazing collaborative endeavours so far; "In B Flat" (see the official website here) is a project created by Darren Solomon in which musicians were asked simply to play whatever they wanted as long as in the 'B flat' tone. You can read the 'Wired' magazine article about it here or read their FAQ.

"play these together, some or all, start them at any time, in any order."

Now, I honestly was so impressed by this I actually watched one by one to understand more of how it works; and on this video below, recorded during the "Notes and Neurons" event at the World Science Festival in 2009 (watch the whole panel here); Bobby McFerrin (wiki) shows us still a bit more about the pentatonic scale and its inert predictability (precisely what makes it so universally comprehensible)

While on the universality of music, the 'Playing for Change' project, goes around the world putting  together artists who never even met to sing 'universal classics' of popular music, while raising money for music education worldwide.

Here's a couple of these songs but you can watch them all on youtube or at their own website (linked above) and you may also donate at the 'Playing for Change Foundation'.

Finally this 30' documentary entitled 'We.Music' shows a bit about music creation among artists from São Paulo, Brazil and how they're facing these new possibilities of collaboration and collective creations and productions. The documentary itself was part of a vast collaboration between artists institutions, sponsors and of course the team @ "Galeria Experiência" who themselves have been working as a 'collective' of photographers who sign their work as one.

(I believe this video still hasn't gotten its English subtitles uploaded so for now, I'll have this one here and asap I'll swap to the subtitled version)


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Politics 2.0

I've decided to begin this post - Blog; (Am new at this thing, not really the writing type) - with an issue that should be recurrent around here; 

"Our generation's unique opportunity, brought by the 'Internet 2.0' revolution, to collaborate globally towards one goal;" 

Now, to introduce this theme, I'd like to start by 'quoting' an interesting Skype call that happened recently, between the British Prime Minister David Cameron's offices in Downing St. and Facebook's CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in what appears to be his room and he's on his PJs or something... Anyway, this is short and hopefully will get you interested in what I'm about to say next; - here's the video call;

So if you're on Facebook, you can check out the 'Democracy UK' page they've created. - I 'liked' it, I think we should all encourage or even demand that our governments do the same. And if you're British, you should certainly try to keep up because this unique and historic situation shall soon be considered not a new 'French Revolution' but a rather British one; very civil, trying to reach out and have their citizens actually engaged in the policy making that will affect them.

Which brings us to the next few videos;

As there's no order you should preferentially watch them, I'll try to brief the 3 of them here and you may watch them as it would fit you best The last one, though, should possibly be the 1st video to be posted or watched but I didn't want to scare you guys right away with its length so; Take your time, watch the short ones on a 'creative idleness' 5' coffee break and take the long one to bed or to the couch, call your friends and have some popcorn... hope you enjoy this first post and if so, please stay tuned, comment, follow, subscribe; let's see how this works out...!!  Here's the 3 videos;

- The 1st one is about 5' long is a lecture that I happened to watch live in the TEDxSP event in Nov.09; it's in portuguese and has english subtitles although they're quite a bit out of sync but still, it's really worth it; about a website that actually allows you to track down every decision that's being made and how is your congressman responding to it, so you rapidly relate your votes to his and other congressmen and women. Decision by decision if you want or even just check which politicians are voting for or against what most people would desire.

"TEDxSP > Fernando Barreto > "Vote na Web"

- 2nd is also by TED; about 15' long with former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on what he defines as a Global Ethic and a Global Society; Filmed in Jul.09 and I really find it precise and very contemporary. (Subtitles available in 16 languages)

- And the 3rd one is an excellent 60' long documentary called "Us now" (I guess that really shows the kind of commitment you'd need to follow this blog) - now, this is a 'must see'; nothing more contemporary; bringing these concepts into our everyday lives, into global economy, into environmental issues and so on...

"Us Now"

Buy the DVD here http://banyak.co.uk/shop-usnow.php
For more information, extra clips and reviews please go to usnowfilm.com
Watch Us Now in other languages here: http://dotsub.com/view/34591ca8-0ef5-48fb-82e6-163a9f21298d




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