Wheels of Words












Today I want to talk about a film which I have seen recently and which has touched me deeply. I am talking about BARAKA by Ron Fricke, which was released in 1992. Baraka is a non-verbal film, so totally dialogue-free. Additionally, it doesn't have any actors, a plot, or a script. The focus is on the images and the music.

Filmed in 24 countries around the world (eg. Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, France, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Nepal, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey USA and many more) the images show some of the most stunning, but also most disturbing parts of nature and human life: On the one hand, we can admire natural landscapes, volcanoes, water falls, scintillating stars or indigenous people dancing. You can basically indulge in the beauty life has to offer. On the other hand, we see rapid urban life, images of poverty and are witnesses of destruction of nature. The visual power of each and every image is absolutely amazing as well as the detail in every shot.

Having read quite a number of reviews, I know that Baraka is not a film for everyone. While many viewers found the film an exceptional, humbling experience or even a spiritual journey and meditation, some were criticising the lack of dialogue, some found it boring, and for others the images were pretty disturbing at times, which is definitely true. They are thought-provoking images, but at the same time they make us think and talk about the topics they depict, which is a good thing.

Regardless of the many different views, the film was a great experience for me and I hope I can interest others to watch it, too.

If you want to find out more about the film, here's a link to the website:


An interview with director Ron Fricke can be found on the following page. Fricke, for example, explains why he chose not to include words in his film or what he sought to convey with Baraka:




If you have any thoughts about the film that you want to share please feel free to do so!

All the best,

Judith


PS. This image is taken from http://www.spiritofbaraka.com/
© Copyright 2001 - 2011 SpiritOfBaraka.com


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2011 is slowly coming to an end and we would like to take this opportunity to wish our blog readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We know that some of you might not celebrate Christmas, but we want to wish you a wonderful time, too, because we just cannot let this time of year go unnoticed ;)


Appropriate to the occasion Judith included a small clip, taken from the British sitcom “Yes Minister”, one of her favourite British shows. The section shows Sir Humphrey Appleby wishing his MP Jim Hacker Merry Christmas in his very own way. Here's the transcript, hopefully faultless. Judith gave it her best shot ...



“I wonder if I might crave your momentary indulgence in order to discharge a by no means disagreeable obligation which has, over the years, become more or less established practice within government circles as we approach the terminal period of the year - calendar, of course, not financial - in fact not to put too fine a point on it, Week Fifty-One and submit to you, with all appropriate deference, for your consideration at a convenient juncture, a sincere and sanguine expectation - indeed confidence - indeed one might go so far as to say hope that the aforementioned period may be, at the end of the day, when all relevant factors have been taken into consideration, susceptible to being deemed to be such as to merit a final verdict of having been by no means unsatisfactory in its overall outcome and, in the final analysis, to give grounds for being judged on mature reflection to have been conducive to generating a degree of gratification which will be seen in retrospect to have been significantly higher than the general average.”


We wish you a wonderful Christmas season and a Happy New Year

Judith and Vivienne



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Last Friday I caught my first night train bound for Dresden. After 8 ½ hours in a cell-like waggon cabin and very little sleep, my family and I arrived bleary-eyed at the Dresden Main Station. Catching a tram, we rather quickly located our hotel, dumped our luggage, indulged in a cup of black milk coffee and were ready to start exploring just as the lazy winter sun peaked over the horizon. Perfect light to take pictures! As we strolled along the Elbe River, we admired the baroque skyline of Dresden in the first rays of daylight. 

The beautiful baroque-style buildings were cast into breath-taking relief as the glass dome of the Academy for Visual Arts and the impressive Frauenkirche reached into the sky. However, not all buildings are actually as old as their architecture suggests. A bombing by the Allied Forces in March 1945 destroyed great parts of Dresden, killing 35.000 people in a matter of hours. For days the city was on fire, firestorms of up to 1000°C razing through the streets. Rebuilding efforts after the war were slow as people were undecided on whether to restore the former baroque character of the city or to replace the ruins with modern buildings. Thankfully, the preservation committee won out and the baroque monuments were rebuilt or renovated. 

Consequently, Dresden boasts such architectural jewels as the Augustus Bridge, the Frauenkirche, the Taschenbergpalais, the Semper Opera House and the Residenzschloss. Each of these buildings holds its own unique history reminding visitors of Dresden’s glory times under Friedrich August I (1694-1733), Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, instead of the horrors of World War II. Nevertheless the fire of 1945 will never be forgotten. 

Of the sights we visited on the first day, I liked best the “Canaletto”-View which is a panorama point letting visitor’s see baroque Dresden through the same lense as Bernardo “Canaletto” Belotto when he painted his famous view of Dresden in 1765. However, simply strolling through the Altstadt of Dresden feels like a journey back into the 18th century with little indication of the fact that one is actually strolling through a restored 20th century baroque city quarter.   
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     I don’t believe that there is one right way on how you should approach writing. Like your choice in reading material, your style in writing will depend on personal preferences, habits and interests. As an artistic skill, writing is a form of personal expression which cannot be defined by a clear set of rules. However, when you are looking to present your work to an audience there are a few general points you might want to consider:
  • Correct spelling as a mark of quality
With the advent of computers correct spelling has become hardly a chore as spell-checking programs take on the bulk of your work here. If you prefer to write in a program without a spell-checking function, it is a simple matter of minutes to copy and paste your text into another program to get it checked. Correct spelling is a mark of quality which can be assessed by a glance and may decide your reader whether to peruse your text further or not.
  • Who am I addressing?
Your audience will guide you in your choice of text style and register. If you want to write an article, you will probably choose a more structured text style and a more sophisticated register compared to a blog entry for example.  In case of publishing, the age of your target readers will also be reflected in the rating placed on your written texts. Certain topics are inappropriate for certain audiences.
  • Proofreading
What would you say is the ideal number of times for proofreading a text? I would say at least two, ideally four times. Why? Because normally you can only concentrate on one or two aspects of your text while reading it again.  During my first run, I usually check for spelling and grammar. Round Number two, I use to correct personal spelling kinks – like there vs. their, pursue vs. peruse,… The third time around, I keep an eye on vocabulary and repetitions and during the fourth round I look for coherence and form. 

Care for these three aspects shows a certain degree of seriousness when it comes to producing written material. Although in certain modern lyrical endeavours exceptions even exist for correct spelling, most texts profit from a spell-check. Ultimately, your readers will decide whether they wish to consume your material or not and if you are writing merely for your own pleasure then you are free as a bird.

Ready to get started? What’s your next piece of writing going to be?

-Vivienne
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After Vivienne has presented two awesome internet platforms in her previous posts, it is now my turn to show you another website where you can unleash your creativity and explore the vastness of fonts, sizes, colours and much more to pimp up your PowerPoint presentations. But be aware – only try it if you have time, and I do mean a lot of time, because once you get started you'll get addicted, at least I did.

The website I'm talking about is wordle.net, which is a tool for creating 'word clouds'. As an example, I have produced a Science Fiction (I couldn't resist...) word cloud so that you have an idea what it could look like. But this is just one out of a million options! Because these word clouds can take any shape or size, it just depends on how you like it and how much you 'play' with the program.

That's how you do it:
There is a really great FAQ section on the website so if you want to find our more read the FAQ section or better still – give it a go and explore! I will just summarize the most important steps to create a simple word cloud:













Step 1: The first step is to click on 'Create' to get started; the links appears once you open the website.

Step 2: If you’ve clicked 'Create', you'll find a text area with the heading 'Paste in a bunch of text'. You can write anything you want into this box, but there are some rules you should consider before clicking the ‘Go’ button: The size of a word is proportional to the number of times the word appears in the input text. In other words, if I type in
Hallo Hallo Hallo Hallo Hallo Vivienne Judith
Hallo will be the biggest word and Vivenne and Judith compared to Hallo pretty small. The arrangement of the words can be random, so if I type in a sentence like “Today is wonderful day”, the words will definitely not appear in that precise order and most likely the words will not be horizontal! However, if you do want to keep some words together, as I did with Science Fiction, Star Wars or Star Trek, just put the character ~ between the words that you want to go together. A little hint: the more words you enter, the better it will be.

Step 3: Once you click 'Go', the fun begins. A random image will appear with your words, it's always a surprise what will happen, because the words can have any colour and font, the arrangement of the words can be horizontal, vertical or any which way, and also the background can have any colour. If you click the button 'Randomize', the image will change immediately. If you do it for the first time, I advise you to keep on clicking 'Randomize' just to get an idea of how many different possibilities there are and maybe there's something you like. Or you can start editing the picture as you see fit. You can for example choose a font you prefer or mix and match the colours that should appear as well as how the word cloud should be arranged (vertical, horizontal etc). As I already pointed out, there are an enormous number of possibilities. I have included only two more examples of Science Fiction, but there are no limits to creativity!











Note that while Worlde is a great tool and you can do a lot with it, it also has its limitations. For example once the word cloud is created you cannot edit it any more, you would have to create a new word cloud! But it is possible to remove single words by right-clicking on them and using the resulting pop-up menu. However, be aware that these actions will re-layout the whole wordle! (without the selected word of course). So to be on the safe side, the best thing to do is to save your worlde as fast as possible. Which brings me to my next point…

Step 4: Unfortunately, you cannot save the wordle applet as a jpg. But what you can do is to take a screenshot. I hope everybody knows how to do that. (if not, the following page provided in the FAQ section explains it: http://take-a-screenshot.org/) Then you can copy the image into your word-document. By the way, I prefer open office, where one can easily convert an inserted picture into a jpg. And don't forget to press the button 'Open in window' before you take the screenshot because then the image will be bigger! And you can always print your worlde immediately, which comes in quite handy.



I hope this wasn't too confusing, but the best formula always is: learning by doing :)
So have fun creating your first word cloud,
Judith




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