My Design in a Field of Motion

Motionfield - Under the Stars

The ambient artist Motionfield has recently released a new album of his: the soothing record Under the Stars. The music is a blending pot of warm ambient and mellow electronica. I would go as far as saying that this has some strong references to the great pioneer's of syntheziser music.

I designed the cover with the basis of a photograph I took this spring. The first cover entirely done by me. So this is somewhat different then the covers which I have contributed my images to.

It is available for purchase from many venues, such as Emusic and Record Union. For those who have an account at the streaming e-music service Spotify, you are also able to listen to the album there.

Lady Frost

Lady Frost
Originally uploaded by Suecae Photography

The 2 December was a day of immense beauty. The world was transformed by white crystals which was then colored by the sun. We have had to many grey and cloudy days as of late, so this was definitely needed.

On the Cover: Reprise

A second photography of mine has found a home with one of the netlabel Kahvi's releases. The first one was Polaski's Bendii Syndrome. This time around it is Acrilic Colors ep Yves Klein Blue. It was released on the netlabel Kahvi Collective a couple of days ago and is available for free.

I Found You

I Found You
Originally uploaded by Suecae Photography

This is an image I captured last month that I wanted to share with the readers of this humble blog. I feel so happy to have discovered all of you.

With eyes of those Yet to be Born

I spoke at a protest rally this weekend for human rights. A rally which I also helped plan. At the rally I spoke about how society has forgotten solidarity and the growing mistreatment by government bodies of to those dependent on welfare and of those that are asylum-seekers.

After the manifestation we gathered at a café run by a local Christian church. A well known poet in Sweden; Bengt Berg, read some of his work. While he read his poetry, another man translated. The people at the rally and at the café were mostly middle-eastern of origin. I remember the faces of the women there. They were full of life. Proud. Some wore Hijab, some didn't.

Bengt Berg also recited a passage in which the latin-american poet Otto René Castillo encouraged us to "view life with eyes of those who have yet to be born." That this would give us the inspiration to create a better world with care for each other and the nature which sustains us.

Later he gave me that same book.

Today I am thinking about compassion. I am reading a text at the newly founded Charter for Compassion and seeing it as parts of a larger whole. As I do with the the cause of the rally. All initiatives small or large have the potential to point towards values and a world beyond our present. This is some of the beauty there is to it.

The sounds of Jupiter

A friend of mine pointed my attention towards an unlikely source of music. The planet Jupiter. Allegedly the NASA Voyager once picked up: "The complex interactions of charged electromagnetic particles from the solar wind , planetary magnetosphere etc. create vibration "soundscapes". The result below is a kind of ambient induced sweep of sounds which alters slowly. And I love ambient.

Here is a track from the 1990 album Space Sounds released by Brain/Mind research.



I sincerely doubt that this track is a unedited and raw recordning. But after reading a little from the people of NASA themselves, it seems that this is not fiction anymore. Leaving science. It has been done officially and NASA has some clips of sounds to listen to.

This of course could provide a fascinating backdrop for those who want to seek insperation from other sources then the usual. Maybe especially for those who are into sci fi and space exploration. Many ambient musicians have a keen interest in field recordings of natural sound, which they use in their music. I too own an old minidisc and a sony stereo microphone to record sounds. But most of us admittedly stay on the earth.

Artist Proton Kinoun did not use any audible material from any space exploration program to create his vivid and stunning album Apeiron. But the inspiraration is similar. With a rich imagination and the images of the Hubble Space Telescope he created one of the most beautiful free ambient albums that I have had the privileige to listen to. The netlabel Omnisphere recommends complete darkness and the use of headphones when listening to it. I can only agree.

Surreal Beauty

Portrait of Judy Garland

I recently stumbled across the art haven fthr productions, while enjoying the swedish artist Mosaik's newest EP out on Softphase netlabel. I liked the Mosaik release so much that I wrote a review of it for the netmagazine Original Sound Versions, which I hope will surface in due time on their website.

Behind Fthr productions is graphic artist Antti Jädertpolm, who creates a kind of modern surrealist art with some extremely interesting use of collage techniques. I wrote him to ask if I could put a couple of his stunning images on my blog, to my happiness he thought that this was fine.

Saturday night Hammock Collage

Like you can see in Portrait of Judy Garland and Saturday night Hammock Collage, there is a whole lot of attention to details. The common theme found in his images seems to my mind to be the amount of layers that can be found in almost every image and a very quirky kind of beauty.

Spring

There are both lighter and darker motives and a whole lot in between. What many of them share though is the overwhelming imagery . You can browse Antti's quite massive collective of fine art here. I warmly recommend you to view them in full size. It does all the difference.