Resetting Your EGO

 Starry Night
or
 a film by

Ian Cheney

venue:
BMW GUGGENHEIM LABdesigned by
Atelier Bow-Wow, Tokyo"The BMW Guggenheim Lab is a mobile laboratory that will travel to nine major cities worldwide over six years...the BMW Guggenheim Lab will address issues of contemporary urban life through programs and public discourse.  Its goal is the exploration of new ideas, experimentation, and ultimately the creation of forward-thinking solutions for urban life."

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Ian Cheney is the narrator of his film, The City Dark.
It asks a series of questions:
What do we lose,
when we lose the night??
It's a great question.
The film is a combination of video and animation. 
Psychologists, Astro-physicists, Astro-Photographers,
Professional Astronomers, Amateur Sky-Watchers
and Owners of light bulb stores are asked
why being able to see the sky is important to us.

Why do we feel the need
to dominate the night?
Today, we live under a dome of  light.  It's called light pollution.
Cheney rates different sites around the world from A-F
for the ability to see stars in the sky. 

2/3 of all human beings live under artificial light.

Hatching sea turtles in Florida depend on light of stars
to guide them to the water, but they can't find the ocean anymore,
because the light from buildings, street lights, etc. disorients them.

Stars serve as a map for birds as they migrate.
Fireflies are in decline due to changes in habitat.

It begins to get scary.
Scientists researching breast cancer
correlate women who do shift work with a high incidence of breast cancer. 
LIGHT COULD BE HARMFUL.

Le Corbusier said of Times Square
"It's the Milky Way brought down to Earth."

If we don't look at the night sky
how do we know
our place in the cosmos?

The night sky is a
RESETTING OF YOUR EGO
I found watching the film a resetting of my knowledge.