Solstice2016 Solstice celebrations have existed for as long as people have been looking at the sun. Especially for indigenous peoples whose habitats were closely tied to the cycle of the sun and earth, the solstice was a marked point in the year. Wether celebrating the day the sun never sets, or celebrating the rebirth of sunlight after the darkest period of the year, humans have observed the seasonal milestones and created spiritual and cultural traditions reflecting the diversity of the sounds of the earth. For over a decade Charlie Morrow and his friends, veterans as well as newcomers to the  avant-garde music and poetry scene, have traveled the world over to produce, record and participate in Solstice events and celebrations. From their combined experience came the idea to bring this multitude of events and performances home to anybody who would like to learn more about it or follow it live on ‘the day of’. This is a huge technological and organizational challenge that has never been done before,  bringing together a large number of people around the globe in an exciting multi-level, multi-stream production. This June we are proud to introduce “Solstice 2016” to pilot an annual international internet celebration that will allow viewers and listeners to tune into 24 hours of live programming from around the world. Solstice 2016 draws from science, astronomy and mythology to create a global communication platform for all sorts of indigenous and artistic celebrations, covering all of earth’s time zones. The program will be finely curated. Participants will perform their Solstice art in whatever medium they choose, between the hours of 17:00 and 18:00 in their time zone or create the performance in advance. Viewers around the world will be able to catch the simultaneous feeds throughout the Solstice period, and add their thoughts to the Comment Stream. They can do this form their phone or laptops, or participate in one of the many international Solstice parties in Planetariums, museums and other great venues who open their doors to connect Solstice worshippers around the globe. After the event, our website will feature highlights of the program and an interactively searchable database with contributions from our participants. It will be featuring a pre-recorded assembly of unique world music and historical solstice materials for each time-zone as well as poetry, stories and event listings. The Arctic Studies Center of the Smithsonian Institute will contribute with their own unique collection of materials from their archives and current research from the Arctic and Subarctic. There will be a beautiful mix of materials showcasing endangered languages, astronomy, poetry, literature ... Aztec sun gods, Southwestern ‘sun daggers’ and much else. Some never seen or heard before! On June 20, from 5-6 pm, or “Happy Hour”, we start our celebration at the International Date line.  Using the latest communication technology, we will follow the solstice moment and  ‘feeling’ around the globe and capture all kinds of people’s experiences. Moving west and broadcasting one hour per each of the 24 time zones, we follow the Earth spinning, ‘handing over’ the solstice moment to each following time zone at 5 pm.  In addition, moving north and south within each time zone,  different climate regions with specific geography and cultures are being made visual and brought into focus: from the Arctic where the sun never sets, to the Antarctic where there will be total darkness. We keep moving west, one hour per zone, until we come back to the International Dateline at ‘the end of the day’ or 24 hours later. Our brilliant team of curators that have put our premier program together will keep building the collection to expand the show into the next level for the Solstice 2017 celebration.  We will recruit videographers all over the world to film and document what is happening live around the globe and upload it to our Solstice web page, as well as taking live feed and comments from participants to give the viewers an opportunity to see what happens in other parts of the world during solstice. We will have live hosts narrating through the website and radio and local hosts in the different time zones. This platform gives a live counter point to the additional artistic and science events and programs that are happening in planetariums before and after the Solstice as well.  One notably important Solstice 2016 event will be in Warsaw, celebrating the 500 year anniversary of the renaissance mathematician and astronomer Copernicus, an early scientific Solstice hero who taught us that the earth evolves around the sun, and not the other way around. We expect that the use of social media will create a viral communication wave that runs around the earth melting comments, dialogue, events, photos, videos, sound recordings and local music to a degree the world has never seen before. The top moments will likely be combined into a beautiful video production, pod-casts and book. Some of the participants in this event have collaborated before on (Solstice) celebrations and artistic or musical endeavors; others are newly embracing the idea to share their talents and spirit on this special day in this unique way and add to the multitude of sounds and voices. No printed list will be up-to-date as the momentum is building and we are adding people and organizations every day. The enthusiasm is overwhelming and promises that this day will be an amazing, deep collaboration about the sun and the earth, it’s people and it’s celebrations. We have received widespread enthusiasm, and there have been many exciting suggestions for tie-ins and follow up productions already - from educational programs in classrooms to 360 virtual reality content development.  This event fulfills a huge need and desire to share and learn and to connect viewers around the world through

Videos

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The videos here have nothing to do with the solstice project - but they are part of an eksperimnent recording, upl.oading and presenting videos in the project. they are all very short, they are recorded (sound and video) with an iPhone and they are not edited (exept no. two - editid on the iPhone in Imovie).

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