Birrung

It's 2019,  the Year of Indigenous Languages, so I'm resolved to learn as much as I can about the Dharawal language and put it into practice over the year.  This post will feature lots of stars hence the title birrung.

Close-up of the Barnards Loop emission nebula.

This pic is a close-up from one of lots of identical pics captured in last nights all-night effort, which when combined for noise reduction will show the setting of the birrung of Orion over the South Island. Including the Orion, Flame and Horsehead nebula here at centre but also the elusive Barnards Loop of gas (probably) ionised by the Orion Nebula. It stretches a lot further as will be seen in the final image - this image is almost straight from camera (some quick colour correction in Camera Raw) - it's 200 seconds at f2.8 on a 50mm lens and Ha-modded Nikon D5100, tracking with a Skyguider pro. Very pleased with first capture as clouds were rolling through until about 2am and then it cleared up by 3am for an hour so there should be at least 16 clean flats, hopefully enough when combined to get a better, reduced-noise final image.

A few years ago I noticed that some cool videos from Broulee were online, where I first learned the Dhurga welcoming/farewelling phrase walawaani which got me wondering about the original language for Wreck Bay/Shoalhaven - which seems to have been Dharawal. And now I see that there are lots more on line resources, academic papers and dictionaries including one from Les Bursill in Worrigee near Nowra.

Interestingly, our second son's gaiyara appears in this dictionary. We named him Mani as it has a few Koori meanings, from 'equal to the first' to rock wallaby in Bundjalung country. Now we discover, as he plans his high school career in marine biology, that it means fisherman in Dharawal!

 As (to quote one of the wonderful stories in Anita Heiss's growing Up Aboriginal in Australia)' I'm growing into aboriginality through not being brought up in an Aboriginal community it's going to take a while to absorb it all - one day I'll head back to Nowra a to find out  as much as I can about my Nana Walsh's life at Wreck Bay and nearby.

The aim of last night's allnighter capturing several hours of duplicate images of Barnard's Loop surrounding  dhungagil (Orion's Belt ) was to make a noise corrected composite of the birrung and the sea across to the South island of Aotearoa. I've still to do the combining/noise correction but I have made the first combine of the ocean foreground and tracked birrung.

Barnards Loop part II. Rosette Nebula at top right and the faint clouds at bottom right are obscuring part of the Loop below the yellow red birrung Betelegeuse.

But as well as creating photographic art I would love to document our birrung stories from Yuin country, using video and animation. One of those life-time goals that has to wait for the right time.

Looking forward to putting the final image together, but it may have to wait for commercial work and prep for our 23 Jan Gardens Magic gig!

Sony Lightfoot

Here is a new character created for a future time when the whole world will be covered in water and humans are but a silicon chip memory, where sea-life has evolved and adapted to billions of tonnes of rubbish left behind by mankind. It's a Sony Lightfoot...




Sony Lightfoot

...which has become a dominant crustacean with an indestructible aluminium walkman housing protecting it from most of the food-chain. And it's well disguised amongst the 2000 metre deep layer of plastic and metallic rubbish that makes up the seafloor.





This is a companion character to the Crabboombox also created for this dystopian future. 



As Kuki Koori shows are live-drawn the characters don't get used for performances but their spirit definitely influences the more frantic scribbles that occur onstage. The crabboombox even talked itself into a starring role on the panel of my custom midi controller so it's now present at all gigs.




Crabboombox

But hopefully our world is not heading this way. It's easy to think that a million years is a long time away but it looks the next 12 years could be the turning point for our climate if we don't make some big changes to emissions. I'm thinking that my best chance to make a difference is focussing my film and animation work on renewable energy - but that's another blog post. 




Time to catch up on some sleep after an allnighter capturing birrung pics, specifically of the stars of Orion and the Barnards Loop nebula.

Welcome to the blogiverse inhabited by me, Koori boy Mick Finn, reporting randomly about the fun and games of being the visual half of an audio-visual arts-electronica band known as Kuki Koori.

A short bio - we formed back in 2017 as a creative test-concept between myself and Iain Gordon, whose real night-job is keyboardist with Fat Freddy's Drop, the legendary New Zealand band. Our aim is to create visuals and music on the fly during performances; trying to create little stories as we go. We also like having an opportunity to put Maori and Koori themes in the mix reflecting our dual identities in Western and indigenous worlds. We've had some great nights at a range of festivals and venues and as we get more and more gigs we're starting to find the limits of absolute creativity at each performance. More on that later!

Today sees the heat coming on for an upcoming gig in Wellington (New Zealand) which is going to be short and sweet, and hopefully deadly. Once it gets dark at 9pm we have 20 - 30 mins to perform, a lot shorter than usual, before the park is closed and noise restrictions at Wellington Botanic Gardens kick in. It will a frenetic stretch to create a character in this short time, but I just need to get some of the crazy ideas floating around in my head onto a sketchpad and then practise some of them on the drawing tablet formerly known as the ipad.

We're probably calling this one the Space Race, with a following gig on the Wellington Waterfront being Time Flies, followed by a big 2 hour set at Cubadupa Street Festival which we're calling Space-Time at the End of the Lane.

Though we've just been offered a Sunday afternoon gig in between these at Dowse Art Gallery which will be fun if it all comes together. Edit...the date doesn’t work for us so not this year.

Here's the first sketches, and then another batch overlain on an astro-pic from this week.  Which gives me ideas for  a separate art series for my small astro-photography gallery sales.