Symphony of Science: "Children of Africa" (June 2011)

http://symphonyofscience.com A musical celebration of humanity, its origins, and achievements, contrasted with a somber look at our environmentally destructive tendencies and deep similarities with other primates. Featuring Jacob Bronowski, Alice Roberts, Carolyn Porco, Jane Goodall, Robert Sapolsky, Neil deGrasse Tyson and David Attenborough.

"Children of Africa" is the tenth installment in the ongoing Symphony of Science music video series. Materials used in the creation of this video are from:

BBC Incredible Human Journey
BBC Ascent of Man
BBC Life of Mammals
BBC Human Planet
BBC Walking With Cavemen
Carolyn Porco: Hollywood
Quest for Fire
Hubblecast 29A
What Makes Us Human (Leakey Foundation)
What Separates Us from Chimps (Sapolsky)
Chimpanzee
Neil Tyson - Human Intelligence
Gemini Observatory Time-lapse

mp3: http://symphonyofscience.com

Rights to use Carl Sagan have been put on hold for the time being. Please be patient if you wish to see more Carl!

Special thanks to everybody who's donated to keep the project alive and to those who helped track down the materials used in this video.

To download and watch more videos visit http://symphonyofscience.com.

Enjoy!

~John
john@symphonyofscience.com

Lyrics:

[Jacob Bronowski]
Man is a singular creature;
He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals
So that unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape
He is the shaper of the landscape

[Alice Roberts]
We are all children of Africa
They say this is where it all began

[Bronowski]
In a parched African landscape
Man first put his foot to the ground

[Roberts]
Africa was our only home
for tens of thousands of years
until a small handful of people made their way
out of Africa

[Carolyn Porco]
These beings with soaring imagination
Eventually flung themselves and their machines
Into interplanetary space

[Roberts]
We are all children of africa
This landscape has been home to humans
Two hundred thousand years

[Porco]
We have come so far
All of this is cause for great celebration
We have come so far
This is a story about us

[Roberts]
Those early Europeans
Were people like you and me
But it is humbling
When you see the challenges they faced

People like you and me
Overcame the Neanderthals
People like you and me
Made it through the ice age

[Refrain]

[Jane Goodall]
We are not the only beings
With personalities, minds, and feelings
Chimpanzees have very clear personalities

[Robert Sapolsky]
Take a chimp brain foetally
And let it go two or three more rounds of division
And out comes symphonies and ideology

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]
Everything that we are
That distinguishes us from chimps
Emerges from that one percent
Difference in DNA

[Roberts]
People like you and me
Overcame the Neaderthals
People like you and me
Made it through the ice age

[Refrain]

[David Attenborough]
Using his burgeoning intelligence,
This most successful of all mammals
Has exploited the environment to produce food
For an ever increasing population.

Instead of controlling the environment
For the benefit of the population
Perhaps it's time we controlled the population
To allow the survival of the environment

Symphony of Science: "DNA and Life"

The Symphony of Science is a music project created by Washington-based electronic musician John Boswell.

The project seeks to "spread scientific knowledge and philosophy through musical remixes." Boswell uses pitch corrected audio and video samples from television programs featuring popular scientists and educators. The audio and video clips are mixed into digital mashups and scored with Boswell's original compositions.

Two of Boswell's music videos, "A Glorious Dawn" and "We are All Connected", feature appearances from Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, and Stephen Hawking.

The audio and video is sampled from popular science television shows including Cosmos, The Universe, The Eyes of Nye, The Elegant Universe, and Stephen Hawking's Universe.

Unruly Media, a viral video tracking service, first charted "A Glorious Dawn" on September 21, 2009. A month later, the video had received more than a million views and was ranked in the music category on YouTube as one of the top rated videos of all time.

According to wikipedia, on November 9, 2009, Third Man Records released a 7-inch single of "A Glorious Dawn" for the 75th anniversary of the birth of Carl Sagan.

Alan Watts: "The Real You "

A philosophically oriented remix of the late Eastern Philosopher Alan Watts' 1971 special "A Conversation With Myself" combined with visuals from the great art film "Baraka".


Lyrics:

You're breathing
The wind is blowing
The trees are waving
Your nerves are tingling

The individual and the universe
Are inseparable
But the curious thing is
Very few people are aware of it

Everything in nature
Depends on everything else
So it's interconnected

We confuse ourselves as living organisms which are one with this whole universe
With something we call our personality
And what is our personality?

And our fundamental self is not something just inside the skin
It's everything around us with which we connect

When you look out of your eyes
At nature happening out there
You're looking at you
That's the real you-
The you that goes on of itself

Now listen

It's absolutely necessary
That we let go of ourselves- and it can't be done,
Not by anything that we call doing it, acting, willing,
Or even just accepting things

It seems that the human being
Really has a very simple kind of mind
Nature is wiggly
Everything wiggles
And all this wiggliness is too complicated



Source: The Symphony of SCience


_______________________________________________________________



- The Original source of the hit:


* First Video:




* Second Video:





A 1971 television recording with Alan Watts walking in the mountains and talking about the limitations of technology and the problem of trying to keep track of an infinite universe with a single tracked mind. Video posted by Alan's son and courtesy of alanwatts.com.

Alan Wilson Watts (January 6, 1915 – November 16, 1973) was a British philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and popularizer of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience.

According to wikipedia, he wrote more than 25 books and numerous articles on subjects such as personal identity, the true nature of reality, higher consciousness, meaning of life, concepts and images of God and the non-material pursuit of happiness. In his books he relates his experience to scientific knowledge and to the teachings of Eastern and Western religion, spirituality and philosophy.



For More Informations:

http://www.alanwatts.com/

Journey to the Moon (Apollo 11 Moon Landing Remixed)

A song sampling the NASA documentary "Flight of Apollo 11", depicting the events of July 1969 when the first human set foot upon the moon.



A Song that combine art and science about historical journey that may decide for the future of the next generations.

'The Case for Mars' ft. Zubrin, Sagan, Cox & Boston

"The Case for Mars" is the sixth installment in the Symphony of Science music video series. It features Robert Zubrin, Carl Sagan, Brian Cox, and Penelope Boston. Samples come from the documentary "The Mars Underground", Cosmos, and Wonders of the Solar System. The video is intended to pique curiosity about the planet Mars and to promote human exploration of it.


Lyrics:

[Robert Zubrin]
Mars is the next logical step
In our space program
It's the challenge that's been staring us in the face
For the past 30 years

It has water, it has carbon,
It has a 24 hour day
It has geothermal energy
Mars is a place we can settle

[Carl Sagan]
There is a giant rift in its surface
5,000 kilometers long
There is a volcano as wide as Arizona

[Zubrin]
So there's the choice in life
One either grows or one decays
Grow or die
I think we should grow

[Sagan]
Mars is a world of wonders

[Brian Cox]
It has canyons, river valleys,
and giant ice sheets

[Sagan]
Mars is a world of wonders

[Zubrin]
It shouldn't be humans to Mars in 50 years
It should be humans to Mars in 10

We either muster the courage to go
Or we risk the possibility of stagnation and decay

We've got cosmic radiation
Zero gravity
Martian dust storms
Back contamination

But these are dragons that we can take on

[Sagan]
In our time we have sifted
The sands of Mars
Established a presence there
And fulfilled a century of dreams

[Cox]
The Mars rovers have really
Captured our imaginations
They genuinely are explorers
In the old-fashioned sense

[Zubrin]
If you put out a call
For volunteers for the first crew to Mars
They'd be lined up coast to coast

(refrain)

[Cox]
Mars is a dry frozen version of our home
Covered in red dust and sand

[Penelope Boston]
At one time
In the ancient past
Mars was very similar
To the conditions of early earth

[Zubrin]
There will always be people with new ideas
On how humans should live together

[Cox]
We now have "eyes" and "ears" on the surface

[Zubrin]
What's left after you go is
The good you've left behind
You have to believe in hope
You have to believe in the future

There are more and more people coming around to the point of view that
A positive future for humanity requires human expansion to space

(refrain)

We're at a crossroads today
We either muster the courage to go
Or we risk the possibility of stagnation and decay