Auroville is an experimental city, under development in south India. It is intended to be a model township – an international and universal place for personal, spiritual growth and social advancement.

Auroville exists for nothing less than to hasten the evolution of the human species – to develop the mind from its animal instincts to sublime intuition, and to manifest the inspiration of the Divine in the material world.

Origins

The idea for the town was inspired by the teachings of Sri Aurobindo – an Indian philosopher, freedom fighter and futurist who lived from 1872 to 1950. His greatest disciple, a Frenchwoman known simply as ‘The Mother’, came to India to be by his side and to realise his ideas. She proposed the creation of Auroville, which was finally founded in 1968. Representatives came from all over India and the world, bringing with them a handful of soil from their native lands, to be mixed in an urn at the centre of the city.

The current population is currently around 1800 ‘Aurovilians’. The aim is to have a thriving city of 50,000. The largest country represented so far is India, followed by French and German citizens.

The Matrimandir Temple

The building in the photograph is the Matrimandir – the ‘Temple of the Mother‘. Here, ‘Mother’ refers to the supreme Creative Force, the energy that binds Consciousness into the myriad forms of the universe. Compare with goddess Durga from Hindu mythology:

The Matrimandir is to be a place of concentration, for finding the source of one’s consciousness in the stillness of meditation. The red brick ‘lotus petals‘ each contain a room for meditation. Inside the golden dome is the ‘Inner Chamber‘ – a large, white, circular hall containing a huge glass crystal – the largest in the world – which focusses a beam of white light into the centre of the building.

The gold discs are actually made of gold — gold leaf, sandwiched in between two layers of glass and tiled like a mosaic around huge discs. This sphere of gold, around a place of great concentration upon human consciousness, is intended to have an electromagnetic influence on the state of consciousness for the rest of the planet…

In the following photographs, I use quotes from Sri Aurobindo and The Mother to illustrate the vision for Auroville.

Links:
• Auroville: In Quotes Photoset
• Auroville website
• Wikipedia: Sri Aurobindo
• Wikipedia: The Mother
• Wikipedia: Auroville

Leap-frogging to a new life…
This world is but a play
And death, a change of scene.

Like sleep at day’s end
And fresh clothes in the morn,
So this body, vehicle for the soul,
Is utilised, spent
And discarded at dusk.

A new skin donned at dawn,
Ready for the promise
Of the new light of day.
A new opportunity
For the final leap home.

I recently created a little tool to calculate Golden Rectangles… the GoldenRectanglizer.

It was made for the Golden Rectangle photo group on Flickr, which explores the Golden Ratio in photographic composition. The idea is that you keep it open when cropping photos in your photo software and calculate the Golden Rectangle that best fits your picture.

What’s a Golden Rectangle?
A Golden Rectangle is one whose height and width are related by the Golden Ratio, an extremely common natural ratio – found in the geometry of human faces and bodies, seashells, trees and even the distribution of financial stock market highs and lows.

If you were to cut a square from the Golden Rectangle, the remaining small rectangle would have exactly the same height-to-width ratio as the original rectangle.

One side is approximately 1.618 (“Phi”) times the size of the other. But the exact ratio can never actually be known because Phi is an irrational number, just like Pi (3.14159…). The number of decimal places goes on infinitely.

More is discussed in the Golden Rectangle photo group discussion board. Here are the latest photos from the photo pool:

I almost died last night… I can still feel the pin-prick in my middle finger where the paramedics checked my blood sugar.

The feeling still runs through me… I was in a car, spinning. Seventy miles an hour. I had swerved left to avoid him and skidded wildly to the side. I swung right to correct it and spun out of control – around and around, across the carriageway.

I had done all I could. I was powerless, just waiting for impact. I closed my eyes and spoke to my Maker… "It is in Your hands now. I can do nothing… It is up to You."

I seemed to hit something. Everything stopped.

I was against the crash barrier in the middle of the motorway. Any moment, a whole laneful of cars would plough right through me… but somehow they didn’t. I was in a gap between the fast lane and the barrier – perhaps the only gap for miles.

A woman was at my window and asked if I was alright. They had seen it happen, saw how he’d pulled in front of me. He didn’t stop, just drove straight off.

I had no life flash before me, no panic, no fear. I knew only that I was powerless. And when I closed my eyes, I renounced the outcome. I felt at peace.

And though my mind was scrambled and the car a mess, my body was untouched. It could so easily have been different.

[geotagged]

07-07-2005. Manchester, UK.
It was the day of the recent London bombings and I was wandering a little aimlessly through the city centre, on my way to the recording studios. A strangely ethereal sound came wafting over the hustle and bustle of the square and I was drawn to come closer.

Jali Nyonkoling Kuyateh from the Gambia was sat, busking with his kora. He’s currently living in Manchester, singing his songs and trying to earn some money. He said he wants to make a CD, but doesn’t know who can help him. So he decided to sit on the pavement of Piccadilly, waiting for someone to arrive.

It reminded me a little of the Buddha – sat determined under a tree, unwilling to move until he gained either enlightenment or death.

See the whole set of photos.

Multimedia Files
AUDIO: “A Song” (2 mins):
• MP3 Audio (media page)

VIDEO: “Jali & The Kora” (2 mins):
• QuickTime7 Movie (media page)
• Windows Media Video (media page)

Rochdale Canal, Ancoats, Manchester.

I was photographing the bridge when Mike asked me what I was doing. We went on to talk for about an hour with a conversation that really touched and affected me.

He wanted his story to be told. He said that the stories of the homeless are usually ignored and needed telling. He didn’t mind me taking photos. He just got on with what he was doing, and I did the same.

I gave him the address of my Flickr photostream and blog and said that I would tell his story there. He had never used the internet before, but I hope that one day he finds this and leaves a comment to say how he is doing.

See the photo set for the full story and more photos.

The meeting of the G8 world leaders in Gleneagles, Scotland is about to begin. And Third World Debt, together with the poverty and exploitation it creates, is firmly under the spotlight.

Below are the latest photos from the G8 and Live8 groups on Flickr… They automatically update as new images are posted. Click a thumbnail to view the original.

• AfterCapitalism.org – cooperative economics blog
• IndyMedia UK – independent journalism at the scene
• MakePovertyHistory.org
• Live8 official website
• G8 official website
• G8 on the BBC
• Live8 on the BBC

I’ve been experimenting with interlinking photos to allow a user to navigate around a scene.

If you click on the photo above, you can then navigate around the Yellow Wall using the links within the image notes. The whole photoset is then interlinked with the nearest photoset.

I want to expand this concept by telling a piece of a story with each photo (see work in progress). The user can reconstruct the story from whichever angle interests them. Kind of like “Choose Your Own Ending”, but more like “Choose Your Own Everything”.

So, it’s possible to spell words with Flickr photos, eh?

Kastner‘s created a little gizmo to do just this from the photos of Flickr’s countless users.

» Respell Dharmasphere, or…

Spell your own: (on Kastner’s Flickrtext site)

So, I finally got around to getting into Flickr.com.

I first heard about this collective global photo community quite some time ago, but hadn’t delved into it until now. I’ve uploaded some of my recent photos and artwork based on them.

I’m planning to gradually upload my stock of good images and to set up a Dharmasphere photostream – and then pipe it straight through this website…

Here are some images taken last week on a little morning jaunt around Alexandra Park in Manchester.