Today’s walk: Unterbersten-Frangenberg-Müllersommer, starting near Landhaus Fuchs and to the left into the deep forest, then along the long path through Müllersommer and up back through the fields towards the car. It took an hour or two but I walked slow, as I do when I’m alone, often sitting somewhere and enjoying. It was cold and blue but I had my hardcore winter coat and felt comfortable. The beauty of the frosty meadows and the wide vistas, and the deep silence eventually brought my mind to a stop. And there were these guys in the rusty car.
jazz standardnot sure if I’d want to get into this car with these guysI looked around and saw 20 vapor trails
A late December morning with a cold blue sky and sunshine. Computer work waits for me but there is enough time for a little meditating and a walk. My soul felt different afterwards, thankful and quiet. I seem to get the hang of this more and more as I get older. There is this image of an old man sitting in the sun with his cat, content, quiet, at peace with himself, not having to save the world any more. I would like to be like that. Getting closer to it already.
Binaryminds is a software company that I sometimes work for. For the 2016 winter holiday season, they sent greeting cards to their customers – but not ordinary cards! The packages contained Google Cardboard sets – virtual reality headset kits made out of cardboard. You need to put your smartphone into them to watch 3D scenes.
The 3D scene that the binaryminds customers were pointed to contained season’s greetings – „keep calm and holiday on“ – set in a computer generated winter landscape. And there is sound, done by me, a six minute ambient winter soundscape. I am totally in love with the sights and sounds of this.
If you watch this in a browser on your desktop computer, you can move around using your mouse. If you use a tablet or mobile phone (it needs a gyroscope/compass to work), just move around. Of course, the best version is a virtual reality headset. (If you only see two parallel static images, your device doesn’t support the 3D view)
click on the image to launch the VR landscape
Of course the soundtrack was done with a nod to mastermind Brian Eno, inventor of this kind of musical aesthetic. Eno was the one who came up with the term „ambient music“ in the 70s, and some of his ambient soundscapes evoked a sense of place, an inner landscape. He often used this music as an acoustic backdrop to his visual art exhibitions. The result was always pure magic.
