Friday 12 July 2013

Scourge Amazonia (2013)


It really is quite astonishing that some of the most biodiverse regions of the world are being exploited for resources and none more profound than that of the Amazon in South America. 
Pic 1: Ridiculously amazing view (pic stolen from itsabeautifulearth.com)

The Amazon is the world’s largest tropical rainforest stretching across 9 countries and encompasses half the world’s rainforests. So species rich is the Amazon basin it contains a 10th of the worlds known species (WWF 2013) and yet it is being blitzed by deforestation. Land clearing makes way for massive cattle stations and crops such as soy beans grown for human consumption and ironically to feed the Brazilian cattle which then finds its way to the tables of Europeans, Russians, Eygptians and to the Middle East. So the demand for Brazilian beef in the Old World is responsible for the deforestation of the New. What an incredibly energy expensive way to put beef on the plates of Westerners.
Pic 2: Image predicting the extent of forested vs. deforested areas within the Amazon in 2050  if deforestation continues at its current rate (pic stolen from Soares-Filho et al. (2006). Modelling conservation in the Amazon basin. Nature 440: 520-523).


Also, the basin acts as one massive carbon storage centre (90-140 billion metric tons (WWF 2013)) which as it loses its capacity to store atmospheric carbon and is thus released through deforestation becomes a contributor to the Greenhouse Effect and a rise in global temperatures. The Amazon also contributes approximately 20% of the planets atmospheric oxygen (WWF2013) which just reiterates the point that we are one immensely stupid species. So to bring all these points together the message is clear... WE ARE EATING OURSELVES TO DEATH!



Scourge Amazonia (2013)

The Termite Horde lays waste to all life in its wake,
In a Cleansing of the Vital Mosaic

Out of Sight - Out of Mind
Scourge Amazonia

The Scourge that reaps the Great Gardens,
To quench the pallet of the Western Realm,
Ecocidal mania shreads the Lungs of the Earth,
To Feed the Cold Hunger of the Few.

Out of Sight - Out of Mind
Scourge Amazonia

Severing the Lines of Original People,
Shreading the Lands of the Old Ones,
Parasitise the Veins to Fuel the Masses,

Keep Feeding - Keep Feeding
Keep feeding... Till We grow short of Breath!

Out of Sight - Out of Mind
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Monday 8 July 2013

Extinctio in Ignorantia (2013)

We are losing species before we even know they exist. Since Linnaeus and Darwin, humanity has been trying to document the plethora of life forms on the planet but it comes as no surprise that we will probably never know the full extent of how diverse the global biosphere is. There are only estimates with huge margins of error and we are still finding species in some of the most remote and biodiverse regions of the world (PNG, Antarctica). However, worldwide there is a lack of taxonomists to describe newly found species especially for Kingdom Fungi and unfortunately a lack of funding is one of the biggest reasons. 
Pic 1: A phylogenetic tree of the evolutionary relationships of all known species (pic stolen form University of Texas).

 Lyrically we’ve attempted to capture this idea with of course the tree of life (phylogeny) and worship of trees (dendrolatry) to paint a picture complimented with a grand tapestry to reference the attempt to describe every living species and their evolutionary relaionships. 

 There is a saying in biology, “Extinction is the Rule, not the Exception", and even though historically this has been the case we owe the 6th known mass extinction period which we are currently experiencing to the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens.

 Extinctio in Ignorantia
In Awe of the Great Tree,
And Thirst to Scribe Life’s riches,
Devoted hands weave in vain,
An unfinished Tapestry in stitches.

Extinctio in Ignorantia,
An unfinished Tapestry in stitches.

Extinctio in Ignorantia,
Branches lost before they are found,
The Rule is quickened by Conquest,
The Tapestry’s knot-work unwound.

Extinctio in Ignorantia

No Name for the Branches fallen
In a Forest unheard and unseen
Unheard...Unseen...

Extinctio!
Extinctio in Ignorantia
Watch: ExtinctExist - Extinctio in Ignorantia (Live at Such is Life 2013, Goongerah, Victoria)

For interests sake:
Conservation Bytes
I fucking love biodiversity (Facebook page)
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Saturday 6 July 2013

Kings Fall (2013)

When the first colonialist arrived on the shores of Australia from 1788, there was a God-given, blinkered perception that the forests and woodlands of the mainland’s Eastern Seaboard, Tasmania and South-Western Australia were an inexhaustible bounty. New Holland as it was known was also seen as an unruly place, untamed and where the Devil roamed, seen through European eyes it was a far cry from the lush green pastures of the mother land. With this in mind a campaign was founded to “acclimatise” the land so too that England could further its boundaries, augmenting the alien landscape to a more familiar terrain to be freely colonised.

In the forested mountains the largest of the trees were of course targeted for felling, namely Eucalyptus regnans (Mountain Ash in Victoria or Swamp Gum in Tasmania) the tallest flowering plant in the world, hence the species name which in Latin refers to the regal or kingly nature of their lordship over the mountain forests. The tallest recorded was found in the Watts River region of Victoria around 1871, an alleged 132.6 metres, however this has been disputed as an unreliable account and a specimen felled in Thorpdale (Vic) measured on the ground at 114.3 metres has been accepted as a realistic documentation.

Pic 1: Canopy shot of Mountain Ash forest in the Great Otway National Park, Victoria (pic:Nick Noodle).

 The ecology of these cool temperate forests is temporally dynamic. Mountain Ash live for approximately 400 years and as patches of forest dominated by this species move further through time unscathed by fire, the forest structure moves into a mixed rainforest of Nothofagus cunninghamii (Myrtle Beech) and Atherosperma moschatum (Southern Sassafras) with a much lower density of Eucalypt species. 


Pic 2: Myrtle Beech forest floor, Great Otway National Park, Victoria (pic:Nick Noodle).


Myrtle Beech are a longer lived species (approx. 500+ years) quite sensitive to fire and if damaged by dropped limbs or by logging machinery become susceptible to the pathogenic fungus Myrtle Wilt (Chalara australis) which is the most common cause of death of this species. 

Pic 3: Gnarled base of a Myrtle Beech, Great Otway National Park, Victoria (pic:Nick Noodle).

Mountain Ash forests are also prime habitat for Leadbetter's Possum (Gymnobelideus leadbeateri) which is currently listed as Threatened under the Fauna and Flora Guarantee Act 1988 in Victoria. These small omnivorous arboreal marsupials utilize the hollows bourne in Mountain Ash trees approximately 150 years, however logging in these forests has reduced habitat range which has compromised the successional mosaic of different aged patches of Mountain Ash dominated forest. Under the current forestry regime Leadbetter's Possum may become extinct in the wild within 20 years.
Pic 4: Leadbeater's Possum (pic stolen from Australian Geographic)

Kings Fall
Seemingly endless,
From the sea to the hills,
In the name of the Crown,
Tame the Devil’s Land.
Senicide!
Ecocide!
Giganticide!
Regicide!
Desist!!!

Slayers of Giants,
The Prehistorics robbed,
The Disease of Ents,
Gnarled stories lost.
Senicide!
Ecocide!
Giganticide!
Regicide!
Desist!!!

Millennia past,
In Beech’s Keep,
No flame, no blade,
Till Sanctum breached.
Senicide!
Ecocide!
Giganticide!
Regicide!
Desist!!!


Massacre of Ash,
Shatter the hollows,
The Kings of Mountain High,
Shall be slain.

Kings fall!
Kings fall!

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Friday 5 July 2013

Exhaled (2013)

Here we visit the inception of the Industrial Revolution (the Age of Soot) in the 18th centuty and the unlocking of the Carboniferous deposits through coal mining. 

Lyrically it's initially drawn from the phenomenon of Industrial Melanism which saw the Peppered Moth (Biston betularia) undergo a rapid evolution (through selection) due to soot depositing from nearby factories, blackening the white trunks of Birch (Betula sp.) trees in England. 
Pic 1 (left): Soot covered Birch trees lacking lichen colonies camouflaging the black morph while the white morph is starkly contrasted and Pic 2 (right): showing the opposite. (pics stolen from Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Black morphs who existed in smaller numbers within the population where selected for since they were camouflaged against the soot covered bark of the trees while those individuals who were white were selected against since they were now easy targets for predation due to their apparency.

Pic 3: ExtinctExist - Demo MMXIII artwork/logo by Santiago Armengod. Although inspired by the story of the Peppered Moth, the image is actually drawn from from the Death's-head Hawkmoth (Acherontia atropos).

We then fast forward to the present day where the consequences are already being felt with atmospheric carbon levels at a staggering 400 ppm which in Earth's history hasn't been the case for at least 800,000 years. We allude to phenomena attributing to greenhouse gas emissions such as the melting of Arctic ice which has for millennia held ancient methane deposits and is now unleashed to contribute to and exacerbate the global warming crisis. In a nutshell, support for an anthropological hypothesis to explain Global Warming at this stage outweighs the notion that we are merely experiencing natural phenomena alone. One mustn't discount that it too could be a contributing factor, however there is just too much support for a correlation between the inception of the Industrial Age and the rise in atmospheric carbon levels. There's no denying these sorts of climate events have happened in the past to which most skeptics will refer, its the rate at which it is happening that raises alarm bells and the responsibility is ours. There are those out there in the science community who feel we are the last generation to make a difference that will last.

Exhaled
At the turning of the Age of Soot,
The Beast pores seethed carbon pitch,
The melanised woods of Birch grew dark,
Till the Peppered Moth turned black.

Evolution,
Asphyxiation,
Primeval winds,
Industrialism,
Melanism,
Exhaled!

As the Carboniferous tomb is sacked,
And the Iron guts grind time held woods,
The Insidious Seed that is Anti-life,
Is nurtured by the Milk of Arcane Skies.

Evolution,
Asphyxiation,
Primeval winds,
Industrialism,
Melanism,
Exhaled!

As Ancient Breath is exhaled,
The Stories of the Stones speak louder still,
And Ice held secrets unsheathe the Eyes,
To a Snowflake’s fate in a new born HELL...



Evolution,
Asphyxiation,
Primeval winds,
Industrialism,
Melanism,

Exhaled!

 Listen: Bandcamp (Demo MMXIII)

Watch: ExtinctExist - Exhaled (Live at Such is Life 2013: Goongerah, Victoria)

Art: Santiago Armengod: Justseeds Artist Cooperative
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