Respect them

 I have a movie recommendation for you. "Monuments Men" is currently on Netflix, the story of civilian men recruited during World War II to recover works of art and return them whenever possible. 

Statues and paintings were stolen by Hitler's armies from museums and churches all over Europe. Locations include Belgian cathedrals and Nazi-occupied France. The cast is full of stars whom you'll recognize.

The leader of these men (played by George Clooney) was passionate about finding these art pieces before they were lost or destroyed and explains why: "You can wipe out a generation of people, you can burn their homes to the ground and somehow they'll still come back. But if you destroy their achievements and their history, then it's like they never existed." 

It still happens today. Destroyers want to destroy statues, history, achievements. That's what they do.

Marimba

Just for fun, here is Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" performed by a student marimba band in South Africa. To remember what the original sounded like about 300 years ago when it was composed, go here.

Hillbillies

Dominican friars aren't known for their musical performances. Or, at the least, you might expect medieval chants over American bluegrass. But they're performing bluegrass all right . . at the Grand Ol' Opry in Nashville TN.

Their name, "Hillbilly Thomists," is a reference to Thomas Aquinas who lived around 1200 AD in Britain, an influential monk.

In the words of one fan, "Their folksy music is at once complex and lovely with lyrics rich in poetry and Scripture."

Savage

Lord of the Flies was published in London by a schoolteacher in 1954. A group of boys are marooned alone on an ocean island. Without protection or supervision, they organize themselves to survive but eventually descend into fear and savagery.

Darkness in the human heart is said to be the author's theme, horrifying evil that's normally held back only by the imposition of civilization. He's not wrong (and the Bible agrees).

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While we can't deny that people of all ages are capable of evil, we don't live with horror every day. Why is that? 

This scenario of kids, lost and alone and marooned, actually happened in reality. How did that turn out? . . in tomorrow's post.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Casual art

Enjoy this post from almost five years ago, maybe the most beautiful thing you will enjoy today:

Imagine a big extended family gets together. Just for the fun of it, just casually standing around in the living room, wearing t-shirts and jeans - they all break out into glorious harmonious song. 

How can everybody in this family all be amazing?

Bocelli

World-famous tenor Andrea Bocelli is now singing and recording with his son and daughter. The Bocelli Family partnered with a capella group Pentatonix for a single of Christmas song "Do You Hear What I Hear?"

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AI art? 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Can computers create art in the same way that humans do? It depends on how you define the words "create" and "art."

Computers or artificial intelligence can generate answers to questions, can direct equipment to build (like 3-D printer), can generate digital images, and much more, on one condition: that they have been programmed to do it.

That is, programmed by a human engineer to do the task. It's called "narrow AI." Programming is done by algorithms. An algorithm is instruction, a recipe, a formula. AI can be programmed or instructed by a human being to do any number of tasks for us.

But that's not "general AI," which would think for itself and create - in the sense that humans create ideas. So artificial intelligence doesn't actually create art, but rather the human engineer had the idea and taught the computer how to generate what he had in mind. The engineer is creating the art and using AI as a tool. 

What is creativity? This article explores its meaning. What is digital art? Wikipedia has an article on it.

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(Experts tell us to use the word "it" rather than a personal pronoun like he or she to refer to a robot. It may be designed with something like a face on it, it may have a name (like Sophia), it may be programmed to use friendly words -- but it is a machine, not a person.)

AI art?

Artificial intelligence has come a long way. We take its presence for granted when we program our thermostats, or when it runs manufacturing robots or helps the staff at a pizza shop, or when it links your phone to the camera at your front door.

In the spirit of innovation, people are trying to find out what else it can do. For example, can AI create art? Some claim that AI can do that. 

A digital art competition was held last July at the Colorado State Fair. Here's the piece that won:

Some of the contestants were upset when they discovered that AI had generated the image. The judges said they would have given it the prize even if they had known.

Is it art if it was generated by artificial intelligence? Does AI actually create, as humans do? 

(cont'd tomorrow)

Zuby

Zuby's background can only be called diverse - including cultures of Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and education in the U.S. He's an author, speaker, rapper, and more, with over a million followers on social media.

He likes debates. Convenient, because he also likes to think for himself.

Artist 2

Bernie Mitchell is an artist. But maybe he didn't know it for a long time - because he only developed his ability while working as a professional drywaller, putting up drywall and mudding the joints.

Use your imagination to picture him starting to discover his ability while on the job.

Enjoy watching him create this piece.

re-post from 2016

Rose Ensemble

Committed to "preserving and performing sacred and secular early [American] music," the Rose Ensemble has a good reputation with classical music fans.

Enjoy this performance of a 19th century song written by Jeremiah Rankin, abolitionist and minister of Washington D.C.'s First Congregational Church.

In remembrance of Martin Luther King.

Christmas beauty 2

Christmas has been inspiring composers of music for hundreds of years. The musical results then inspire the rest of us.

Johann Sebastian Bach was himself inspired by the God of the Bible. His music was "the expression of a unitary … world view, in which all beauty … was sacred because God was one, both Creator and Redeemer."

"The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul." —J.S. Bach

Here is beauty from his Christmas Oratorio, to glorify God and refresh your soul.

Bond

(cont'd from last Friday's post)

Everyone knows what the James Bond movie franchise thrives on: glamor, guns, suspense, plots, danger, heroism - and they are all there (except, thankfully, for the usual provocative sex) in the new release, "No Time to Die." Last Friday I saw it, and saw something more.

All those regular Bond elements brought people to the theater. But the different element I noticed was one of those beautiful, divine truths mentioned in "Co-Creators 3" and I think I noticed it because I had just published that post. 

The additional element is self-sacrificial love. Everyone who sees the film will feel it. Yes, sacrifice for love's sake is divine, a trait of God himself. It is beautiful and timeless, a virtue that every human heart can recognize but may or may not choose to do when the time comes.

Meaningful art reaches into our human core.

Co-creators 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Like most of us, you have probably been amazed at the unexpected art forms people create which turn up on social media. Human beings can create art out of just about anything (ex: musical instruments out of junkyard trash). Creativity of different kinds is built into us, sort of a family trait from our Creator.

Whether it's a song, a drawing, or landscape design, or a movie, etc., we deeply respond to it when the artist embodies in his own art some reflection of eternal Beauty or Wisdom. His or her love of that wisdom or beauty is what drives it.

C. S. Lewis (in his fiction, The Great Divorce) describes the motivation of a painter: "When you painted on earth--at least in your earlier days--it was because you caught glimpses of Heaven in the earthly landscape. The success of your painting was that it enabled others to see the glimpses too."

from Deeper Magic: the Theology Behind the Writings of C. S. Lewis 

Special note: If C. S. Lewis interests you, plan to see a new movie that will be shown in some theaters about his life and journey from atheism to Christian faith on November 3. "The Most Reluctant Convert" was filmed in and around Oxford by a British director.

Co-creators 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

God was the first to create, the first artist and first builder. Our race takes after Him, and we create too. In fact, we take the material he provided in the natural world and do something with it to bless and serve our family and neighbors. 

"Someone who loves roses can develop new hybrids with different fragrances or colors. When they do this, they function as an image bearer of God, governing roses. Others govern wood; from a block of wood they can make something beautiful.

"This truth applies not only to the fine arts but to every creative work: an oil painting and a lesson plan, a musical composition and a clean toilet, a literary novel and a tidy home that refreshes a family, an exquisite sculpture and a successful surgery, a pencil sketch and a repaired vehicle, a verse of poetry and a new work process.

J.R.R.Tolkien, Christian and author of Lord of the Rings, says we are sub-creators, continuing and completing the creation of this world begun by The Creator.

from Darrow Miller and Friends

(cont'd tomorrow)

Co-creators 1

Human beings are creators. We imagine things that don't exist yet, and then bring them into the material world. 

We can do that because we were created by, and are like, the Creator himself:

"The Bible describes a God who creates order out of chaos, and sets creatures in it who are capable of understanding and appreciating its harmonies and beauties. When we work with our head and hands to create beautiful and useful things, we are fulfilling our calling as people made in the image of God."  Ruth Bancewicz

(cont'd tomorrow)

Moonscapes

"The moon remembers everything in the last four-and-a-half billion years," says Noah Petro, Project Scientist for NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). Without wind, water, or molten rock to erase geologic history, everything that hits the moon leaves a mark.

Noah explains the significance of some of the craters in this 3-minute video.

As a scientist, he appreciates the data - but he appreciates the beauty of the images as well.

For a beautiful combination, this video combines moonscapes with the famous "Clair de Lune" (English translation, "Moonlight") by French composer Claude Debussy.

Create . . art

 "It began as part of a mountain in Italy.  Then one day a workman came along and began chiseling out a block of marble.  Using his discerning eye and powerful hands and arms, he worked for weeks.  When the block was finally hewn from the mountain, another man with a horse-drawn wagon hauled it to Florence.  A third fellow bought the stone and had it put on a pedestal in his studio.  That man was Michelangelo.  As he went about his other work, the artist would often pause to gaze at the immense, flawed block.  Perhaps months later, Michelangelo saw what lay hidden in the stone.  Finally, he picked up his hammer and chisel and began to reveal it.  Today we call what was once a buried chunk of marble a priceless masterpiece -The David."   Discipling Nations

That buried chunk of stone was worthless to people.  Then three individuals (in this story) applied their labor and intelligence and genius to the stone, and the original material (it was always in there) now had huge value, huge worth.  That value, that wealth of beauty, was created by people.

(cont'd tomorrow)

The Blessing

 Churches and Christian groups in the United Kingdom got a big project together last May, and it went viral. Singers and musicians from their homes performed "The Blessing" and sang it for their country. Enjoy.

from Premier Christian News

God in a park

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Vice President of New York State Charities Association, Frederick Law Olmsted, designed New York's Central Park with a goal in mind. It was to be:

 “a specimen of God’s handiwork” that would heal “the hundreds of thousands of tired workers” of their “vital exhaustion,” “nervous irritation” and “constitutional depressions.” 

"Olmsted’s and [his assistant] Calvert Vaux’s design of Central Park artfully and systematically provided vistas and paths that would make one feel like the special object of a loving God through a beautiful city. Olmsted said every path, rock, flower and tree had a functional purpose in the creation of a healing scene."

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