World Premiere of Seismic: Music and Animation Inspired by The Telling Image

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine receiving the Wildcatter Award for Creativity. Never did I imagine my book, The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times, to be the inspiration for an original musical score with animation. Yet that is what ROCO, River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, has done. The commissioned music and animation had its world premiere at Miller Outdoor Theater in Houston, Texas, on Friday, Sept. 29th, 2023. All of these events fill me with wild gratitude.

I’m excited to share the music and animation for the event from ROCO: Tectonal by Anthony DiLorenzo (composer) & Cynthia Wong (animation).

The Shape of Thinking Through Time

“Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside the Earth is available…a
new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.”

— Fred Hoyle, British astronomer, 1948

Kick up your perspective. Stretch your imagination. The James Webb Space Telescope is delivering startling new images of the universe from as close to the origin of creation as humans have ever peeked. In some images, what looks like a black canvas with single stars is actually dark space where each point of light is a galaxy. It boggles our sense of time and space. Now add the realization that information from the James Webb Space Telescope is delivered in infrared light and humans cannot see infrared. NASA must translate the data into colors and forms that humans can perceive. So even as we are humbled by the enormity of the universe, add another dose of humility, knowing that what we do see is only what our limited visual spectrum allows

I’ll be speaking on this and more—in April at the Renesan Institute in Santa Fe! Read below for more details on the event, which will be hybrid in-person and via Zoom.

Renesan Institute for Lifelong Learning: The Shape of Thinking Through Time

DATE: April 10, 2023, 1:00pm - 3:00pm
LOCATION: Online via Zoom and In-Person: 1200 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe, NM 87505, Renesan Institute
COST: $20
Shape itself can help us read the past and glimpse the future. A web shape summarizes migratory humans’ worldview, imitated in round thatched huts, kivas, and Stonehenge. A ladder mindset arose with urban humans, reflected in structures from pyramids to skyscrapers. Today networks master our lives. What’s next? From web to ladder, network to next, we shape our world; then it shapes us.

REGISTER NOW

A full High Five to celebrate!

A full High Five to celebrate!  Five book award competitions have chosen my book The Telling Image Shapes of Changing Times. It won Grand Prize Best Nonfiction 2019 from Next Gen Indie Book Awards, where it was recognized with a ceremony in Washington, D.C. during the American Library Association Convention. It was selected for the  Nautilus Book Award, which honors better books for a better world. The National Indie Excellence Award and the Independent Press Award also chose it as their winner. News of my fifth book award was just received from NYC Big Book Award, which selects for great ideas from around the globe. The Telling Image took home awards in three categories: Photography, Coffee Table Book, and Book Interior Design Nonfiction.

It is gratifying that ideas that sleep in my mind awaken in books that reach other minds. It is thrilling when my book is honored for its writing, photographs, design, cover, and quality. Writers write in isolation, not knowing if the words will land with welcome by readers. When awards are received, it lets the writer know that an invisible full circle has occurred - that an unknown reader and an unknown judge have sent their nod that an idea transferred from my mind to theirs. It is a sacred circle. 

Exploring Creative Thinking in an Uncertain World

I was interviewed by the Angles of Lattitude Podcast on my book, The Telling Image, and what it’s like to be a creative thinker in a time of uncertainty.

When you’re learning something new, using a circular or global way of learning to connect the dots might make more sense to utilize than a linear model. What is the shape of your thinking?

Learn more about The Angles of Lattitude Podcast here

One Source of Wisdom is a Wider Lens

I was also interviewed by Rob Kall of the Bottom-up show on how the future is embedded in the present… to deeply see the present we need to embrace paradox, hold opposites and accept complexities with infinite causes and consequences.

New Podcast Interviews and Talks

In July, I was interviewed by A Pretty Normal Podcast, a show that re-imagines what society considers normal. It was interesting to dive into my past as a documentary filmmaker and how I came to write my book, The Telling Image.

I also gave a talk to the Institute for Spirituality and Health in Houston, Texas. Some fantastic conversation came from the questions asked in the Q&A that I’m still thinking about today. You can watch the talk via Youtube.

The Telling Image is a bestseller on Amazon and you can grab your copy here. We can read the past and glimpse the future by watching when shapes shift. See what you think.

You Are My Other Self: Recent Articles and Mentions

The virus may be invisible, but the rush of human activity reducing to a hush is visible on seismic readings. The Earth itself knows we are ceasing from disturbing her. Coronavirus lockdowns have changed the way Earth moves.

Breakdown or Breakthrough: Changing the Covid Crisis to Opportunity (International Coronavirus Journal)

Each day the Coronavirus unfurls in new dimensions, statistics, challenges. In April I wrote a feature and in May it was published in an International Coronavirus Journal. The exponential nature of this virus' spread and its consequences continually surprise. May strength and imagination be with everyone dealing with its developing consequences.

Through this pandemic, we relearn we are part of nature. Viruses are part of us, between us, in us, connecting us. Viruses are highly adaptive. They mutate easily. Maybe they are teaching us how to evolve.

My article was shared by Reverend Barkley S. Thompson, Christ Church Cathedral Houston, who has his own thoughts to share about the Covid Crisis:

Success Life Masters Series with Eric Reid

I recently interviewed with Eric Reid about my book, The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times. In these times, we need a bigger perspective. One that lets us read the past and glimpse the future by watching when shapes shift.

Check out the video interview here:

The Fifth Dimension Podcast with Evan McDermod

How can human perception and historical progress be tracked through the years? And based on what we know about the past, can we use it to see the direction we are heading in the future. When looking at different eras of human history, we can see our perception of reality encompassed through our methods of organization. By looking at our past, we can begin to enhance our own perspective to see the interconnectedness that does exist between all humans, and in turn create a society fueled by that widened lens.

The Telling Image Wins Independent Press Award

A happy surprise.

My book, The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times, just won its fourth book award from Independent Press Awards, an international competition.

This comes on top of being named Grand Prize Winner for Best Nonfiction 2019 from Next Gen Indie Book Awards, a Gold from Nautilus Book Awards, and an Indie Excellence Award. This book was 25 years in the making, so the satisfaction that it was understood and appreciated is immense. Enjoy shape-seeking.

A Third Win for The Telling Image

The National Indie Excellence Awards emphasize a synergy of form and content in judging their award winners. My book, The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times delivers its message through its 200 images, as much as its text delivers its ideas - a synergy of form and content. So I was thrilled to be selected for its Excellence Award for both Arts and Entertainment as well as Cover Design.

As a former documentary filmmaker for NBC News, I had to find a telling image that conveyed the essence of the information that I scripted. In covering foreign cultures or national issues, I realized how important shape is in downloading the world into order and meaning. Shape itself can be a symbol that tells us the thinking, the mental map, of the culture that built a circular settlement, a pyramid, a town square, a roundabout or a downtown grid. These very shapes reflect whether a society is based on equality or hierarchy, on qualities or quantities, on flow or fixed places.

National awards for Indie books are especially welcomed as independent publishing, from university presses to hybrid publishing, are rising dramatically while traditional publishers are merging and shrinking. The more ideas that are shared, the stronger the society. Thanks to awards such as this, merit can still be recognized even within a system where all can enter. I am grateful to the National Indie Excellence Award judges for the difference their recognition makes for independent writers and excited to be recognized for excellence.

A Second Gold for The Telling Image: Next Generation Indie Book Award

The Telling Image Wins Gold

The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times was awarded a Next Generation Indie Book Award in the category of Coffee Table Book/Photography!

Another happy surprise. My book, The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times won another Gold book award. Next Generation Indie Book Awards will celebrate its winners in a Washington, DC ceremony in June. This Gold adds to the Gold from Nautilus Book Awards. It is gratifying that the book’s ideas and images on our search for pattern and meaning have found their way into the minds of readers.

Images are the dominant language of our time. Visual processing takes up 30% of the brain’s function. It is the first and foremost way we take in the world. The 200 images in this book reveal how humans throughout time, from migratory to modern living, have made sense of the world through shape. So it is particularly fitting that this Gold award is for the category of Coffee Table Book/Photography. The eyes are our portal and pathway. Yet, the way we see and understand the world shifts at pivot points in history.

Pattern recognition is a buzz word of our data processing age. Yet pattern recognition is what humans have always done, ordering the world through shape, from stone circles, to pyramids, to helices and networks.

May images of the circle dances in tribal societies, the skyscrapers of modern cities, the helix of DNA and the links and nodes of networks seep into your eyes and show you how we shape our world, then how that shape, shapes us.

The Telling Image is a Nautilus Book Awards Gold Winner

The Telling Image is a winner of the Nautilus Book Awards!

The idea for a book often aligns with a point in time, a story or observation that inspired it. Yet the process of writing a book is more porous than simply a beginning and an end. The Telling Image brewed in me for decades before its publication. After the physical book was in stores and at conferences and in the hands of readers, it still was not in its final stage. The book is simply the suitcase of the multiple ideas that are enclosed. And those ideas embed uniquely in each reader. So a book begins, not ends, at publication. It is never ‘finished’, as its ideas have thousands of carriers in those who read the book.

I was deeply gratified that my book was recognized by the Nautilus Book Awards with a Gold Award for The Creative Process. This felt particularly wonderful to me, as it was a long and meandering thought process that led it from field to field until I found an encompassing way to speak of many things – how we see, how we think, organize, find pattern and meaning – and how the very answers to these questions shift at major transition points in history.

The Nautilus Awards recognize books in many genres that nurture positive change. It aims for Better Books for a Better world. And it combs the world to find the ideas bubbling in all categories, from 36 states and a dozen other nations. We need this kind of harvester in our world. One that looks for the best expression of our highest aims.

Writing is a solitary process. It often feels like a spider throwing out its silk thread without knowing whether it will reach and attach to any destination. It is an act of faith. So it is with great gratitude to Nautilus Book Awards that I can smile knowing that the thread of ideas I flung out to the world was so graciously received.

Space Exploration or Space Race?

The air belongs to everyone; the best things in life are free.

Maybe not. Air space, air quality, and aerial views are subject to ownership, pollution, and obstruction today.

When space exploration began, we felt a thrill seeing Earth as a whole sphere. Consciously and unconsciously, this created the sense that humans are bound together on this planet in common consequences. But our own human nature doesn’t fully understand our interconnectedness. Space exploration became the space race.

When the first satellites went up, bringing us images of weather patterns and ocean currents that played supra roles in the drama of nations, we received a larger context. I was hopeful that these images, beyond rhetoric and beyond political philosophies, could create a unifying awareness of our fragility and need for cooperation.

My wish was that a space perspective would engender a set of laws between nations creating a common purpose girded by space law. Like admiralty law controls how the oceans are governed— accommodating for navigation, fishing rights, territorial waters—I believed we could evolve to develop more comprehensive, more beneficial principles to oversee space.

It was particularly painful to see my dream die.

First China shot down its own satellite to demonstrate that they could—and to show they might use that power against others as well. The USA and Russia have done the same. And now India joins that pack. In March 2019, India shot down its own satellite.

Last week India shot down a satellite. The U.S. says the debris created threatens the International Space Station pic.twitter.com/JDVhClWjHb

— TicToc by Bloomberg (@tictoc) April 3, 2019

Think of the debris from each of these smatterings. The pieces of the blasted satellites will float on and on. There are no vacuum cleaners in space. Obstacles are dancing around the same orbit in which the space station and working satellites fly.

What strikes me about this bullet to my dream is that blowing up a satellite is not conquering territory in the classic sense. It is destroying another country’s ability to communicate. The life or death of information and communication are now more vital than citizens’ life and death.

When I think about military history, information lines were always a critical target, from capturing runners to blowing up bridges to encryption messages. So maybe it is only the technology that has changed, not the way we proceed. Maybe the costumes of our offenses and defenses have changed, but not the narrative of the play we call history. Still, it hit me like a thud, that the wild blue yonder does not belong to everyone.

It belongs to the latest technology.

Becoming a Shape-Seeker

Dear Friends,

As a documentary filmmaker, I traveled the globe seeking the answer to one question: How do humans make sense of the world? From Abu Dhabi to Cuba to Liberia, I had to find a telling image that summed up a story. I found a key hiding in plain sight. It was shape itself.

I’m excited to share my new book with you, The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times. May it help you see the world with new eyes.

I hope you’ll join me in becoming a shape-seeker.

Lois Farfel Stark

---

December Lights

December is a time when we celebrate light piercing through the darkness. In the winter we experience more lightless hours. And December is the time when the counting of days ends and begins, like the moment a tide reverses, rolling back to sea. 

Christmas celebrates Jesus’ birth, announced by the brightest star in the sky. The star oriented the wise men. It literally oriented them to the manger and symbolically orients the world to a new way of seeing—a new guiding light. We learn to recognize that we are connected to and have an impact on each other in every small gesture.

Chanukah is also a festival of lights. The light in this story is the miracle of a lamp with a tiny supply of oil lasting eight nights. Like the lamp, our daily lives leave us feeling as if we’ve exhausted our last reservoir. We learn to expand the resources deep within us and muster strength to see us through personal darkness despite improbable odds.

Animals instinctually know how to prepare for winter. Bears find caves to hibernate. Chipmunks burrow in holes underground. Even termites close off air tubes in their complex sand structures. What do we do? Besides upping the thermostat and wrapping our necks with woolen scarves, we also soak in light to store in our inner selves. We seek out the guiding star to navigate our lives, or we reach deeply within.

Light has other strange properties. Our eyes perceive a stream of light but when we reach out, we cannot touch it. We see light only when it touches other things like reflections on the moon or specks of dust in the air seen from the light of a movie projector in a dark room. We live in a time of many kinds of light. Campfires, torches, whale oil and kerosene lamps from days of old are now new kinds of light—laser, electrical, nuclear, incandescent or fluorescent, sulfur lamps or neon lights. 

What takes us out of darkness physically? What illuminates spiritually? Light is the beam that reveals what it lands on. It fills the air but we see its effects, what it lands on becomes aware to our eyes or our technology sensors. Like enlightenment, like love, like peace, we sense it when it lands on us. 

This is the season to notice where the light lands. This is the season to be a source of light.
 

Goodreads Giveaway of The Telling Image

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Telling Image

by Lois Farfel Stark

Giveaway ends December 27, 2017.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Are you on Goodreads? I'm excited to announce that I'll be giving away 25 advance copies of The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times via Goodreads! To enter, click the above link. 

Announcing The Telling Image

The Telling Image

Shapes of Changing Times

by Lois Farfel Stark

Now Available for Pre-Order! 

I am very pleased to share with you the cover for my new book, The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times. This book has been ten years in the making. As many of my friends can attest, these ideas have been swirling with me since my years as a documentary filmmaker for NBC News. During my travels, I was trained to look for the telling image—a picture that gives the essence of the story. In covering countries in times of tension and transition, I had to look through other people’s eyes to learn how they saw the world. I filmed in Abu Dhabi before the United Arab Emirates were unified, in Cuba ten years after their revolution, in Northern Ireland when their religious conflict burst into urban warfare, and in Liberia covering its social split.

While history gives us versions of a story, a telling image has the power to tap a deeper understanding. I practiced seeing with new eyes, open to take in the unfamiliar and to discover clues to another culture’s worldview. Dropping into a foreign country and trying to understand it enough to present its various factions, historic background, and current controversy was daunting and humbling. I knew I needed to lasso the topics at play, and I knew I would never know everything. One approach I took was to step back and look at the situation with the largest lens, seeing all sides, noticing the geography that influenced the culture’s way of living, and learning the historic background. I had to find an image that could relay the issues and emotions, the culture and landscape, in a way that could convey more than words can explain.

Searching for the telling image of a story, I found one, hiding in plain sight. It was shape itself. Once I looked for shape, I saw it everywhere—in shelters, social systems, and sacred sites. From indigenous cultures to modern societies, our answers to survival, social bonding, and sacred symbols differ vastly. Yet the blueprint for each culture became clear when I looked for shape.

Now you can join in my journey. I extend my thanks to my friends, colleagues, and supporters who have been there with me along the way. Without you, this book wouldn't be possible.

If you'd like to receive more updates about my book, click here to sign up for my book newsletter and get a free excerpt of the book. Or you can pre-order your copy on Amazon. 

Advance Praise for The Telling Image

Group sales and publicity information

Press Release

Technology's New Lens

Technology's New Lens

We often don’t realize how much technology shapes our daily lives. A few decades ago, a cell phone was something out of Star Trek. But now new technologies seem less and less like science fiction and more like essential parts of our world. What we don’t realize is how much this can affect our perception.

For example, the new Nokia 8 allows you to take a picture of what is in front of you as it also records you and what is behind you. This is called a “Bothie” now adding to selfies, allowing people to take pictures forward and backwards simultaneously. The concept is simple—two lenses. But it blows open our habit of perception. Will we start to perceive like the proverbial teacher with eyes in the back of her head?

3-D printing is another way of seeing in new ways. It incorporates a full-sphere visual of the object being replicated. The blueprint of a hand tool can be sent to the International Space Station, where a 3-D printer creates the tool for astronauts to use. This cuts down on payloads launched and allows for devices to be created as they are needed. But it wouldn’t be possible without the technology that allows us to see in multiple dimensions. Inside the space station, astronauts float and summersault to move about. They tether themselves to a spot with a foot latch to anchor themselves to a place on the cylinder-shaped interior walls. Without gravity, our way of seeing the world changes. When the first crew left earth they were astounded by the sight of our Earth from outer space, it allowed them to see our world in new ways.

Even healthcare is rearranging. Robotic assists during medical surgery become a 360-degree eye that can image the space around and under the bones, nerves, tissues, muscles, and organs being operated on.

These new ways of recording, seeing, moving, working upend our basic assumptions. We can feel unmoored, as dizzyingly adrift as an astronaut floating in space. The ability to see all around us at once will be an acquired perception, much like a blind person suddenly given sight needs to learn to distinguish the depth of fields, the outline of forms. Add virtual reality to these multiple lenses, and the job of making sense out of what is real or imagined, what is forward or back, or what is in around the corner, requires a major adjustment in our senses and how we make sense of the world. The question is: What will you do with this new sight?

To understand the genius of Elon Musk, Thomas Edison, and Mark Zuckerberg, just look at their desks

Desks have long been the home of the mind: an intimate space where you figure out what you think. Desk spaces have changed through the years to accommodate different styles and types of work, and the recent trend toward co-working also represents a change in the nature of the workplace. You can now rent workspaces around the world with funky furniture, pool tables, rock-climbing walls, and free wine. In London, people even rent chairs at their dining-room table by the hour—an attractive alternative to those living in small apartments who are tired of working in coffeehouses.

Read more from my article on Quartz.com...