Roger Ferragallo, artist, teacher, philosopher, environmentalist, is our Guest Author this month.
Ferragallo received his graduate and undergraduate degrees from the School of the Art Institute
of Chicago. He is an innovator and co-founder of numerous art and communications societies,
including the League for Innovation, where he was named a League Fellow, and the Society for
Film and Television for Children. His full bio can be found at
ferragallo. Ferragallo has sent me his observations on "No More War", which I share with
you this month.
Dear Corinne,
"No More War" is a powerful message for you to put out there because warfare today is impossible
to live with. The planet grows smaller by the hour. I dare say we are in a state of critical
mass over national boundaries, and they should not exist on a finite planet with no where to
turn but spin us round with our backs and eyes to the sun. After all, we have journeyed four
billion plus years to now. What "now" you say, with camera and iPad in hand, with straight-forward
imagery as you feel it course through your veins? Very brave indeed and so deeply felt that
they make their way onto aluminum panels that apparently reflect back on you some mirror of a
world that teeters between chaos and structured hope. If "people" look back at you through
the forms and imagery that you conjure then it's a phenomenon that speaks to you - to danger -
to the crisis that mounts.
It was no accident that recently the atomic clock was set one minute closer on January 11th
2012 as follows: "The Doomsday Clock moved one minute closer to midnight after scientists
agreed that a global cataclysm was more likely today. The clock, which last moved in January
2010 is a universally recognized indicator of the world's vulnerability to catastrophe
from nuclear weapons, climate change, and emerging technologies. The clock now shows five
minutes to midnight, said the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in Washington."
So it is that we "sensitives" have no alternative but to feel this in the "now" we face. We have little
time to settle our scores with planet earth because if we fail she settles her score with us!
Linear time is no more because we live in an exponential space-time reality with everything around us
moving ever more rapidly with blinding velocity. With "faster" there is also the hope that the web, the
internet, the cloud will awaken in us the inner necessity to make this planet whole: yes, "No More War"
indeed!
We are all in this together, and must come forward with symbiosis our mantra - with creative voices, music
images, words, video, sculpture, dance, architecture - a united earth, not one divided by 99% vs. the 1%,
or oligarchy vs. democracy, or right wing vs. left wing, the military industrial complex and oil or worse.
We must use the medium brought on by television, computers, satellites, iPad and phones in hand which have
created an empowering global web, instantaneous global communication and above all verifiable falsifiable
science that keeps us open and honest with each other.
Futurists among us paint a dazzling, creative, technological and scientific century awaiting us if only we
challenge old political systems, mythologies, and national boundaries! If there be boundaries let them be
city-states that act symbiotically together for the good of all. We began a century ago with the League of
Nations now having morphed into the United Nations - a huge challenge.
I greatly admire what you are grasping with your art, and may it thrive!
Thanks, Corinne, for caring.
c. Corinne Whitaker 2012
Viewers can see Ferragallo's "Cosmic Tree of
Life" in stunning detail at Gigapan. Additionally, a
YouTube brief video explains his philosophy in more depth.