The latest studio multimedia starts off with new (and old) additions to the Studio Shangri-La conceptual online photography catalogs – here of course, and also TurningArt and Saatchi Art. The above original with graphic design is “Khepri’s Sunflower,” named for the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph of the beetle, representing bringing something into being or to create. In photos of artifacts, I’ve seen Khepri in place of someone’s head. For this reason of placement on the brain, and also the shape of the beetle resembling magnetic field flow lines, I wonder if Khepri was also an ancient expression of electromagnetism.
See also the ‘moments in nature’ below, including a tribute to the honeybee. Certainly reverence for nature is a theme for me, an appreciation for evolutionary biology, that modern science does not yet fully comprehend the interconnected we of the grand design. Recently I joined the comment thread on a Gates Foundation post about malaria. I speculated that the single celled organism that causes it may have co-evolved alongside primates to remove excess heme from the bloodstream. Anyway, I do not kill insects – not even mosquitos. I was inspired when I heard this from the Dalai Lama years ago.
The next bit of news is definitely fun. This year OCTAVES Music has made a few entries to the 2025 Grammy Awards happening in February, in the Classical Music, Alternative and Songs For Social Change categories. It means a lot to be considered. If any recording academy members happen to see this, I hope you will consider OCTAVES for nomination, and appreciate the variety and artistry of what the label has to offer thus far, with much more to offer in the future. For any listeners, I hope you enjoy. As Andy Warhol put it basically, you just keep making art and let other people decide whether they like it or not. While they’re deciding — keep making art!
For label and other inquiries, please e-mail: sarah.ikerd@studio-shangri-la
Another rewarding project lately has been the science fiction series on Kindle Vella, a wonderful platform for creative expression. Since the last studio update, I’ve added a couple of chapters, or episodes. The story continues to thread cosmology with humor, and fantastical astronomy and history with the real.
Lastly, my citizen science project and first envirotech design research project is progressing with methodical testing, with the vision of realizing a functioning photocatalytic waste/ plastic to water process and portable waste receptacle – that is also a water purifier. I hope that one day soon it will be a great solution for further environmental cleanup. Optical technologies are indeed rapidly progressing.
For the latest experiment, the UV reactor has become an electroplated A frame or triangular prism with a mirror as the base and aluminum on the ends. Inside, I have added green LEDs. For this iteration, I will test different placements and modes of the LEDS, and also test without them given the addition of the mirror. The test subject for photodegradation / transmutation is still a polypropylene cup!