Relevance

The Koyaanisqatsi film is relevant to the project as it could be argued to be a documentary of humans and nature on a wider scale.

Observations

The best example I can find so far of such powerful and perfect unification between audio and visual is Koyaanisqatsi the first of a trilogy directed by Godfrey Roggio with the music by Phillip Glass in 1982. The tribal chant at the beginning emphasises the title and the meaning which you later discover means crazy life, life in turmoil, a state of life that calls for another way of life. And when the journey finally does conclude thats exactly how you feel. The intense relationship between the two mediums and the simple techniques of repetitive, layered melodies, makes you feel like a stone at the top of a hill rolling and picking up speed and momentum, to a conclusion which is going to hit you very hard. This pace highlights the ridiclousness nature of the chaotic way of life we choose to live juxtaposed against the previous  tranquil scenes of nature. I began watching the film laughing at the mass numbers of population occupying one space and the way in which everyone walks in line, knows their path and which route to take with such an air of certainty it makes you tired. It makes perfect sense in some ways yet watching it sped up forces you to address the environment we live in.  In one time-lapse of a street boulevard which is hideously crowded, an LED light advertisement screams "welcome to broadway baby", the fact that you would want to make the landscape anymore dense seems ludicrous and this teamed with what it is actually saying is twisted irony.

Philip Glass - Koyaanisqatsi