(Roughly) Daily

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Thwp. Thwp. Thwack. The sound of stone striking wood. Rustling leaves. A loud crack as a tree falls. A dry whirring of insects. Further off, a monkey shrieks. Shhpt. Shhpt. Water purls over stones in a brook; the heavy pitter-patter of rain taps the forest floor.

These are the sounds of primitive technology. Primitive Technology: an oxymoron, perhaps a logical impossibility, a collision of two buzzwords, and one of the most arresting (and unexpectedly popular) channels on YouTube.

Primitive Technology was created two years ago by a man in Queensland, Australia, who builds huts, weapons, and tools using only naturally occurring materials. In all of his five- to ten-minute videos, the man wears only navy blue shorts, rarely looks at the camera, and never speaks…

An appreciation of Primitive Technology, a You Tube series the episodes in which have garnered as many as 46 million views each: “A Walden for the YouTube Age.”

[TotH to @kevin2kelly, who suggested that I check it out]

* Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

###

As we appreciate apocatastasis, we might recall that it was on this date in 1909 that The Futurist Manifesto (download it here) was first published (in the French periodical Le Figaro).  The creation of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti– who authored the manifesto, used his private fortune to publish it, then recruited artists to his banner– Futurism paved the way for Dada and Surrealism… and suggested some pretty evocative imagery to the likes of Fritz Lang…

a still from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis

source