Friday, August 20, 2021

THE PITCH
On the Scene at Bon Iver’s Oil Pipeline Protest Show

The band headlined yesterday’s Water Is Life festival, which was held in opposition to Minnesota’s controversial Enbridge Line 3 project.

By Andrea Swensson

August 19, 2021

Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon onstage at the Water Is Life festival. Photo by Tony Nelson.

With the ragged last chord of “Blood Bank” still echoing off the hills around Duluth, Minnesota, and a cargo ship passing behind him in Lake Superior, Justin Vernon stepped to the mic to speak. “We haven’t been on a real stage since March 7, 2020,” the Bon Iver bandleader said, gazing out at the thousands of music fans, environmental activists, and Indigenous tribal members who had amassed in Duluth’s Bayfront Festival Park for the Water Is Life: Stop Line 3 festival last night. After 10 hours of performances and pleading speeches about the nearly completed Enbridge Line 3 oil pipeline in Northern Minnesota, which experts say would exacerbate climate change, sully sacred Anishinaabe territory, and contaminate the area’s water supply, Vernon used his moment in the spotlight to address the receptive crowd.

“Being a music fan can just become, well, ‘I like this band and I like that band,’” he said. “But for me, this whole thing started out as an expression of being alive. And you know the one thing we need to be alive? Water. And that’s why we’re here.”

“Blood Bank” began with a poignant collaboration with the pow-wow singers and drummers Joe Rainey Sr. and Dylan Bizhikiins Jennings, who both appeared on Bon Iver’s most recent album, i,i . Over an unflinching drum beat, Rainey and Jennings repeated the lines, “They don’t want us to live here/But we’re still here,” to a roar of applause. Their voices were interlaced with the mournful moans of Vernon’s electric guitar and then completely enveloped by a full-tilt rendition of “Blood Bank,” with founding Bon Iver member Sean Carey on drums and Michael Lewis on bass, that sent the audience leaping into the air (and the baseball cap flying off Vernon’s head).

The cross-cultural exchange between indie rock bands and Indigenous traditional and folk artists was a defining aspect of the Water Is Life festival. The yearly event is spearheaded by the prominent activist and water protector Winona LaDuke and her Honor the Earth organization. LaDuke has been on the frontlines of the Line 3 protests across Northern Minnesota, and is one of the 700 activists who have been jailed so far in the years-long resistance to the tar sands oil pipeline that is snaking its way through the region’s pristine wetlands and lakes.

As they attested throughout the festival, Line 3 protestors have been met with violence by the local police, including being physically tackled and shot with rubber bullets. LaDuke herself was most recently arrested and detained just three weeks ago, shortly after choosing a date for the festival, and several mayors from across rural Minnesota petitioned Duluth’s mayor to stop the event from even taking place. But the pipeline has now garnered national and international attention, and the bands played on.

When asked about the role music can play in protest, LaDuke simply told me, “Music is about love, and it changes us all.” Before walking away, she smirked and added, “Did you hear about those mayors that tried to stop this? I’m not going to jail this week. But maybe next week.”

The festival featured protestors who have been on the front lines of the Line 3 resistance and have raised more than $60,000 in bail funds for the cause. Photo by Tony Nelson.

The day began out in the festival field, with a with a diverse crowd quietly observing a Midewiwin water ceremony and taking sips from small Dixie cups of blessed water, before LaDuke hopped up on the stage to say, “OK, the rock and roll guys are going to play now.” And play they did: From the searing rock anthems of Navajo songwriter Corey Medina to the protest songs of troubadour Larry Long to the harrowing guitar howls of Low’s Alan Sparhawk, who performed a long electric guitar solo accompanied by drum duo Giniw and Nigigoons.

As a prop plane flew a banner with the menacing message “GO LINE 3” over the lake behind the stage, the Ojibwe songwriter Annie Humphrey wrapped up her set with a somber piano ballad version of Bob Seger’s “Like a Rock,” turning the eternal pick-up truck commercial soundtrack into an ode to the strength of the activists who stood in the crowd before her. “No matter what we do, it’ll never be enough,” Humphrey said onstage. “But you can’t do too little, so do something!”

Other artists kept their commentary brief. During a cathartic performance by St. Paul rock quintet Hippo Campus, guitarist Nathan Stocker simply said “Fuck Line 3!” and was greeted with an enthusiastic call and response from the giddy crowd. The entire front half of the festival field had filled in by the time Hippo Campus finished their set, and the large audience remained rapt for a final set of speeches by a full stage of protestors and tribal leaders, including an 11-year-old member of the White Earth Nation named Silas, who said, “This corporation tried to bury us, but they did not know we were seeds.”

After a short set by the Red Lake Nation rapper Thomas X, Bon Iver took the stage to close the night with an eight-song set, beginning with the For Emma, Forever Ago opening track “Flume” that placed a special emphasis on the line, “I move in water, shore to shore/Nothing’s more.” The pared-down, three-piece version of the band was at their most powerful when joined by the omnipresent Minneapolis guitarist Jeremy Ylvisaker, who added an emotional dimension to a cover of Leon Russell’s “A Song for You” and a transportive, drawn-out version of For Emma’s “Creature Fear.”

Before sending attendees away from the shoreline and back up the city’s steep hills, Vernon closed with a cover of Duluth-born Bob Dylan’s “With God on Our Side” and a final call to action: “This is an important part of the process, lifting people up and coming together. But there’s something that happens tomorrow too, and I hope we all remember that.” A Stop Line 3 march is happening today in downtown Duluth to demand that the Army Corps of Engineers pulls the permits for the Line 3 pipeline, and a subsequent rally is scheduled at the Minnesota State Capitol on August 25.

Backstage after the performance, Vernon was energized. “I’ve been inspired by Winona LaDuke since I was 16 years old,” he said, remembering back to when he saw her at an Honor the Earth concert with the Indigo Girls in the ’90s. “This is the only thing that matters right now

Watch Bon Iver Play Fest Protesting Enbridge Line 3 Pipeline, Their First Show Since Pandemic

KghVWVKCds
— kyle (@solace) August 19, 2021

Here’s last night’s setlist, according to one Reddit user:
01 “Flume”
02 “666 ʇ”
03 “Blood Bank”
04 “29 #Strafford APTS”
05 “A Song For You” (Leon Russell cover)
06 “00000 Million”
07 “Creature Fear”
08 “With God On Our Side” (Bob Dylan cover)
You can find out more about the effort against Line 3 here.

Water Is Life protest concert draws diverse, dedicated crowd to Duluth waterfront

Native voices mixed with Bon Iver, Hippo Campus and other rock acts at the 10-hour festival.

By Chris Riemenschneider Star Tribune

AUGUST 18, 2021 — 10:52PM

GALLERY

GRID

1/21

ALEX KORMANN, STAR TRIBUNE

Gallery: Bon Iver member Justin Vernon performed in the Water is Life Festival at Bayfront Festival Park in Duluth on Wednesday.

Water Is Life protest concert draws diverse, dedicated crowd to Duluth waterfront - StarTribune.com

DULUTH – He wasn't yet a fan of Bon Iver or Hippo Campus, but George Martin loves Bob Seger. So the Vietnam and Korean War veteran was touched to have Seger's song "Like a Rock" dedicated to him from Bayfront Festival Park on Wednesday afternoon.

"This is a special day," said Martin, 85, of Wisconsin's Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, after Minneapolis singer Annie Fitzgerald gave him and his service a shout-out.

Martin's wife, Sydney, added, "This makes our heart feel powerful, seeing so many people young and old come out to an event like this."

The event was the Water Is Life Festival at Duluth's waterfront amphitheater, which — depending on your view — was either a rock concert with a purpose or a protest with a great soundtrack.

The 10-hour, 14-act music marathon carried a strong undercurrent of American Indian culture and brought together a lot of different groups of people based around a divisive issue: the Line 3 pipeline, which Canadian oil company Enbridge is currently building across northern Minnesota near the Mississippi River and other waterways.

Organized by Indigenous environmental activist Winona LaDuke and Minneapolis musician David Huckfelt with production help from First Avenue, the festival came together in less than a month's planning time but surprisingly still ran smoothly — even after 11 other northern Minnesota mayors sent a letter to Duluth Mayor Emily Larson trying to stop the event. They cited a risk of violence and their ongoing support for Line 3 to provide jobs and energy.

In the end, the only thing that seemed dangerous at Water Is Life was Wednesday's baking heat and the wildfire in nearby Superior National Forest, which LaDuke singled out on stage.

"It's not supposed to be like this in Duluth," she said in one of a dozen-plus speeches from Native activists about protecting the environment. The concert doubled as a fundraiser for her long-running nonprofit Honor the Earth.

Many of the 4,000 or so attendees were there mainly to catch the main-stage music, a lineup that included Bon Iver — playing his/their first post-quarantine concert — along with other Upper Midwest mainstays Charlie Parr, Hippo Campus and Lissie, plus bluesy South Carolina singer Adia Victoria.

Still, the music fans on hand also seemed to appreciate the added messaging.

"Especially after the pandemic, I want to find ways to contribute and make this a better world," said University of Minnesota Duluth student Emma Bursinger. "This feels like the right way to do it."

Native voices weren't just prominent as speakers but also as musicians throughout the day.

Dorene Day Waubanewquay added spiritual chants to Minneapolis folk musician Larry Long's old-school-folk fight songs. Drum duo Giniw and Nigigoons joined Duluth indie-rock vet Alan Sparhawk of Low fame during an improvised set of electric guitar drone and traditional Indian singing. Hoop dancer Samsoche Sampson and Oregon singer-songwriter Quiltman joined Huckfelt for the earthy soul-searcher "The Book of Life." Red Lake's Thomas X rapped about the struggles and strengths on Indian reservations as he filled in for no-show Mumu Fresh in the slot right before Bon Iver.

A hundred mostly non-Native attendees formed a traditional Indian dance circle during Ojibwe songwriting legend Keith Secola's anthem "NDN Kars."

"Welcome to the resistance," Secola yelled at the dancers, a scene impossible to resist smiling over.

Many of Wednesday's performers purposefully dropped in songs about water. Huckfelt and his all-star band the Unarmed Forces delivered a lush cover of Willie Nelson's "The Maker" ("Oh, deep water / Oh river, rise from your sleep"). Lissie talked about growing up near the big river and pollution in Rock Island, Ill., before her spirited "Oh Mississippi."

Performing as the sun set over the Duluth hillside, Victoria delivered a shimmering set full of poetically haunted, gospel-based songs based on her family's Old South African American heritage: "We have a lot in common," she noted toward her fellow Native performers.

With as many fans singing along as in Bon Iver's set, St. Paul-reared pop-rockers Hippo Campus looked downright giddy playing their first show of 2021, offering extra-buoyant versions of "South" and "Warm Glow."

Bon Iver's eight-song set started out mellow with "Flume" but quickly turned feverish as a pair of Indian drum circle singers, Jeremy and Dylan, set up a smoldering "Blood Bank." Singer Justin Vernon ended with a cover of "With God on Our Side" — "a song by a man born in Duluth [dedicated] to the men of Enbridge," he said.

After 10-plus years of building up Bon Iver's set musically and visually, singer Justin Vernon made a bold step back to a raw, three- and four-piece band that exposed a few cracks (namely his voice in the high-reaching "22 #Stafford Apts") but also added a tenderness (especially in a cover of Leon Russell's "A Song for You" accompanied by Mike Lewis on sax).

Summing up his emotions about being back on stage, Vernon said music "started as an expression of being alive."

"And you know what the number one thing is to keep us alive?" he asked.

"Water" was the answer, but live music like the passionate and often urgent performances at this festival also might have sufficed.

Chris Riemenschneider • 612-673-4658

Chris Riemenschneider has been covering the Twin Cities music scene since 2001, long enough for Prince to shout him out during "Play That Funky Music (White Boy)." The St. Paul native authored the book "First Avenue: Minnesota's Mainroom" and previously worked as a music critic at the Austin American-Statesman in Texas.

chrisr@startribune.com 612-673-4658 ChrisRstrib

MUSIC

Justin Vernon on Duluth anti-Line 3 concert: 'We have to come together to save our environment'

Grammy Award musician from Bon Iver is the headliner for "Water Is Life: Stop Line 3," a festival organized by Honor the Earth as a fundraiser to stop the Enbridge pipeline.

Written By: Christa Lawler | 6:04 pm, Aug. 17, 2021

Bon Iver. Contributed / Graham Tolbert

Justin Vernon wasn't trying to dash other people's dreams of being a pop star during "Water Is Life," a 30-minute conversation with Winona LaDuke and other artists and organizers involved with the "Water Is Life: Stop Line 3" festival, scheduled for Wednesday at Bayfront Festival.

But he didn't get into the music business to get famous — or semi-famous with a lower-case f, as he described himself. Rather, the Grammy Award-winning artist behind Bon Iver said he wanted to move people.

"I've never really stopped thinking that art has the ability to move and change people's hearts," he said. "Conversations are one thing, philosophical debates and town halls are one thing, politics are one thing. But that's why I'm here and that's why I can't stop doing what I do."

He's offered a portion of royalties to organizations combating domestic and sexual violence, gender inequity, and in 2020, he launched a campaign to get Wisconsin voters registered. He's also invested in saving the planet.

"I have this feeling, it's more than a belief, it's a feeling in me, " he said. "We are all so similar and share so much. We have to come together to save our environment, save our earth from total annihilation. That's on its way."

Winona LaDuke

Bon Iver is the headliner for the all-day festival, a fundraiser for Winona LaDuke's Honor the Earth organization, with its mission to raise awareness and money for environmental issues, especially those that affect the Indigenous community — specifically Enbridge's Line 3 project. The annual concert starts at 12:15 p.m. Wednesday at Bayfront Festival Park and the lineup includes Corey Medina, Larry Long & Friends, Annie Humphrey and Band, Charlie Parr, David Huckfelt and Unarmed Forces, Adia Victoria, Hippo Campus, Mumu Fresh, Superior Siren, Alan Sparhawk, Quiltman, Keith Secola and Lissie.

Tickets are $65 at axs.com.

David Huckfelt, formerly of The Pines, described the musicians in the lineup as "living and dying by the spirit of music." He said he has seen online comments from people are surprised that these artists would support an effort to stop Line 3. There's no reason to be surprised, he said, have you listened to their music?

"The support from artists is vast, massive," he said. "This intersection of art, music and activism reminds me of a John Trudell, a huge mentor and leader and groundbreaker," Huckfelt said.

Trudell, the late Minneapolis-based artist and activist, told Huckfelt that some people define insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. But, he recalled Trudell saying, "That's not all of it," Huckfelt said. "He said, 'I think about alchemy. We do the same thing, we show up, we bring our creativity, our ideas and our passion. We do it again and again and again until the conditions are right and then everything changes.'"

LaDuke, who met the Indigo Girls in 1990 during an Earth Day event and launched this concert with them soon after, told the News Tribune in 2019 that there had been about 100 shows since. Artists, she said, are who she connects with, and she spent most of her life around great musicians who are "doing the right thing."

"I want to be with the team that has the vision and the courage and the beauty to change the world," she said. "I don't want to listen to a bunch of guys with dumb ideas trying to make a buck. I want to be with the heart and the spirit."

Last week, a handful of officials along the pipeline route sent a letter to the city of Duluth asking the city to cancel the concert. That request was denied. In previous years, artists like Chastity Brown, Indigo Girls, Bonnie Raitt, Brandi Carlile and The Chicks have played the festival.

BBC’s Olympics Studio Was Fake, Made with a Game Engine

AUG 17, 2021

JARON SCHNEIDER

The recently-concluded 2020 Olympics weren’t different just for athletes and spectators because of the coronavirus pandemic, but also for news outlets that covered the games. For example, the BBC shows how its Tokyo studio was entirely faked, recreated within Epic’s Unreal gaming engine.

Because of the extreme restrictions on travel and attendance at the Olympics in Tokyo, news organizations had limited staff who were able to actually be on the ground at the games. Anchors who were responsible for reporting the news were not allowed to travel to Japan, and some made the best of this situation by building elaborate studios that mimicked what it might be like if they were actually there.

“A lot of people assumed we were actually live from Tokyo but because of the pandemic, the obvious travel restrictions and the uncertainty that came with all that, we’ve done things slightly differently,” said Dan Walker, a BBC Sport anchor.

BBC Sport’s Tokyo Olympics studio never actually left Salford, England, and was instead housed inside a massive green screen room that projected what, to many, looked like a real Tokyo backdrop.

While a close inspection does reveal the studio isn’t the real deal, most casual observers would not necessarily notice. The technology is one that is still growing and expanding, which may mean that photographers may very soon not need to actually travel to some of the most sought-after locations on Earth in order to capture photos there.

Walker and co-anchor Sam Quek explain that the studio was created in real-time using the same engine that powers games like Fortnite. While true, pointing to Fortnite as an example of graphical performance does a bit of a disservice to the Unreal Engine. Fortnite uses a more stylized cartoon design while the Unreal Engine is capable of rendering a lot more realistic scenes.

Early last year, Epic — the studio that develops Fortnite and the Unreal Engine — showed the power of its gaming engine to render light and environments in a way that blurs the line between computer graphics and reality. In February, Epic showed how its computer-generated digital humans can look nearly indistinguishable from real people.

The capabilities of masking and green screening a studio are shown off by the BBC above, but the actual technology that is at the bleeding edge of gaming development is capable of creating an even more realistic scene than the one the British sports network used. The only real limitation to that are computers and budget: it would take a massive amount of computing power to render scenes as realistic as the Unreal Engine is capable of, but it is certainly not impossible. As computers become cheaper and more powerful, the ability to further blur the lines between the digital world and the real one will only rise.

When it comes to photography and content creation and the technology is there to create completely real-looking environments, will photographers use it? It is entirely possible for “outdoor” portrait sessions to take place in a studio where the photographer and subject can journey to any number of places on Earth with a few clicks of the mouse. Whether this is desirable or a good thing is entirely up for debate, however.

Racial Justice Through the Lens of Science, Poetry, and Photography
AUG 19, 2021
JOSHUA SARIÑANA

Racial bias is well documented in photography—consider, for example, photographers’ inability to capture and expose darker skin tones with film. Within the emulsion of film, the chemicals that recapitulate light, is inherent social bias. There’s a distinct prejudice within the algorithms of our digital imaging technologies.

Mainstream media are bereft of, or misrepresent, people of color. In my own experiences, I am often the only Brown person, or person of color, in the room when attending exhibition openings.

Last year’s protests in response to the murder of George Floyd and the rampant anti-Asian hate crimes, along with my own struggles, motived something within me to be proactive.

Daniel Burje Chonde, MD, Ph.D., resident in radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital, executive director of the Peoples’ heART

From “Daniel Chonde, Scientist, Beaver” by Danielle Legros Georges

Sheena Vasquez, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Biology at MIT

From “X-Ray” by Danielle Legros Georges

Nandita Menon, MS, technical associate at MIT

From “Under the Eucalyptus Tree” by Charles Coe

Kathleen Esfahany, computational neuroscience and artificial intelligence researcher at MIT

From “The Shades of Us” by Suparnamaaya Prasad

Christian Loyo, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Biology at MIT

From “Looking” by Luisa Fernanda Apolaya Torres

Jason Samaroo, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Biology at Boston University

Poem by Sophie Laurence

You can see the fully gallery here and read the poetry here.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.

About the author: Joshua Sariñana, PhD, is a neuroscientist, photographer, and director of The Poetry of Science. You can read his previous PetaPixel articles here and view his photography on his website.

Antarctica's 'Doomsday Glacier' is fighting an invisible battle against the inner Earth, new study finds

By Brandon Specktor

Underground heat is cooking the Thwaites Glacier from below, and could push it closer to collapse.

Antarctica's Twaites Glacier is facing an assault of heat from the sky, the sea and deep underground. (Image credit: NASA)

West Antarctica is one of the fastest-warming regions on Earth. For evidence, you need look no further than Thwaites Glacier — also known as the "Doomsday Glacier."

Since the 1980s, Thwaites has lost an estimated 595 billion tons (540 billion metric tons) of ice, single-handedly contributing 4% to the annual global sea-level rise during that time, Live Science previously reported. The glacier's rate of ice loss has accelerated substantially in the past three decades, partially due to hidden rivers of comparatively warm seawater slicing across the glacier's underbelly, as well as unmitigated climate change warming the air and the ocean.

Now, new research suggests that the warming ocean and atmosphere aren't the only factors pushing Thwaites to the brink; the heat of the Earth itself may also be giving West Antarctica's glaciers a disproportionately nasty kick.

In a study published Aug. 18 in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, researchers analyzed geomagnetic field data from West Antarctica to create new maps of geothermal heat flow in the region — essentially, maps showing how much heat from Earth's interior is rising up to warm the South Pole.

The researchers found that the crust beneath West Antarctica is considerably thinner than in East Antarctica — roughly 10 to 15 miles (17 to 25 kilometers) thick in the West compared with about 25 miles (40 km) thick in the East — exposing Thwaites Glacier to considerably more geothermal heat than glaciers on the other side of the continent.

"Our measurements show that where the Earth's crust is only 17 to 25 kilometers thick, geothermal heat flow of up to 150 milliwatts per square meter can occur beneath Thwaites Glacier," lead study author Ricarda Dziadek, a geophysicist at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Germany, said in a statement.

Because West Antarctica sits in an oceanic trench, the crust beneath the seabed is much thinner than the crust below East Antarctica. Scientists have long suspected that this comparatively thin crust must be absorbing more heat from the planet's upper mantle (which experiences average temperatures of 392 degrees Fahrenheit, or 200 degrees Celsius), impacting the formation and evolution of glaciers there over millions of years.

In the new study, the researchers quantified that difference in heat flow for the first time. Using a variety of magnetic field datasets, the team calculated the distance between the crust and the mantle at various spots throughout Antarctica, as well as the relative heat flow in those areas.

It's hard to tell exactly how warm the glacier is where the ice meets the seabed, as different types of rock conduct heat differently — however, the researchers said, it's clear that this extra supply of heat in the West can only mean bad news for Thwaites.

"Large amounts of geothermal heat can, for example, lead to the bottom of the glacier bed no longer freezing completely or to a constant film of water forming on its surface," study co-author Karsten Gohl, also a geologist at AWI, said in the statement. Either of these conditions could cause the glacier's ice to slide more easily over the ground, causing the glacier's ice loss to "accelerate considerably," Gohl added.

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A scenario like that could put the Doomsday Glacier's name to the test; if Thwaites Glacier were to entirely collapse into the ocean, global sea levels would rise by about 25 inches (65 centimeters), devastating coastline communities around the world, Live Science previously reported. What's more, without the glacier plugging the edge of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet like a cork in a bottle of wine, ice loss could accelerate dramatically in the entire region, leading to unprecedented levels of sea level rise.

Researchers will soon have a chance to further hone their measurements of the heat flow below Antarctica. A major international research project is currently underway at the South Pole, including missions to drill ice cores that stretch down to the bed of Thwaites Glacier. Heat flow measurements from these core samples could give scientists a better idea of how much time is left on the Doomsday Glacier's ticking clock.

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Friday, August 20, 2021

Water Is Life protest concert draws diverse, dedicated crowd to Duluth waterfront

Justin Vernon on Duluth anti-Line 3 concert: 'We have to come together to save our environment'

BBC’s Olympics Studio Was Fake, Made with a Game Engine

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