Title: April 7th - 15:43 Medium: Super-8 film Aspect Ratio: 4:3 Resolution: 2880 x 2160 File Type: H.264 Codec / MP4. Comments: The ending is also the beginning. Where can a year take you to? How much can you change, even in a day. Reciting the lessons that I learned and stories that were told. People across the Earth are all the same. We are all human. And us humans want the same things, eat the same things, sleep the same way, we work, we play, we become. We are like ants and the bees in community, so why don't we act like a team? We live our lives, seperate from the hive. Did we evolve to be this way, how did we learn to individualize? What would happen if we all cooperate as a species and stopped wasting resources on wars and conflicts, and pool all our collective might forward to explore new dimensions in space and time as the human race. We can begin setting up new ways to survive and thrive on planets across the blinking suns and swirling moons. Look how far we have come. We started as less than an animal in the wild that grew into something beyond words. How does consciousness let us think? To be aware, that we are even aware right now, is what makes us unique. For every generation we get smarter, better, stronger, that is how the chains are linked through blood and family. DNA ladders waiting to go even higher, some gene mutations others are genuine miracles. Think of how many family members it took for us to get here right now, to read this sentence. We are the miracles, beyond all odds of existence, yet here we are! What are we doing here, and why does art make us feel? Perhaps life is just one big question mark, and the more questions we ask, the more we learn. The more we answer, the more we really don't even know. To take on this year long project, twice took a lot of my heart and soul, body and mind in all the most beautiful and difficult ways. The ways the help us grow when we never give up on those dreams of ours. Yet here we find ourselves in a special museum in the middle of Addis Ababa with the oldest humans on Earth. Her name is Lucy, and she is our great, great,great, great, great... you get it... grandmother. She connects us all, because scientist say she was THE first human. It all started with her, and here we are! Fetiha Was with her son, Liqu, as well as another baby on the way. I thought to myself,. as we walked through the museum exhibit, how many layers of bloodlines exist in this one room. From the elders of our ancient past, we to are the children of the present, and for the future generations to come the unborn ready to embark on this world. When I saw her hold her child beside Lucy. Something inside me started to glow. I saw time unfolding, and the meaningful action of this artwork being made. It was dearly human. Stretching across generations after generations after generations. A portrait of a family through time, in time with the videos I have shot. Somewhere between a still memory and a moving image of the present moment that stretches and flexes past our mind. The feeling of completing an artwork that was the main purpose and focus of life, was the most joyous experiences. All the discipline, all the hard work, we create the rules and live by them like gospel. Who is enforcing the rules? Only yourself really. A scream of joy, a cathartic release of emotions bottled up across 7 continents like the sand vials. It's time to let it all go, so much life was lived, and a only a fragment remains. The beauty of humanity is infinite. So how do we choose what represents what we are? NASA had an idea, through sound. This project too, honors that. Their legacy. To communicate with something outside of ourselves. Perhaps we may have even created it. What comes to meet us first? Extra Terrestrials or Artificial General Intelligence? Both at the same time? I have a dream, as large as the cosmos. To send this project out into the stars. Channeling our distant spacefaring cousins in the deep dark. When I look into the diamond of the night all I can whisper a breath into infinity, because when I look at those stars all I can see into something vastly endless and alive at the same time, we live inside of it as we are made of the same strings. I believe, we can meet our makers, as we also the ones who are making. The moral of the story here is that we are all one. We celebrate and learn from each other's uniqueness, and come together in unity as the same species. Like brothers and sisters, Lucy is our shared ancestor. She brought us all together simply by being; and all of humanity is just one big happy family.