




I wanted to explore the conundrum that is Pink Floyd’s album The Dark Side of the Moon. The album itself is a masterpiece and I have always loved Pink Floyd’s music (brought up listening to them by my dad) and have been listening to them for all 21 years of my life. Despite this, I still am uncovering new things in the album and other albums that I never thought of before. These things can be anything from new notes that I never noticed before or diving deeper into the meanings behind words and sounds on the album. I am still finding new things and I believe that I will continue to do so for a long while still. To make this easier to do in the timeframe that I have, I chose to stick with the first two (although it is really just one) songs off of the album: Speak to Me and Breathe. Speak to Me is a short song, about ~40 seconds, that opens the album with a single heartbeat fading into existence. It goes on to sets up the thematic score for the rest of the album including the Doppler effect/helicopter from On the Run, the ticking clocks of Time, Clare Torry’s wailing vocals from The Great Gig in the Sky, the cash register and change from Money, and the mad man’s laugh from Brain Damage. I wanted to include these motifs too if time permitted. I wanted to represent the heartbeat as it’s something that ties us all together when we are all thrust into this world. The album is a dedication to the stresses, struggles, sorrows, joys, and pleasures of life. The words make you think while the music takes you to another place entirely (I’m not talking about the psychedelic sense although that is often closely tied to Pink Floyd, I personally steer clear). I am always trying to figure out the meanings behind the words. I wanted to represent the heartbeat, lips to create the idea of ‘speak to me’, which is followed closely by breath both physically and in the album. The surfer on top of the curl of one of the breaths is a reference to the line “Long you live, and high you fly/But only if you ride the tide/Balanced on the biggest wave/You race towards an early grave” an allusion to how one can achieve the greatest things if you put yourself out there, but it comes with a warning because in those highest highs, there’s the chance that you will burn out, crash down and it can lead to your early death. I then wanted to follow up this imagery with the combination of the iconic album art (the prism scattering light) combined with a moon that actually has a shrouded ‘dark side’. The question I am focusing on is ‘what does the dark side of the moon mean/represent in these two songs.’
1. Choose a topic
Is it possible and ethical to revive species?
2. Consider and clarify your topic
I chose the question of “is it possible to revive extinct species?” With climate change beginning to shadow over our current level of biodiversity, it’s become clear to some scientists that the only way to fix the problem is to bring back species that were hunted to extinction by humans, like wooly mammoths, or one of their predators, dire wolves. But this also brings up a lot of ethical questions; we’re so fixated on the idea of doing this that we haven’t stopped to consider “should we?” Another thing to consider is that the concept of a species is VERY human in terms of categorization, and I don’t think it’s fair to box organisms in these categories just to try and “de-extinct” imaginary categories we deem more important to an ecosystem. Even if we do “de-extinct” something liek the dire wolves, it isn’t… *really* that species. De-extincting species by major companies feels like a ploy to get more funding for science, which is just another lovely side effect of our capitalist society. It’s really depressing to watch biologists overcomplicate solutions to climate change when the real solution that feels more viable and proximal is to change the fact that big companies aren’t curbing their emissions. Ten Things:
DNA, dire wolves, wooly mammoths, dodo birds, great auks, pipettes, plastic waste, passenger pigeon, Carolina parakeet, elephant bird










https://youtu.be/gv4GmLlZaPo
https://youtu.be/RbWgUDRwfZo
https://youtu.be/PhAarplYb4A
https://youtu.be/-ClKpKOQB78
https://youtu.be/jq8Z73As1rc
https://youtu.be/U3b5YpntkNg