On October 24 - 26, 2009, Arcosanti hosted a Dutch TV crew from VPRO TV, a national, noncommercial broadcasting organization in the Netherlands. Arcosanti and the work of Paolo Soleri will be featured in a special extended edition of the weekly news documentary series "Backlight," which will present ecologically-minded community projects around the world. The piece will air while the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference takes place in Copenhagen, Denmark this December.
In this photo, the crew interviews Paolo Soleri in front of the Ceramics Apse while Arcosanti Public Relations Coordinator Erin Jeffries assists with a light reflector panel.

Randy Murray Productions arrived at Arcosanti on Thursday 10/22/09 to film segments of "After Armageddon," a docudrama for the History Channel. The story explores what might happen after a worldwide epidemic. Many Arcosanti residents were cast as “extras.” In this photo, Director Stephen Kemp gives extras instructions for the next scene.

Arcosanti’s unique buildings offered versatility, allowing the production to film multiple story locations within the same site. In this scene, survivors of the pandemic farm for food, planting seeds by hand.

It was an entertaining day with many scenes revolving around food and agriculture.

Filming continued the next day in several locations, including the Bronze Foundry, Ceramics Apes, and the Crafts III building. The film’s final scene features Arcosanti’s unique building environment to depict how people might have rebuilt their lives 25 years after the pandemic.

Formed in 1991, Randy Murray Productions quickly grew into into a developer of creative content and a reliable resource for productions in Arizona. Randy Murray Productions is known for their powerful story telling through film and media that aim to bring positive social change to their audience.

For more information about Randy Murray Productions please visit www.randymurrayproductions.com

After a week of intensive composing and rehearsals, Difference Skies delivered their final performance on Saturday October 24, 2009.
On the night of the performance, the Colly Soleri Music Amphitheater was illuminated under the night sky and the audience huddled together around the amphitheater.
The musicians and visual artists together created a stunning tapestry of improvised and composed space music, ambient, experimental, and electronic, mixed with interactive video synthesis, for the audience.

After the formal part of the program and a brief intermission, the artists played numerous spontaneously improvised pieces, stirring the awe and imagination of the audience.

The Different Skies performance was absolutely astounding. Thank you and congratulations to all who helped bring this wonderful performance together. We hope to see you all again next year!

The Different Skies musicians gave a special performance to a group of students from the neighboring ORME School, as well as to a group of 50 students from the Facultad de Arquitectura y Diserto, Extension Ensenada, Universidad Autonoma de Baja California.
The students from Ensenada visited Arcosanti for an extensive architectural tour and enjoyed the impromptu liveliness of the music.

2009 Different Skies participants:
[back row from left]
Ivan Schwartz, Allen Goodman, Brian Good, Bill Marx, Rus Foster, Jonathan Mills, John Rossi III, Giles Reaves and John Krikawa.
[front row from left]
Greg Hurley, Bill Fox, Kevin Haller, Mike Metlay, Otso Pakarinen and Tim Walters.

The weeks practice sessions culminate into a public performance on Saturday, October 24. 2009. The evening event will start with a complimentary tour at 5 pm,
followed by Dinner in the Cafe at 6 pm,
and the Concert starts at 7:30 pm.
For ticket information call 928 632-7135.

Arcosanti welcomes the return of the annual week-long DIFFERENT SKIES electronic music festival for their 7th year, with participants
Russel Foster, Bill Fox, Brian Good, Allen Goodman, Kevin Haller, Greg Hurley, John Krikawa, Bill Marx, Mike Metlay, Jonathan Mills, Otso Pakarinen, Giles Reaves, John Rossi III, Ivan Schwartz, Tim Walters, and Doug Wellington.

The musicians will be performing at the Colly Soleri Music Amphitheater on Saturday October 24, 2009, featuring an evening of original electronic and experimental space music written by participants from around the world. The music will also be accompanied by a dynamic live video synthesis performance.
For more information about the Different Skies concert please visit www.differentskies.com or call Arcosanti at 1-928-632-7135.

Last week's pour for the heat duct tunnel wall was a great success. The concrete for the retaining wall came out smooth and uniform and is holding up strong. Rocks, soil, and insulation materials filled up the trenches surrounding the finished area of the heat duct tunnel.

Last Thursday, construction staff and the new workshop participants poured concrete for the beginning of the footings that lead down the slope. Concrete is transported with wheel barrows onto the scaffolding and then scooped into buckets to be passed down and poured into the formwork.

As we wait for the concrete to cure, the construction crew will continue preparing the groundwork for the next footings. We will continue this report next week.

This report continues from 10/14/09.
All the fun and exciting activities began right after the students and teachers unpacked and settled into their dorms. There was no time for dawdling! The afternoon was packed with outdoor activities from gardening and hiking to Geocaching. Here we see the children on the Archaeology Hike. The students enjoyed looking for petroglyphs on the rocks and trying to figure out what they mean. The hike also allowed students to learn about the Native American culture while exploring archeological sites and the unique vegetation, hydrology and high desert geology surrounding Arcosanti.

On the night of the same day, a group of astronomists called Stargazing For Everyone, LLC, came to Arcosanti and set up four large space telescopes for an Astronomy Workshop. The students viewed the night sky through their telescopes and binoculars and learned how to find and identify different planets, galaxies, bright stars and constellations, as well as the legends behind them and other interesting sky facts and fiction.

The students also enjoyed a silt-casting workshop organized with the help of Arcosanti's residents. For the silt sculptures, the students were divided into teams to decide by consensus about what to carve. Some of the sculptures created in the end included an owl and a wedding cake.

All the students and teachers gathered around the Colly Soleri Music Amphitheater for a Panel Discussion with Paolo Soleri. The students were eager to learn and raised many questions about Paolo's childhood, ideas and buildings. After the meeting with Paolo, the students climbed up on top of the Vaults and wrote in their journals about what they learned at Arcosanti and from Paolo.

Students and their teachers from the Phoenix Country Day School had three days packed with fun, outdoor adventures and craft-workshops. Thank you PCDS student and teachers for visiting Arcosanti. We hope to see you all again next year!

A group of 50 students and their teachers arrived for a 3-day visit.
The students are fifth graders from Phoenix Country Day School and this is the third year that this school has brought their fifth grade students for a few days of true adventure to the Arcosanti site.

The action-packed schedule started with an introduction to Arcosanti by guest services manager Carri Krueger.

Activities will include an Archeology Hike, Geocoaching [learning GPS], Farm & Garden Tour, Astronomy, a Silt Workshop for Tiles & Totem carving, a Panel Discussion with Paolo Soleri, a Talent Show, Shadow Dancing and a Camp Fire Session.
Other activities are Volleyball, Recreation Room, Ping Pong, Journal Writing and Art Projects. We will continue this report on Friday, 10/16/09.

The Arizona Shakespeare Festival returned to Arcosanti's Colly Soleri Amphitheater stage with Shakespeare's sparkling and wonderful romantic comedy, "Much Ado About Nothing".

With sassy female characters and two very different romantic relationships to keep track of, the audience was enthralled by the witty dialogue, the modern setting of the play, while following the gender switching, multiple role playing, path of merry confusion.
The Festival is currently on a 20 city state wide tour, bringing live theater to the outdoors and people together, and capturing the hearts of audiences along the way.

Welcome workshop participants of October 2009:
[top from left] Zhang Shiyin, Zhu Yanmo [two weeks], James Carnazza, Joseph Burton, Juan Felipe Montañez, and Paolo Vozzella.
[bottom from left] Yu Wei, Li Ling [two weeks], Rachel Hirschey, Jia Zijian [two weeks], and Sophie Nichols.

This report continues from 09/18/09.
Last week, the construction crew worked on building formwork for the retaining wall on top of the heat duct tunnel roof.

For the concrete pour, a ramp was moved to a higher ledge so that it was leveled with the elevated scaffolding. Wheelbarrows of concrete were dumped directly into the wall.

1 yard of concrete was mixed to fill the wall.

Here we see the formwork taken off, revealing the new wall. While the concrete is left to cure, the construction crew will continue excavation for the footings for the next section of the heat duct tunnel.
We will continue to report as construction progresses.

We welcomed back HUMAN NATURE Dance Theater for their annual workshop, this their 16th year at Arcosanti.
The week-long workshop culminated into a lovely performance on Saturday evening, open to the public.

Human Nature has a unique collaborative process. Each member of the group has equal say, forcing us to quickly enter deep water and become completely vulnerable with one another. Each year at Arcosanti we work with a theme that our improvisations revolve around.

The subject this year was FLYING AT NIGHT, "an exploration through feeling, with limited sight. An inky-black mystery, which beckons us into its fold though we can not foresee what lies ahead. The darkness of the unknown, which is not merely walked into, but flown through, light as a feather, quick as a falcon. Alert for what can't be seen, compelled to travel courageously onward when others might hide in their nests. The evening journey, with only the stars to guide us home."

Particpants this year were Arcosanti alumnus Paul Moore, Jayne Lee, Delisa Myles, Brenna Rogers, Kristin Greco, Nathan Montgomery, Gina Shorten, Jonathan Best, Francis Martineau, Marshall Elliott and Eric Souders.

Saturday's performance was dynamic and intense, danced and acted with tight discipline, yet with obvious ease and excellence.
And as is 'Human Natures' nature, the cast presented lovely eye-blinks of stories, potent, emotions boilt to their essence, funny, scary, ridiculous and very vulnerable moments that touched the heart.

Human Nature Dance Theatre, a performance collaborative, uses dance, music and word to express the deepest elements of the human experience. HNDT is supported in part by the Arizona Commission on the Arts and Flagstaff Cultural Partners.

Congratulations to the August 30. 2009 workshop participants upon their graduation:

[from left]:
Amanda Carson, Morgan Jacobs, Tommaso Osti and Andrew Chisholm.