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Author Topic:   Gaia (Guy Laliberte)
cspg
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Posts: 6210
From: Geneva, Switzerland
Registered: May 2006

posted 02-19-2011 01:58 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for cspg   Click Here to Email cspg     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Gaia
by Guy Laliberte
  • Hardcover: 300 pages
  • Publisher: Assouline Publishing (May 3, 2011)
  • ISBN-10: 2759405346
  • ISBN-13: 978-2759405343
A somehow early post - couldn't find additional info. The book may be related to his space flight.

cspg
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From: Geneva, Switzerland
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posted 03-07-2011 02:31 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for cspg   Click Here to Email cspg     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
From the publisher's website:
Gaia is the tour de force of Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté. Here Laliberté presents stunning photographs of the Earth taken from 220 miles away during his eleven-day trip orbiting the earth as a private space explorer, with unique views of nearly forty countries. A documentation both rare and captivating, his images are natural works of art, rich in color and texture.
There's also a $875 "special edition"! - here.

alanh_7
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From: Ajax, Ontario, Canada
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posted 06-22-2011 09:11 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for alanh_7   Click Here to Email alanh_7     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I heard this book is now available in three different editions valued at $70, $900 and $7,000 depending on which edition you chose.

cspg
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posted 08-21-2011 01:55 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for cspg   Click Here to Email cspg     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
The publisher's web page now gives September as a release date.

Hart Sastrowardoyo
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posted 08-21-2011 09:46 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Hart Sastrowardoyo   Click Here to Email Hart Sastrowardoyo     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Really? Because Laliberte has since late June been on a book promotion tour, including New York (which I found out too late!), London, and Paris. The end of the tour, I believe, is in Las Vegas.

328KF
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posted 08-21-2011 11:37 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for 328KF   Click Here to Email 328KF     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
That kind of money for a book by a multi-millionaire who wore a red clown nose all during the flight?

Yeeeeah...I think I'll pass.

cspg
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From: Geneva, Switzerland
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posted 08-22-2011 01:02 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for cspg   Click Here to Email cspg     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Promotion also took place on a French TV show (in May-June). The deluxe edition of the book was presented. If I'm not mistaken the proceeds of the book will go to projects providing drinkable water to people.

cspg
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Posts: 6210
From: Geneva, Switzerland
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posted 10-22-2011 01:48 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for cspg   Click Here to Email cspg     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Sure the view of Earth from space can result in beautiful pictures. And the book is simply just that: a collection of pictures - one after the other. No text, just the pictures' location on Earth. Maybe that's what art is supposed to be, something only to be looked at and admired. But what those pictures depict can be traced to geophysical processes and/or human intervention. Unfortunately no explanation is given as to what we are looking at, let alone how such beautiful sceneries came to being. Definitively not worth the price. As a cheaper and educative alternative, log on to NASA's "The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth" at eol.jsc.nasa.gov. The pictures are just as beautiful and the accompanying text can teach you a thing or two.

And I can't believe that there are a $875 edition and a $7,000 limited edition of this book. Even if the author's proceeds go to a good cause.

music_space
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posted 10-22-2011 08:14 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for music_space   Click Here to Email music_space     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
The book, in its various editions, has been launched here in Montreal during 2011 as well. We also had, on our Place du Quartier des spectacles, an outside exhibition with the pictures blown up on 6-by-6 panels. In this setting, the pictures were -- for most of them -- geolocalized and contextualized in a paragraph or two on an info card. Alas, there was little geophysical information. In fact, the pictures with the most involved descriptions concerned locations having issues with potable water, Laliberté's One Drop Foundation's championning cause.

Even though I get off on and champion a lot of what Laliberté did and stood for while training and flying, these books aren't meant for me. They are an end result, a tangible record of some of Lalibeté's 'Poetic Social Mission in Space', but just like the other product of the mission -- the world-wide, Internet show Moving Stars and Earth for Water (still visible here) -- they hopefully reach their target audiences, regardless of my personel wonderments and reservations.

These books have very much to do with the French connections and cultural appeal related to his mission. Paris Match, the famed magazine, ran a (pretty good) exclusive story after Laliberté's mission, with the first press-released space-borne pictures from the mission; the French editor Pierre Assouline specializes in similar, high-class coffee books (check out Laliberté's and other coffee and artbooks by Assouline).

I did spend a long moment with one of the books along with my best reading glasses. Laliberté's pictures are similar to the aerial photographic work of Yann Arthus-Bertrand, and just as it is with Arthus-Bertrand's works, I can detach myself from the poetic subtext's moral to appreciate the photographic work. A few of the pictures did, however, seem to me like they were subjected to more post-processing than I care for.

-=+=-

The real essence of Laliberté's training and mission lies in the process rather than the end products. Wait until you see the recently completed Touch the Sky, an 84-minute HD documentary, aptly described by its director Adrian Wills as "a fly-on-the- wall feature documentary in collaboration with NASA about Guy Laliberte's trip to the International Space Station". Laliberté has been giving carte-blanche to young cinematographer Wills ever since All Together Now, which at times candidly reveals cringing sides to Laliberté's personnality while he deals with the surviving Beatles and widows.

In Touch the Sky, Laliberté's genuine and unrelenting respect for 'nauts and support personnel permeates the whole work, the clown noses and persona are but brushed upon and the stakes and issues pertaining to the 2000's private spaceflight participation are exposed with equanimity and wit. You'll see!

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