Jaguar

This animation is part of the "Taïga Maya" DVD tinyurl.com/qy8kfuz and artelligences.com/taiga-maya/?lang=en
There is quite a saga behind it as it started, many years ago, with a sketch I made on a beautiful music by L'Arpeggiata vimeo.com/201462154 (more info on the whole process there)

Thierry Van Roy took that clip on a trip to the Sakha Republic (Yakutia, Siberia) where he searched for remaining shaman in order to record their songs. He showed the muted clip to one of them, Stepanida Borissova
hulu.de/en/musicians/stepanida_borissova.htm

Stepanida watched the silent video several times, then improvised a song to/for it, while Thierry, a sound engineer by trade, skillfully recorded the whole thing.
He sent me the recording which really hit me, forcing me (with much pleasure) to modify the original images to try to better serve the power of Stepanida's singing vimeo.com/201462662
I made a search on Stepanida and discovered that she had worked with Western musicians before, notably with Hubl Greiner and Luigi Archetti hulu.de/en/trance_siberia/trance_siberia1.htm

Their "TranceSiberia" CD immediately appealed to me so I contacted Hubl (we discovered we had several friends and collaborators in common) to ask permission to use one of the tracks on that CD.

It gave birth to "Barastylahyyœ" vimeo.com/29561908

I burned that clip to a DVD and sent it to Hubl, thinking it would be the end of it (as is the case with many of my pieces, I considered it a sketch). A few months later, Hubl told me he had been invited to present, with Stepanida, a "Shaman Music Concert" during the "Al Bustan Festival" in Beirut, Lebanon. He asked if he could use that DVD to promote the concert, which I of course agreed to.

A few days later, I received a phone call from the Al Bustan Festival director, inviting me to Beirut for the festival (which also featured an exhibition of prints of a selection of my digital images). That also gave me the opportunity to take part in the concert with images, one of my early live performances vimeo.com/201465941
and
hubl.com/stepanida-friends.html

Later on, Hubl thought that the material I had created for the Beirut concert would work well with another CD of his, "Inemuri" hulu.de/en/electronic_music/inemuri/inemuri.html
I wholeheartedly agreed with him and eventually made a film by the same name: vimeo.com/55321526

See also this sketch done with Stepanida (a real document on shamanic singing): vimeo.com/44772757

But back to "Jaguar:" Thierry Van Roy incorporated Stepanida's improvised song on my images into what became “Jaguar," with lyrics written and sung by Melanie Gabriel (Peter Grabriel's daughter)
Here’s another video from the Taiga Maya DVD, again with Melanie: vimeo.com/29774940).

I brought together images from "Barastylahyyœ" and "Sogna Sakha 2005" mixed with bits of videos and photos shot in Mexico and Siberia (videos and photos taken by Thierry and Melanie while on their search for material for "Taïga Maya," to which I added photos of our farm taken by my son when he wasn't 8 yet, he's now 25 and has continued to take many photos: flickr.com/photos/73827399@N06/sets/).

The "Taïga Maya" box-set (DVD, CD and book, illustrations done by yours truly, as well as authoring the complex DVD and more) is available from various vendors, as for example Amazon tinyurl.com/qy8kfuz
The Taïga Maya trailer is available here: vimeo.com/8028822