Joe Rohde's Collected Pandora Instagram Posts

[the.dreamfinder]

An archive of Joe Rohde's Instagram posts about Pandora detailing everything from the thinking behind the land's design, attraction/land backstory, and how the land enriches the park's ecological themes.

 

[the.dreamfinder]

I doubt anybody will post about this. The Velocivirus is not native to Pandora. It's origins are unknown, but it survives space travel on transport vehicles, which are supposed to flare their thrusters before entering the atmosphere to burn it out. Of course, that takes fuel, and costs money… So not everybody does it. It only takes one jerk, and there you have brown tree snakes on Guam, coqui frogs in Hawaii, zebra mussels in the Mississippi, lionfish off the coast of Florida, pythons in the Everglades, feral cats eating migratory songbirds, hordes of starlings, kudzu, Water Hyacinth, cane toads, anopheles mosquitoes, and of course, here, the velocivirus, a colonial -cooperative virus that can use its own micro-vibrations to echolocate and travel. It functions like a hemorrhagic virus to dissolve and coopt any tissue it comes in contact with, and, as with many introduced species, nobody has quite figured out how to eradicate it yet. The biologists of the Pandora Conservation Initiative are desperately trying to find a way to kill this thing, just one of the charming legacies of the exploitative reign of the RDA. Of course there are also beautiful floating mountains, bioluminescent flowers, flying creatures, and a wonderful indigenous culture… But this little phenomena appeals to my dark sense of humor. Cost savings gone terribly upside down.

5/5/17

 

[the.dreamfinder]

The Pandora Conservation Initiative focuses a lot on restoring water quality. In fact, the entire Mountain Banshee Project, which has enabled our participation in the Flight of Passage, boils down to water quality assessment. Banshees are an apex predator, which implies that they have to eat something that eats something else, that ultimately eats fruits, or plant material, or insects that are dependent on water quality. Environmental damage is not always obvious. It might be many steps between the problem and its final result. Polluted water might inhibit the gestation of a larval creature that grows up to migrate a thousand miles and fertilize the flowers of a tree that produces fruit that is eaten by a creature that is the seasonal prey of a flying creature, and that flying creature ultimately the main food source of Banshees. The banshees don't even have to live anywhere near the environment where the problem started. I recall an article about the total collapse of a marine ecosystem in Alaska that was caused by pollution that weakened sea lions off the coast of California and somehow changed the feeding habits of orcas, who began eating sea otters instead...depleting their population, which caused the sea urchin population to explode, eating everything into a marine desert. The interconnections of ecological systems are mind boggling. The word "eco" in ecology does not mean "nature." It means "everything." Everything is connected...like on Pandora. #design#animalkingdom #animalkingdomdisney#atanimalkingdom #pandora #pandoradisney

5/6/17

 

[the.dreamfinder]

Detail, the inner berm. Everyone who understands theatrical design can understand the concept of onstage and offstage. A performance is framed in such a way that the audience can tell what is and what is not performance. Only those things that contribute to performance are allowed on the screen, or on stage. In the themepark world, this stage is surrounded by a massive landscape curtain call the berm, which separates the entire stage from the outside world and prevents anyone from being able to look offstage and see contradictory information. The berm surrounds and creates a kind of handmade virtual reality. Now, the only place left for a viewer to find contradiction is inwards. Detail exists for only one reason, to uphold the narrative reality of the story being told. Detail is entirely dependent on how closely people are able to observe. But when they are able to stand very close, and look very closely, and for a long time, then the requirements for detail are absolute. The detail is the inner berm. When the detail is greater than the viewers ability to observe, the viewer is then caught between two berms, the huge outer berm that surrounds the world, and the infinite inner berm of detail that makes that world undeniably real. Every single knot in the entire ceiling of the cute area for the Na'vi River Journey his hand-tied, as are all the knots and all the weaving of all the totems in the land, and every other woven object. It's enough saturation of detail that eventually you surrender to the detail, stop analyzing, and just live in the world.

5/6/17

 

[the.dreamfinder]

The cave through which initiates pass on their journey to the Flight of Passage contains a huge variety of painted images on the wall. These apparently date back millennia, and have been painted over the top of each other by generations of flyers. Some of these represent flyers on banshees approaching the great red Leonopteryx. But many refer to other phenomena, mostly cosmological or astrological. Polyphemus, which is visible almost all the time from Pandora, has a huge eye-like marking, not unlike Jupiter in our solar system. In the cave paintings, this eye is often rendered as an actual cyclopean eye. Certain paintings extrapolate from this eye to a huge cosmological being, a kind of one-eyed mother who looks over the planets. Various heavenly phenomena such as planetary alignments, are represented as relationships between beings who embody these planets. Mother, daughter, son, and a monkey-like creature, presumably a prolemurus, that represents a moon or planet with a particularly eccentric orbit. Careful observers may even find images of Polyphemus giving birth to the sun, Alpha Centauri, at the termination of an eclipse. not all the symbols have been fully cataloged and identified, but together they contribute to the idea that this flight is an event of great symbolic meaning. It is of course darkly ironic that the RDA chose to drill a giant borehole through the side of this cavern to access their facility. Of Course, planet Earth offers countless examples of similar disregard by resource extractors for indigenous peoples attitudes about their land. #pandoradisney #pandora#atanimalkingdom #animalkingdomdisney#animalkingdom

5/6/17

 

[the.dreamfinder]

Dr. Ogden's office is not open to visitors to the Pandora Conservation Initiative's project center in the old RDA mining headquarters. We catch a glimpse of it in her introductory video. She has an impressive collection of Na'vi artifacts and tribal antiques from earth. Just as on earth, it is impossible to create successful, functional wildlife conservation programs without the involvement, support, and cooperation of local indigenous populations. Many of the earth artifacts are from Papua New Guinea. I suggest that the seriously interested student of Design do a Google search of the two words "mining" and "New Guinea." I believe this will make it clear why so many of these earth artifacts are sourced from this region.

5/7/17

 

[the.dreamfinder]

Having grown up in a tropical place, I am very familiar with how quickly things become completely overgrown and disappear into the jungle as if they are centuries old. When I take team members to Bali, for work, we visit a pond at the bottom of a canyon in the famous monkey forest at the edge of Ubud. The pond is surrounded by a carved stone fence, with symbolic statues all overgrown with roots and moss like something in Angkor Wat. Except. I remember when it was built. I remember before it was built. The power of nature to overcome and absorb things is amazing. Pandora is full of vignettes in which is nearly impossible to tell that one is looking at a man-made object.

5/9/17

 

[the.dreamfinder]

Narrative placemaking is not a "push" form of storytelling. You are not forced to look in any particular direction, pay attention to any particular character, or place yourself in any particular place. Instead you are free to look at anything you please, and think whatever you choose to think about it. However, whatever is there to be seen should be filled with meaningful detail, so that if you do look, and you do think about what you see, there is story, emotion, and philosophy to be absorbed. Not very different than the real world. The tiny Pongu-Pongu tiki-style walk-up bar on Pandora is such a place. Because I grew up in Hawaii, I remember tiki bars that were not retro… they were sincere. They were made by vets who had returned from World War II in the South Pacific, which ended only 10 years before I was born. The idea of people returning to peace, of taking the trash of conflict and up-cycling it into something that will be used for celebration, friendship, and fun is poignant and meaningful. The idea of the power of a creative soul to recover beauty out of destruction is important. Or. It's a great place for a tasty colorful drink. And that is true too. Only depends on how closely you look.

5/9/17

 

[the.dreamfinder]

The Flight of Passage experience is a Na'vi tribal rite of passage involving the Ikran, or banshee. In order for this ancient ceremony to continue, there have to be banshees. No living thing exists in isolation. Banshees, as an apex predator, rely on a vast Jenga-tower of interrelated organisms. Pull out one block and the tower collapses. This chart traces only two of the main threats to the banshee, deforestation and poor water quality. As with such crises on earth, neither affect the keystone species directly, but disrupts the underlying system that support it. No banshees-no ceremony-no ceremony-no cultural identity-no identity-no Na'vi. For indigenous people, (including ourselves, because we are all indigenous somewhere,) the loss of biological life is not just a physical loss, but a loss of meaning. What is Africa without lions and elephants? What are the great northern rivers without salmon? What is summer without butterflies, or the sea without coral and tropical fish? What is night without bats? All these words change their meaning when we extract the life from them. And, even though we may still be standing, we too are less, because no living thing exists in isolation. We are a part of a huge living thing, sustained by it and obliged to sustain it...or we are nothing. #dak #design #pandoradisney #avatar

5/10/17

 

[the.dreamfinder]

I know this is not fully legible, but this old RDA sign appeals to my dark sense of humor, because if you were to read it entirely, you would realize that it is impossible to comply with directions needed to maintain a nontoxic system. The required time for each inspection adds up to more time than any given maintenance worker is allowed to be inside the system. Humor and outrage are really just two versions of the same response to events.

5/10/17

 

[the.dreamfinder]

Few things give me greater delight than the creativity, inventiveness, and improvisation of guests at Disney's Animal Kingdom. I don't think any of us had any idea that #mosswall in Pandora was a thing when we did it… But it has become "a thing." And what I like best about it is that it shows that our guests have the discernment to recognize the beauty in something so simple and mundane as a flat wall in a land filled with extravagant displays of technical virtuosity. I've said before in other posts, that we draw our inspiration as much from other artists as we do from the world of research. That is what makes such a thing as possible. And this massive wall has made artists out of thousands of people. Have faith in Art. If you open peoples eyes they will see beauty everywhere.

5/12/17

 

[the.dreamfinder]

I have to write a huge thank you to the very gracious cast members of the Animal Kingdom Lodge who have hosted us through this long and epic journey as if we were their own family. I found this tasty and touching gift in my room when I arrived. I particularly like the chocolate floating mountains. When you arrive at our resorts, people greet you with, "Welcome Home." Everyone here does everything they can to make sure that these words are true. People make a home, and this has been a home for us, for years now, and hopefully for years to come. #disney #design #pandora#animalkingdomlodge #animalkingdomdisney

5/18/17

 

[the.dreamfinder]

Me and Djuan Rivers, VP of Disney's Animal Kingdom, at the mossy wall. #mosswall#animalkingdomdisney #pandora#atdisneysanimalkingdom

5/18/17

 

[the.dreamfinder]

Detail you might walk past without knowing what you were seeing. When you're doing a biological population survey, you don't necessarily need to see animals in order to know that they are there. You need to see incontrovertible evidence that the animal is there. That includes scratch marks, scat and spray, fur, feathers, scales, and, of course, tracks. What you were looking at here is a "track trap," exactly like the ones we used on the Mission Himalayas #RAP survey expedition to Nepal and China. You can make one of these at home. Either put out bait, or find a pathway where you know small animals are likely to pass… They tend to like to move along edges of things, like your garden hedge, or the wall of your house. You make a kind of crowd- Control funnel leading to something like a sponge or a cloth that is soaked in black oil paint, or printers ink or stamp pad ink. These dry very slowly so they will stay wet enough all night long. Beyond the ink pad you place a piece of white paper. Everything that walks over the ink pad will leave footprints on the white paper. And you can identify the different species by checking their tracks against reference. You should put an ink pad on either side of the paper because animals go both ways. So see? You probably thought this was just Squigley junk on a piece of paper. But noooooooo! Why do that when you could create content? In the lab space for the Flight of Passage. #atdisneysanimalkingdom#animalkingdomdisney #pandora #flightofpassage#science #research #tracks #tracking #biology#wdw

5/19/17

 

[the.dreamfinder]

The wetland areas of the Mo'ara Valley on Pandora dotted with an unusual plant commonly called the spiny whip. The gelatinous tentacles of the species are translucent and bioluminescent. They live for a very long time in a relatively stable condition. But eventually they die, like all living things, and collapse into a mushy mess. This one is clearly on its way out. It's easy to find beauty in a plant or an animal that is in its full flush of life. But There is beauty in every aspect of life, and this declining plant is still quite beautiful.#pandora #dak#avatar #animalkingdom #atanimalkingdom

5/21/17

 

[the.dreamfinder]

I return to the issue of the moss wall, and Michel Foucault's theory of the heterotopia, easily available online under the English title, "Of Other Spaces." Critiques of the themepark artform often focus on Baroque era antecedents and the use of spectacle, theatricality, and controlled views in the exercise of power. Most of these theories I believe are illegitimate and not based on a close study of how the business actually works. However, Foucault's heterotopia offers a more accurate model, a non-place, out of time, and away from the normal controls, in which, for a short time, alternative reality and alternative identity can be played out. Foucault includes gated and ticketed spaces in his theory. Within the spaces created by our official design system are any number of behaviors and places created entirely by guests. These are heterotopia within heterotopia. The moss wall was not created by ourselves, but created by the vision and attention of our guests. While not exactly subversive, this reclamation of space has come into being unplanned, and exists under its own power. It doesn't exist in any sense that is official, as in a map, or guidebook, And could not be found unless you knew where it was, which you cannot do by referring to our official system. It's used by guests not to commemorate any of our beloved characters, but to commemorate themselves, all of which neatly fits into Michel Foucault's theory. Our spaces are often used in ways that are not entirely predictable, nor ownable, and this is part of their charm. Play is open-ended, and the best heterotopias offer opportunities for unstructured free play. Posing at the moss wall is that. We can take no credit. It is an invention of our playful guests that exists partially within a space we created for other purposes and partially in the imaginary space of the Internet which is beyond our control altogether. Foucault's quintessential heterotopia was a mirror. The Instagramiverse does the mirror one better, because it is inhabited by many people and not one.#atanimalkingdom #mosswall #animalkingdom#avatar #dak #pandora #frenchphilosophy #foucault#heterotopia

5/21/17

 

[the.dreamfinder]

Children of all ages love their pet banshees.

5/23/17

 

[the.dreamfinder]

Pandora and the family. Boys hadn't been back since Everest opened!!

5/23/17

 

[the.dreamfinder]

Let us consider the phenomenon of human attention. We are a profoundly social primate. We compete for mates on the basis of display behavior. This is obvious when one looks at the broad variety of appearances that make up the human species. If we competed on the basis of strength, all males would be nearly identical and the only features distinguishing us would have to do with power… huge muscles and big teeth. But we compete by commanding attention. We make ourselves unique, and then look around to see if anyone noticed. Our eyes are unique among primates for having such a huge area of exposed white. This makes it very very easy for each human being to tell precisely where another human being is looking. In many primate species, it is forbidden to look directly at a dominant member. Looking is a form of aggression. Among humans, looking is a form of grooming, of praise. Here, it is clear that important humans are on display. We don't even need to see the stage. We can follow the gaze.

 

[the.dreamfinder]

In fairness to the Animal Kingdom Lodge staff, this is the second confectionery composition they left on my bed....last night… In Florida… Where I am no longer… Until the 27th.

5/26/17