Breath of Life Wins Back to the City Competition

The Breath of Life Art Installation were one of two joint winners of the Back to the City Project awards. Professor Ann Graham of the University of Newcastle Australia announced the winners at the Newcastle Art Gallery 31 January 2008.

This comes as news of another sighting of the Breath of Life windmills has emerged at a Barak Obama rally in the US. Sightings have now grown to 385 reports from over 137 cities worldwide.

A Message from the Breath of Life Co-Ordinator

Last Monday (Australia Day holiday) the Breath of Life team made an executive decision to take down the remaining windmills.

Many had been destroyed by strong wind the day before and others had been vandalised, one pole was pulled from the ground and a windmill found lying in Wolfe Street.

We decided that the overall design needed to remain uniform and therefore the remaining windmills taken down. Although this does not make as much of an impact as the initial installation design, public safety was our main priority as we did not want to take the risk of any remaining windmills coming loose and harming anyone.

The installation of windmills has been well documented and a slideshow will be available at the Symposium today to highlight the project in its original state. Unfortunately we do not have the funds or the physical man power to restore the full installation, except to install a couple for February 9 children's workshops. There are plenty of images available on our flickr site and blog pages that record the installation in its former glory.

The change in the design is also documented and interpreted (in a very creative way) as seen on the blog.

Ann Hardy

Co-ordinator
Breath of Life Team

Flying Windmills Reported Over 97 Cities

NEWCASTLE - Australia - Reports of flying windmills have been flooding in to mission control on the Obelisk Hill site Newcastle Australia. There are now over 266 sightings over 97 cities worldwide, as tracked by Google Earth's aerial windmill tracking station in New Jersey.

"We are so pleased, and relieved that so many survived from their brutal attack only nights ago" Varelle Hardy, spokesperson for the Breath of Life Art Installation team said today.

A Very Happy Mrs Varelle Hardy

Breath of Life, part of the Back to the City Project was one of the installations attacked a number of nights ago by giant flying vandal sharks called 'coaliaths'. Many windmills escaped (leaving their tails floating in the wind) and have been flying over the planet ever since their hasty departure.

"Evidence has also been emerging that some of our windmills have found sanctuary in distant lands and have sprouted wind farms" said Mrs Hardy. "We are sending out a call to local children to come to the Obelisk Hill on Saturday 9th February 9-11 am to help us create more windmills that we hope to plant locally and hopefully they will germinate and grow into mature wind farms." she said.

Cassini spots windmill at outer rings of Saturn

PASADENA, California -- An odd, four-sailed, windmill-shaped feature passing the outer rings of Saturn has captured the interest of scientists with NASA's Cassini mission.

"This is a very strange object, lying in a precise geometric fashion with four nearly equally straight sides," said Dr Henk Nisesui, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

NASA authorities have been working closely with the Australian atmospherics team at Parkes Radio Observatory even since the windmills escaped Australian airspace on January 28. "It is astounding that a windmill from the Breath of Life art installation in Newcastle Australia has reached the outer reaches of our solar system". Dr Niseusi remarked. Cassini scientists have calculated that at this rate it will leave the Solar System around February 17.

"We've never seen anything like this pass any other planet, yet there it is" he said.

Mr. W

This is something really fantastic.

Survivor Windmill 'Speaks' of Night Battle Ordeal

NEWCASTLE, Australia - Detectives of Operation Boreas have had a major breakthrough and been able to finally 'speak' with the sole surviving windmill of the Breath of Life installation.

Inspector Auster told the international press conference assembled today that it had not been 'easy' - "As you may be aware Windmills don't speak in our language, rather they converse in a form of music, so we needed to bring in specialists to find out what this one was saying."

The musicians from the Hunter Wind Ensemble translated testimony from 'Windemere' to English for over 4 hours hours today. What emerged was a tale of tragic terror, and an insight into a hitherto unknown world of windmills.

At dusk on the evening of the 27 January 2008 they were set upon by large 'flying sharks' called 'coaliaths' who descended on the group of 60 odd art installations. Most of the windmills took flight, leaving their tails, much like lizards, as is also done in their species. They fly and scatter, similar to a dandelion's seeds when the wind or a person's breath blows the seeds off into the world. Some unfortunately did not make it, and were destroyed by the coaliaths.

The windmills are said travel the earth, in some cases for years, before sailing down to germinate more of their kind in what we call 'wind farms'.

Dr Albrecht of the University of Newcastle, an expert in such species, said this recent discovery was amazing, and would lead to greater understanding of the phenomenon.

"Words cannot describe my excitement" Dr Albrecht said. "To be now able to communicate with these lifeforms will help us to understand what they need in order to thrive." "I have also discovered that these species cause sickness then death to the 'coaliaths' that attack and eat them". Coaliaths are known to cause a medical condition known as 'solastalgia', or the 'feeling of homelessness while you're still at home'. They are also responsible for clawing out huge chunks of the landscape of the Hunter Region. "They have voracious appetites" Dr Albrecht said.

Evidence of Coaliath Investation

In the Newcastle Herald it was reported that over night these 'flying sharks' struck again on another art installation, unfortunately in this case the flat people had no means of flight at their disposal.


Investigations are continuing with another sighting over the Sydney Opera reported.

Missing Windmills - Further Sightings

NEWCASTLE - Australia - Further reports have come in of sightings of missing windmills that mysteriously disappeared on January 25. A tourist holidaying at Cairo snapped this image of a solitary windmill flying past the Giza Pyramids. Another on board an Antarctic Exploration vessel reported a number of windmills flying in formation over this tabular ice berg that had just broken off.


"They've got to be ours" said Varelle Hardy, spokesperson for the Breath of Life art installation team. "I just can't believe they've survived, we are all overwhelmed."

This was just the tip of the iceberg as Google reports over 190 sightings from 61 cities across the world.



The reports were confirmed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) who are assisting local police in tracking the missing windmills via satellite. A NASA official said that it was established protocol that when foreign bodies, such as these windmills, entered American airspace they be tracked. "This occurred 8.45pm our time when reports started flooding in of these flying white pinwheels passing our Statue of Liberty" the official said.

Detective Auster of Operation Boreas said while this was encouraging information their enquiries are continuing. "This is great news. We hope to get to the bottom of this when our forensic detectives interview the one surviving windmill later today" he said.