Film, Video & Music
bioephemera | July 14, 2008
You may have already seen this video over at Boing Boing, but I thought it was worth posting anyway: a flock of what look like starlings doing some seriously creepy flocking. Check out the ribbon formation about ten seconds in. It literally gave me goosebumps!
Link
bioephemera | July 9, 2008"Sonnet: To Science"
words by Edgar Allan Poe
song by Alex Colwell
video by Jeff Burns
From oilcanpress
I love the pairing of Poe's sonnet, which basically accuses Science of destroying the poetic mysteries that make life meaningful, with the techno-optimistic nostalgia of early films glorifying science and technology. Yummy!
Poe had a curious relationship with science. Despite the accusatory tone of his poem, Poe was fairly well-versed in contemporary scientific theory, with a solid grasp of astronomy in particular. Poe even wrote a small book called Eureka (1848) about his early,…
bioephemera | July 8, 2008
Those of you in the greater DC area may be interested in the NIH Science in the Cinema Film Series at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring.
Starting tomorrow, July 9, there will be free weekly screenings of films centered on various medical conditions - like Alzheimer's (Away from Her), locked-in syndrome (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) and HIV/AIDS (Life Support). The films will be followed by commentary from researchers in the field and a Q&A session, which could be interesting, given the directorial liberties that are often taken in films dealing with medicine and biology.
If…
bioephemera | June 26, 2008This is why I don't do digital art (click PLAY, or for a larger, higher-res version, go to the link below):
AtomFilms.com: Funny Videos | Funny Cartoons | Comedy Central
Higher-res version: "Animator vs. Animation" by Alan Becker
Sequel (via GrrrlScientist, thanks Bob O for the heads-up): "Animator vs. Animation II" by Alan Becker (this summarizes nicely why the second and third Matrix films were doomed to mediocrity).
bioephemera | June 24, 2008
Mark Wahlberg's science teacher contends with his own confusion while gratuitously alluding to Einstein.
Zade Rosenthal. c 2008 Twentieth Century Fox. All rights reserved.
Last night I saw The Happening, which is hands down the worst film since Battlefield Earth. I savor big-budget, mindless popcorn romps (Independence Day, yay!) but The Happening was a nasty lump of awful dialogue, overacting/nonacting, and ludicrous pseudoscience. I'm not sure how this film even got released. Several people fled the theatre as it became painfully clear just how bad it was. Those of us who stayed were…
bioephemera | June 13, 2008
Phobia
Joshua Hoffine
Joshua Hoffine's tongue-in-cheek riffs on Hollywood horror archetypes are the perfect post for Friday the 13th - a Friday which also happens to be the Ides of June. Beware!
According to Hoffine's website,
I stage my photo shoots like small movies, with sets, costumes, elaborate props, fog machines, and special effects make-up. . . My images are not photoshop collages. . . I use friends and family members as actors and crew. Everyone works for free. We do it for fun.
Staging scenes from imagined horror films is a pretty imaginative way to bond as a family, isn't it?…
bioephemera | May 23, 2008
Chris Smith and Todd Redmond of Crowboy recently asked to use my painting Fly Away Home as the cover of their new alt-country album, Making Up for Lost Time.
This painting was inspired by a rusty aqua trailer that my dad bought and refurbished twenty years ago for use as a family vacation cabin in Idaho. My dad passed away in 2003, but I think he would have enjoyed Crowboy's music, so I was happy to give Chris and Todd temporary custody. They're both visual artists as well, and I think they did a lovely job putting their album together.
To celebrate the release of Making Up For Lost Time,…
bioephemera | March 26, 2008
from Darwin's Natural Heir
Directed by David Dugan; produced by Neil Patterson
I am a specialized advocate: an advocate for the rest of life. I hope that doesn't sound pompous, but all of us should be advocates for the rest of life. -E.O. Wilson
Last Tuesday I visited the National Geographic Society for the premiere of "Darwin's Natural Heir," a documentary by Neil Patterson about the career and life of naturalist Edward O. Wilson. It's a nice little film, with some effective graphics and visual metaphors, and a good dose of humor. But I wasn't there to see the film. I was there to meet E.…
bioephemera | March 25, 2008Have you heard the song about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle? Check out Jonny Berliner on yesterday's Guardian Science Weekly podcast:
Everett said that there are infinite realities
The Copenhagen explanations sound like insanity
With consciousness affecting wavy-particle dualities
The actualities are rather mysterious
bioephemera | March 25, 2008
Photo: John Downer
Trunk-cams and tusk-cams - apparently when they're not painting portraits of each other, elephants are film auteurs:
One carried a "trunk-cam" - a device resembling a huge log concealing a camera which could be held in its trunk and dangled close to the ground. Another had a "tusk-cam" hooked over its tusk. The elephants moved so steadily that the images are pin-sharp. Other log-cams were left on the forest floor. The high-definition cameras were created by inventor Geoff Bell for a documentary in the remote Pench National Park in Madhya Pradesh in the heart of India. (…
bioephemera | March 6, 2008Zooillogix posted this video of an elephant that paints "realistic paintings of other elephants:"
It's a fluff piece, granted, but it gestures towards credibility by bringing in an "art expert" (and, I'm guessing, cutting 98% of her comments). The genial narrator, anticipating our astonishment that an elephant could learn to paint portraits, reassures us that it is indeed possible, and that "what makes it possible is the trunk." Uh, no. The trunk is what makes it possible for the elephant to grasp a human-style brush and execute fine motor movements. The brain is what makes any artist an…
bioephemera | February 17, 2008
Golden Age of Scientific Computing
Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute
In a Friday session at the AAAS conference here in Boston, Dr. Chris Johnson of Utah's Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute showed this short video encapsulating some of his team's striking 3D imaging innovations. He also made what I think is a very important point: that one of the biggest challenges in his field lies not in finding new technologies to capture details, but finding new ways to generate abstractions of data - images that don't just depict results for presentation, but help to clarify…
bioephemera | February 13, 2008One of the questions an artist hates most is what is your artwork worth? Price is a subjective, unsatisfactory proxy for emotional angst, frustration, eyestrain, and time. Sometimes I find that NO (reasonable) value can compensate for the emotional investment I've made - in which case I either keep the thing myself, give it away, or throw a tantrum and rip it up. Other variables also influence price - the artist's fame and skill, obviously, but also whether the work has been copied. People are willing to pay a premium to own original art, even if a reproduction is virtually identical in…