Posts tagged ‘video’
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Video: Time-Lapse of Ant Colony Living Inside Scanner
François Vautier made this time-lapse video of an ant colony inside his scanner, by scanning the nest each week for 5 years!
Via MAKE Magazine
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Electric Butterfly in a Jar
Check out this super realistic looking electric butterfly, made by Japanese toy company Tenyo. The butterfly flies around the jar when you tap on the lid.
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Chris Watson in The Wire
Pestival friend and collaborator Chris Watson is on the cover of The Wire magazine this month, with a feature by Ken Hollings.
Chris Watson refers to himself as a sound recordist, but it feels like an understatement: he has made his instrument, the microphone, a powerful tool for eavesdropping on wildlife and wild places to reveal sounds and environments free of human presence. Since leaving Cabaret Voltaire in 1983, he has travelled from pole to pole (geographically and musically), working with everyone from David Attenborough to z’ev.
Great insect-themed photo shoot with Chris at the Natural History Museum, courtesy of Jake Walters.
Check out Chris Watson’s fantastic sound installation, Whispering in the Leaves, currently at London’s Kew Gardens until 5 September. Alongside the installation, there’s a great programme of performances, workshops, guided tours and talks.
Here’s a short documentary on Whispering in the Leaves:
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Cataloguing the World’s Ants
Yesterday, Boing Boing’s David Pescovitz posted the documentary “Ants: The Invisible Majority”, about Californian entomologist Dr. Brian Fisher’s attempt to catalogue the world’s 30,000 species of ants before they’re extinct. Fisher has designed the website AntWeb, which digitises data and photos of different ant species. He calls on all amateur taxonomists to help catalogue ants, saying “We’ve discovered but 10% of the living things on earth. 90% is out there to be found. We need more taxonomists!”
The video also talks about evolutionary biologist Neil Tsutsui’s research into the invasive Argentine ant, which has eliminated almost all native ant species in its path, since it was introduced to the states from South America in the 1890s. Usually, most ants will fight against other colonies of the same species, but these Argentine ants form ‘super-colonies’, and cooperate with each other, leading to their high population densities. Ants can tell other species apart from waxy chemicals on their exoskeletons. Tsutsui found that by changing their external chemical uniform, they can turn friend into foe. He hopes to develop non-toxic insecticides to convince members of the Argentine colony to fight each other, leaving other ant species unharmed.
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Bob and Roberta Smith Presents the Art Colony
Bob and Roberta Smith introduces the Art Colony in front of the new Insect Arts Club / Pestival HQ.
The Art Colony is inviting different people from science, philosophy, art, technology, design, architecture, music, dance, film and more to come and collaborate with them and the conservation scientists at ZSL London Zoo, along the north bank of the Camden Canal. The first artist to contribute to the Colony is Bob and Roberta Smith, one of the founding Art Colony members. When Bob was talking here, the painting of the hut wasn’t complete. Afterward, Bob added the insects to complete the new Pestival HQ. We’ll be putting up pictures soon of the finished hut, so you can see it in all its bug art glory!
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Tonight: Bridget Nicholls on Radio 3 Night Waves
Pestival Director Bridget Nicholls is one of the expert guests on BBC Radio 3′s Night Waves tonight at 9.15pm. This Landmarks episode discusses Jacques Cousteau’s revolutionary documentary The Silent World, one of the first ever films to use underwater cinematography. Tune in tonight or listen to it later!
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Artificial Butterfly Filmed in Flight
Japanese researchers Hiroto Tanaka and Isao Shimoyama have created a working replica of a swallowtail butterfly to study flight mechanics. Made from balsa wood, a rubber band, a wire crank, and with thin polymer wings, the model is the same size and weight as a real swallowtail butterfly, and flies just like one too.
Filmed in high speed, the flapping wing motion can be analysed:
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Musical Ant Farm
Check out Vermont-based artist Adam Franchino‘s interactive musical ant farm!
From Design Boom:
the project utilizes infrared sensors that act as gates for the ants inside the farm. the sound of the device alters based on how many ants pass through the gate and at what pace.
an arduino program provides the computer power to create the soundtrack. the gates are all magnetized so that they can be moved around the ant farm. -
Interview with Bridget at The Dream Factory
An interview with Bridget from The Dream Factory website.
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3D Images Show Inside View of Beehive
Check out entomologist Mark Greco and his team at the Swiss Bee Research Centre in Bern. They’ve devised a new 3D imaging technique called Diagnostic Radioentomology (DR) to scan a live beehive. That means we can see what’s going on “in da hive” in real time without disturbing the bees. Very useful in these terrible times of colony collapse, as it might give us some clues to help the bees survive….
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Video: The Termite Pavilion by Night
Here’s some more time-lapse footage of the marvelous Termite Pavilion, revealing quite how dramatic it looked when lit up in the evening.
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Interview with Noboru Tsubaki
Noboru Tsubaki talks about the ideas behind his Moonwalker Vegetable Wasp creation at Pestival 2009. The project was conceived before Michael Jackson’s death in the summer, and Tsubaki reveals how his shock and sadness fed back into the artwork.
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Video: The Termite Pavilion being built
Watch the centre-piece of this year’s Pestival – the Termite Pavilion – being put together layer by layer in this time lapse film.
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Video: The Decayed Book
Park Light Pictures have made a short film to accompany Mark Cockram’s beautiful art work that was displayed at the Pestival:
