via maximumfun.org

The Sound of Young America

On “The Sound of Young America” the inimitable Jesse Thorn interviews the director of Philadelphia’s fascinating Mutter Museum – a treasure trove of medical history and strangeness.

Posted via web from Hazlett’s Occasional

Definitely use the HD viewing option for this featured work from the Imagine Science Film Festival’s Vimeo Short Film Contest:

Glenn Marshall, an Irish computer artist and musician, created this work by filtering music through a series of formulae using an open source tool called Processing. He writes at length about how he created this “generative animation” at his website.  A taste:

Nearly everything is controlled by multiple oscillators which when offset and multiplied by each other create an organic, continually changing pathway for the snake body to follow.  The camera z depth is also hooked onto an oscillator, and also tracks a fixed point close to the head of the snake.

He has created some beautiful art using these tools–from a forthcoming iPhone app to an award-winning Peter Gabriel video.  Marshall’s work is one of many beautiful short films blending artistry and science at the Imagine Science Film Festival group in Vimeo.  The 2009 festival will be held in New York in October.

[See also this previous post on the ISF project and other "Interesting Videos" highlighted at The Occasional.]

Absolutely gorgeous imagery of the red planet and its landscapes…

[Hat tip: Bruce Hoepner via Facebook]

James Randerson writes in the Guardian:

I thought my capacity for sheer jaw-dropping amazement at the Antikythera mechanism had been well and truly exhausted – until last night. The puzzling instrument is a clockwork computer from ancient Greece that used a fiendishly complex assembly of meshed cogs to simulate the movement of the planets, predict lunar eclipses and indicate the dates of major sporting events.

The clockwork technology in the device was already known to be centuries ahead of its time, but new evidence suggests that the enigmatic machine is even older than scientists had realised.

The whole story is here at the Guardian.  They have also posted an amazing video that demonstrates how we think the gizmo worked.

[via Design Observer's Twitter feed]

Parallelostory from impactist on Vimeo.

This two minute wonder is an example of the kind of work encouraged by a non-profit organization called Imagine Science Films.  They are looking for new ways to enhance understanding of science by encouraging filmmakers and scientists to collaborate in imaginative ways.  As they gear up for a festival this summer, they are releasing “video picks of the week” at Vimeo.  Definitely worth exploring and enjoying.

As reported in the Studio 360 story linked above, MIT biologist Hazel Sive has found a fun and involving way of conveying her passion for science… providing rock soundtracks for videos of biological processes like frog embryo development. Her musical taste is decidedly baby boomerish, but the result is very enjoyable.

A team of filmmakers used images and data from a NASA satellite mission to record the solar winds to create some fascinating electronic art.  “Listen” to the solar breezes and watch the universe go by…

Black Rain from Semiconductor on Vimeo.