Thursday 24 February 2011

Coral Gardening: Ecological Remediation of fast disappearing coral reefs


Large areas of the world’s oceans are experiencing devastation caused by coral bleaching. According to Clive Wilkinson of the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network:   “…May, June, we started seeing massive bleaching in the Andaman Sea side and then in the Gulf of Thailand and now it is appearing to spread across through Indonesia and up into Vietnam and Southeast Asia. And it will possibly start to affect Taiwan and southern Japan very soon.”

You might think its tides floods and disasters that are chiefly to blame for coral reefs fast disappearing, but nay its largely due to human interventions like global warming and overtly heavy industrialized or exploitative fishing, depleting the ocean of a huge range of fisheries.

Jonathan Clay directed and produced this documentary video for the BBC Natural History Unit, and its about an amazing pilot project in Fiji that is bringing damaged coral reefs back to life.



Judging by the success of a few Fijian divers, in the above video, it now appears to be up to science researchers, marine engineers and governments to upscale this ecological remediation technique !

Go here for more information on the project featured in the above video.

Saturday 19 February 2011

Black Liquid; abstract media art


Dimitry Zakharov is a practicing video producer and designer that creates amazingly entertaining animations and videos by using 3D and 4D Cinema software's. Black Liquid is a fluently evocative abstract stop motion animation that swings forms and shapes around the picture plane, sometimes collapsing and reforming shapes and then ripping them apart with heaps of fluid dexterity.

The animation holds our attention by the synchronized pulses and smoothly tuneful play of the sound design from coresplittaz, which turns this short moment of fluidic joy into a handsome media art package.

Tuesday 15 February 2011

Opening up a wormhole shooting at 2,564 frames per second.


Director of Photography, Cinematographer and Editor , Tom Guilmette was given a high speed Phantom Flex, Rule Boston video camera to shoot the fast and mentally demanding World Championships of Ping Pong (WCPP), in a way that was never before seen.

"The most surprising thing about the new Flex camera is its light sensitivity and native noiseless 1000 ISO. Dave and I were able to record 600 FPS under Rule office fluorescent ceiling lights! The picture was not perfectly exposed, but we were making flicker-free images at that insane frame rate. If you are not familiar with high speed, a ton of light is needed and flicker is almost always a problem. But this camera is the most sensitive yet. The new Flex is “simply magic”. I think I said that to Dave more than once at Rule."

To familiarize himself with the Flex camera, Tom shot a bunch of test footage's in his locked Las Vegas hotel room and together with some of his friends created an insanely entertaining media art piece by editing in, sped up and slowed sound bytes, overlaid with some wild percussion, resulting in a punctually satisfying sound design.

Hence in his minds eye slow-motion video, below, Tom believes he is "Violating the laws of nature. Playing God. Capturing stuff we are not suppose to see. Potentially opening up a wormhole in the fabric of time." Nevertheless a suspension and a collapse of space time all at once, huh?

Saturday 12 February 2011

Macro Kingdom; enhanced microcosmic media art


Clemens Wirth does some really entertaining and engaging macro and microscopic photography and videography of unseen microcosms from within an unseen universe that bind us together.

He brings to life, forms, shapes and ideas from a world we are aware of but rarely have the opportunity to see.

Macro Kingdom, is part 3 of his creative vision, an ongoing project poem of the scaled down infinite world made ever more so memorable by sounds, created from found objects by the sound design of Radium Audio and vocals by Melanie Pappenheim.

Monday 7 February 2011

Australia 2011: Too Many Environmentally Devastating Firsts, already


The flooding never stops as Australia's Victoria (see video, below), gets a creeping massive inland sea that obliterates townships, villages, lively-hoods and municipal infrastructure throughout its north west.

Sydneysiders have just this afternoon received a very welcome cool strong burst of cool air lifting us out of the worst full 7 days on record of a 'round the clock' severe heatwave. Albeit north east Queensland has progressed to the mopping up phase, of tropical cyclone Yasi; hopefully giving rise to some worthwhile form of social and infrastructural remediation from the worst tropical cyclone in recorded history.

Simultaneously at present the remnant cyclonic stream from Yasi is rummaging across inner west Queensland towards the center of Australia, as the worst flood in recorded history is swamping multitudinous hectares of north western Victoria. Into this mix Australians struggle, perspire, sweat, or boat across wide open expanses of temporary flooded plains, hopefully to nearby evacuation centers.



Go here for current live weather map feeds of Victoria, and or go read of the super-cell thunderstorms presently pounding Victoria.

Hey, but if things couldn't get any worse, with news just in; South Australia has just now been impacted by the petering out tropical cyclone Yasi.

"The landscape is sodden across a wide area of South Australia. Yongala received 128 millimeters of rain in 24 hours, beating a record set 121 years ago. Hallett in the mid-north also had a record fall of 98 millimeters, beating a mark set in 1890".

Go read the full story and view the video, from ABC News.

Saturday 5 February 2011

Unreal Stop-Motion Animation: Meta


is a graduation media art project designed and directed by Jurriƫn Boogert and is a masterpiece of contrived suspended anticipatory entertainment.

The work is likely made with some kinds of unspecified 3D and stop motion animation software's, with beautifully composed sound design.

Wednesday 2 February 2011

Devastating Tropical Cyclone Yasi Satellite & Radar time lapse video

The biggest category 5 cyclone in recorded history is presently beginning to batter the geography of far north Queensland coastal region, at a breadth of more than 200 kilometers. The nastiness is expected to penetrate the inland for at least another 3-400 kilometers, until if we can believe the meterologists, should begin to subside.

"This time lapse (video) uses false color infrared imagery from JMA's MTSAT geostationary satellite & radar data from the Australia BoM to track the path of the Tropical Cyclone Yasi as it forms and heads towards the Queensland Coast."



Environmental degradation, possible risks to human life and possessions are expected to deliver expotential ill outcomes.

For the most current versions of this satellite imagery, go here.

Tuesday 1 February 2011

Theo Jansen's biomorphic machine, Animaris Siamesis


is a huge insect-like structure that moves independently and gracefully with the wind.

Theo Jansen has been developing his beach based environmentally friendly kinetic sculptures for about 20 years. His first biomorphic machines walked only in one direction. Since then he has developed his Strandbeest's as he affectionately calls them, to walk, powered by the wind.

Essentially,  Strandbeest's are made from recycled materials - cable, PVC conduit and plastic bottles. Animaris Siamesis, his most recent incarnation is driven pneumatically - wind-powered pistons compress air into  bottles, from which it's released to drive the walking legs.

Amazingly his latest version stores some of the wind's energy in plastic bottle 'stomachs' to be used when there is no wind, as we see in his video, here, his graceful creature doing a short walk on compressed wind from the wind stomach.



He intends these graceful creatures to continue to walk up and down the beach long after his life has passed, as we hear in this other video.

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