Stephen Fry Introduces the Strange New World of Nanoscience

in Science, Video - Science | December 9th, 2011

What is nano? And how will nanoscience (the study of phe­nom­e­na and manip­u­la­tion of mate­ri­als at the nanoscale) shape our future, from the way we build hous­es to how we cure dis­eases? It’s all explained in a snap­py 17 minute video nar­rat­ed by Stephen Fry (British writer, actor and direc­tor). Pro­duced in part­ner­ship with Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, NANO YOU was named the best short film at the Scin­e­ma Sci­ence Film Fes­ti­val in 2010.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry & Friends Pay Trib­ute to Christo­pher Hitchens

Stephen Fry on Phi­los­o­phy and Unbe­lief

Stephen Fry Gets Ani­mat­ed about Lan­guage

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HDR Skies: Beautiful Time-Lapse Film of the French Countryside

in Art, Technology | December 9th, 2011

French pho­tog­ra­ph­er Tan­guy Lou­vi­gny cre­at­ed this time-lapse film of bucol­ic Nor­mandy and Brit­tany using High Dynam­ic Range (HDR) imag­ing tech­niques.

From for­est floor to set­ting sun, Lou­vi­gny’s shots ren­der fine detail across an extreme­ly wide range of lumi­nos­i­ty. To achieve this he used the auto-brack­et­ing fea­ture of his Canon EOS 400D and 60D cam­eras to cre­ate three dif­fer­ent expo­sures for each frame in the film. (At 30 frames per sec­ond, that’s 90 expo­sures for each sec­ond of screen time.) Lou­vi­gny then merged each set of three expo­sures into one image using Pho­toma­trix Pro 4.0 soft­ware, selec­tive­ly tone map­ping each sequence to hold detail in some areas while allow­ing oth­ers to go dark.

To cre­ate the mov­ing-cam­era effects, Lou­vi­gny designed and built his own robot­ic three-axis motion sys­tem using Tetrix motors and a LEGO Mind­storms con­trol sys­tem, which he pro­grammed in ROBOTC lan­guage. This allowed him to auto­mate the tor­toise-like dol­ly, pan and tilt move­ments. Lou­vi­gny edit­ed the dig­i­tal film in Adobe Pre­miere and After Effects soft­ware. To top it off he com­posed his own music on a Roland MC-808 groove­box. For more infor­ma­tion, go to the pho­tog­ra­pher’s web­site and Vimeo page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Invent­ing the Dig­i­tal Cam­era: A Short Por­trait of Steven Sas­son

Darren’s Big DIY Cam­era

Walt Dis­ney Presents the Super Car­toon Cam­era

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Jazz for Cows

in Music | December 9th, 2011

The French love their jazz. The peo­ple love it. Their cows love it no less.

Here we have The New Hot 5, a New Orleans-style band, bring­ing their act to the pas­tures of Autrans, France, and treat­ing the audi­ence to an Amer­i­can clas­sic, “When the Saints Go March­ing In.” You can learn more about The New Hot 5 at jazzforcows.com.

Speak­ing of France, we have added French lessons by Carnegie Mel­lon and the BBC added to our col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mari­achi Band Ser­e­nades Bel­u­ga Whale at Mys­tic Aquar­i­um

John Coltrane Plays Only Live Per­for­mance of A Love Supreme

Vin­tage Djan­go

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Philip Glass & Lou Reed at Occupy Lincoln Center: An Artful View

in Current Affairs, Music | December 9th, 2011

Last week, com­pos­er Philip Glass and rock leg­end Lou Reed embraced the Occu­py Wall Street move­ment. Ini­tial video & audio clips cap­tur­ing their appear­ances were shod­dy at best. Now Jean Thevenin (who joined the protest at Lin­coln Cen­ter Plaza) has giv­en us a bet­ter view, pro­duc­ing a short, ele­gant film sim­ply called Vis­i­ble Shape. The accom­pa­ny­ing music is “Protest” from Satya­gra­ha, writ­ten by Philip Glass and per­formed by New York City Opera Orches­tra.

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