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Described by its American director Conner Griffith as an ‘advertisement for planet Earth’, Ripple consists of a torrent of images contrasting the planet’s natural and developed surfaces. Assembled largely using Google Earth and Wikipedia, Ripple uses overhead shots of cities, port terminals, farmland and even microchips to offer a startling perspective on the profound marks we have left on this planet. The video’s imagery allows us to see the world and its myriad details in fresh ways, suggesting a poetics of technology that can admire human achievement without blindly embracing it.
Director: Conner Griffith
video
Childhood and adolescence
Marmar is living through a devastating war – but she’d rather tell you about her new dress
8 minutes
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
The ‘cloud’ requires heaps of energy to stay aloft. Could synthetic DNA be the answer?
12 minutes
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Art
A puppeteer makes sense of an overwhelming world by shrinking it down to size
5 minutes
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History
There are fragments of Romani Gypsy history all over the UK – if one knows where to look
3 minutes
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Biology
Brilliant dots of colour form exquisite patterns in this close-up of butterfly wings
3 minutes
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Anthropology
Does Mogi’s future lie with her horses on the Mongolian steppe, or in the city?
16 minutes
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Genetics
Why it took a century to work out that humans interbred with Neanderthals
22 minutes
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Art
The sprawling mural that depicts an unflinching people’s history of Los Angeles
7 minutes
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Personality
A ‘dumpster archeologist’ reconstructs strangers’ stories via what they’ve discarded
14 minutes