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In Chemical Somnia, the Canadian filmmaker Scott Portingale captures the beauty of chemical reactions in wondrous detail. Using time-lapse and macro photography, even a spot smaller than a square inch on a Petri dish springs to dazzling life, capturing processes of crystalisation, phase change and fluid dynamics at speeds and sizes that the human eye can relish. Portingale sets these visuals to a dramatic string score from the Turkish composer Gorkem Sen – performed on an instrument called a yaybahar, which Sen himself invented. Through their inspired collaboration, the pair craft an otherworldly experience at the intersection of human and hidden scales, and the worlds of art and science.
Director: Scott Portingale
Music: Gorkem Sen
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Animals and humans
The wild tale of a young animal keeper, an angry tiger and a torn circle net
10 minutes
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Beauty and aesthetics
Can you see music in this painting? How synaesthesia fuelled Kandinsky’s art
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Astronomy
The remarkable innovations inspired by our need to know the night sky
5 minutes
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Knowledge
Why it takes more than a lifetime to truly understand a single meadow
11 minutes
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Physics
Groundbreaking visualisations show how the world of the nucleus gives rise to our own
10 minutes
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War and peace
‘She is living on in many hearts’ – Otto Frank on the legacy of his daughter’s diary
12 minutes
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Art
Why Diego Velázquez needed a lifetime to paint his enigmatic masterpiece
31 minutes
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Earth science and climate
There’s a ‘climate bomb’ ticking beneath the Arctic ice. How can we prepare?
8 minutes
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Political philosophy
The radical activist couple who fought for social change in the courtroom
21 minutes