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For As Above, the Paris-based artist Roman Hill captured 10 minutes of footage of a chemical reaction occurring on an 8 mm2 surface. Following a months-long period of extensive editing and colour-grading, the French filmmaker and musician Thomas Vanz composed a pensive piano score to accompany the imagery. Inspired by the sense of awe evoked by both telescopic views of the cosmos and microscopic views of cells, Hill’s project forges a sublime – and visually enchanting – connection between things extraordinarily large and small.
Director: Roman Hill
Composer: Thomas Vanz
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Technology and the self
Greetings from Green Bank – the small town where modern technology is banned
10 minutes
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Stories and literature
What makes John Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ so enduringly powerful?
10 minutes
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Human evolution
Far from frivolous, cuteness is a powerful – and still mysterious – force of nature
6 minutes
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Dance and theatre
How a Noh mask-maker summons a lifelike face from a single block of wood
16 minutes
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The ancient world
What wine vessels reveal about politics and luxury in ancient Athens and Persia
16 minutes
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Art
David Goldblatt captured the contradictions of apartheid in stark black and white
15 minutes
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Space exploration
In the search for life, might alien ocean worlds be a better bet than Earth-like planets?
5 minutes
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Love and friendship
When drawing your muse hundreds of times becomes an exercise in love
7 minutes
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Thinkers and theories
Is simulation theory a way to shirk responsibility for the world we’ve created?
13 minutes