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At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Digital Life initiative endeavours to create high-quality 3D digital models of living organisms – especially those on the brink of extinction. This modern Noah’s Ark is just one of the ways humanity is digitising a world in ecological peril. But what does this impulse, combined with the rise of ‘simulation theory’, say about us? Is the idea that we can digitally preserve and simulate biology, or that we already exist in a computer-simulated reality, merely a way to comfort ourselves as we drive our world further toward ecological collapse? In a collage pulled together from the world of digitisation, the experimental short Our Ark ponders whether these notions of parallel simulated worlds are a means of offering ourselves ‘solace in the face of paralysis’.
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Death
Even in modern secular societies, belief in an afterlife persists. Why?
9 minutes
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Nature and landscape
Take a serene hike through an ancient forest, inspired by a Miyazaki masterpiece
6 minutes
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Design and fashion
The mundane becomes mesmerising in this deep dive into segmented displays
14 minutes
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Physics
A song of ice, fire and jelly – exploring the physics and history of the trumpet
9 minutes
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Architecture
Tour the European architecture that dreamed of a wondrous, fictitious China
16 minutes
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Spirituality
Trek alongside spiritual pilgrims on a treacherous journey across Pakistan
6 minutes
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Thinkers and theories
Photographs offer a colonialist window to the past – one that must be challenged
14 minutes
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Animals and humans
An artist and ants collaborate on an exhibit of ‘tiny Abstract Expressionist paintings’
5 minutes
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Mathematics
How a curious question about colouring maps changed mathematics forever
9 minutes