Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Mark Firth doesn’t talk, or work, like a stereotypical artist. ‘Machinery is my vocabulary,’ he says, surrounded by rulers, cutting mats, sketchbooks filled with ‘page after page of numbers’ and devices designed to shave metal to the thousandth of an inch. His London studio, with its whirring machinery and mostly unadorned walls, would be easy to mistake for a boutique metal workshop. But as the short film Precision as a State of Mind details, Firth has a refined artistic vision – one inspired by the intersection of objects and science, as well as the creative problem-solving that emerges from his intricate processes. The short documentary captures Firth in his studio over the course of two years as he creates block sculptures for an exhibition at the Graves Gallery in Sheffield, England. Featuring Firth’s gentle narration set against a barely there score and cinematography as precise as its subject, the film provides a meditative window into the world that Firth has built around the things that fascinate him.
Video by Sheffield Museums
Director: Alan Silvester
video
Design and fashion
A ceramicist puts her own bawdy spin on the folk language of pottery
14 minutes
video
Animals and humans
Villagers struggle to keep their beloved, endangered ape population afloat
19 minutes
video
Language and linguistics
Why Susan listens to recordings of herself speaking a language she no longer remembers
5 minutes
video
Ethics
Plato saw little value in privacy. How do his ideas hold up in the information age?
5 minutes
video
Biology
Starlings swoosh like brushstrokes across the sky in this dazzling short
3 minutes
video
Information and communication
‘Astonished and somewhat terrified’ – Victorians’ reactions to the phonograph
36 minutes
video
Engineering
From simple motors to levitating trains – how design shapes innovation
23 minutes
video
Home
How an artist transformed a dilapidated hunting lodge into a house made of dreams
8 minutes
video
Animals and humans
Are zoos and natural history museums born of a desire to understand, or to control?
57 minutes