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Although they may look computer-generated, the micro-images created by Maria Ferreira at the Rhode Island School of Design, examine a very real world ordinarily imperceptible to the human eye. In her short video Lattice, Ferreira uses a polarising filter under an inverted microscope to transform growing crystalline masses into otherworldly prismatic landscapes, revealing the striking beauty and complex geometry of crystal formation.
Director: Maria Constanza Ferreira
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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
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Engineering
From simple motors to levitating trains – how design shapes innovation
23 minutes
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Animals and humans
Are zoos and natural history museums born of a desire to understand, or to control?
57 minutes
video
Virtues and vices
Why Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith were divided on the virtues of vanity
5 minutes
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Ecology and environmental sciences
The tree frog die-off that sparked a global mystery – and revealed a dark truth
15 minutes
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Beauty and aesthetics
In art, the sublime is a feedback loop, evolving with whatever’s next to threaten us
9 minutes
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Film and visual culture
Our world has very different contours when a millimetre is blown up to a full screen
8 minutes
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Bioethics
What a 1970 experiment reveals about the possibility and perils of ‘head transplants’
6 minutes