Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
A project by the Italian chemistry student and photographer Emanuele Fornasier, Crystal Birth features close-up time-lapse photography of electrocrystallisation, a process in which an electrical current running through a chemical solution results in the gradual buildup of metal on an electrode. By carrying out this process over hours or days, depending on the chemicals present in the reaction, Fornasier is able to capture crystals piling on beautifully, layer by layer, in a remarkable synthesis of science and art.
Via Colossal.
Director: Emanuele Fornasier
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
Why large language models are mysterious – even to their creators
8 minutes
video
Sports and games
Havana’s streets become racetracks in this exhilarating portrait of children at play
5 minutes
video
Evolution
The many ways a lizard tongue sticks, grasps, pinches and plops – in slo-mo
6 minutes
video
Design and fashion
A ceramicist puts her own bawdy spin on the folk language of pottery
14 minutes
video
Art
Radical doodles – how ‘exquisite corpse’ games embodied the Surrealist movement
15 minutes
video
Language and linguistics
Why Susan listens to recordings of herself speaking a language she no longer remembers
5 minutes
video
Biology
Starlings swoosh like brushstrokes across the sky in this dazzling short
3 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