Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Designed to help ships navigate through hazards such as reduced visibility, foghorns first started appearing on coastlines in the 1850s. While imperfect messengers, these elaborate and powerful steam whistles were nonetheless considered an improvement on the systems of lights, rockets and cannons that predated them for centuries, until simpler horn designs, and later, GPS, rendered them obsolete. This brief piece from the UK filmmaker J J Jamieson transports viewers to the Sumburgh Lighthouse in Shetland, in the far north of Scotland, for the annual sounding of its recently refurbished foghorn. With an artful editing style, the short video captures the intricate, elegant mechanics that awake the powerful horn from its slumber, and send it bellowing across the scenic coastline.
Via Kottke
Director: J J Jamieson
video
Nature and landscape
California’s landscapes provide endless inspiration for a woodcut printmaker
10 minutes
video
Love and friendship
Never marry a man you love too much, and other views on romance in Sierra Leone
5 minutes
video
Engineering
Can monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive?
15 minutes
video
History of technology
Curious singles and tech sceptics – what ‘computer dating’ looked like in 1966
6 minutes
video
Cognition and intelligence
A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory
4 minutes
video
Animals and humans
Join seabirds as they migrate, encountering human communities along the way
13 minutes
video
Stories and literature
Two variants of a Hindu myth come alive in an animated ode to Indian storytelling
14 minutes
video
Technology and the self
The commodified childhood – scenes from two sisters’ lives in the creator economy
14 minutes
video
Fairness and equality
There’s a dirty side to clean energy in the metal-rich mountains of South Africa
10 minutes