681 – Isle of Dogs (2018)

timespace coordinates: 2038 Japan

Isle of Dogs (Japanese: 犬ヶ島 Hepburn: Inugashima) is a 2018 stop-motion animated film written, produced and directed by Wes Anderson. Set in a dystopian near-future Japan, the story follows a young boy searching for his dog after the species is banished to an island following the outbreak of a canine flu. The film’s ensemble voice cast includes Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Bob Balaban, Greta Gerwig, Frances McDormand, Courtney B. Vance, Fisher Stevens, Harvey Keitel, Liev Schreiber, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, F. Murray Abraham, Frank Wood, Kunichi Nomura and Yoko Ono.

Anderson said that the film was strongly influenced by the films of Akira Kurosawa, as well as the stop-motion animated holiday specials made by Rankin/Bass Productions. (wiki)

https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/23-29-april-2018/erica-dorn-on-creating-graphics-for-wes-andersons-isle-of-dogs/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5104604/

674 – Secret Life Underground: Series 1 (2016 documentary)

Nature Documentary hosted by Geoffrey Bateman, published by Arte in 2016 – English narration. (docuwiki)

The underground world is so unfamiliar to us that you only have to dig down a few yards to reveal a totally unknown realm, just beneath our feet. Today, only a fraction of the rich biodiversity that inhabits the soil has been studied. Scientists estimate that the ground is probably home to 70% of the living organisms yet to be discovered.

The Skin Of The Earth

We know less than 10% of the organisms that populate the underground world and that, each in their own way, take an active part in creating the soil. We are just beginning to discover that plants form partnerships and create complex unions. Welcome to this subtle, surprising and secret world.

Hidden in the Depths

Take a journey alongside scientists into an underground maze with huge surprises in store. They lead us into monumental cavities, shaped by water and by time. They reveal to us mineral jewels of staggering beauty, and shed light on certain species of fauna that defy the imagination.

mineral trees:

668 – Ready Player One (2018)

spacetime coordinates: 2045 Columbus, Ohio

imdb

cultural references

The film was noted to have significant differences from the book, with some critics calling the film’s plot an improvement over the source material. 🙂

667 – After Life: The Strange Science of Decay (2011 documentary)

If you have ever wondered what would happen in your own home if you were taken away and everything inside was left to rot, the answer is revealed in this programme which explores the strange and surprising science of decay. For two months, a glass box containing a typical kitchen and garden was left to rot in full public view within Edinburgh Zoo. In this resulting documentary, Dr George McGavin and his team use time-lapse cameras and specialist photography to capture the extraordinary way in which molds, slime molds, microbes and insects are able to break down our everyday things and allow new life to emerge from old. Decay is something that many of us are repulsed by, but as the programme shows, it’s a process that’s vital in nature. And seen in close up, it has an unexpected and sometimes mesmerising beauty. (docuwiki)

imdb

665 – The Botany of Desire (2009 documentary )

The Botany of Desire is a two-hour program broadcast by PBS based on The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World is a 2001 nonfiction book by journalist Michael Pollan. Pollan presents case studies that mirror four types of human desires that are reflected in the way that we selectively grow, breed, and genetically engineer our plants. The tulip, beauty; marijuana, intoxication; the apple, sweetness; and the potato, control.

The stories range from the true story of Johnny Appleseed to Pollan’s first-hand research with sophisticated marijuana hybrids in Amsterdam to the paradigm-shifting possibilities of genetically engineered potatoes. Pollan also discusses the limitations of monoculture agriculture: specifically, the adoption in Ireland of a single breed of potato (the Lumper) made the Irish vulnerable to a fungus to which it had no resistance, resulting in the Irish Potato Famine. The Peruvians from whom the Irish had gotten the potato grew hundreds of varieties, so their exposure to any given pest was slight.

imdb

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Michael Pollan on twitter 

640 – Rabbit (2005)

A modern mystery film of lost innocence, greed and nature. A dreamlike but dark story of lost innocence and the random justice of nature, told with curious images from a distant childhood. A selection of 1950s educational stickers, discovered in a provincial junkshop 20 years ago, provide the ingredients for this adult fairytale.  Once they were new, delivering a simple message to those also young. Like us, however, they have grown older and now present a more complex meaning. Rabbit tells a tale of lost innocence, greed and the random justice of nature. When a boy and girl find an idol in the stomach of a rabbit, its magical abilities lead to riches. But for how long?

BACKGROUND INFO

Run Wrake found an envelope in a secondhand shop in the 1980s that contained sheets of educational stickers illustrated by Geoffrey Higham and published by Philip & Tacey Limited in the 1950s. The image of the idol was the primary inspiration for Rabbit’s storyline.

https://runwrake.com/       imdb

636

The Garden of Emoji Delights by carla gannis

“The current speed of technological advancements suggest biological organisms and the environment are irrevocably changing. In light of this, it is fascinating to discover how easily the visual vernacular of our day aligns with the symbology of a prescient artist from 500 years ago. The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymus Bosch’s most ambitious work, embodies the conflicts, humor, darkness and absurdity of human, earthly and cosmological conditions.

In The Garden of Emoji Delights, one intention of my transcription was to mash up popular historic and contemporary sign systems, and to diversify and expand the Emoji lexicon through this process. Emoji are a contemporary glyph system which offer an emotional shorthand for virtual expression. The pleasurable stylizations are ubiquitous worldwide and across generations. Translating iconography of an earlier era using Emoji seems to makes perfect “nonsense/sense” to me.”