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Clemens Wirth continues his creative vision with the third instalment of his Macro Kingdom series. With a macro lens affixed to his camera, Wirth captures ethereal images of natural phenomena in miniature. The popular videos unveil the unseen in the universe around us. “The minute is a special place, unseen microcosms within a unseen universe bind us together," writes Wirth. "Our......read more
Photos, left to right: The warming Arctic (Global Warming Images/Alamy); steam and smoke seen over a coal power plant in Gelsenkirchen, Germany (Martin Meissner/AP); a storm brews over a beach at Cancun, Mexico. ...read more
Few things in nature are more creatively patterned than agate, a type of quartz that forms in concentric layers in a wide variety of colors and textures. The fine-grained rock has been a favorite carving material since at least as far back as Ancient Greece. These macro shots of agate, part of a Flickr set created by a Czech mineral shop, show off the rock's psychedelic patterns and......read more
Bay Area fine art photographer Caren Alpert brings together her interests in food, science, and art to create these vivid, incredibly detailed images of food. Shot with a scanning electron microscope, the photos render common eats as abstract, otherworldly landscapes. "Because I’m a science geek at heart, it’s not such a far leap to explore food in a way that no one else has,"......read more
New York's Macro-Sea invades underused urban spaces and reenergizes them with creative projects and happenings. Like Glassphemy!, a 20x30-foot "visceral and psychological recycling center" erected in a pre-gentrified lot on the Gowanus Canal. In a violently fun take on recycling, participants were invited in the structure to smash empty beer bottles against the bulletproof glass.......read more
In the lead up to the release of their self-titled debut album, Seattle hip-hop outfit Kingdom Crumbs used Kickstarter to raise some funds to make the album a full on multimedia experience for its listeners. As part of the Kickstarter drive, the crew tapped Tel Aviv-based animator/illustrator Ori Toor to make this trippy video to go along with "Evoking Spirits," the opening track from......read more
With inspiration from the Charles and Ray Eames' "Powers of Ten" -- the uber-great short documentary that takes viewers on an adventure in orders of magnitude -- filmmaking trio Encyclopedia Pictura set out to visualize the scales of the physical universe using stop-motion-animated food. "Micro-Macro" is the result, and the result is awesome. From atomic particles made of brussel sprouts, to......read more
It's been a while since we checked in with Eric Power, one of our favorite animators whose work we've featured multiple times here on SHFT. What better way to mark his return than with another truly awesome animation, this time for the Northern Bells track, "Animal Kingdom." Eric applies his signature paper animation style to the video, telling the tale of three strange creatures caught headed......read more
In the video for "Bicycle," the standout track off Memory Tapes' 2009 album Seek Magic, director Jamie Harley splices together footage of the natural world, filtering the images through psychedelic, mind-expanding effects. It reminds us of watching Wild Kingdom when we were kids, except on hallucinogens, with the sound on mute, dancing to a hazy, 21st-century pop song. ...read more
In his series Until the Kingdom Comes, New York-based artist Simen Johan creates dramatic tableaux of wildlife with weird and unnatural twists. In the large-scale color photos and taxidermy-based sculptures, nothing is quite as it seems. A pair of white owls sit perched on a picnic table in the fog; a pair of foxes huddle together in the snow, crying; two moose battle in a rugged landscape, with......read more
