Magnetic Movie (2007)

This enchanting little short was produced at the NASA Space Sciences Laboratory, at UC Berkeley in 2007, and has won a number of awards at film fests since. Snip:

The secret lives of invisible magnetic fields are revealed as chaotic ever-changing geometries . All action takes place around NASA's Space Sciences Laboratories, UC Berkeley, to recordings of space scientists describing their discoveries . Actual VLF audio recordings control the evolution of the fields as they delve into our inaudible surroundings, revealing recurrent ‘whistlers' produced by fleeting electrons . Are we observing a series of scientific experiments, the universe in flux, or a documentary of a fictional world?.

Magnetic Movie, A Semiconductor film by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt. (thanks, Marianne Shaneen!). Ed. Note: this video was previously blogged on Boing Boing Gadgets.

• [SamSam]

  SednaBoo: But don’t iron filings arrange themselves into lines when tapped on paper above a magnet? And can’t you get the same lines in 3D if you do it in an oil suspension? What are those lines?

  I genuinely don’t know. Are the lines the filings arrange themselves into really “there” or not?

• [Takuan]

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIXs6Sh0DKs&feature=PlayList&p=16366DA1828D8660&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=1

• [teufelsdroch]

  Senda, I thght u were gonna say fields weren’t accurate b/c they have non-zero divergence. But insofar as virtual photons are ‘real’, yes, the lines are real.

• [unklstuart]

  This video makes my teeth hurt.

• [Anonymous]

  So, I’m confused. Is this a CGI interpretation of what it would look like if we could see them?

• [Jake0748]

  Fantastic!

• [Kennric]

  The probing, non-closed field lines were disturbing to me, as a physicist. Otherwise, I quite like the feel of the animations – very reminiscent of tesla coil or jacob’s ladder vibrating-but-fluid energy flow. Would it have been so hard to make at least superficially correct field lines?

• [13strong]

  I can highly recommend getting hold of Semiconductor’s excellent Worlds in Flux DVD. In particular, their sound recordings/interpretations of epic solar activity are mind-boggling and soul-quivering.

  Best seen on the big screen, in a darkened room (which is how I saw them), but here’s a youtoob clip:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax2oe9UaFIE

  Also excellent are their discussions with scientists, in which the scientists answer an unheard question, which may or may not be “Can Science tell us everything?” Some great answers – really thought-provoking stuff, and an antidote to the allegation that Scientists are arrogant.

• [Takuan]

  as Presteign’s daughter, Olivia, saw the world in Bester’s Tiger! Tiger!

• [SednaBoo]

  SamSam@10: I think the iron filings are just lines because it’s a slice. Same way if i took a slice of the earth you’d see lines where the core, mantle, crust, etc. But when you look at the earth it’s not a bunch of lines.

  Plus I think using relatively large iron filings ‘pixelates’ the picture. If you had real short and skinny ones I think it’s look different.

• [russtolium]

  I think my favorite part of this is the sound effects. They’re oddly soothing.

• [Anonymous]

  What are we seeing? What causes this?

• [Anonymous]

  It’s like a Björk video.

• [gothicgeek]

  Semiconductor’s stuff is beautifull

  thanks for the reminder :)

• [SednaBoo]

  It’s kind of misleading, because that’s not how it would actually look like. Magnetic fields aren’t a bunch of lines any more than a contour map is how a hillside looks. The lines are just our way of graphing them.

• [Takuan]

  would you see fuzzy glows?

• [13strong]

  SEDNABOO – it’s art. It doesn’t need to be accurate!

  What I love about this work is how animalistic or botanic the waves become – twitching, growing, tensing and then leaping across the room. They’re kind of friendly and threatening at the same time.

• [chixon]

  a great movie, but the ending was a bit anticlimactic. I kept on hoping that the magnetic threads would ensnare passers by, control them to do their bidding, and ultimately take over the world.

• [peacock]

  best xeni post up to this point in time