Ants on a scanner: 5-year video timelapse

(via Submitterator, thanks gevertully).

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE: Entertainment • Weird

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

Shelby Davis

Yeah I’m confused on the conceptual side too. We seem to see ants under the glass (we over it, them on the underside), see a light passing back and forth behind both the ants and the glass–so he’s really taking photos of his scanner while he changes the position of the scanner bulb?

However he does it, I love the concept. It’s got this whole eco-reclamation post-apocalyptic vibe. Like those books and documentaries that try to project what would last and how it would decay if mankind were wiped out, but on a really tiny scale.
Anonymous

I have no idea what the hell I just saw. How come the numbers of the inside of the scanner keep changing? Is that even possible?
- Anonymous
  
  @Anon â€¢ #5
  The numbers are a timecode for each photo (scantz200607081949).
  
  It’s kind of neat to see it shifting back and fourth as the focus shifts forward and backward in time to different points of interest.
Darren Garrison

I have had it with these motherfucking ants in this motherfucking scanner!
- Anonymous
  
  You sir, have won.
codeman38

Thanks, ants.

Thants.

(Someone had to say it…)
Anonymous

5 years of ant colonization and it still works?
jeligula

I have to agree with the very first comment. Time lapse doesn’t mean much when the lens is moving. A static shot would have been better, although I do realize that what he did was harder.
Anonymous

Nice to hear some Infected Mushroom music being used.
- elfspice
  
  ya i thought that was IM. it would be heaps cooler in HD without the panning.
alberta

Well I enjoyed it. Pan/zoom works well with the music.
imag

I may be completely off base here, but my guess is that the artist has the full images of each day at high resolution. My assumption is that the panning and zooming was done in AfterEffects to make the video more interesting, not at the original time of shooting.

I actually thought the panning and zooming worked, because it allowed you to see more detail in a particular area, and selected areas of growth and change. Showing the whole thing for the whole time would have just showed a rapidly moving flurry of dirt. I also thought the panning and zooming brought a level of abstraction to the thing, where it’s not even clear what kind of technological thing one is looking at.

Anyway, *I* thought it was cool. Thanks, person who scanned a scanner every day for 5 years!
ikoino

Have to agree that the panning doesn’t enhance this piece. However, FranÃ§ois Vautier applies panning works to mezmersing effect in his Blade Runner piece, which lays out 167,819 frames in a 60,000×60,000 grid. The pan scans the surface and adjusts speed to sync with in with frame advance. Stunning!
Astragali

Not that it counts for much, but I was intrigued by the presence of (what appeared to be) flash-framed Magnetic Poetry tiles.
Anonymous

This is industrial-techno-club-wall ready!
Rick.

I liked the panning. Probably would have stopped watching after 30 seconds if there wasn’t something else happening.
Anonymous

It looks like a CSI intro show. Good job!
doplgangr

i watched it without sound and imagined it as a background for a Nine Inch Nails video…
GraemeM

Fantastic video, but #2, think about it, one pic a week there no way you can tell what each ant is doing. You are watching the effects n the colony of all the ants.

Brilliant idea, can this be done elsewhere; a termite mound, a city skyscape, the cheese in my fridge.
BarelyFitz

Christ, what an ant hole.
hdon

Hi I’m a nerd and I can’t appreciate the rich — dare I say… tactile — visual experience that has been created. I want this video to be about ants and tunnels and stuff. I know what’s better than the artist because I’m smarter than anyone else I know.
Ryanwoofs

It was hard to make out everything until I put it full screen. Then it was awesome.

I thought “documentary” when I read the description, but the editing moves more towards “art” in my mind.
Anonymous

Franks – Infected Mushroom
Rossy

Ugh, I can’t seem to get the video to work on my iPhone. It’s really too bad, I was looking forward to seeing something someone else made that I never have and complaining about it.
rk

@hdon: That’s pretty fair. I blame the person who titled the post here for that reaction, however. As a visual arts project, I think it’s amazing… but a “video timelapse” usually means something different to many people. File under “expectations management”, perhaps?

It reminded me of moments from the Indigo Girls video for “Touch Me Fall”, which is a great song and a wild video.
- duggo42
  
  Yeah, “Timelapse Music Video” would have been a better title, I think. This isn’t what I was expecting to see when I clicked on the link, but it was still really cool, creative work.
apoxia

Well I like the video and found it far more interesting than a simple time-lapse. That would have been extremely boring.
bombertherigpig

I see no ants. But it is cool.
Art

I can’t correlate the whole ‘art colony in a scanner’ thing with the ensuing images and I echo Shelby Davis’s previous questions.

However, the images are absolutely gorgeous and that alone makes this video a stand-out artistic achievement.
Bennessy

What song is that? Sounds like Infected Mushroom.
querent

friggin awesome.

rock on, science art.
D2S

yep he should do both… that was a cool art piece but lets see the more nerdy examination version too
Quothz

This would be a lot more interesting if the video didn’t pan all the time and zoom in and out. You can’t really make out much of what’s happening because whatever you’re looking at wanders off-screen after a second or two. It’s too bad; it’s a fantastic project but kind of ruined by the scanimatography (for lack of a better word).
bcsizemo

Well this is an ass like comment, but either

-we are taking pictures of the inside of the scanner
-the scanner was hacked to scan it’s inside
-or most likely we aren’t really taking a picture of a scanner (at least I’ve never seen on were the electronics went the full length of the scanner surface.

Either way it’s kind of cool, but I agree with Quothz. It’d be better if it didn’t pan/zoom all the time. (But hell that’s better than Micheal Bay cut scene fever.)
- Anonymous
  
  I’m not sure if the light in a scanner is offset from the scanning elements enough to get around reflection problems it would cause, but could he have used a mirror facedown on the bed of the scanner?
Gormogon

Have to agree with Quothz, if I wasn’t told directly what this was a video of, I’d probably have no idea. I might guess that it’s an ant colony, but would have assumed it was some motion-graphics project — and not real ants.

This would be VERY interesting to watch if it were just one static time lapse – so you could see the whole picture of what was going on.