Fremen from Arrakis, shown in the movie Dune, wearing their stillsuits
Recently my mind has turned to the problem of excessive humidity – not because I’m suffering from it currently, but because I was curious as to how an algae-based CO2 scrubber could be used without having to live in a near 100% humidity environment! This was, apparently, one of the issues with the algae biocoil in the Biosub project. In the end, I blew through a tube and got dizzy – here’s why.
Don’t try to make sense of this animated short from French Goeblins school in 2008 – because I’m not sure it makes any. Still – if you’ve wanted to see a boy, fishing for monsters in the puddles of a multicolored, multi-leveled shanty, then this is the animated short for you.
Seen at Ufunk.net.
Concept Art of From Dust from Ubisoft
While the gaming universe is twisting itself into a POrTAl TwO pickle, for some reason I was reminded of From Dust, and upcoming game from Ubisoft in the style of Populous. The videos look beautiful – globs and dollops of the very stuff of life, pliable in your hands.
I even get a strange feeling in my hands when I think of it – I like to imagine that it’s my mirror neurons longing to grasp, mold and smooth.
I had wanted to watch this for a long time – a short sci-fi film of a post apocalyptic settlement somewhere in Africa, reeling from the mistakes leading up to the great war for water. The main character, Asha, is the lone, desperately hopeful, curator of the museum of natural history. Nobody visits these dead relics of a dead surface world, but she dreams forbidden, and drug-suppressed, dreams of water, trees, and life!
It’s a quiet film where nobody speaks with their mouth – I don’t know if that’s to conserve water, Dune style, or if in the future people are so used to typing that actually speaking out loud is just something you don’t do. It’s a refreshing film where it’s actually really nice to have a lead actress who doesn’t look like all the Hollywood actresses. It’s a sad film, where I couldn’t work out which meaning the ending had – but neither of them were kindly.
If you can manage to find it, watch Pumzi. There seems to be no showings, no releases, no word on their blog since the beginning of 2010 – but if you do come across it, it’s not 20 minutes wasted.
Myriad Whimsies 