Manufactured Landscapes

edwardburtynsky_02edwardburtynsky_01edwardburtynsky_03 A nice follow on from the last post: this is a feature length documentary by Jennifer Baichwal about the photographer Edward Burtynsky. He takes stunning photographs of landscapes which have been drastically altered by human activity- think open mines, endless factrories and ship breaking beaches.

It's powerful and beautiful stuff but also very open ended. As Burtynsky himself points out- he doesn't take a 'this is bad' political stand point- but lets people see what they want to see. There's an obvious sustainability and 'aren't we fucking up the planet' message that can be read but also there's a whole look at human progress and our advancement in conquering nature or something.

Interesting film, more a piece of journalism than a pointed 'An Inconvenient Truth' thing but well worth watching.

The Secret Life of Chaos

fractalsfractal_food_02 This brilliant BBC4 documentary kicked my ass. It talks about chaos theory, fractals, patterns and loads more. The punchline is that chaos and order (pattern) are beautifully and inextricably linked. That even the simplest equations and mathematical formula, when fed back into themselves (this bit is key) cannot be examined far enough back to make accurate predictions about where the formula might end up- hence sand dunes, cows spots and nature in general looks similar but not the same. Fractals are part of this- and a guy called Mandelbrotz pretty much invented these while he was working at IBM- the whole thing is linked nicely to something called 'self similarity' which is like branches and rivers and out blood vessels and loads of other stuff. Really good but hurry click here to watch it before the 24th.