From this morning's inbox:
"Dear Amazon.com Customer,
We've noticed that customers who have purchased Baraka (Special Collector's Edition) also purchased Microcosmos on DVD. For this reason, you might like to know that Microcosmos will be released on May 3, 2005 on DVD."
It's all true. I got'm both. (pics above from the Microcosmos cover: the all romantical-like silhouette French version on the left and the "too cool for school" mantis shades American version on the right; pretty funny (read: stereotypical) marketing difference between the countries)
Microcosmos falls into a very special and loosely defined category of big picture, scale-switching and time-lapse films. Other films in the family besides Baraka include Chronos and the Qatsi trilogy. What does this have to do with a digital worlds theme? Last week I wondered aloud on my blog about what was going on with time-lapse and time-lapse simulation and animation. I think studios like Pixar and agent-based software "animators" like Massive (who did the armies for Lord of the Rings) can provide us with the best views on nature, science, and society...all visually simulated organic simulations of species evolution, wars, the growth of cities, the spread of people and ideas and all the interesting stuff that happens on size, time, and causal scales that we have problems (or impossibilities) filming let alone consciously detecting or synthesizing into a coherent picture.
While the power and price of high-end tools sweep toward a place where a dedicated studio could make these sorts of projects happen, you can check out the limited number of filmic stabs in this direction at spiritofbaraka.com.
Comments