Zoom Into The Mechanics Of A Dragonfly’s Movements Through Complex 3D Imagery

Entomology, the scientific study of insects, isn’t a typical departure point for most artistic creators. More generally, when art and science do merge, the result often becomes an elaboration on scientific data through a more accesible, artistic medium, such as in Niklas Roy’s Perpetual Energy Wasting Machine, or Studiomobile’s Networking Nature installation. However, in Cut & Cook’s new video Infime, directed by post-production coordinator Dan Charbit, the seemingly scientific examination of a dragonfly’s exoskeleton offers viewers a much more poetic, thought-provoking look at the insect’s physiology.

For the first half of the video, shots of mechanical landscapes paired with organic sounding ticks and cracks give the impression of a futuristic utopian dreamland. When the camera zooms out to reveal that the previous scenes came from the wings and eyes of a moving dragonfly, the effect is rather humbling. To create such effective and mesmerizing graphics, Cut & Cook had to use their own customized methods of development. Even more impressive is the fact that some shots in the video are made up of over 30,000,000 polygons, the two-dimensional structures that are stacked to build three-dimensional sequences. The video may not express any actual scientific data, but it surely inspires some biological speculation.

@CreatorsProject