Skip to main content

While Darwin Sleeps

Paul Bush

2004 00:05:00 United KingdomEnglishColorStereo4:3Film
Tags:
Animation, Science, Animals

Description

More than three thousand insects appear in this film each for a single frame. As the colours glow and change across their bodies and wings it seems that the genetic programme of millions of years is taking place in a few minutes. It is a rampant creation that seems to defy the explanations of evolutionists and fundamentalists. It is like a mescalin vision dreamt by Charles Darwin.

The film is inspired by the insect collection of Walter Linsenmaier in the natural history museum of Luzern. As each insect follows the other, frame-by-frame, they appear to unfurl their antennae, scuttle along, flap their wings as if trying to escape the pinions which attach them forever in their display cases. Just for a moment the eye is tricked into believing that these dead creatures still live...

"As thousands of different species swim past our eyes, a strange effect occurs. We feel to be watching a single species morphing from one phase in its history to another. It is as though we were watching a time-lapse film, albeit one charting the entire story of evolution rather than a few hours or days...The effect is akin to an evolutionary sublime--the sheer volume of information which floods our sensory apparatus overpowers our ability to identify, classify or comprehend any individual species. Accordingly our brain accepts them to be a single unity; as one monstrous shape-shifting creature in constant metamorphosis... The experience the work offers is both marvelous and monstrous; of a kind of natural history gothic where the artist is like a sorcerer's apprentice at work in the sanctity of a museum."

--Alistair Robinson

"Optimistically celebratory of nature's infinite variety... though there's a hint of a bad trip down the garden path."

--The Guardian

This title is also available on Paul Bush Pixilated.

About Paul Bush

 

Paul Bush was born in London in 1956. He studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College and began making films in 1978, after joining the London Filmmakers Co-op. From 1981 to 1993 he taught filmmaking, establishing a 16mm film workshop in South London and supervising a wide variety of courses and the production of numerous student films. Between 1995 and 2001 he taught on the visual arts course at Goldsmiths and recently he has lectured about his work at the Media Academy Cologne, St. Lukas Brussels, Hogeschool Ghent, CalArts in the U.S., and the RCA, the National Film School, and Duncan of Jordanstone in the U.K. Most of his films have been commissioned for broadcast, but he has also made films for arts organizations and the commercial sector.

Bush's Fine Arts background remains an influence on his work, which crosses the boundaries between fiction, documentary, and animation. His films have been shown in festivals, exhibitions, and on television all over the world. Forgetting (1990) won the gold plaque for short drama at Chicago Film Festival. His Comedy (1994) has been awarded prizes at Melbourne, Bombay, and Cinanima Festivals; The Rumour of True Things (1996) won at the Bonn Videonale; The Albatross (1998) at Zagreb, Hiroshima, Cinanima and Bombay; and Furniture Poetry (1999) at Transmediale, Berlin. He makes commercials for Picasso Pictures for clients including Panasonic and Philips, and he was recently ranked second on Creation's top 50 list of directors of animation.