About ten days ago I posted a lovely video by Sam (Samantha) Taylor-Wood showing the time-lapse decay of a dead hare. There was also a peach in it, which remained unsullied while the hare turned into a maggot laden stew. Today we have the complementary video: what happens to a basket of fruit over time. You might be surprised.
I think she kept the Drosophila away.
“I think she kept the Drosophila away”
Because she left the banana out?
“two weeks into the project, Sam realised she had left her pen on the table”
There are definitely fruit flies swarming over the rotting heap towards the end.
Thanny, I thought at first they were fruit flies, too. But on rewatching I believe they’re small eruptions of a black mold.
There was a graininess to the film near the end that wasn’t present in the beginning — dark spots appearing in random places on each frame. I believe those are insects of some sort, probably flies.
They’re all over the frame, not just on the fruit. I can’t see how they’re not flies.
Amazing – do you mean the way the mould grows on the table then retreats? Would that be tanins in the wood inhibiting it, or just the fungus taking opportunity of moist conditions & vanishing as the wood dries out? Anyone know what the black mould is that follows the white (brewer’s yeast?)?
The black mold is probably aspergillus.
Martin
Thanks! Loads of species, & homothallic or heterothallic – fungal sex is really interesting. I think that I did some of this stuff at school but it was long ago…
Hrm, last comment got caught in the mod trap. Shorter me: I’d highly recommend internet searches for her Hysteria video and for her Crying Men photo series. And rewatch the hare video!
My wife tells the story of how during the indiscriminate Israel bombardment of West Beirut, their home was hit with a shell that didn’t explode and they had to get up from dinner and flee RIGHT NOW. When they returned from the mountains many weeks later, the dinner they had been eating had turned into a bizarrely beautiful showering fountain of all kinds of mold, shooting straight up from their abandoned dinner plates. It all collapsed at the slightest touch.
Another story involving life from death involves feeding time at the Vancouver Aquarium’s hagfish tank. After the hagfish ripped through the rotting corpse of their meal and one stuck its mouth out from inside the corpse’s anus, the guide dryly remarked, “Sort of takes the romance out of being buried at sea.”
And OT: more grist for the Obama is an atheist speculation. In his key Middle East speeches, Obama has invoked the Treaty of Tripoli and now Frederick Douglas’s abolitionist movement. Frederick Douglas was well versed in the history of atheism, and used it it in the service of his attacks on American Christianity:
So we know that Obama the orator and statesman is deeply familiar with Adam’s presidential statement that “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion” as well as Frederick Douglas’s attacks against American Christian churches—Douglas yells out in all caps “YOUR HANDS ARE FULL OF BLOOD!”
“Sort of takes the romance out of being buried at sea.”
Brilliant line, but I would still be happy to be food for fishes! In the UK there are I think two places where burial at sea is allowed. Both at sea funnily enough…!
Of course, recall the film of the elephant being eaten – the hyaena started its meal poking its head inside the elephants fundament…
Daniel wonders why this doesn’t show Jesus.
If the pattern holds, the next vid in the series will show the plastic ballpoint pen decaying.
It’s a long-term project.
If you are in SF go to the Exploratorium and see an exhibit called Life from Death in which they have road kill in various stages of decay. Not time lapse bu tit is real. Though they decrease the odor with filters it is not gone completely so you see and smell. Wonderful exhibit.
Martin
So the first video was a hare with an untouched piece of fruit. The second video was a bunch of fruit with an untouched pen. So what will the third video be? A cup of pens with an untouched _________?
I certainly hope they got the pen back in circulation.
How weirdly beautiful.
But I want the next one to be a pot of boxed macaroni and cheese. I remember in my college days one of my housemates leaving one on the counter and sticking it in a corner somewhere… and some days or weeks later, the pot had filled with flourescent blue and green mold, with a puffy, cotton-candy-like consistency. It was actually quite lovely. Alas, my wife won’t let me re-create it.