ce qui m'a permis de scanner en très haute définition ce microcosme en permanente évolution

August 2, 2010 2:37 PM

I installed an ant colony inside my scanner five years ago.
posted by OverlappingElvis (40 comments total)

That is one of the strangest videos I've seen in some time. I have no idea how this guy got his ants wedged into his scanner, or why.
posted by jedicus at 2:40 PM on August 2, 2010 [54 favorites]

I watched this, then I realized it was a lot of ant poop.
posted by Catblack at 2:41 PM on August 2, 2010 [1 favorite]

I didn't see even one ant!
posted by cjorgensen at 2:41 PM on August 2, 2010 [5 favorites]

Ack. Brothers Quay scanners and maggot man robots.
posted by Babblesort at 2:42 PM on August 2, 2010 [1 favorite]

That is unbelievably cool.
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 2:45 PM on August 2, 2010

I want to see a "making of" video more than this. Or a blog post. I don't get the "inside the scanner." If it were then this wouldn't function, and if it did function it would destroy the colony once a week. I think something is getting lost in the translation.
posted by cjorgensen at 2:48 PM on August 2, 2010 [1 favorite]

I was fascinated by the idea, but I wish it was more of a linear time-lapse video rather than edited to look like an old 120 Minutes ID.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 2:49 PM on August 2, 2010 [10 favorites]

I don't get it. I kept waiting for Trent Reznor to pop out whilst screaming about fucking pigs.

Still and all, I wonder if I will ever cease to be amazed at the endless crazy, left-field ideas that one can find online. I know that sounds pretty.....what, 1998? But man, really? An ant colony in your scanner for 5 years?

Awesome post, thank you.
posted by nevercalm at 2:50 PM on August 2, 2010 [3 favorites]

does anybody read the posts down here?
posted by koeselitz at 2:51 PM on August 2, 2010 [11 favorites]

does anybody read the posts down here?

We scan the posts down here.
posted by xod at 2:53 PM on August 2, 2010 [2 favorites]

Hypothesis: They put a mirror surface on the lid so that one is seeing the ant colony under the glass of the scanner bed.
posted by xod at 2:55 PM on August 2, 2010

Awesome post. The Infected Mushroom track was the perfect accompaniment.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 2:56 PM on August 2, 2010

insane, but great.
posted by russmaxdesign at 2:58 PM on August 2, 2010

It's a scanner with a full-size transparency adapter. I have one like this. Dude disabled the light bar in the transparency adapter and filled the adapter with ants. So: enclosed section up top has ants, enclosed section below has light bar and scan head.

I'd much rather just see the scans in a step forward/back UI than this over-edited video.
posted by seanmpuckett at 2:58 PM on August 2, 2010 [10 favorites]

xod: Hypothesis: They put a mirror surface on the lid so that one is seeing the ant colony under the glass of the scanner bed.

But wouldn't the moving scanner piece drag all of that stuff underneath it when it scanned? And I would think that it would stop working pretty quickly. Or a re scanners more durable than I thought?
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 3:00 PM on August 2, 2010

Wait, what? The scanner still works? I can't manage to make the non-infested scanners I use behave. What kind of magical pixie scanner does this dude have?
posted by phunniemee at 3:00 PM on August 2, 2010 [1 favorite]

I knew what the first comment would be as soon as I saw the word "scanner." I love ya, Metafilter. Never change.
posted by Doublewhiskeycokenoice at 3:02 PM on August 2, 2010 [7 favorites]

I can't quite work out how to enter the Konami code in.
posted by Wataki at 3:02 PM on August 2, 2010

Uh...nevermind. Thanks seanmpuckett.

Oh, and here are some Ants in the Kitchen compliments of Masters of Reality.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 3:02 PM on August 2, 2010

Thanks, seanmpuckett, I was just about to ask how on earth the scanner could still be functioning with all that business going on inside it.
posted by Gator at 3:03 PM on August 2, 2010

I'd like to try this with one of my aunts, but I'm going to need more information.
posted by Short Attention Sp at 3:08 PM on August 2, 2010 [2 favorites]

I'd much rather just see the scans in a step forward/back UI than this over-edited video.
Quite. I think I saw the same bit of root grow five times over. Seems just some sort of random shuffle approach. Why not just provide the time line...also the moving-camera-kind-of-trick is somewhat hectic, even considering that ants are involved.
Otherwise pretty awesome.
posted by Namlit at 3:17 PM on August 2, 2010

Looks like he spilled chili in his scanner and then scanned it every day for five years.
posted by marxchivist at 3:21 PM on August 2, 2010 [2 favorites]

It looks to me like the ant debris is piling up around and between the ICs, and that the character of the junk is different on different circuit board surfaces. I think maybe this is a dead scanner full of ants that was itself imaged with some other device.

I liked the maker's Blade Runner movie better.
posted by Western Infidels at 3:24 PM on August 2, 2010

Needs an Anthill Inside sticker.
posted by quin at 3:40 PM on August 2, 2010

It's like a Jan Svankmajer movie! Or a NIN video without any crucified monkeys.
posted by katillathehun at 3:46 PM on August 2, 2010

If I did this it might look cool for the first week or three, but then the ants would all die because I can't keep anything alive. We'll except for my cat, but she'd stubborn.
posted by cjorgensen at 4:06 PM on August 2, 2010

I'd much rather just see the scans in a step forward/back UI than this over-edited video.

Man, completely. Maybe I'm wrong, but "time-lapse" to me has always meant time passes in a straight line, forward. This was schizophrenic.
posted by graventy at 4:13 PM on August 2, 2010

I don't know. There's such a glut of "W took a picture of X every Y for Z years" videos out there, that it was almost interesting to see someone use the premise towards ends other than a straightforward time-lapse.

Almost.

(I think it was mostly a pacing issue—260 frames or whatever the person ended up with isn't enough to make any sense of what one's looking at. I agree with the above suggesting that the effect ended up being MTV ca. 1997 or something).
posted by wreckingball at 4:31 PM on August 2, 2010

Very cool idea, but why the heck did he bother with the idea of putting ants in a nice stationary scanner, if he was going to edit the video to bounce around like he hired one of his ants to film it? All I can see are some electronics and some dirt whizzing around.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 4:51 PM on August 2, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'd much rather just see the scans in a step forward/back UI than this over-edited video.

That's exactly how I feel about it. Cool idea, but it was waaaay too frenetic.
posted by rollbiz at 5:24 PM on August 2, 2010

scants.
posted by lapolla at 6:21 PM on August 2, 2010 [4 favorites]

This was much less interesting than I thought it would be.
posted by Simon Barclay at 6:40 PM on August 2, 2010

Ants, in my scanner?
posted by Kloryne at 6:51 PM on August 2, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm going to call bullshit on this.

- A scanner would almost certainly stop functioning after a period of time, especially with the kind of growing corrosion visually apparent on metal components.

- The circuit board shown seems 10~20 years too old to be guts from a scanner, not to mention the edge connectors aren't hooked up to anything.

- the scanner bar appears to run behind the circuit board which is impossible with just a mirror... plus, why are we seeing it at all, and in motion too, when it's what's supposedly capturing the images?
posted by CynicalKnight at 7:33 PM on August 2, 2010 [2 favorites]

Without more of an explanation on how it was done I am pretty skeptical that it is really "ants in a scanner." Maybe it's something else on top of a scanner, as CynicalKnight suggests, I'm not sure.

The soundtrack is cool, and really the whole video is cool, but it's not really what I was hoping for when I clicked on it. I was really hoping for something involving ants in a scanner. I'm not exactly sure what I got.

Needs more context, is I guess where I'm going with all this.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:41 PM on August 2, 2010

ewww ewww ewww!

KILL THEM! KILL THEM ALL!
posted by liza at 10:26 PM on August 2, 2010

That was *a lot* less interesting than I expected it to be. Actually just not interesting. Moving the camera (or view) over the course of a timelapse is awesome, but only if it somehow helps accentuate the motion / change within the video. This one was both a little confusing to watch (what am I seeing?) and also managed to make it almost impossible to see how things were changing over the course of time.
posted by pkingdesign at 11:15 PM on August 2, 2010

THANKS FOR NOTHING FINAL CUT PRO
posted by seagull.apollo at 12:40 AM on August 3, 2010 [2 favorites]

10.28. Results: Bullshit. 

Euclid predicts AAR at six and a half. AAR hasn't been beneath forty in twenty years. Explanations for anomaly:

Human error.

posted by 7segment at 6:43 AM on August 3, 2010