Darwin's Pilgrims in Cambridge: the Movie

Here is the next installment in the Darwin's Pilgrims movies, our trip to Cambridge. 

Link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=513900029811842595&hl=en

Unfortunately, because of a lorry on fire on the motorway Lauri, Cyndi and I arrived over two hours late for our rendezvous with Baba Brinkman and Claire McShane and so our trip was shorter than planned. Also, Christ's was closed to visitors, so we had to make do with photos outside. But the visit to magnificent King's College Chapel, where Darwin used to go and listen to anthems (like Handel's Zadok The Priest heard here), made it all worthwhile. 

Here is what Darwin said about the chapel in his autobiography:

I acquired a strong taste for music, and used very often to time my walks so as to hear on week days the anthem in King's College Chapel. This gave me intense pleasure, so that my backbone would sometimes shiver. I am sure that there was no affectation or mere imitation in this taste, for I used generally to go by myself to King's College, and I sometimes hired the chorister boys to sing in my rooms.

DARWIN ORIGINALS: 3-minute films on Channel 4

Artsadmin has joined up with DVDance and Channel 4 to commission eight artists’ films inspired by Darwin, four of which will be broadcast on Channel 4’s Three Minute Wonders series between 11 & 14 February.

The films will explore Darwin and his legacy from a very different perspective. Ranging from Emma Darwin’s remedies for her sick husband or Darwin’s worms, to the genetics of red hair and Darwin’s ‘thinking path’ in the grounds of Down House, Darwin Originals will be unorthodox, political, humorous and unexpected.

The films will be screened at venues, museums and festivals in the UK and abroad throughout 2009. Darwin Originals was funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

For more information, visit the project's website or check out the contributing artists:

• Ackroyd and Harvey
  
• Bobby Baker
  
• Anne Bean
  
• Lucy Cash
  
• Curious
  
• Graeme Miller
  
• Henry Montes
  
• Lemn Sissay 
  

Silly but fun KNTV song and show on Darwin

As I write, the UK TV Channel 4 is broadcasting an amusing programme on Charles Darwin as part of a 10-part series for children, KNTV Philosophy, presented by virtual hosts Kierky and Nietzsche, two teenage science-obsessed rock thrash musicians from the fictitious communist country of Slabovia. 

You can find out more about the series here:
http://www.4learning.co.uk/support/programmenotes/micro/kntv/
and about the Darwin episode here:
http://www.4learning.co.uk/support/programmenotes/micro/kntv/prog2.html

Curiously, the show has not yet appeared on YouTube but UK viewers who use Windows should be able to watch it on 4oD (but when oh when are these muppets going to get this service working for Macs??!).

Also, you can see a clip of a Darwin song from the show from the AniBoom website:

KNTV has its own website: http://www.slabovia.tv complete with its own video player, but as yet the Darwin material isn't there. But it's worth a visit to see the silly songs on Karl Marx and Adam Smith!

Not a lot happens in Cornwall...

Why else would the fact that the actors working on a film about Darwin had to "to cover up against the elements during a break from filming in Cornwall" prove newsworthy? :-)

Darwin stars shelter from elements from thisiscornwall.co.uk

Now the film itself: that is newsworthy!