The Umwelt

March 2023 Issue

In 1909, the biologist Jakob von Uexküll introduced the concept of theumwelt. He wanted a word to express a simple (but often overlooked) observation: different animals in the same ecosystem pick up on different environmental signals. In the blind and deaf world of the tick, the important signals are temperature and the odor of butyric acid. For the black ghost knifefish, it's electrical fields. For the echolocating bat, it's air-compression waves. The small subset of the world that an animal is able to detect is its umwelt. - David Eagleman

Color in Flatlands

Don Cho United Arab Emirates 2014
FILM

Abu Dhabi

Miraflor Santos United Arab Emirates 2015
FILM

Sleepless

Ellie Land United Kingdom 2016
FILM

Shaheen

Samuel Ridgeway United Arab Emirates 2016
FILM

Insan

Alexis Gambis United Arab Emirats 2017
FILM

Caroni

Ian Harnarine Trinidad, United States 2018
FILM

Monarch Scales

Alexis Gambis United States, Mexico, Canada 2019
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Aesthetic Dilemma

Ivy Akinyi United Arab Emirates 2019
FILM

Nanodoctor

Tim Grabham Felipe Cardoso United Kingdom, United States 2020
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The Nine Circles

Rodrigo Luque United Arab Emirates, Spain 2021
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The Linguist

Yifan Lin China and the UAE 2022
FILM

Sand and Dust

Tamoghna Dey United Arab Emirates 2021
FILM