If design govern in a thing so small

This animation begins with a clinically marvelous evocation of an insect’s perspective of the forest floor. And then it gets odd and unsettling.

Although its color palette (and speculative conclusion) is different, the piece reminds me of Robert Frost’s poem, “Design” (1936):

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth —
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth —
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?–
If design govern in a thing so small.

[Crossover from Fabian Grodde on Vimeo.]