A Boy And His Atom

We've covered a lot of short films here at Eye For Film but we've never covered one this small. That's because A Boy And His Atom has been animated with individual atoms manipulated using quantum tunnelling. It's the brainchild of IBM Research who are using it to illustrate how much data can be stored in a small space. Each frame of this film is, edge to edge, about a 1,000th of the thickness of a piece of paper.

So how does it look? As you'd expect with something made using such a reduced technique, it does't have fancy graphics. Instead it recalls an early Eighties computer game, something that was clearly understood when adding the music. Like those early games, it has a quirky charm that stems partly from fascination at how his can be done, partly from the appeal of its simple character. Having acquired a atom, the boy bounces it around the screen. Magically, it turns into a trampoline (acquiring several more aoms in the process), and then it's his turn to bounce up and down.

Short but sweet, this is an entertaining film you may well find yourself wanting to watch again. Art does indeed flourish within constraints and, until filmmaking is ready to progress to the subatomic level, it's hard to imagine many tighter than this.