Musiccosmos

I recently delivered a talk at Boring VIII in London titled ‘Insects Caught on CCTV’. The conference was a sell-out despite audience members not knowing who was going to be speaking, or what they were going to be speaking about. The idea of the event is ‘Interesting people talking about boring things’, and to give you a good idea of how it worked, I took to the stage after a talk about doormats which followed a talk about call centres. My talk wasn’t just about insects caught on CCTV, but about insects caught on CCTV that aren’t ghosts but that people think are ghosts. I have a collection of these because I think they’re awesome and this is what I was sharing with the audience. Why are they awesome? Well, they’re funny once you realise they’re insects. However, they also tell us a lot about how people view death and their own mortality. And although that may seem a little deep for what is essentially a fly walking across a camera screen and looking a little bit weird, it’s true. ...