What a view | Ai Weiwei on Olafur Eliasson; Ancient Rome as never seen before; Emperor Nero’s excesses – art documentaries on Netflix and Disney+

Anyone who claims all art is essentially frivolous should be directed to Netflix documentary series Abstract: The Art of Design, in which a mixed bag of “creative visionaries” (the word “artists” doesn’t stretch far enough) reveal sometimes mind-warping concepts.

Neri Oxman is season two’s chief radical. Described by one contributor as “the embodiment of art, design, science and engineering”, she is – with colleagues at the United States’ MIT Media Lab – “designing new materials for, with and by nature”. Translated, that means “growing” structures rather than manufacturing and assembling them – using shrimp cells, lemons and apples, among other components.

Alternatively, installation artist Olafur Eliasson (“an expert in the art of smoke and mirrors”) merely confines himself to projects such as creating a waterfall beneath New York’s Brooklyn Bridge. Or making an artistic offering out of fog.

For Eliasson, art is all about us, the observers: if we don’t experience the work, it doesn’t happen. As he intriguingly puts it: “What you see is up to you.” As interviewee Ai Weiwei puts it, Eliasson’s work amounts to “a new type of art”.

For time-lapse cinematographer Louie Schwartzberg, the art of the matter lies in the beauty of the natural world – that, and the connections between it and the planet’s dominant species.