Showing posts with label Art of Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art of Science. Show all posts

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Growing Art

A Day in The Life. Page 9 color pencils

One of the things that fascinates me is how ideas and creativity come about. I especially like the instances where science and art collide to produce the most wonderful discoveries and artwork.  More than ever this illustrates that we can all learn techniques- be it scientific methodology or how to lay down paint but to have a breakthrough, to make big discoveries seems to require something almost magical! I came across three  different stories about Alexander Fleming and his discovery of penicillin. There is much more there than simply happenstance. 

Smithsonian article explained that long before Alexander Fleming discovered the antibiotics, he was a painter, a member of the Chelsea Arts Club. He used watercolors, but that was not his favored medium.  He painted ballerinas, houses, stick figures fighting and other subjects by using bacteria! The  article says :"He produced these paintings by growing microbes with different natural pigments in the places where he wanted different colors. He would fill a petri dish with agar, a gelatin-like substance, and then use a wire lab tool called a loop to inoculate sections of the plate with different species. The paintings were technically very difficult to make. Fleming had to find microbes with different pigments and then time his inoculations such that the different species all matured at the same time. These works existed only as long as it took one species to grow into the others. When that happened, the lines between, say, a hat and a face were blurred; so too were the lines between art and science."  Further down the article is the revelation :"On that fateful morning, what Fleming actually discovered was, in a way, a version of one of his paintings. Each of the colonies of Staphylococci bacteria that he had inoculated on the plate had grown into a small shape resembling a planet or a star in a night sky. But there among his wild planets was something else, a larger, lighter body at the top of the dish, the Penicillin fungus. Around it the sky was dark, where the bacteria were dying. It was his masterpiece, his “rising sun,” the painting that would save more lives than any other discovery."

Read the Smithsonian article: Painting with Penicillin: Alexander Fleming's Germ Art  and then listen to PRI's Studio 360 story : Godfather of BacteriaOn PRI's link Painting with E.Coli,  there is also a photo of one of Flemings paintings :) 

A blog Growing Impressions-Gulden/Baldwin records the collaboration between artist Amy Gulden and scientist Dr. Kristin Baldwin :"...we have enlisted a natural organism, E. coli bacteria, to generate images that resemble paintings or prints, but that have a unique set of patterns that could not be generated using non living materials. We hoped that by letting nature generate its own patterns we would trigger the interest of the eye and the visual brain, which has evolved to pay attention to the irregular patterns generated by natural growing objects."  There is an amazing collection of 'paintings' in that site!

This goes to show that we definitely need to nurture curiosity. Arts and science is a very artificial seperation of  knowledge!

Friday, December 17, 2010

Science, Math and Art

Mirror #10 Sketch Mirror
 Snow Mirror 2006 
Darwinian Straw Mirror 2010
Each of the above photograph is my portrait -amazing interactive imagery with custom software, video camera projector and silk screen courtesy of    "Contrast: Interactive Work by Daniel Rozin"  - an installation at the Chrysler Museum of Art at Norfolk, VA.   The museum web site explains : "Daniel Rozin's work combines art, technology — and the viewer — to create a distinctive artistic experience. Though computers and machinery play a key role in his digital interactive installations, the science behind the work is seldom visible. The idea is to create works that not only incorporate change and movement, but that also respond to viewers in real time. Thanks to the use of video projection and sophisticated programming, visitors can become part of the art, or the art can change based on the movements or perspective of the viewer. Part sculpture, part mirror, part screen, his works often defy easy categorization,"  It was truly a surreal experience to see my image emerge, change, and dissolve and emerge again as I moved about.  And there was so much laughter, excitement and child like sheer pleasure at the gallery  as each of us -viewers- discovered we were the ones creating 'art' in there :) 

Speaking of science and math and art, two days ago I watched a Nova program on PBS on Fractals and once again mesmerized by the beauty in math, science and nature.  I have been googling Fractals to learn more about it - I had come across it a few years ago and continue to be fascinated by the phenomenon and the designs they create :)

And one more link : check out some wonderful quirky artsy math doodling of Vi Hart and explore her website.

So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite 'em,
And so proceed ad infinitum.
—Jonathan Swift, from "On Poetry: A Rhapsody"

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Glow in a Glass

Lemon Glow digital photography
Last week, this glass of water with a slice of lemon caught my eye as I sat resting my feet towards the end of fun wedding reception I was attending and out came my camera as I clicked away merrily catching the glow in the glass. The digital camera with its ability to preview helped me play with the composition and settings until I was satisfied.

Check out some beautiful photographs in the online exhibit of Princeton University's Art of Science 2010 Gallery. Since the first exhibit in 2005, Art of Science showcases stunning and simply amazing photographs that were captured in the process of scientific research and not as 'art for art's sake'. The web site says that the 45 winning images from 115 submissions from 20 departments by students, faculty, research staff and alumni were 'chosen for their aesthetic excellence as well as their scientific or technical interest.' This year's theme is "Energy." And of course, according to an article in physorg.com the odd amounts in 'cash prizes were derived according to the Golden Ratio a mathematical proportion that has been found in aethetically pleasing designs from seashells to Ancient Greek Temples" Be sure to check their archives of previous years' exhibits for some most extraordinary and stunningly beautiful images.
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