Transparent Still Life

Physicist Arie van 't Riet specializes in radiation physics, and very low energy x-rays in particular. He began making artwork employing x-ray nature photographs, where radiography intersects fine art. His colourized x-ray photos of bioramas are a sort of see-through wunderkammer. He creates entire scenes in x-ray form. It makes me think of how the natural world might look if my eyes could see in x-ray wavelengths (or those back-of-the-comic-book x-ray specs really worked).

  Arie van 't Riet

Cameleon, begonia, Arie van 't Riet

Barn owl, Arie van 't Riet

Arie van 't Riet

frog, Arie van 't Riet

Arie van 't Riet

Arie & Hans van't Riet

 As a printmaker, I also appreciate how he's worked with Hans van 't Riet to produce Toboyo prints, or photo-polymer etchings, using UV light to transfer the x-rays to a plate which was inked and hand-printed. There's something poetic about using one non-visible wavelength to photograph right through lifeforms and show their structure, and then use another non-visible wavelength to bite an etching plate and print onto paper- combining the high tech with the centuries-old artistic medium.







Transparent flowers, revealing their skeletal structures, are also the subject of  architecture-student-turned-artist Macoto Murayama's work, but his is a very different medium. He uses computer graphics, 3dsMAX software usually employed in architecture (or animation), to model and then Photoshop and Illustrator depict the anatomy of flowers. It's like a specialized form of scientific illustration, as he bases his images on his own careful dissection of flowers

Chrysanthemum, Macoto Murayama

Rose, Macoto Murayama

Yoshino cherry, Macoto Murayama

Chrysanthemum, Macoto Murayama

Satsuki azalea, Macoto Murayama

(via the scientist)

Sound (Visual) Art

Source: asci.org via minouette on Pinterest

"Bowhead," a picture of a sound made by a Bowhead whale, 2003 by Mark Fischer (using wavelet analysis of recorded hydrophone sound data)

Artist Mark Fischer was interested in whalesong and found that in the literature you could find information on the range of frequencies employed, or fourier transforms of recorded sound (so you could see it plotted as a function of frequency, or moreorless which 'notes' were used, if whales happened to use discrete notes like most human music). He decided to use a method common in my field - marine geophysics. He employed wavelet analysis. (If you're interested, this is something seismologists typically use. They take time series data, which means they measure the amplitudes of vibrations, which is often equivalent to measuring the intensity of sound, periodically, so they get a series of measurements in time. They convolve the time series with a wavelet, a specific function. The result is a matrix of numbers which can be displayed as a 2D image if you simply map numbers onto colours.) It suffices to understand that there are a series of numbers (equivalent to the whalesong) to which he applies a mathematical procedure to produce an image. As he writes,

The procedure I have developed to pursue this exploration is, to me, a form of photography- with mathematics as the lens and a computer as a camera. What results is something I call 'the shape of the sound'.

More recently he's produced wavelet images of birdsong and insect noises and what he calls 'AguaSonic' videos of various species, so you can hear the animals too.

Source: asci.org via minouette on Pinterest

Pseudorca Pontinha by Mark Fischer, 2009 17.75" x 23.75" archival digital print on Crane's Museo Max paper

Sound as visual art can also be of sounds closer to the human experience (and not only those which require hydrophones to record). Epic Frequency makes prints of famous audio clips. This one is Martin Luther King, Jr. beginning, "I Have A Dream" On August 28, 1963.

Source: epicfrequency.com via minouette on Pinterest

Or, here is a way in which natural sounds combine with sculptural art. 'Hear Heres' is a set of four giant ear trumpet sculptures designed to highlight the sounds of nature, by London architecture firm Studio Weave.

Source: laughingsquid.com via minouette on Pinterest

Hear Heres

Source: laughingsquid.com via minouette on Pinterest

Hear Heres

Source: laughingsquid.com via minouette on Pinterest

Hear Heres