Showing posts with label x-rays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label x-rays. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

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)



Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Art on Science

I like to blog about the intersection and cross-breeding of art and science. Today I bring you some beautiful objects which are really more just art on top of scientific ephemera - but they are lovely.

Philadelphia- based multi-media artist Matthew Cox embroiders x-ray photographs. He writes about the contrast between the labour-intensive needle work and the rapid technological image making, the decorative and artisanal versus the x-ray images "devoid of aesthetic intention", the stereotypically feminine art of embroidery versus the stereotypically male technological output.


Laughing Skeleton


Waterproof Watches


Feet


Wading Knees
(via Honestly WTF)

You know I love a wunderkammer and adore scientific collections re-imagined. CoriKindred, one of my Etsy favorites, has done something of such beautiful simplity. She's created rock collections of beautiful minerals, and labelled them whimsically, with unexpected, conceptual names. It's easier to look at than to describe, but it's like she's managed to illustrate things as ephemeral or intangible as anticipation incarnate as a rock, simply by adding typewritten labels.


Legend Rock Collection


Bohemian Rock Collection


Dress-up Rock Collection

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