Visible Radiation

The art of science and the science of art. A blog for anyone who's fascinated by art that relies on scientific ideas, and scientific beauty that can be classified as art in its own right. Run by Alex a student at University College London with a background in accidentally breaking things in physics laboratories. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-19182283-5']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

[unconsumption]

In one of his most ambitious book sculptures to date artist Guy Laramée (previously here and here) created an homage to the printed Encyclopedia Britannica by transforming a 24-volume set into a sloping mountainous landscape. Titled Adieu, Laramée says the work was inspired in part by Encyclopedia Britannica’s announcement that after 244 years the would cease printing its iconic multi-volume book sets.

(via Artist Guy Laramée Carves a Mountainous Landscape from an Encyclopedia Britannica Set | Colossal)

[itsokaytobesmart]

Circle of Life

The genome of Gloeobacter violaceus, drawn as a gorgeous circular plot by visionary biological data artist Martin Krzywinski (from this paper). Within its concentric layers of information are buried genome composition, relation to other species, and overall genetic structure. It’s also very pretty.

Gloeobacter is an ancient photosynthetic bacterium that branched off the rest of the photosynthetic tree (including cyanobacteria and, later, plants) and has its own strange way of eating sunlight. 

Krzywinski’s informative and beautiful data visualizations are featured at Wired Science, check ‘em out: Circle of Life: The Beautiful New Way to Visualize Biological Data

[photographysoma]

2013.12.22 Sun -  Harry’s model

a device for a performance space

佐藤 壮馬　soma sato

 http://www.somasato.com/ 

[freshphotons]

Random Structures from Lego Bricks Using a Washing Machine. Via.

[prostheticknowledge]

Full Turn

Kinetic art piece by Benjamin Muzzin creates 3D light sculptures using a flat screen monitor spinning at high speeds.

[wnycradiolab]

Julie Mecoli’s “Dark Matter” is a series of artworks inspired by the University of Queensland Pitch Drop Experiment (if you want to seriously geek out about this, our story on the experiment is right here). 

Mecoli’s pieces are made of bitumen.  They start out looking like solids and slooooowly reveal their true liquid nature.  Check out some of her other work here.

[explore-blog]

The little-known art of beloved physicist Richard Feynman, born on May 11, 1918.

[nouralogical]

Conrad Shawcross: Slow Arc Inside A Cube IV

[visibleradiation]

This work loses so much in still photos. It would however look amazing in GIFs. I regret not thinking that when I was in the Hayward Gallery. 

[staceythinx]

Work by Mary Iverson

From the artist statement:

Mary’s prints and paintings resonate with so many other things that I am looking at online: data visualizations and information graphics, Modernist painting, and resurgences of photo-realistic and illustrative painting as well. I am particularly struck by the relationships in these images between the natural and the artificial, the figurative and the abstract, and the balance of thought and feeling. This balance is reminiscent of my own feelings about the Internet and the “wildness” of its networks. It seems perfectly appropriate that I would first see these images on the web instead of in the more controlled space of a gallery.

Iverson’s shipping containers can be seen as metonymic stand-ins for a whole system of distribution for objects that we deal with every day. These paintings, until recently, left us with little clue of what they might contain. They are like scientific conceptual “black-boxes” which are put into place to sidestep our actual material understanding. We might see these containers on a dock or train and have only a vague sense of what they may contain or how those materials might be used. This parallels directly with the distribution of data on the net. The analog and digital worlds of things echo each other.

Continue reading…

[sciencenote]

Mr. Karl Deckart

Eckental, Germany Specimen: Soap Bubbles Technique: Polarized Light

[sciencepopularis-blog]

A magnetic field visualized

[irakalan]

High-Tech Japanese Art Installation by Norimichi Hirakawa

16 arrows and the exposed - installation, 6720x3000x910mm, label, line tape, arrow

In the world of quantum including this world, every particle is ruled by indeterminacy theory, therefore we never can know both coordinate and velocity of each particle at the same time. But in the world of computer program, all of future is computable by calculation from initial value. It is doomed vision of the world that all of its future is decided at the moment of the big bang. Nevertheless, actually there’re freshness and wonder when we observe the future that has come at the moment. A physicist, Lapace imagined an intelligent existence who can foresee all of future by the perfect observation at the moment and the high-speed calculation.

It became being called “Lapalce’s demon”. Isn’t it the computer in the modern period ?

Trying to generate all of a plane composition by using overall calculation capability of commuter is like selling artistic soul to the demon. but, what kind of things is the artistic soul actually ?

[expose-the-light]

The Daily Dish

A CATALOG OF 365 PETRI DISHES PAINTED BY KLARI REIS

[staceythinx]

Horizons by Aaron Farley

Farley on his project:

These are not real photographs of real things. The original photographs are of water and clouds and these are photographs of those photographs, turned on their side, moved, reshot, reprinted, cut and folded, and reassembled to create a different scene which still looks familiar.

[staceythinx]

Quantum Blink by Isabel M. Martinez

Martinez on her work:

According to quantum mechanics we have forty conscious moments per second, and our brains connect this sequence of nows to create the illusion of the flow of time. So, what would things look like if that itermittence was made visible? This body of work explores that hiccup, that blink, that ubiquitous fissure in the falling-into-place of things.

In my work I attempt to articulate something in between the freezing of time—that so often characterizes photography—and its relentless passing. I hint towards temporalities that are fluid, speculative, and somewhat loose. I am looking for the line that divides the finite (probability) from the infinite (possibility). If time is a succession of instants, I want to see what lies in between them. I am after the gaps between instants of consciousness.

Continue reading…

[thedailywhat]

Early Bird Special: “This Is Our Planet,” by Croatian 18-year-old Tomislav Safundžić, was created from imagery captured by NASA at the International Space Station.

Wow.

[petapixel]

[thatssointernet]

Kysa Johnson, “BLOWUP 31 SUBATOMIC DECAY PATTERNS” (2003), ink on panel