Anyone’s work that involves “visualizing the story of life” has me hooked. Below is the Ted Talk presentation/ slideshow of Frans Lanting: “A Journey Through Time.” This multimedia work that premiered in 2006 involves great photography, dialogue/poetry, and music by Philip Glass, and aims to tell the story of life. It starts from the ancient alien-like world of earth and moves forward, successfully conveying the beauty of evolution and humanity’s place in it.
Unlike other largely inspirational visual & scientific works, this one succeeds in being nearly as informative as it is beautiful. Useful facts are cited throughout the journey, and there’s a great visualization tool of the photographs and their context in evolution on the www.lifethroughtime.com website.
LIFE: A Journey Through Time – this includes a preview of the slideshow, and a unique interactive viewing method of the photographs in situ with their place in evolution.
update: looks like the photographer behind this work is the UK photographer Rankin. There’s some great photography to peruse on the site. Keep scrolling over in the “special projects” section to find the irises.
Also note this larger collection of his irises, here. Again, scroll over to see them all.
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There’s a fabulous gallery of closeups of irises at the Chive. All the images are believed to be public domain, but unfortunately, there’s no other information going along with them — some are clearly pathologic, and I’m curious what the cause is (guesses, anyone?).
In any case, the images give a closer view of an already alluring body structure and reveal the delicacy of its form.
The concept here is less the structures of the ventricles, than how the major neighboring structures lie in adjacent to the ventricles. The adjacent anatomy isn’t shown, just where on the ventricles it creates a wall. After all, ventricles are essentially the brain’s negative space; they’re filled with CSF and occasionally choroid plexus but no neurons/support cells. It was rather a pain to research, because there are few good models and sources for the structures of ventricles, and oft times they’re rather variable and asymmetric anyways.
Ventricles and the Borders of Major Adjacent Anatomy
I have yet to really do that gratuitous eye drawing that every artist at sometime does – so with a little more freetime, I took it up! Here’s the resulting sketch, from a mirror, in charcoal:
We’re looking at some works by Anne Pratt today, a Victorian age botanical illustrator! She wrote and illustrated more than 20 books, after largely self teaching herself botanical illustration, and helped significantly in popularising botany. Considering the era she was working, it seems like quite an accomplishment.
There’s a Ted talk that describes the UC Santa Barbara based AlloSphere, an impressively immersive space for viewing scientific data. This 3 story sphere can hold about 20 researchers, all standing on a bridge running through the middle of this structure. It is connected to a super computer, and projects many data types, including visual sound mapping.
As one commentor put, X-men?
Some nice pieces of imagery are shown, but I’m curious what exactly they’re showing (and not showing) in the brain project. The cortex is displayed as an abstract cavernous space, but nature abhors a vacuum. The video said it was based on fMRI data, but is the positive space showing specific cell types, water density, etc? Or is it largely sound mapping? Maybe we’re getting a bat’s eye view of these structures.
Below are selected works by Lindsay Feuer – a porcelain artist who creates wonderfully odd ceramics. They are especially enigmatic because they seem both familiar and foreign — the detail work and sub parts of her sculptures could very well be straight from nature, but the combination of all the parts in a whole makes for something much more imaginative. Some look half plant, half creature, and although they are frozen in their form, have a surprising amount of fluidity and motion in them.
From her statement:
“Inspired by the mysteries of nature, pieces deliver an animated and fantastical view of our biological surroundings. I invite my audience to draw upon their experience and imagination, and to discover a unique reality for each piece.”
Beyond what’s shown below, there’s lots more to see on Feuer’s website.
I ran across these fabulous vases online by porcelain artist Jennifer McCurdy. Living in Martha’s Vineyard, she is drawn and responds to patterns and cycles in nature, creating strong and dynamic forms from a fragile medium.
This striking image was done by Ben Fry , showing how the FOXP2 gene differs in humans and chimps. The entire image is made of the 75,000-some long gene; the red dots highlight the significant differences. Great concept and design work! In general Fry does a nice job of simply and cleanly, but effectively getting his message across. His background is in both the arts and programming; currently he is directing Seed Visualization and developing Processing.
Click the image for more information about it, and links to more of Fry’s works.
