Category: The Art of Science

Art of Science: Dance, Opera and Particle Physics Combine on Film

symmovie

Dance, opera, digital art and particle physics unite in an intriguing new film, Symmetry, which was filmed partly inside CERN, the home of the Large Hadron Collider. The film, directed by Ruben van Leer, tells the story of CERN researcher Lukas (played by dancer and choreographer Lukas Timulak), who “is thrown off balance while working on the theory of everything and the smallest particle. Through Claron’s singing he rediscovers love.”  In the “endless landscape” of Bolivia’s salt flats, Claron (played by soprano Claron McFadden) takes Lukas back “to the moment before the big bang, when time didn’t exist.”

The film will debut at the EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam on March 14 as part of the Cinedans film festival and at the NewScientist CERN festival later that same week.

There’s much more information and a teaser for the film at The Creators Project and on the Symmetry website.

Superpurrsition

Diesel Sweeties by Richard Stevens 3 (CC BY-NC 2.5)
Diesel Sweeties by Richard Stevens 3 (CC BY-NC 2.5)

There are comics that are card-carrying “science comics” that teach science (eg, Boxplot by Maki Naro) and express truths about the experience of being a scientist (eg, Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham). There are those that are super-nerdy all the time, like xkcd by Randall Munroe.

Then there are the comics that occasionally brush up against the scientific world – dropping a punchline that hints at larger concepts, drawing in those who understand and inviting inquiry from those who don’t. This strip from Diesel Sweeties by Richard Stevens 3 is part of that tradition.

Art of Science: Jessica Lloyd-Jones Sculpts the Body Electric

Jessica Lloyd-Jones, Optic Nerve 2008 - 2010. Blown glass, xenon
Jessica Lloyd-Jones, Optic Nerve 2008 – 2010.
Blown glass, xenon

Welsh artist Jessica Lloyd-Jones describes her work as merging art, science and technology. All three are certainly present in her sculpture series Anatomical Neon, which she made from 2008-2010. Lloyd-Jones describes the works on her website:

“Blown glass human organs encapsulate inert gases displaying different colors under the influence of an electric current. The human anatomy is a complex, biological system in which energy plays a vital role. Brain Wave conveys neurological processing activity as a kinetic and sensory, physical phenomena through its display of moving electric plasma. Optic Nerve shows a similar effect, more akin to the blood vessels of the eye and with a front ‘lens’ magnifying the movement and the intensity of light. Heart is a representation of the human heart illuminated by still red neon gas. Electric Lungs is a more technically intricate structure with xenon gas spreading through its passage ways, communicating our human unawareness of the trace gases we inhale in our breathable atmosphere.”

Although these pieces are beautiful in photographs, they are much more amazing in motion, so I urge you to visit Lloyd-Jones’ website and see her short videos of the pieces as the chemical light flickers through the organs. (I mean, seriously, check out the Optic Nerve). These pieces give gorgeous, graphic life to the chemical impulses shooting through our bodies and powering our minds.

#SciArt Tweetstorm

Rainbow Microbes by Michele Banks
Rainbow Microbes by Michele Banks

The Grand Poobah’s of science art at the Symbiartic science art blog have declared 1-7 March to be the week of the science art tweetstrom using the hashtag #sciart.

Here at The Finch & Pea we currently have 181 “Art of Science” posts (well 182 now), or 30 per day for the the rest of the week. That should keep y’all busy.

Art of Science: Sonja Hinrichsen’s Snow Drawings

Briancon_01-970x646
Snow Drawing, Briancon, France, 2014. Photo by Sonja Hinrichsen

Artists whose work engages with the environment often gather materials from nature – branches, dirt, soil or leaves. Sonja Hinrichsen’s art supplies simply drop from the sky. Hinrichsen creates beautiful, ephemeral artworks using snow.

Her Snow Drawings are a series of designs that are “walked into” pristine snow surfaces with snowshoes. Hinrichsen creates the design and a group of volunteers strap on snowshoes and make it. The artist then documents the work in photographs and video.

Hinrichsen says her Snow Drawings, which she has been making since 2009 in the US and Europe, “correspond with and accentuate the landscape, and I hope that they help arouse appreciation and consciousness for the natural world.”  She says she prefers to create immersive but ephemeral experiences rather than objects.

The drawing shown above was created in February 2014 in Briancon, in the Valley of Serre Chevalier, a skiing area in the French Alps. The piece was created over two days with the help of approximately 70 participants from the surrounding communities.

You can read more about these and other projects by Sonja Hinrichsen at her website.