Truth and Beauty
retrospectacle | January 13, 2008Although I don't care much about money, I do regret that having none means that buying beautiful works of art is something that I cannot do. I occasionally post here about interesting science/naturalism-inspired art, and a new artist I wanted to highlight is Richard Kirk. A friend of mine showed me his work because one of his pieces is entitled "Cochlea" (below). I was floored at the intricacy of his work, as well as the juxtaposition of precise medical realism (like the cochlea + vestibular system in the lower right corner) and absurd surrealism (the pulleys as joints, branches for limbs).…
retrospectacle | November 14, 2007
By Dr. Sonja Pyott
Department of Biology and Marine Biology
University of North Carolina, Wilmington
Wilmington, NC, USA
Specimen: Cochlea and Hair Cells
Technique: Confocal
This confocal microscopy image of the organ of Corti is just stunning. Judges at the Olympus Bioscapes Digital Imaging Competition thought so too, and awarded Dr. Sonja Pyott 4th prize in the contest. For an even larger, more hi-res version, go here. Winners receive Olympus microscopes and other prizes! Guess who the 1st place winner is? Yeah, its the Brainbow mouse, which I discussed in a previous post.
The image above…
retrospectacle | October 27, 2007I'm a huge fan of artistic expressions which gets inspiration from the natural world, which is why I was absolutely floored by these beautiful clockwork insects created at Insect Lab by Mike Libby. These clocks are made from actual dead bugs; tiny clockwork gears and spings are worked around the shiny carapaces of beetles, the furry exoskeletons of tarantulae, and the delicate wings of butterflies.
The inspiration for creating these tiny frankenbugs came when Mike found a dead intact beetle one day. After locating an old wristwatch, and thinking about the simplistic, precise movements of…
retrospectacle | October 12, 2007The Fibonacci numbers form a sequence defined by this relation (don't be scared!):
What this means, in English, is that it is a sequence of numbers whose relationship is this: after the first two numbers, each proceeding number is the sum of the previous two numbers. For example 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233.....and so on. Quite simple, really.
Fibonacci numbers have an interesting property. When you divide one number in the sequence by the number preceding it, you are left with a number very close to 1.618. This number is called the "golden ratio," and rectangle whose…
retrospectacle | October 11, 2007I have immense respect and awe for people with artistic talent. Since I have have absolutely none to speak of, the process of developing a piece of art from sketch to completion (and making it look beautiful) is something that baffles me. Artists who focus on the illustration of specimins, science, and natural history art are particularly awesome and rare.
I am lucky enough to consider as friends two talented natural history artists, Glendon Mellow and Carl Buell, who have both designed the beautiful banners which rotate on the masthead above. I have another to add though, reader John Perry…