2nd Place at the Biophysical Society's annual Art of Science competition in 2024 went to Benjamin Stottrup for this stunning image - "Every breath you take is possible because of lung surfactant. Lung surfactant makes these intricate and beautiful patterns that vary with composition and surface pressure. This image was taken by confocal fluorescence microscopy. Sample composition is 9:1 (4:1 r:racDPPC):hexadecanol with 1.5 mol% dehydrocholesterol."
I love it when the imaging process is every bit as fascinating and awe-inspiring as the process it illuminates!
This image of a rodent optic nerve head showing astrocytes (yellow), contractile proteins (red) and retinal vasculature (green) by Hassanain Qambari and Jayden Dickson won first place at the 2023 NSW Photomicrography competition.
https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2023-photomicrography-competition/rodent-optic-nerve-head
The processes of erosion and subsequent sediment deposition can produce some very intriguing and visually staggering imagery, whether on a small scale, or visible from satellites, as presented here.
Wherever there is nature, you will never be far from Art.
https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2023/10/dan-coe-lidar-rivers/
One of the most amazing things about Art which is meant to change within an environment as the environment changes, is the cumulative effects that change can have, when viewed over a long period of time. This artwork was meant to archive that change, as that change transformed the work of art.
It's important to revisit works like these, to get in touch with the passing of time in beautiful new ways.
https://www.deseret.com/entertainment/2020/4/7/21207816/spiral-jetty-50-robert-smithson-nancy-holt-anniversary-dia-umfa-great-salt-lake-landmarks-utah
My artwork probably wouldn't exist in the form it's in now, if it weren't for alluvial fans and river deltas being formed by sediment deposition in nature - I suppose that isn't the same thing as soil art, but as long as the imagery is a result of or inspired by natural processes, then my vote is still "YES". Thank you for posting!
This image was captured by Differential Interference Contrast by Dr. Lynn Boatner et al of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA for the 2003 NSW competition, where it placed 15th. ...But of course I will hone in on it because it looks so much like a landscape!
https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2003-photomicrography-competition/surface-of-titanium-carbide-crystal
This painting was a salvage operation, from the moment when I discovered that my gesso had been replaced by a cheap impostor wearing the same bucket. The gesso cracked and fell away from the masonite, and I almost gave up on this painting - and painting in general. I didn't though, and just applied more gesso over what was left in this painting. The end result was definitely an interesting surface to apply pigment to, resembling a rocky coastline where a few puzzle-pieces of gesso held on.
My work has always attempted to echo nature, by applying some of the same processes that nature uses - in this case sediment deposition (in addition to fractal field applications), to reproduce alluvial fans, river deltas, and other geological features often found in the natural world.
Pigment is applied in a highly aqueous state by pouring it over a level painting like flood waters, which move over some areas quickly, and others more slowly. Depending on the pigment grain, the individual particles settle at different rates, collecting on the surface in differing concentrations. Just like in nature, this liquid collects from these "rivers and streams" into larger "lakes and seas", which sometimes take days to dry completely in the sun.
Each consecutive layer interacts in unexpected ways with the previous, resulting in a work that was painted by nature. As the artist I just facilitated the various processes it needed to accomplish its magic.
https://blog.yourdesignjuice.com/2021/11/an-artists-life-by-loren-hall/
Submitted to the Nikon photomicrography competition in 1990, this entry won 4th place. In addition to just being a lovely piece, it has the distinctive signs of nature repeating herself - this time in the form of an alien desert landscape! And THAT, is a tell-tale sign that some natural process art is afoot!
https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/1990-photomicrography-competition/thin-slab-of-brazilian-agate
The more I look at these, the more I'm taken by the feeling that what I'm looking at was not only formed by nature, but colonized by nature in a seemingly random way that has a mind of its own - apart from the artist. It is this "mind" that creates a lot of natural process art, and as an artist I can tell you that it is a joy and a wonder to work with, once you can forge a relationship with it.
I do not think that this particular artist copies mold colonial distribution exactly, mapping them all out using mathematical coordinates, but there's an overall feeling that says "this is natural", not a placement that feels labored over, or over-considered, and that requires an artist for which the natural world, its preservation and presentation, is more important than the ego, or the will of the artist.
I can highly respect that.
https://www.elinthomas.com/section371257.html
This entry from the 2013 competition won first place, and in spite of its rather pixelated appearance, it is indeed fascinating, and visually intriguing! It was created by using fluorescence microscopy imaging, and shows "alterations in the morphology of Dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC) monolayers at an air/water interface due to extended exposure (8 days) to carbon nanodiamond particles. The images show discrete dark liquid condensed phase domains in a continuous bright liquid expanded phase due to interactions with the carbon nanoparticles."
...I couldn't have said it better, myself.
https://www.biophysics.org/awards-funding/image-contest#/
This image won first place in the NSW photomicrography competition, in 1990. Looking at the other entries from that year, the competition seemed to be fairly stiff. I will most definitely be posting some more images from that year!
This particular image was produced by Richard H. Lee of Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Illinois, and looks for all the world like a fish rising to the surface of the water to me.
https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/1990-photomicrography-competition/crystals-evaporated-from-solution-of-magnesium-sulfate-and-tartaric-acid
This striking image, produced by Eammon Kennedy of Notre Dame, is a composite of six Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) topographs of cancer cells. Programmed cell death (apoptosis) has been induced by laser irradiation.
This image won 2nd place in The Biophysical Society's annual Science of Art competition, in 2017.
https://www.biophysics.org/awards-funding/image-contest#/
Elin Thomas has used the "mold and lichen" motif on everything from clothing to book covers and more, but her exhibition pieces are arguably her most intriguing, because rather than using these individual elements as an accent, or simple adornment, these larger pieces capture the random distribution of colonies over an area, which to me is every bit as fascinating and visually captivating as the formations themselves.
https://elinthomas.bigcartel.com/
Are scientific illustrations natural process art? That is up for debate, but in my opinion any art that is based on direct observations of nature can be considered natural process art, so long as the intent is not only to illustrate an idea, or present a thing, but present it in an aesthetic, visually appealing way. The intent is also to create something beautiful, not just educational, or scientifically accurate.
The work of Ernst Haeckel definitely fits into this category. Not only does it offer an accurate reporting of biological forms in their various environments and life cycles, but does so in a staggeringly beautiful, graphically intriguing manner.
All work from "Kunst Formen der Natur".
https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/haeckel.html
I love how unique and beautiful his imagery is! I do wish he was a bit more scientific about his processes, but I suppose a healthy portion of "let's just see what happens" is necessary in science!
I'm just glad someone's working on it, because I have no idea! 😅
The link for this one says the following, but doesn't say how long it took each person, or a total of hours. I'd like to know that, though!
"In addition to the “Core Collection” of reefs constructed by Christine and Margaret Wertheim, the Crochet Coral Reef project encompasses a community program in which the Wertheim’s work with citizens of various cities and countries to create local “Satellite Reefs”. As of early 2023, 50 Satellite Reefs have been made including in Chicago, New York, London, Melbourne, Ireland, Latvia, Finland, Germany, and the United Arab Emirates. More than 20,000 people (mostly women) have contributed to this ever-growing woolen archipelago. At the end of this page is a chronological list of all Satellite Reefs and their host institutions."
Another thing that's always intrigued me about it is that not only is it "analog", it doesn't even require electricity, at least for the audio portion. Sound waves could mechanically move a needle through warm wax which was spinning on a turntable at a regular rate with a hand-turned crank, across a screw drive. That needle would leave a spiral groove in a wax disk (or cylinder) that could be cast in metal using the "lost wax" method of casting. The reverse process would occur during playback, when the needle would read the data that was already recorded, and vibrate a mechanically amplified tympanum. I still don't know enough about the image recording process to say whether that could be done without electricity, but I know that its inception and the development of electricity happened very close together. There's no real reason I can think of why the Ancients could not have made something similar for recording audio and playing it back. The first phonographs did not use electricity!
Thank you!! That is an amzing treasure trove of information! Sorry I called that a "laserdisc"! I knew it was a disk from my memory of the website where I found that GIF, but it's so amazing to actually see it in all its analog glory. It is the precursor of the videodisk, not the digital laserdisk. I misspoke.
That gif was originally saved as "first tv broadcast" when I found it years ago, but even though I've done multiple image searches I have not been able to track down that original image! I literally scoured the internet. Thank you for your help in researching it, can you point me to any links? It always seemed strange to me that we could even see "the first broadcast" unless he had also invented video recording, but laserdisks came a bit later.
I agree, thank you, and you are very welcome!
Between the 2 factions (covert and overt), we seem to be covering a lot so far! There aren't many doing the covert, just a few in large cities, but hopefully the mainstream acceptance will increase that, as well. I actually just realized a (completely unrelated) firm has bought the URL ecograffiti.com. ...Not sure how I feel about that, exactly, but trying to stay positive. It would be much better if that firm actually DID eco-graffiti, but oh well.
Oh, and here's how they're doing this! https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Moss-Graffiti
Mt. Rushmore is a great example of the other side of that, thank you!
Me too! Yarn's not really "permanent", but it's way more permanent than spore cultures, and I love that about these. Plus you can pick them up and handle them without wanting to wretch. lol
Since I was a child, I've been obsessed with 2 particular places in mainland Greece - Olympia and Delphi. Anything that "felt ancient Greek" captivated me. I don't know why. After I grew up and discovered Google Earth, and after finding my own house with it, I found those two places. Doing 3D street views there blew my mind, and really gave me more of a feel for those places in first-person context, and in relation to other places. I honestly can't explain the feeling I got while doing that, but I was addicted. From Olympia I started exploring the Peloponnesos, including Corinth, Sparta, Argos, etc. From there I went to Athens, then Eleusis, Rhamnous, and Amphiaraion. Eventually I made it back to Delphi, and decided to just keep going.
I joined a website called wikimapia and started finding and labeling all of these places over there. In the process of doing that I updated the database for each place with information about that place, and in order to do that I had to do varying levels of research. It was a process of completing a personal quest, but it was also a goal of mine to archive these places for anyone else who might find them useful, and along the way I increased my understanding of the geography and history. Quite often the historical context gave me clues for neighboring settlements to look for, even including descriptions like "5 km to the North, along a rocky escarpment" occasionally, making it much easier to find them in the modern satellite data.
It sounds like a whole lot of work, and it was, but I lost track of the time because I was so into it.
Eventually I moved onto Mycenaean sites, Minoan sites, Macedonian sites, then went to Asia Minor, Crete, then Lycian and Pisidian sites in Turkey. Then Cyrene in North Africa, Alexandria, Carthage, and began collecting the Phoenician sites along the Levant. From there the whole thing just exploded with Hellenistic sites stretching all the way to Ai Khanum and Alexandria-Kapisa in Afghanistan.
About this time I started posting my KMZ file on google earth boards, and had various editions over the years. Once it got to about 500 places I was alerted that it had become "official google content", which was displayed on the main google boards page, and linked back to my google account. It was amazing to log in and see how many downloads it got! I was on top of the world, and endeavored to make it to 600 places.
Then one day I logged in, and my post, and the entire history board it was featured on, got moved to another board with a totally different UI, which destroyed my graphics, text content, and even my download count. Just like that, all the joy was drained out of it for me. There was no way for me to fix it. A little while after this my list stopped being presented as "official google content", and archived so that I no longer could edit or control it. At about this time another list appeared that totally encapsulated my list - which was in historical context - and combined it with several other ancient place lists. The result was that this new "master list of 1,000 ancient sites" became official google content, even though none of the people who worked on it got any credit for it, including myself. They literally just took my places (and a lot of other people's) and stuck them on another list, and that's obvious when some sites had 3-4 entries for the same place.
Eventually there was no evidence that I could find, that my original list existed at all, so I found the new location of the google community board where it is now, which lo-and-behold was the same as the original board layout and UI, and just re-posted it like it was (minus the now-wiped download count).
THEN GOOGLE ARCHIVED IT AGAIN, because apparently information about ancient sites that are thousands of years old - has a shelf life.
I'm really sorry that this explanation devolved into a rant, but it all illustrates one of the main reasons why we are here on a decentralized platform in the first place: the autonomy of our own content.
[EDIT] Oh, and to answer your last question, I'm an artist and occasional writer, so this is all related to personal interest and inspiration.
I thought the same thing! Of all the natural process artists I've run across, his work is some of the most visually unique!
Loren @mander.xyz I'm a natural process paint spiller, general cat utility, husbear, and occasional writer. Thank you for stopping by!