Art by Braniacs
Science and art don’t always see eye to eye. Science deals with cold, hard facts while Art relies on creative impulse. The yin and yang disciplines, however, are in perfect harmony at the 2006 The Princeton University Art of Science Competition. Art of Science is a celebration of the “aesthetics of research” and the “ways in which science and engineering inform art and vise versa.
Art of Science? Aetshetics of research? What’s artsy about a pinned down frog with its insides exposed? Art is in the eyes of the beholder. To those not blessed with medical inclination the frog’s intestinal tract is a disgusting thing. But to the eyes of a future surgeon, amphibian gut is a wondrous thing. To the eyes of frogs it’s just torture.
Still not convinced science can be a thing of beauty? Browse through the gallery of some of the entries and see science in a whole new light.
The gallery awaits after the jump!
Science and art don’t always see eye to eye. Science deals with cold, hard facts while Art relies on creative impulse. The yin and yang disciplines, however, are in perfect harmony at the 2006 The Princeton University Art of Science Competition. Art of Science is a celebration of the “aesthetics of research” and the “ways in which science and engineering inform art and vise versa.
Art of Science? Aetshetics of research? What’s artsy about a pinned down frog with its insides exposed? Art is in the eyes of the beholder. To those not blessed with medical inclination the frog’s intestinal tract is a disgusting thing. But to the eyes of a future surgeon, amphibian gut is a wondrous thing. To the eyes of frogs it’s just torture.
Still not convinced science can be a thing of beauty? Browse through the gallery of some of the entries and see science in a whole new light.
Mitosis (left)
First Prize Winner
Jennifer Rea
Images of mitosis and cell division superimposed on mass-produced floral fabric. The painting “speaks generally of growth… and unregulated growth…this could be conceived of as a sort of tumor.” We told you art is in the eyes of the beholder.
Isolated Hairpin (middle)
Second Prize Winner
Melissa Green
“Turbulent flow, although chaotic, is organized into coherent structures.” The artist/scientist used a method called Direct Lyapunov Exponent to investigate a structure called isolated hairpin vortex found in turbulent wall-bounded flows.
Easter Bonnet (right)
Third Prize Winner
Qiangfei Xia
It’s no bonnet at all but a piece of metal on a silicon chip melted by a laser pulse half the diameter of a human hair. An accidental dust particle appears as a decorative flower on its top.
Nesting Leatherback Sea Turtle (left)
The nesting female sea turtles enter a state of complete hypnosis. The image captures her expression as she passes her eggs in a trance-like state. Note the tears in her eyes. Are they a mother’s tears of joy? Or are they the same kind of tears people with hemmoroid shed every morning?
Falling apart (middle)
Joerg Schroeer
The most photogenic human fibroblast cell we’ve seen. Stained by green immunofluorescence with an antibody. The cellular DNA (nucleus) is stained in blue. The cell probably is undergoing apoptosis because the nucleus is undergoing fragmentation hence the title.
Lichen II (right)
Amy Morton
Taken in Tasmania, Australia, the image is part of a series showcasing granite outcrops along the Tasmanian coast sculpted by wind and water and covered by a carpet of unsually bright orange lichen.
Godzilla (left)
Jane M. Woodruff
What looks like an old sci-fi B-movie space monster is actually a human body louse.
Soap Film Hurricane (middle)
Steffen Berg and Sandra Troian
“The image shows white-light reflection from a flat soap film formed from an aqueous solution of the anionic surfactant sodium dodecyl sulfate and the hydrosoluble polymer poly-(ethylene oxide). The peacock feather patterns in the yellow and green parts of the film arise from inhomogeneous distributions of the surfactant causing gradients in the surface tension.” Who would have thought something so boring to explain will be so pretty to look at…
Microwave Magic (right)
Arianna Gianola
Microwave a CD for 10 seconds and you will get the concentric circle pattern of the CD surface that is invisible to the naked eye. Finally, we found a way to turn our Venga Boys CD into something (anything) else
Via Princeton