bioephemera
Posts by this author
July 6, 2009
If anything can put you off bacon, this awesome vintage French ad will!
While the ad appears bizarre to us today, it makes sense in a different social context - one in which animals exist primarily to serve human needs, and all's right with the world when they're fulfilling that function.
I find…
July 6, 2009
Wandering around the Chattanooga waterfront at night, we encountered this charming random artwork. It's sort of Greek Temple x [Tesla + Buckminster Fuller]. And the wire hemisphere was full of tiny insects!
It was only one of many artworks scattered around the Aquarium, Hunter Museum, and…
July 5, 2009
Kurt Peterson
Artomatic just wouldn't be complete without a sinister cephalopod, and luckily Kurt Peterson stepped up to make it happen. At least I think that's a cephalopod. Unfortunately, Peterson's another one of these off-the-grid, website-free artists, but you can read a little about him at…
July 4, 2009
Wow. . . coming off the Silence is the Enemy rape awareness initiative, it's more depressing than usual to see the Telegraph's latest bad science reporting. Their story implies that rape victims deserve blame for what happens to them:
Women who drink alcohol, wear short skirts and are outgoing are…
July 4, 2009
In Seattle, a venerable fireworks show has become the subject of a legal dispute between locals and the city - and since this is Seattle, it's only to be expected that the dispute is over environmental impacts. But it's not the fireworks themselves at issue - it's the fact that the city holds the…
July 3, 2009
Millennia, 2009
aluminumMichael Sirvet
Michael Sirvet's aluminum shell, three feet in diameter, is a porous excuse for a bowl (heh heh), but all those edges make lovely sifted patterns of light. Millennia makes me think of a cell membrane, a hollowed-out moon, or the Death Star. I'm not sure which…
July 2, 2009
Forrest McCluer
A little more explicitly biological than most of the works at Artomatic, Forrest McCluer's six-foot viroid is part of "an ongoing project to deconstruct 30 discarded personal computers and then create sculptures from all their constituent parts."
I'm not even going to start "…
July 2, 2009
Ornament(al) Skull
Noah Scalin
Anatomophiles alert: tomorrow, Noah Scalin, proprietor of the Skull-A-Day blog and author of Skulls, opens a new show at the Quirk Gallery in Richmond, VA.
I just typed "Richmoaned". Does that qualify as a Freudian slip? Or something else?
July 1, 2009
mushroom paintings, oil on panel, 2008Amy Ordoveza
This series of three paintings by Amy Ordoveza works as abstraction from a distance, but close up, they're luminous golden woodland fungi - the quintessence of bioephemera! See more at her website/blog.
June 30, 2009
Last Friday, in my post on Nature's comprehensive coverage of science journalism, I mentioned the recent Nature Biotechnology conference paper on science communications co-authored by scibling Matt Nisbet. I also said I'd come back to one of the points in it that bothers me.
As I said yesterday,…
June 30, 2009
TheatreBen Tolman
Like Hieronymus Bosch paintings, Ben Tolman's intricate, epic drawings can hold your attention for a long, long time. Although the poor lighting at Artomatic makes poring over the minute detail a little frustrating, it's impressive to see the scale of Tolman's works in person.…
June 30, 2009
Today is the last day of the Silence is the Enemy fundraising drive here at BioE - when I get my proceeds I'll send them along to Doctors Without Borders, probably along with a little extra, since I don't usually make an appreciable amount here at BioE. But I did notice a slight uptick in traffic…
June 29, 2009
Mark Mawson's Aqueous series consists of amazing fluid artworks created by dropping paint into water. I wasn't going to blog about them, because everyone else is already, but I found it remarkable how similar they are to jellyfish - not the one above necessarily, but some of the others. Go to his…
June 29, 2009
John Timmer at Ars Technica discusses the results of a survey of bloggers which seems to suggest that, while most bloggers hold themselves to a reasonably high ethical standard, they don't necessarily expect other bloggers to do so.
I think it's kind of a weird idea to have a code of ethics for all…
June 29, 2009
The Age of the Drowning of Sorrows and the miracle of Soju and Etha
oil on canvasTracey Clarke
Tracey Clarke has taken nearly every little girl's habit of doodling horses, turned it into startlingly realistic animal portraiture, and then added a frisson of creepiness. Her wild horses, blank-eyed…
June 28, 2009
nmohan of the collaborative artists group Robot Disorder just contacted me to let me know they've launched the Robot Disorder 2.0 website, with more robot hordes (and easier navigation). He says they have literally thousands of robot drawings to clean up and post in the coming weeks, so if you…
June 28, 2009
Her Dark Satanic Mills
Paul Taylor
When I saw Paul Taylor's massive paintings at Artomatic, I immediately thought of two things: fire and Blake's etchings. So I was tickled that the title, "Her Dark Satanic Mills," refers to a poem by Blake, and that Taylor's creative process is all about fire:
The…
June 27, 2009
If this story is to be believed, Body Worlds creator Gunther von Hagens is going to plastinate Michael Jackson.
I have no objection to plastination per se, but I think it would be uniquely tragic for Michael Jackson to remain an object of invasive voyeurism after death. That's exactly what he was…
June 27, 2009
Nápoles #2
acrylicFabian H Rios Rubino
It's the last two weeks for DC's Artomatic, which runs through July 5. If you haven't had a chance to go, in addition to losing your chance to Draw A Robot, you're missing a lot of wonderful artwork. For the next week, I'm going to highlight some of the…
June 26, 2009
. . . at least according to a Japanese researcher, who trained them to differentiate "bad" and "good" children's art.
According to New Scientist,
This isn't Watanabe's first efforts to teach art appreciation to pigeons. In 1995, he and two colleagues published a paper showing that pigeons could…
June 25, 2009
a ten year old rape victim from the Congo
photo by Endre Vestvik
Almost a month ago, a number of bloggers launched Silence is the Enemy, a blog initiative against sexual violence. Since then, we've seen a number of thoughtful and provocative conversations throughout the blogosphere, trying to…
June 25, 2009
This may be the best BBC story EVER. Seriously:
Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around "as high as a kite", a government official has said."We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in…
June 25, 2009
Nature has gone science journalism crazy, with no less than six new articles on the subject! My favorite is "Science Journalism: Toppling the Priesthood," by Toby Murcott, who argues that coverage of peer review is a necessary component of truly investigative, accurate science journalism.
I don't…
June 24, 2009
The "gastronomical cocktail" called "sex on a drip" is just one reason to hop a plane to Singapore and visit The Clinic, a theme restaurant that's probably not for the squeamish.
Their website boasts, "Clinic's unique alfresco is easily identified by its hospital whites, colourful pills, syringes…
June 24, 2009
According to Boing Boing, two homeless men got in a brawl over quantum physics, which ended with a skateboard to the face:
At the time, Fava was chatting with an acquaintance, who is also homeless, about "quantum physics and the splitting of atoms," according to prosecutors. Keller joined in the…
June 24, 2009
"Assessing the Impact of Science Funding," by Julia Lane, from the June 5 Science, ends with a gratifying shout-out to visualization as an essential part of the scientific process:
A related intellectual investment is to advance understanding of how to convey complex answers about the impact of…
June 23, 2009
Clocky sounds like R2D2 and looks kind of like an ATV's single-axled, pastel cub. In other words, it's really, really cute. Which is why when Clocky wakes you with its piercing warbles, crashes to your floor and rolls under your bed, you won't want to smash its little display with your fist. At…
June 23, 2009
I'm here in DC at the Newseum for the State of Innovation Summit, a collaboration between SEED and the Council on Competitiveness. The crowd is pretty awesome - right now Adam Bly, SEED's CEO, is sitting a few rows from me with E.O. Wilson. Earlier, Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian…
June 22, 2009
Red Line crash, June 22, 2009, between Takoma Park and Fort Totten stationsPhoto from Fox5 News, via DCist
As many of you already know, DC's Red Line suffered a fatal crash this evening during rush hour. One train had stopped. A second train behind it failed to stop, overtook the first train, and…
June 22, 2009
Artomatic is one of my favorite things about DC: a cooperative unjuried art gallery in a vacant high-rise, staffed by artists, with live performances and mini-bars on every other floor. It's free (except for the bars). What's not to like? The icing on the top (floor) this year is Draw A Robot - a…