Sometimes art doesn't need to be complicated. Shawn Knol's simple videos of oil in water capture fascinating patterns reminiscent of dividing cells, budding spores or lava lamps, depending on your mood. His newest, Psycho Bubble (above), was just released a few days ago.
"A lot of people are asking how I did this. It's pretty simple. I just put the camera on its lowest jpeg setting, placed the camera into continuous mode, and locked the shutter down with my wired remote. The oil is being dumped into a tall cylindrical glass, with about a cup of water in it. The whole thing is lit from behind by a diffused clamp light. "(source)
Knol's flickrstream includes some beautiful black and white stills from his oil-and-water films, as well as photos of ferrofluids, soap bubbles, and explosions. Amazing work.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
There's a news piece in Physics World this week titled "Atom laser makes its first measurement" and you might think this would be right up my alley. Mostly, though, it serves to remind me that the term "atom laser" has always kind of pissed me off.
This is somewhat ironic, as it's a beautiful piece…
As mentioned earlier, the younger Free-Ride offspring's first grade class is learning about states of matter. We continue to get reports back about the content of these lessons, and then the sprogs set about trying to extend them ... in ways that suit their aesthetics more than their parents'…
It's been over a month since I did a photo-a-day post, largely because I haven't been taking many pictures for a variety of reasons. I do still mean to get a year's worth of good photos done, but the "daily" part has completely disintegrated at this point.
As a way of getting somewhat back on…
I was doing a little research into the history of telescopes, and it was about a century ago that they finally realized how much more potential light-gathering power reflecting telescopes had as compared to the older refracting telescopes. On Mt. Wilson in California, astronomer George Ellery Hale…
That's fucking coolio!
"Sometimes art doesn't need to be complicated. Shawn Knol's simple videos of oil in water capture fascinating patterns reminiscent of dividing cells"
That might be more than a simple resemblance! It's entirely possible that the first proto-cells in fact were balls of lipids (i.e. oil).
This makes for a very nice background!