Film, Video & Music

Seeing the invisible? There's an app for that

bioephemera — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 11:12:20 +0000

Seeing the invisible? There's an app for that

This video from Xperia Studio very effectively conveys how data visualization can both leverage and challenge our conceptions of "reality." The night sky we've seen since childhood, like everything else we see, is just a tiny slice of the spectrum - only what we can perceive with our limited physiology. An app that lets us "see" otherwise invisible wavelengths is not merely a prosthesis that cleverly enhances our sensory perceptions, it's a tool to expand our worldview, by reminding us that what we see is only a limited subset of the whole: we could as easily see quite a different world, and quite a different night sky.

Full disclosure: I'm mad that I can't get this app for my iPhone! But if you're an Android user, you can try the free Invisible Universe app here.

If you can't get the app, you can still enjoy the video, which is really very pretty in the best "science-is-awesome" sense. Josh Peek nicely captures the addictive nature of research: "probably every six months or so, I get the sort of hair-standing-on end thrill of knowing something new about the universe that nobody else knows yet." Yes, I remember that feeling . . . except the things I discovered involved screwed-up mutant fruit fly neurons - not quite so awesome as galaxies and cosmic radiation and freaky supernovae. But I digress - how deliciously steampunky is that observatory wheel apparatus? And watch for the Darwin fish cameo! :)

From Xperia Studio.

bioephemera Thu, 09/08/2011 - 07:12

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Dataviz

education

ephemera

Film, Video & Music

Maps

Science

Web 2.0, New Media, and Gadgets

Kate MacDowell: bloodless bodies

bioephemera — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 06:49:22 +0000

Kate MacDowell: bloodless bodies

Entangled, 2010
handbuilt porcelain, cone 6 glaze

Kate MacDowell sculpts partially dissected frogs, decaying bodies with exposed skeletons, and viscera invaded by tentacles or ants. It's the imagery of nightmares, death metal music videos, or that tunnel scene in the original Willy Wonka (not a speck of light is showing, so the danger must be growing. . . ). But her medium - minimalist, translucent white porcelain - renders her viscerally disturbing subject matter graceful, even elegant. Some of her pieces, like Sparrow, below, play off the porcelain's resemblance to delicate bleached bone. In others, the permanence of the porcelain generates tension with the ephemeral forms it depicts - like insects, leaves, and flowers.

Sparrow, 2008
hand built porcelain, cone 6 glaze

MacDowell's work explores how the "romantic ideal of union with the natural world conflicts with our contemporary impact on the environment." In Sparrow, the chimera of a human skeleton inside a broken bird-body has an apparently clear message: what we do to our world, we do to ourselves. We are biologically and ecologically interrelated. But in other pieces, like the installation Quiet as a Mouse, the message is not so clear.

Quiet as a Mouse, 2011
hand built porcelain, cone 6 glaze

MacDowell explains that this sculpture

is based on images of the Vacanti mouse which became an online visual meme and sparked heated discussion about genetic engineering, animal testing and various related ideas, often based on a misunderstanding of the image that was further distorted by the online game of telephone (for example, human genetic material was not used in the experiment, the "ear" was a synthetic construct).

Though the ear-mouse is at first glance a real-world embodiment of MacDowell's human-animal chimeras, that's only the (incorrect) interpretation the public readily placed on it. Yes, it was a mouse with a genetically compromised immune system, but it was not genetically engineered to grow a human ear, nor were human cells used in the ear. Rather, it carried the illusion of a human ear - a proof of concept, a biomedical tool intended to eventually transform our own bodies. Thinking about how the ear-mouse was misunderstood/understood by the public prompts us to consider where our own first reactions to MacDowell's other artworks are justified, or if we need to look again.

Kate MacDowell graciously agreed to answer a few questions about how she uses anatomical and biological imagery in her work; her answers (and more of her work) are below the fold.

Solastalgia, 2010
hand built porcelain, cone 6 glaze

BioE: I'd love to share with my readers how you first became inspired to incorporate such a broad swath of anatomical imagery into your work. I see from your resume that you are not a biologist by training; how did you develop your eye for anatomical accuracy - dissections, study from specimens, etc.?

K MacD: Most of it is from observation and having sketched from life since I was a teenager. That made the transition into sculpting natural forms much easier. I have taken a figure sculpting class that focused on the human body - skeletal systems and muscle groups, and what I generally do when sculpting an animal is to go online to google images and collect source pictures of the forms I'm going to be sculpting, from as many angles as possible. I also do a little reading about the environmental issue or case study I'm exploring in order to understand it more deeply.

Idea, 2007
hand built porcelain

K MacD: I make sure to find scientific drawings as well as both professional and snapshot photographs. Diagrams of skeletal systems are especially good for figuring out proportions, because they are the framework that I can then build the muscle/fat/fur around. I really haven't done any dissections or taken post-high school biology classes. Occasionally I will have an actual animal skull to study, or a trout I can buy at the supermarket or something, and plants are fairly easy to substitute for one another (when taking impressions of leaf veins, for example). I also have a lot of plastic miniature animal toys that help with basic proportions in 3d.

Venus, 2006
hand built porcelain, cone 6 glazes, acrylic gel, halogen light, wiring

BioE: To what extent do you think your chosen medium mitigates (or dilutes) the instinctive distaste many people have for cadavers/exposed viscera, and how do you use that in your work?

K MacD: I purposely like to use the conflict caused by the pairing of beauty with the macabre or grotesque in my work to evoke an (often conflicted) emotional response so that viewers will spend more time with the piece. By making the pieces out of delicate white porcelain, with a classical/baroque style more often seen in marble sculpture it does invite people closer to spend more time studying the forms and textures without being instinctively turned off by lots of slippery red meat. Often they miss the darker messages until this closer inspection. I like that there is sometimes a bit of a time lag in responses to my work, then lot's of "ewws" and some smiles and laughs.

Canary, 2008
hand built porcelain, wooden wall pedestal, compact fluorescent lights, wiring

Kate's Quiet as a Mouse installation will be on view in the "Night Blooming Stock" group exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York, opening Sept. 14th. You can also see her work on the cover of Erasure's new album "Tomorrow's World", designed by Tom Hingston, as well as on their single covers - Hingston colorized her white sculptures to interesting effect (here's a fan-made video juxtaposing the single cover with the original Solastalgia).

Kate MacDowell is represented in the US by Mindy Solomon Gallery and Patrajdas Contemporary Art.

All artworks reproduced here with Kate MacDowell's permission. If you would like to buy or use one of these pieces, please contact her directly.

bioephemera Wed, 09/07/2011 - 02:49

Tags

Medical Illustration and History

Helping Vermont [bioephemera]

sb admin — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 07:00:00 +0000

Helping Vermont [bioephemera]

Photo of Vermont highway courtesy of Kyle Cornell

Last week, I had my long-awaited vacation semi-ruined when, thanks to Hurricane Irene, my flight back from the West Coast was cancelled. I had to rent a car and drive across the country in a rush - not my favorite way to spend three and a half days. But based on what I saw passing through New York, and what I've heard about the damage in Vermont, I can't complain: flooding has overturned homes, isolated entire towns, and destroyed everything some families own.

Vermonters are a notoriously self-sufficient bunch, and I haven't seen that much publicity for disaster relief, so I asked my friend -- a native Vermonter who drove home a few days ago to help clean up and deliver supplies -- what I should do. These were some of her suggestions for simple ways to give:

United Way of Chittenden County: donate via Vermont211.org (there's a "donate" button on the left sidebar, it goes through PayPal)

Vermont Foodbank: Donate $10 to the Vermont Foodbank to pay for food that will go to food banks in communities most impacted by Irene. Text the word FOODNOW to 52000 to make a $10 donation that will show up on your next cellphone bill (this was even easier than PayPal!)

Vermont Farm Disaster Relief Fund (accepts PayPal - click on the pink box "give now" - or check)

Vermont Irene Flood Relief Fund: raising money for flood relief for small Vermont businesses (click on "donate" in the top bar for PayPal and other options)

I know for many of us, money is tight (you would not believe what it costs to rent a car one way cross-country), but do consider giving something if you can spare it.

sb admin Tue, 09/06/2011 - 03:00

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Department of the Drama

Medical Illustration and History

Random Acts of Altruism

Retrotechnology and steampunk

Science

Science in Advertising

Web 2.0, New Media, and Gadgets

Greg Dunn's golden neurons [bioephemera]

sb admin — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 23:40:59 +0000

Greg Dunn's golden neurons [bioephemera]

Gold Cortex
16 x 20, 2010
Greg Dunn

I used to have a beautiful gold Japanese folding screen, which was purchased by my great-grandmother's feisty sister on a trip in the 1920s. I loved the gold patina and the surprisingly modern impact it had on my wall. At the moment, it's loaned to a friend, but looking at Greg Dunn's artwork, I couldn't help but be reminded of the best aspects of my screen: the gold leaf, crisp black patterns, and way that the scene seemed half natural, half abstract.

The biggest twist Greg, a 6th year graduate student in neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania, places on the screenpainting tradition? He paints neurons, as well as trees and branches. Often it's hard to tell Greg's neurons from other natural features: his cortical neurons look like delicate spring branches, and his retinal neurons are reminiscent of rosehips. At a first glance, could you tell if his Hippocampus, below, was a slice of stained brain or a quarter of a dandelion?

Hippocampus (detail)

18 x 24, 2008

Greg Dunn

The UCSD Neuroscience department commissioned a series of Greg's paintings depicting hippocampus, retina, cortex, and Purkinje neurons. The collection is just stunning, and although you can't purchase the originals, you can get large (16x16) prints for just over $120. I want!

UCSD Hippocampus II

42 x 42, 2010

Greg Dunn

Greg, a self-taught artist, will finish his PhD soon; he plans to make art an integral part of his career. I wish him much well-deserved success (and hope he doesn't run out of prints before I can buy mine.) Note that he will consider commissions, so if you want to get a particular kind of neuron as a unique gift for a researcher, neurologist, or graduate student, you should contact him and ask.

More: buy prints of Greg Dunn's neuron paintings

A review of Dunn's exhibition "Neurons and Nature"

sb admin Fri, 08/26/2011 - 19:40

Science visualization for scientists (for a change)

bioephemera — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 06:54:40 +0000

Science visualization for scientists (for a change)

"Magnetic Field Outflows from Active Galactic Nuclei"
P.M. Sutter, P.M. Ricker, H.-Y. Yang, G. Foreman, D. Pugmire/ORNL

Wired has an article/webgallery of award-winning scientific visualizations which is worth a lunchtime visit. (Having trouble with Wired's interface? The videos collected there are the winners from SciDAC 2011's "Visualization Night" challenge, so you can also just watch them here.)

These visualizations are not your usual public-facing educational animation. Rather, they're just what you'd see at a scientific meeting - dry, functional, aimed at a specialist audience, and begging for added explanation/narration. Basically, they're animated scientific posters.

There's certainly nothing wrong with that. First, it's good to see how visualization can be used within the scientific community to enhance dialogue. Second, it's fun to watch something cryptic and guess what it could represent. "Active Galactic Nuclei," for example, are "the powerful outflows associated with supermassive black holes in the centers of clusters." (Now you know exactly what's going on in the image above, right? No?) Wired adds, "This model shows an AGN's magnetic field lines about 6 billion years after the Big Bang, and it occurs in a cube roughly as big as the observable universe." That's a little bit better, although envisioning a cube as big as the observable universe is not gonna happen in my little brain.

I'd love to see an exhibition of these animations playing on a loop in a plain white gallery space, with their credits and titles snipped off, so the audience would have to guess which was which from the curator's list. Could you tell the difference between wind turbine wakes, blood flow, magnetic fields and "radiation hydrodynamics"? Well - probably; the blood cells and propellers are dead giveaways. :) But still, science produces some mysterious video artifacts.

bioephemera Tue, 08/09/2011 - 02:54

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Web 2.0, New Media, and Gadgets

Flipping through the uncanniest of books

bioephemera — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 08:15:02 +0000

Flipping through the uncanniest of books

This little video from Abebooks is the closest I've ever gotten to flipping through a copy of the Codex Seraphinianus. What a truly weird book.

I particularly love it when the staid narrator reveals his "favorite" illustration - a roller skater murdered by a monstrous pen. What?!

The Codex reminds me of If You're Afraid of the Dark, Remember the Night Rainbow by Cooper Edens. My mom had a copy and I used to flip through it as a child, confused and not a little disturbed. I still took things too literally to appreciate the visual non sequiturs, combined with the nonsensical text ("If you have butterflies in your stomach...ask them into your heart").

The Codex can seem almost plausible as a factual document - it might be an artifact of an alien civilization, or a faithful narrative of an alternate reality with a totally different physics - but then the murdered roller skater yanks you back to a world you know, and you realize the artist, a Roman architect, is our contemporary. (He's actually still alive.) That the book is so disconnected from the recognizable and quotidian reality we all live in is thus both wondrous and creepy.

I think that creepiness is the difference between the lush dragonscapes on the cover of fantasy novels and the paintings of Salvador Dali, or between fairy tales and magical realism. (No wonder that Italo Calvino wrote a foreward to at least one version of the book). There's a lurch, a vertigo, a dissonance created by fantasy that's almost real: the Codex Seraphinianus, like the Voynich Manuscript and some of the truly great works of literary science fiction, occupies a textual Uncanny Valley. I think that's why people covet it so much.

Find copies of Codex Seraphinianus at Abebooks - a really good online network of used bookstores.

Via Visual News.

bioephemera Sat, 08/06/2011 - 04:15

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Books & Essays

Conspicuous consumption

Bjork's Biophilia; Deadline for Imagine Science Film Festival

bioephemera — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 20:51:13 +0000

Bjork's Biophilia; Deadline for Imagine Science Film Festival

What with all the buzz surrounding Bjork's Biophilia project, science films are so hawt right now! Don't know what I'm talking about? Then check out this weirdness:

Yeah. . . okay!

Anyway, some other science/film folks, the crew over at Imagine films, reached out to ask me to remind you that the deadline is approaching for your science films to be considered for this year's festival:

We are currently looking for short or feature length films to showcase at this years festival. Submissions should weave elements of real science into a fictional narrative and filmmakers from all backgrounds are encouraged to participate. Entries must be submitted by the 15th of August. To give you a clearer idea of what the festival entails, last year we showcased everything from Isabella Rosselini's Green Porno to a film directed by a monkey! Documentaries are welcome, however we encourage comedies, mysteries and dramas etc which touch base with a scientific idea or fact. The successful submissions will be screened at the festival and will be eligible for one of four film prizes available.

Check out the festival entry info here. No, you don't have to include shots of your head overlooking an icicle-covered moon.

bioephemera Tue, 08/02/2011 - 16:51

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Events

Film, Video & Music

Science

Science in Culture & Policy

Rebuilding the past, virtually: The Buddhist Cave Temples of Xiangtangshan

bioephemera — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 18:34:50 +0000

Rebuilding the past, virtually: The Buddhist Cave Temples of Xiangtangshan

From the Smithsonian, a short video about using technology to virtually reassemble ancient art from fragments long carried away and dispersed:

Majestic sixth-century Chinese Buddhist sculpture is combined with 3-D imaging technology in this exploration of one of the most important groups of Buddhist devotional sites in early medieval China. Carved into the mountains of northern China, the Buddhist cave temples of Xiangtangshan were the crowning cultural achievement of the Northern Qi dynasty (550-77 CE). Once home to a magnificent array of sculptures--monumental Buddhas, divine attendant figures, and crouching monsters framed by floral motifs--the limestone caves were severely damaged in the first half of the twentieth century, when their contents were chiseled away and offered for sale on the international art market.

The show runs through July 31, 2011.

bioephemera Sun, 07/03/2011 - 14:34

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Web 2.0, New Media, and Gadgets

Monday stress vaccine: The Arctic Light

bioephemera — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 19:42:02 +0000

Monday stress vaccine: The Arctic Light

If this luminous, high-definition, time-lapse film of Arctic skies and seas by Norwegian photographer TSO (Terje Sorgjerd) doesn't vaporize your stress in under three minutes, I don't know what will. Be sure to click the video controls to view full-screen - this one is worth it.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

bioephemera Sun, 06/05/2011 - 15:42

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Rated "euw" for wicked bug sex

bioephemera — Thu, 26 May 2011 06:02:37 +0000

Rated "euw" for wicked bug sex

Amy Stewart's new book Wicked Bugs: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon's Army & Other Diabolical Insects takes a fairly trivial concept - a collection of historical anecdotes and icky factoids about dangerous insects - and executes it remarkably well. The book is well-written and has a non-cloying sense of humor ("she's just not that into you," begins the section relating how female praying mantids eat the males). Briony Morrow-Cribbs lends her insect illustrations (see a NYTimes slideshow of her ink illustrations here), and Anne Winslow's design plays off the concept of a vintage textbook - more Hogwarts than Harvard, perhaps, but still cute. I love the red-and-crimson cover.

As these snapshots show, there are multiple fonts, brown and black ink, pull-quotes, faux-aged pages, and of course illustrations everywhere:

At times, the sheer accumulation of design elements becomes almost too much. But the overall effect is playful, nonthreatening, and certainly a fun way to introduce kids (or adults) to entomology. Such a small, durable book (it's a little larger than a paperback, with an apparently water-resistant board cover) is very conveniently sized for taking to the beach or park in a knapsack - which may explain why the book is coming out now, and not at Halloween. But be aware, the book is not a field guide (as Stewart herself warns in the introduction), and it will not teach you to name or categorize what you find on a nature walk. Rather, it's the sort of compendium of deliciously gross, morbid factoids that small boys absolutely adore - virtually every body part is bitten, chewed off, or infected with some form of insect at one point or another. Ticks? Check. Tapeworms? Check. Tapeworms in the brain? Check.

A few paragraphs, though, may make some parents blanch. I'm thinking specifically of the banana slugs gnawing one another's penises off, or "all species of bat bugs participate in a form of lovemaking called traumatic insemination, in which the male bypasses the female's vagina altogether and pierces her abdomen with his horribly sharp little penis." That's biology - no way around it - and it's neither naughty nor prurient. But one of the benefits of not being a parent myself is not having to decide at what ages my kids get to read about - and ask me to explain - penis-stabbing. (That's your problem, friends with babies! Ha!)

Anyway, "bad bug romance" aside, the book is teeming with tales of the insect pests that brought down armies, cities, even the French wine industry. It's entertaining stuff, it flows well, and it's fairly accurate (which in my experience is unusual for popular-science books). Stewart even make a point of explaining in the introduction that the word "bug" is a misnomer as applied to all insects, for which this biologist thanks her. Maybe one or two people will retain that tidbit, along with the Napoleon anecdotes and the story of the British man who bought a nine-inch exotic centipede to keep as a pet - which promptly escaped to the neighbor's house. Really? A giant centipede pet?

For a sense of the content, here's a promotional video Stewart created. In my mind, it doesn't do the book justice (for one thing, the book has more of a steampunky, turn of the century library flavor than a early-journalism newsreel public health vibe). But the tongue-in-cheek attitude is right on target.

Wicked Bugs: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon's Army & Other Diabolical Insects: recommended for all aspiring entomologists old enough to handle icky bug sex, however old that is, in your opinion, because I would not presume to judge or parents will get mad at me.

Read an excerpt here. NPR interview with Stewart here. Boing Boing interview with Stewart here. Also see Stewart's previous book, Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities, also illustrated by Morrow-Cribbs.

bioephemera Thu, 05/26/2011 - 02:02

Tags

Medical Illustration and History

Retrotechnology and steampunk

Yikes!