The Endless Night Show

science-junkie:

Beautiful ‘flowers’ self-assemble in a beaker

With the hand of nature trained on a beaker of chemical fluid, the most delicate flower structures have been formed in a Harvard laboratory—and not at the scale of inches, but microns.

These minuscule sculptures, curved and delicate, don’t resemble the cubic or jagged forms normally associated with crystals, though that’s what they are. Rather, fields of carnations and marigolds seem to bloom from the surface of a submerged glass slide, assembling themselves a molecule at a time.

By simply manipulating chemical gradients in a beaker of fluid, Wim L. Noorduin, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and lead author of a paper appearing on the cover of the May 17 issue of Science, has found that he can control the growth behavior of these crystals to create precisely tailored structures.

“For at least 200 years, people have been intrigued by how complex shapes could have evolved in nature. This work helps to demonstrate what’s possible just through environmental, chemical changes,” says Noorduin.

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deviantart:

The oddly charming illustrations of *liransz.

rhizomedotorg:

Trails #1 and Trails #2 by Edward Tang was just added to the Rhizome.org ArtBase and is currently exhibiting in the “Fresh Art” section at Rhizome.org. Click here to see the entry

A common paradigm in the new media genre are pieces that reflect some aspect of the viewer’s visual appearance - virtual “mirrors” that take in live video input (usually via webcam) and then feed back that visual data in intriguing ways. My interest in using this technology is not to simply present a two dimensional “mirror,” but to combine that effect with 3D graphics, creating an onscreen virtual space that is sculptural and architectural, as well as, graphical. I call the approach “3D Video Sculpture.

Trails #1” and “Trails #2” are interactive works using a webcam and specialized software to generate interactive 3D Video Sculptures on a computer screen. - Tang

deviantart:

The wonderful work of `archanN!

theartofanimation:

Archan Nair