Science imaging: Towards the macrocosm

The 20th century visual art world has been characterized by trials and essays at surpassing the limitations artists felt landscapes and portraits, those first degree images that project on the retina, were imposing on their creations. Different schools of thought and style succeeded one another presenting an evolving landscape of the visual arts and eventually the adventure concluded with the death of painting around the 1980th when the art world lost complete conscience of its historical functionality at diffusing the visual signs of the worldview of the day.

Coinciding with the death of painting an imaging revolution was slowly put in motion in the world of science:

- in the underground of university laboratories scientists coupling lenses light and cameras were trying to render in visual images the infinitely small in biology chemistry physics in order to advance their knowledge. The visuals of the infinitely small were so surprising that they appealed to the artistic sensitivity of scientists and artists alike.

- space endeavors, pursued in the footsteps of earlier observations by astronomers, returned to earth a myriad of photographic images from the macrocosm going back in earlier times. The farther the distances the longer those images take to reach earth and it ensues thus that the farther the images have to travel the older will be the reality they represent.

- visual representations are behind our thinking mechanism, deriving the idea that natural phenomena were ordered according to recurring patterns, scientists developed mathematical formulas to give visual representations of such patterns. The visuals resulting from those formulas were so appealing that a scientific tool was born for artists to play with.

Check the following pictures, are they not worldview-changing?



Photographer/University of Wisconsin-Madison.
URL: UWMadison


Nasa astronomy picture of the ady: 2005 October 6
Spiral Galaxy NGC 1350
Credit: H. Boffin, H. Heyer, E.Janssen (ESO), FORS2, European Southern Observatory


Beautiful barred spiral galaxy NGC 613, a mere 65 million light-years away in the southern constellation Sculptor.
URL: Nasa astronomy picture of the day 2005 October 1


Staring across interstellar space, the alluring Cat's Eye nebula lies three thousand light-years from Earth.
URL: Nasa's astronomy picture of the day. 2005 September 24


URL: 2005 September 18

M42: Wisps of the Orion Nebula
Credit & Copyright: John P. Gleason

Explanation: The Great Nebula in Orion, an immense, nearby starbirth region, is probably the most famous of all astronomical nebulas.

In the same vain as those stills, please view the following videos of Nasa... they are simply stunning and brimming with truth.
entering into our galaxy
leaving our galaxy

Keywords: art, modern art, art theory, visual art, power, society