Most Successful Intersection of Art and Science (Tram Dang)

     Out of all the reading, the one that stuck out to me the most and showed a fruitful intersection of art and science were the Greeks. I think it is so amazing they were able to create such a simple invention to have letters stand for vowels. And added with Phoenician consonants, they were able to create a visual system to communicate and use day-to-day. By doing so, the alphabet became the civilization's first abstract art form. But also just by creating this pure invention, people were able to come up with words, and those were able to become sentences. 

     As I was thinking about intersections between art and science, it reminded me of the artworks that were hanging at the Rinker campus. Specifical ones where it was microscope views of the blood cells. I just found it so refreshing that everything around us and even our body was in some way, art. While continuing my research, I came across more microscopic art, which I found fascinating. In the 1990s, scientist Micheal Davidson, a Flordia State University researcher, pioneered new techniques for photographing alcoholic beverages under polarized light. With the help of a scientific photographer, Martin Oeggerli, also known as Micronaut, he uses a scanning electron microscopy to produce images of pollen, microbes, insects, and fungi with 500,000 magnification or more. Nearly a decade later entrepreneur, Lester Hutt, who holds a Bachelors degree in biology and chemistry as well as a Masters in analytical chemistry from the UC Berkeley, was working as a consultant at Florida State University, when he came across the work of Michael Davidson, a world-renowned microscopist, in 2008. He then found BevShots to bring this unique mash-up of art and science to the masses. Since then the BevShots brand has developed a range of contemporary art, fashion, and barware products featuring Davidson's works.

     It made me curious about how these images were made and the process that went into it. "BevShot refers to unaltered photographs of beverages that have been crystallized and viewed under a polarized light microscope. The imaging technique is also called photomicrography and is used in a wide range of applications. The difficult trick in producing these wonderful images is getting the beverage to crystallize, which requires both a solid scientific understanding of the process along with intuition and experience about what conditions to attempt" (https://www.bevshots.com/story). 

     His pieces look like abstract work at first glance and then when you find out that the photo is the crystallized form of the drink using a standard light microscope and a camera with two polarizing filters, it just blows my mind. He didn't modify the photo in any way, and the colors that show up with only the light passing through is one of the beauties of photography and darkroom photography. When the light passes through the crystals, it produces the vibrant colors and shapes seen in the images. Anything that isn't a crystal, however, appears completely black.

     For these photos to be created, a drop of liquid is placed on a microscope slide and then left to dry out. For some drinks like a pina colada or a margarita, that has sugar or salt to help with the crystallization process; it is relatively straightforward with the help ingredients other than pure alcohol in them. However, other spirits drinks like whiskey or vodka take a much longer time to crystalize. It can take anywhere from four weeks to six months. 

Tequila photographed under a microscope
Tequila
Sake photographed under a microscope
Sake
NONE
Piña colada
Vodka under a microscope
Vodka
Photograph of gin taken under a microscope
Gin
Bloody Mary photographed with microscope
Bloody Mary 
Image result for greek alphabet
Greek Alphabet 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

JPL Visit 2

On our second trip to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory campus, the majority of the day was focused on the tree of life project being run by the arts team. We had many of our questions answered about the project, and witnessed first-hand the process the team takes in generating and refining their projects based on the research and findings of the NASA scientists. My main question in regards to the tree of life dealt with how the team planned to create a cube-sat which had the ability to last the duration of the project, 200 years, since no such thing has ever been done before. My favorite brainstorming session activity was writing down every question we had about the project on sticky notes and putting them up on the wall. I wish our questions had all been answered because I think the project is still very early on and a lot of people had really great questions to ask. We briefly viewed a few of the things we had seen during the first visit, including the clean room with the more-develop...
Read more

Blog #7- Sammy Keane

Image
Sammy Keane Blog #7  Since I was unable to attend the second JPL field trip due to unfortunate events, I found myself looking throughout NASA’s dense website. Juno, NASA’s mission to Jupiter, really stood out to me. Launched on August 5, 2011, the goal of this mission was to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter. Juno is a solar-powered spacecraft that’s observations will lead to a better understanding of the formation of our solar system and planetary systems discovered around other stars (eyes on the solar system). In addition to that, Juno would look for solid planetary core, map its magnetic field, measure water and ammonia in its atmosphere, and finally observe auroras (nasa.gov). Juno did not arrive at Jupiter until July 4th of 2016. Reading into Mission Juno allowed me to understand more about Jupiter, a planet that I before knew nothing about. For example, written on October 24,19, data from Juno has helped scientists discover that the swirling ban...
Read more

Blog #7: JPL -Sophie Ungless

Image
The majority of our time during this visit to JPL consisted of working with the A-Team to go over the Tree of Life project, which we were introduced to during our first visit last month. The last time we learned about it, I left feeling really confused about exactly what the project was and how it has relevance, so being able to inquire more on this trip was helpful. That being said, though, I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around what the goal of the mission is. It's clear that they were inspired by how we can eventually create a mission that has the ability to arrive at Proxima B, and the drive behind the Tree of Life is this idea of time and longevity. However, the team still doesn't seem clear about how the information they gain from this project can be applied to a future mission involving Proxima B. Or if they do know, they aren't effectively articulating it to the general public, which I believe is going to be vital for keeping interest in the 200 year ...
Read more