Refractographs, Cellular Terrains and BacterioPoetics

Garden in a Petri dish – Prof. Eshel Ben-Jacob

‘As above so below’ and ‘the great in the small’ – resemblance to architecture, the decorative arts, generative art and much much more. Pattern recognitionists can have their field-day!

Reciprocity’s beautiful stream of twisted light Refractographs allows us view the refraction patterns of light as it passes through glass and plastic. The nebulous galactic quality of these pictures fortifies this link between the micro and macroscopic.

Pruned’s ‘Garden in a Petri dish’ post from a while ago reveals ‘godless ecologies simmering with selfish codes and data silently contesting for survival — fractal, pointillist, and mercilessly lethal’. A great set of miniscule Eden’s are unearthed – illuminated pictures of aggregation patterns and fern-like threads. The seed? Socialfiction’s BacterioPoetics. ‘Are these patterns the result of simple physical processes, or do they represent self-organization and communication on many levels?’ Wilfried enquires. ‘More Gardens….reveals yet more wonderful algorithmic botany, and as Alexander puts it ‘self-organizing embroidery of organisms in constant Darwinian mode’. Lovely.

Other onward journeys towards the atom at Pruned include a glide over the surface of the Cellular Terrain and a close-up rendezvous with wood anatomy.

Flickr’s Microscopy pool is certainly worth a visit. Altamons contributions appear as whimsical hand crafted sketches or even textile designs, pre-occupied with the natural colour palette, of the 1960’s. Taka itaha’s Moss (Brachythecium), taken by pressing the camera to the ocular of a microscope, reveals a marvellous pattern of chloroplasts. Biologist, Leah Penn reveals to us a chromatic explosion with her Black stem rust of wheat photograph; again this image is very textile-like.

It’s now possible to experience Blake’s ‘World in a Grain of Sand’.