0 comment Saturday, May 3, 2014 | admin
As part of my MA Art and Science programme, we were able to have a detailed tour around the Wellcome Collection and in the Wellcome Libary.
I was at first astounded at the amount of the online resources that the Wellcome Collection provides, there is a Wellcome Film youtube channel which has over 300 videos uploaded.
There is also a huge database of images on the Wellcome Images site, which has a great selection of anatomical drawings, illustrative diagrams, lithograph prints, scientific photographs and much more!
Here are some things I personally found interesting on the tour:
BBC Source
This is an exhibited created by Gunther Von Haagen, it is a very thin slice of a human body, plastinated in the typical Haagen way.I was particularly interested in the curious way the slice has been presented, between two pieces of glass in a suitably clinical way.
source
This exhibit is the "Library Of The Genome", a publication of a human DNA sequence. The books you see here contain 3 Billion characters (genetic bases) which have been printed and published in to a volume of books. Apparently, to recite the sequence character by character would take approximately 56 years!To think that each human has a completely different DNA sequence is mind-blowing.
It was also interesting to learn that Henry Wellcome preferred to display his collection in a Darwinian style, laying out each specimen side by side.
Other things that caught my imagination include:
- Death Masks that were carved while they were still on a tree, so that "tree spirits" could animate the face.It's interesting that nature has been allowed to alter the work.
- Hair used to illustrate weeping willows inside a piece of mourning jewellery.
- Anatomical Flip-Diagrams which can be found on the Digitised Collections.
I was at first astounded at the amount of the online resources that the Wellcome Collection provides, there is a Wellcome Film youtube channel which has over 300 videos uploaded.
There is also a huge database of images on the Wellcome Images site, which has a great selection of anatomical drawings, illustrative diagrams, lithograph prints, scientific photographs and much more!
Here are some things I personally found interesting on the tour:
BBC Source
This is an exhibited created by Gunther Von Haagen, it is a very thin slice of a human body, plastinated in the typical Haagen way.I was particularly interested in the curious way the slice has been presented, between two pieces of glass in a suitably clinical way.
sourceThis exhibit is the "Library Of The Genome", a publication of a human DNA sequence. The books you see here contain 3 Billion characters (genetic bases) which have been printed and published in to a volume of books. Apparently, to recite the sequence character by character would take approximately 56 years!To think that each human has a completely different DNA sequence is mind-blowing.
It was also interesting to learn that Henry Wellcome preferred to display his collection in a Darwinian style, laying out each specimen side by side.
Other things that caught my imagination include:
- Death Masks that were carved while they were still on a tree, so that "tree spirits" could animate the face.It's interesting that nature has been allowed to alter the work.
- Hair used to illustrate weeping willows inside a piece of mourning jewellery.
- Anatomical Flip-Diagrams which can be found on the Digitised Collections.
Labels: Anatomical, Anatomy, Art, Death Masks, Dna, Gunther Von Haagen, Hair, Library Of The Genome, Mourning Jewellery, Plasticization, Sequence, The Wellcome Collection, Wellcome Collection, Youtube
0 comment Friday, March 28, 2014 | admin
Omid Kashan's "Timeline Of The Universe" has been featured on Information Is Beautiful which is a website run by David McCandless. David McCandless is a data journalist and information designer who is passionate about visualizing information.
It is easy to see why Omid Kashan's design appeals to David McCandless, as creating a "timeline for the universe" is an ambitious task, yet executed beautifully. The finished design is sleek, the circular design helps to simplify the information, whilst the colour palette evokes a night sky.
The concept of visualizing data is an interesting one, data in its raw format can be terribly boring. For example, Omid Kashan used a Wikipedia page to construct his timeline. However, the Information Is Beautiful website shows that data doesn't have to look dull. The algorithms constructed by data can be processed in a creative way, making new patterns and designs that would be hard to devise from imagination alone.
This type of data presentation is already being used successfully as a type of interactive exhibit at The Wellcome Collection. In July 2011, I visited The Wellcome Collection and was able to see my biometric identity in the shape of a star!
Labels: Algorithms, Data, David Mccandless, Graphic Design, Information Is Beautiful, Omid Kashan, Patterns, The Wellcome Collection, Timeline, Universe, Visualization