Sci art

Geometric Light Paintings Drawn by Roombas

The Roomba can keep your floors clean, but with a little setup, they can also make art across your living room. Some Roomba owners have use their robot vacuum cleaners, LEDs, and a camera set to take long-exposure photos to create robot-made light paintings. If you dip your toe into the Roomba Art Flickr Pool,…

io9 Lauren Davis Apr 13

Dramatic diagrams of cell biology and atomic structure belong in a beautiful textbook

Artist MRK (Markos Kay) is best known for his mesmerizing digital videos like The Flow and the aDiatomea series. But he also creates striking static images inspired by cell biology, atomic structure, and his own digital creations. What makes MRK’s images so compelling is the way they make cell biology seem less abstract. Instead of…

io9 Lauren Davis Apr 6

Striking paintings combine Japanese watercolor with the structures of the brain

After receiving his Phd in neuroscience at University of Pennsylvania, Greg Dunn decided to explore the structures of the brain and the rest of the nervous system through the medium of paint. Informed by Japanese sumi-e ink wash painting, Dunn paints meditative scenes of neurons the way many artists have painted twisting trees. Dunn’s paintings…

io9 Lauren Davis Mar 10

Entomologist creates one-of-kind paintings using live bugs as his paintbrush

Entomologist Steven Kutcher has worked as a wrangler of creepy crawlies on movies like Arachnophobia, Jurassic Park, and James and the Giant Peach. But his artist interest in insects and arachnids go beyond the silver screen. He also dips their bodies in paint and places them on a canvas, letting his tiny artists create unusual…

io9 Lauren Davis Mar 3

Lovely medical illustration of the human skull painted directly on a human head

Professional airbrush and bodypaint artist Lisa Berczel painted this bit of medical makeup for the International Make-Up Artist Trade Show in Los Angeles. Aside from some medical grade paper tape near the eye and brow blocking, this is all paint. Berczel has also done her share of (NSFW) pop culture painting, including on a glittery…

io9 Lauren Davis Feb 24

Eerily cool music video features MRI scans of a singing head

Musician Sivu spent two hours inside an MRI machine to film the music video for his song “Better Man Than He.” The result is this hypnotic video, which lets us see what literally goes on in Sivu’s head as he sings. Sivu says that the video was inspired by and made with the help of…

io9 Lauren Davis Feb 2

Anamorphic sculptures reveal their secret shapes in the mirror

Anamorphic illustrations that reveal themselves in the presence of a cylindrical mirror, go back to the 1500s. Jonty Hurwitz takes a similar idea but plays it out in sculpture form, creating distorted objects that reveal a clear image only in front of that shiny cylinder. Hurwitz has a keen interest in both art and physics,…

io9 Lauren Davis Jan 26

Striking papercraft illustrations celebrate CERN and the Higgs Boson

As part of their 2012 retrospective, French newspaper Le Monde commissioned design studio Zim & Zou to create a series of papercraft illustrations as part of an article on CERN’s advancements in seeking the Higgs Boson. The cover illustration gives us a lovely interpretation of particle collision based on the Large Hadron Collider. The other…

io9 Lauren Davis Jan 19

Anatomical illustrations painted directly on human bodies

Artist Danny Quirk has created anatomical illustrations for scientific publications, but his latest series of illustrations don’t appear on the page; they appear on real, breathing human beings. By using people as his canvases, Quirk turns his work from illustration into sculpture, and offers a striking sense of what goes on in our bodies beneath…

io9 Lauren Davis Jan 6

These colorful sculptures are actually painted spider webs

Artist Michael Anthony Simon employs some unusual helpers in creating his gauzy, brightly-hued sculptures: spiders. To create these unique pieces, Simon invites industrious arachnids into his studio and sets them to doing that thing they do best. Simon came up with these idea for these spider web sculptures while working on another sort of unnatural…

io9 Lauren Davis Jan 5

One of the most majestic anatomy illustrations we’ve ever seen

Kate Pfeilschiefter adds an illustrator’s touch to the anatomy drawing she created for a biology class. There’s a mystical touch to her noble stag, but the way she outlines the muscles only add to the creature’s majesty. She adds that she spent a lot of time watching the deer-filled music video for Matta’s “Release The…

io9 Lauren Davis Dec 23

These incredible landscape photographs were created under a microscope

The photographs from the Molecular Expressions Art in Photomicrography project appear to capture local landscapes and alien worlds, but the photographers can create these images without ever leaving the lab. These “microscapes” are made with vitamin C crystals, aspirin, penicillin, and other ingredients to create the illusion of sunsets and grand mountains. This project was…

io9 Lauren Davis Dec 22

Learn the basics of cell biology with these adorable science comics

To help herself study, biology student Biol Jerk draws sweet little comics explaining the differences between the various cells that make up the epidermis, the distinctions between schwann cells and oligodendrocytes, and what the Ran cycle has in common with clubbing. Biol Jerk has been posting these comics all fall, and they’re wonderful in how…

Books & Comics Lauren Davis Dec 16

Can you guess the subject of this photo? (Hint: over half the US population consumes it every day.)

The Wellcome Trust — a London-based medical research charity — has just announced the winners of its 2012 image competition, and they are positively stunning. Take the scanning electron micrograph featured above, for example. Can you guess the subject of the photograph? It may be the most widely consumed psychoactive drug on Earth, but it…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 21

This beautiful anatomical art is made of paper, not flesh and bone

We’re absolutely blown away by the work of Sarah Yakawonis, a Maine-based artist who uses a technique known as quilling to create intricate anatomical models like the ones you see here. The meticulously positioned strips of coiled paper look so much like the folds of a brain, or the sinewy striations of human muscle, I…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 15

Psychedelic Petri dishes turn lab work into a freakout session

Can you guess the subject of this photograph? It’s a bloodshot alien eyeball! Just kidding, although all that red totally resembles vasculature don’t you think? Don’t worry, the real answer is just as awesome: believe it or not, this is actually a Petri dish, created by artist Klari Reis. Reis uses individually-crafted dishes like the…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jan 26

Is “Stay-Green Grass” The Artist’s Medium Of The Future?

I was already excited about Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey’s grass photographs — because who doesn’t love photographs developed using the light-sensitive properties of seedling grass instead of photo paper? — but then I found out they were using special long-lasting genetically modified grass as well. Which makes the pics a whole other category of…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders Jun 6

Geometric Light Paintings Drawn by Roombas

Dramatic diagrams of cell biology and atomic structure belong in a beautiful textbook

Striking paintings combine Japanese watercolor with the structures of the brain

Entomologist creates one-of-kind paintings using live bugs as his paintbrush

Lovely medical illustration of the human skull painted directly on a human head

Eerily cool music video features MRI scans of a singing head

Anamorphic sculptures reveal their secret shapes in the mirror

Striking papercraft illustrations celebrate CERN and the Higgs Boson

Anatomical illustrations painted directly on human bodies

These colorful sculptures are actually painted spider webs

One of the most majestic anatomy illustrations we’ve ever seen

These incredible landscape photographs were created under a microscope

Learn the basics of cell biology with these adorable science comics

Can you guess the subject of this photo? (Hint: over half the US population consumes it every day.)

This beautiful anatomical art is made of paper, not flesh and bone

Psychedelic Petri dishes turn lab work into a freakout session

Is “Stay-Green Grass” The Artist’s Medium Of The Future?

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