Cool Fog

Fog Sculpture rendering in Olmsted Park over an island on Leverett Pond, Brookline, Massachusetts

To celebrate the 20^thanniversary of the Emerald Necklace Conservancy Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya will exhibit five fog works along the historic urban parks that link more than a dozen Boston neighborhoods.

Fujiko Nakaya. Photo courtesy of the Emerald Necklace Conservancy

Nakaya is the daughter of the physicist and science essayist Ukichiro Nakaya, renowned for his work in glaciology and snow crystal photography. Like her father, Ms. Nakaya’s lifelong artistic investigation engages the element of water and instills a sense of wonder in everyday weather phenomena.

Working as part of the legendary group Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), she first enshrouded the Pepsi Pavilion at the 1970 World Exposition in Osaka in vaporous fog, becoming the first artist to create a sculptural fog environment.

Pepsi Pavilion Osada Japan Photo by Fujiko Nakaya

For the last forty years Nakaya has been partnering with Thomas Mee, a Los Angeles-based engineer.  Mee figured out a system for generating water-based artificial fog. To make it work the installation uses a special fog system that included high-pressure pumps and specifically designed fog nozzles. Several outside factors, like wind conditions, temperature and relative humidity in the environment, determined how intense or thick the fog would be at any given time.

Nakaya has established many other fog installations at galleries worldwide, including the Australian National Gallery, Canberra and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain.

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Photo by Phillip Maiwald

Here are two views of the Cloud Parking by Nakaya located in Linz, Australia – by day and at night:

Daytime photo of Cloud Parking by Fujiko Nakaya

Night View of Cloud Parking

Veil: The Glass House fog installation by Fujiko Nakaya in New Canaan, Connecticut Photo: theglasshouse.org

In Veil – shown above, Nakaya has wrapped the Glass House or Johnson House in a veil of dense mist that comes and goes. For approximately 10 to 15 minutes each hour, the Glass House will appear to vanish, only to return as the fog dissipates. Inside the structure, the sense of being outdoors will be temporarily suspended during the misty spells.

The 85-year-old artist describes her work as a “conversation with nature,”  creating shape-shifting, cloud-like, pure water forms that rhythmically appear and dissipate, inviting visitors to immerse themselves in the art while experiencing the landscape anew.

 

30th Anniversary of Bridgestone World Solar Challenge

The world’s largest solar car race began Sunday October 8th with dozens of vehicles traveling some 1,800 miles from Australia’s north coast to south coast.

2017 starting line-up

Starting in Darwin and ending in the southern city of Adelaide teams from over 30 countries take on the challenge of traversing the outback in a vehicle powered only by the power of the sun. These are arguably the most efficient electric vehicles in the world. Some teams expected to record an average speed of 90 to 100 km per hour throughout the challenge.

Students from leading international universities and technical institutes have to engineer and build a vehicle with their own hands using no more than four square meters of solar panels.  With a standard entry fee of AU $13,000 they need sponsors to back up their design. The main action will be the streamlined Challenger class — slick, single seat aerodynamic vehicles built for sustained endurance and total energy efficiency. There is also a Cruiser class, which aims to showcase solar technology for mainstream vehicles that are more practical for day-to-day use.

Once the teams have left Darwin they must travel as far as they can until 5 pm in the afternoon where they make camp in the desert where ever they happen to be. All teams must be fully self-sufficient and for all concerned it is a great adventure – many say the adventure of a lifetime.

Tokai Challenger from Japan

Solar Car Naledi from South Africa North West University

During the journey there are 7 mandatory checkpoints where observers are changed and team managers may update themselves with the latest information on the weather, and their position in the field. At checkpoints, teams can perform the most basic of maintenance only – checking and maintenance of tire pressure and cleaning of debris from the vehicle.

Huawei Sonnenwagen from Sonnenwagen Aachen E.V. in Germany

Nearly 40 teams left Darwin on Sunday but a number succumbed to issues before they left the city limits.  The race takes one week to complete.

NITech Solar Racing vehicle Horizon 17 from Japan catching afternoon sun in Daly Waters after racing on Day One (Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

Top three competitors at Barrow Creek left to right: Unlimited 2.0 from Western Sydney University in Australia, Tokai Challenger from Tokai University in Japan and Nuna9 from Stichting Zenith Innovations in Netherlands.

Hans Tholstrup, the founder of the 1982 World Solar Challenge, comments, “We can take a human being across a continent on just sunshine, and that is pure magic.” The technology or design used to achieve this efficiency could be further developed to be used in high performance race cars..

2017 Event Director Chris Selwood said a variety of practical uses come out of engineering these cars. One example is a Dutch team that developed a coating to make their car more aerodynamic and had the side effect that dirt won’t stick to it.

“If you applied that to a conventional car, you’d probably never have to wash it,” Selwood said. How cool would that be!

 

 

 

Looking Skyward for Optimism

“As If It Were Already Here” sculpture for Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway by Janet Echelman

Making sculpture to visually knit together the fabric of the city Janet Echelman’s art is made by hand-splicing rope and knotting polyester twine into an interconnected mesh with more than a half-million nodes. Monumental in scale and strength, yet delicate as lace, her sculpture responds to ever-changing wind and weather. The sculpture is completely soft and constructed from highly technical fibers that are 15 times stronger than steel yet incredibly lightweight and resilient. By day the artwork blends with the sky. At night colored lighting transforms the work into a floating, luminous beacon.

Night shot of “As If It Were Already Here” sculpture by Janet Echelman

The artwork incorporates dynamic light elements which reflect the changing effects of wind. Sensors around the installation register fiber movement and tension and direct the color of the lights projected onto the sculpture’s surface.

Asked to express the spirit of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s work and mission in a sculpture, and to create a heart for their new global campus in downtown Seattle, Janet Echelman created “Impatient Optimist.”

“Impatient Optimist” Seattle, 2015 by Janet Echelman

Night shot of “Impatient Optimist”, Seattle 2015. Sculpture by Janet Echelman

“1.26” is a travelling sculpture about the interconnectedness of our world. It has been installed in 5 cities and 4 continents. Originally commissioned in 2010 for Denver, CO it then traveled to Sydney Australia in 2011, then in Amsterdam in 2013 and on to Singapore in 2014. Shown below in Montreal.

“1.26” sculpture by Janet Echelman

It takes a crew of construction workers and structural engineers plus the cooperation of host city to install one of Echelman’s creations.   Here’s a time-lapse video of the Boston installation:”

Boston installation rising above the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

 

Over Under Look at a Siphonophorae

(c) Mathew Smith

The Portuguese Man o’ War, also known as the Bluebottle, is a jellyfish-like marine invertebrate of the family Physaliidae. Despite its outward appearance, the Man o’ War is not a jellyfish, but a siphonophore. Siphonophorae differ from jellyfish in that they are not actually single creatures, but colonial organisms made up of many minute individuals called zooids. Each of these zooids is highly specialized, and, although structurally similar to other solitary animals, they are attached to one another and physiologically integrated to the extent that they are incapable of independent survival.

Man o’ Wars are found, sometimes in groups of 1,000 or more, floating in warm waters throughout the world’s oceans. They have no independent means of propulsion and either drift on the currents or catch the wind with their gas-filled bladders. To avoid threats on the surface, they can deflate their air bags and briefly submerge.

(c) Mathew Smith

Their tentacles can extend 165 feet (50 meters) in length below the surface. They are covered with venom used to paralyze and kill fish and other small creatures. Portuguese Man o’ War are feared by swimmers and surfers because of their painful stings. The pain is caused by the discharge of a large number of stinging cells when the tentacles make contact with your body.

Bluebottles appear to light up because of a natural process called bioluminescence. It may draw attention to its venomous tentacles to scare off his predator – hungry loggerhead turtles.

Glow caused by bioluminescence. Photo (c) Mathew Smith

Loggerhead sea turtle preparing to eat Man of War. Credit: Stephen Fink

One award-winning photographer has braved numerous agonizing encounters to capture these beautiful creatures on film. On numerous occasions the alien-like marine creatures wrapped their tentacles around Mathew Smith’s wrist and neck, which were not covered by his wetsuit. Smith spent 12 months at Bass Point Cove in New South Wales, Australia perfecting an over-underwater technique using a waterproofing camera case with a 45cm wide dome he designed. Through careful lighting, Smith’s iridescent photographs capture marine life in new and luminescent ways.

Photo of Mathew Smith at work by Warren Keelan

Matthew Smith was last year named Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year and BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year.

“For me one of the most wondrous parts of any dive is the moment that the water engulfs my mask as my head slips below the surface,” Mr Smith said.

“I think it’s the suspense of the unknown of what lies beneath, and the thought of what alien creatures I might encounter. That is what draws me to taking half-over/half-underwater images. I try to convey to the viewer that majestic feeling in a picture format, to create a window into another universe.”

To see more of Mathew Smith’s amazing work go to

http://www.mattysmithphoto.com

It’s astonishing to realize that the whole coordinated bluebottle creature – which floats, breeds, stings, hauls up and digests – is actually four sub-colonies, in one super-colony, of thousands of animals working together.

(c) Caters News Agency

 

 

 

Pretty in Pink

Lake Retba, Senegal Credit: © WENN.com

Micrograph of Dunaliella salina

No photo-shopping here folks…that water is pink! It’s Lake Retba, aka Lac Rose, in the Cap Vert peninsula of Senegal. The pink is caused by the harmless Dunaliella salina halophile (an algae that can live in a very high salt concentration).   These free-floating microbes harvest energy from the sun through the process of photosynthesis.   The color is especially vibrant during the dry season.

Collecting salt on Lake Retba

Many salt collectors work 6–7 hours a day in the lake, which has a salt content close to 40% (1.5 times higher than the Dead Sea). In order to protect their skin, they rub their skin with “Beurre de Karité” (shea butter, produced from shea nuts obtained from the Shea nut tree), which is an emollient used to avoid tissue damage.

Dunaliella salina  has shown to be a potential source for large amounts of β-carotene and glycerol. Carotenoids are chemicals with significant commercial interest.  They are used as coloring agents in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and food. β-carotene is also used in research such as genetic engineering.

There are 8 notable pink lakes on Earth.  Here’s another favorite tourist attraction:

Lake Hiller Middle Island Western Australia Credit: © WENN.com

Middle Island and its pink lake are located in a pristine wilderness. The only way to view this lake is from the air. From above the lake appears a solid bubble gum pink. The lake is about 600 meters long, and is surrounded by a rim of sand and dense woodland of paperbark and eucalyptus trees. A narrow strip of sand dunes covered by vegetation separates it from the blue Southern Ocean. The lake has been identified by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area (IBA) because it supports significant numbers of native and migratory birds.

It just goes to show how something considered unpleasant – algae – can look so beautiful.