We mentioned The Invisible Bicycle Helmet project last fall, but this video gives a closer look at its creators, design students Anna and Terese. “If people say it’s impossible we have to prove them wrong.”
(Source: vimeo.com)
ZodiacChic Post:Virgo
Dr. Frankenstein harnessed the power of lightning to bring his giant monster to life. Photographer Robert Buelteman uses thousands of volts of electricity to create these dreamy photos of plants and flowers. He might not be a mad scientist himself, but he’d probably get along quite well with others. They could exchange tips and tricks for playing with electricity.
The process that produces images like the ones you see here is called Kirlian photography and was made famous in 1939 by Russian inventor Semyon Davidovich Kirlian who accidentally discovered the process through experimentation:
Kirlian believed that the image he was studying might be a human aura, if such an aura were to exist. It is now well understood that the coronal discharges identified as Kirlian auras are the result of well-understood stochastic electric ionization processes, and are greatly affected by many factors, including the voltage and frequency of the stimulus, the pressure with which a person or object touches the imaging surface, the local humidity around the object being imaged, how well grounded the person or object is, and other local factors affecting the conductivity of the person or object being imaged, including oils, sweat, bacteria, and other ionizing contaminants typically found on living tissues.
Buelteman’s own process in painstaking. First he carves at the plants with surgical tools until they are thin and sheer. Then he places a sheet of transparency film below a metal sheet floating in liquid silicone. He puts the plants on top of the film and connects them, with clamps, to a source of electrical current. Buelteman then sends up to 80,000 volts through the plants to capture the resulting glow on film.
Buelteman works in complete darkness. After shocking the plants, he goes one step further and paints with light across the shape of the plant to add additional illumination and detail to the image. While viewers might be inclined to assume otherwise, the creation of these beautiful images of radiant, almost spectral plants does not involve any digital manipulation.
Buelteman says, “While I remain fascinated by the organic design of simple flowers and plants, I have become increasingly drawn to the power of abstraction made available through the manipulation of color, form, and light.”
Visit My Modern Metropolis to view more of Robert Buelteman’s awesome photographs.
Got questions about the future? Here’s a 4000 year old oracle with some answers! Click here!
(Source: thecellofellow)
A trans* woman who is running for the Orange County Commission in Florida could be the first transgender person elected to office in the Southeast.
Gina Duncan is a small business owner focusing her campaign on economic issues. She’s unopposed in the Democratic primary and will face a Republican incumbent in November.
Here’s the Advocate.com writeup of Duncan’s recent appearance in a TV segment for local media:
The segment focuses on her tireless campaign efforts and her emphasis on job growth in the region, treating her transgender identity as incidental, while acknowledging the potentially history-making nature of her candidacy, as she would be the first transgender person elected to office in the southeastern United States. Reporter Chase Cain does ask her when being transgender will not longer be an issue, and she says, “Maybe not in my lifetime, but someday being transgender means no more than being right- or left-handed.”
Good for her! Excited to see what comes of the race.
In 1900, to buy a dozen eggs, it took a little bit more than an hour’s worth of work for the average person. You were making about 21 cents an hour, and a dozen eggs cost about 23 cents. So that was a lot of work to serve your family a dozen eggs. So just to understand how much the prices have actually fallen over time, the typical wage now is about $23 an hour, and eggs are, you know, $1.69, maybe $2 depending on what you’re buying.
So it takes a fraction of your hour. You can make enough money to buy a dozen eggs in a matter of minutes these days.
Marilyn Geewax, NPR’s senior business editor
For some reason, I can’t stop thinking about this quote. Chewy. —Sarah
