honorable mention
Elzbieta Kurowska canada
title
Light Forms
To implement this technique in my art photography I needed to replace hard resins with the material that had similar optical properties but was soft, malleable, and easy to deform. Through a systematic scientific search, I came across a perfect material - organic gels. Not only did these gels glow with light and vivid colors when subjected to deformation and viewed in cross-polarized light field. They were also predisposed to form life-resembling shapes. All this allowed me to build and photograph complex gel structures that resemble otherworldly life forms made out of light – Light Forms.
One day I suddenly realized that the process of creation of Light Forms feels like creation of life itself. As in scientific theory of life origins, I start from forming “organic” shapes from the amorphous, pale gelatinous matter. Then I subject my gel objects to the stress (of deformation rather than cosmic radiation). Finally, I illuminate them in the cross-polarized light field and capture their transformation into a glowing, vibrant and strangely beautiful “life”.
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entry description
In this experimental photography project, I use translucent photoelastic gels and cross-polarized light to design, build and capture beautiful worlds bursting with light and vivid colors. By combining art and science, I reveal hidden potential of organic matter to transform into glowing, abstract, biomorphic objects. The resulting images look otherworldly, perhaps like alien life developed on another planet, but also vaguely familiar, like microscopic life that could be discovered on Earth. In my creative process I collaborate with forces of nature. When I design and sculpture my gel compositions, and subject them to gentle deformation, the outcome is often delightfully unpredictable. The perfect moment when pale, inanimate organic forms transform into spectacular, glowing structures which look almost alive happens only with a perfect combination of stress patterns in the gel material, illumination, and camera angle.about the photographer
I am a photographer and a biochemist. As a scientist, I was always fascinated by the origins of life; specifically by the moment in Earth’s history when the amorphous organic matter self-organized and transformed into first living organisms, probably because of the extreme environmental stress (cosmic radiation, powerful thunderstorms etc.) on the young planet. I never thought that my fascination may translate into art but… Three years ago I stumbled upon photographic images made using photo elasticity, a long abandoned visualization technique from the field of materials engineering. This technique was originally developed to visualize deformations in translucent models made of hard resins and photographed in polarized light. The resulting images were used to analyze stresses revealed by bursts of light and vibrant colors.To implement this technique in my art photography I needed to replace hard resins with the material that had similar optical properties but was soft, malleable, and easy to deform. Through a systematic scientific search, I came across a perfect material - organic gels. Not only did these gels glow with light and vivid colors when subjected to deformation and viewed in cross-polarized light field. They were also predisposed to form life-resembling shapes. All this allowed me to build and photograph complex gel structures that resemble otherworldly life forms made out of light – Light Forms.
One day I suddenly realized that the process of creation of Light Forms feels like creation of life itself. As in scientific theory of life origins, I start from forming “organic” shapes from the amorphous, pale gelatinous matter. Then I subject my gel objects to the stress (of deformation rather than cosmic radiation). Finally, I illuminate them in the cross-polarized light field and capture their transformation into a glowing, vibrant and strangely beautiful “life”.
back to gallery