Nanotechnology Now

Our NanoNews Digest Sponsors
Heifer International



Home > Nanotechnology Columns > Cristian Orfescu > NanoArt 2011 International Online Competition - TOP10 Artists

Cris Orfescu
Founder
NanoArt21

Abstract:
The TOP10 artists at the 5th anniversary edition of the NanoArt International Online Competition are also featured on the NanoArt21 site in a multimedia presentation.

June 29th, 2011

NanoArt 2011 International Online Competition - TOP10 Artists

The 5th anniversary edition of the NanoArt International Online Competition is over now and the TOP10 artists are exhibited on the NanoArt21 website. All participating artists did a great job for which I am thankful. Their works are showcased on the NanoArt21 Online Exhibition site.
I would like to thank our jurors Dr. Anatoli Korkin (PhD in Physics from Moscow Lomonosov State University), Associate Research Professor at Arizona State University and President of Nano & Giga Solutions (a company that provides research and software development in the area of computational chemistry and materials design for nanotechnology applications and consulting and project management in nanotechnology education, science, and innovation) and Hugh McGrory, Irish filmmaker/photographer and NanoArt pioneer who has built a strong reputation for innovation through experimentation (he was filmmaker in residence at the Toomre Lab's CINEMA microscopy department, Yale University School of Medicine for summer 2007, researching, collecting and creating moving images of the living cell and exploring the wider area of scientific imaging; he is now the Creative Director of Culture Shock Marketing in New York City).
Here are the first 5 in our TOP10 artists (the other 5 artists in TOP10 will be presented in a future article):
First Place: Siddhartha Pathak, USA, born in West Bengal, India. "After finishing my undergraduate studies in 2003 in Metallurgical Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Warangal, India, I have also completed my PhD (2009) in Materials Science from Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA. My first post-doctoral research position after my PhD was at EMPA, Thun, Switzerland, where my primary research focus was on characterizing the mechanical response of grain boundaries in steel under contact loading. Since the Fall of 2010 I have been working at California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, USA as the 2010 W.M. Keck Institute for Space Studies Postdoctoral Fellow in Materials Science. As an artist, my microscopy work has also been showcased all around the globe (including the Discovery Channel website and the 2008 NanoArt Festival in Stuttgart, Germany), and has resulted in a number of awards. The primary inspiration behind my entries for the 2011 NanoArt exhibit is my current research at Caltech which involves mechanical testing at submicron length scales, with a particular emphasis towards space applications."

Siddhartha Pathak, Micro-pillar fabricated from a dense CNT brush

Second Place: Elena Lucia Constantinescu, Romania. "I am a scientist in cellular biology domain. I have come to digital art after many years of working with the microscope in my lab. I was always fascinated by the spectacular microworld and, using the image processing software for my micrographs. I was astonished by the countless possibilities offered by digital technology to turn the photos into artistic images. And I started to draw... The microscopic images are fascinating and very challenging both for a scientist and an artist. I think every microscopist who has some artistic talent should try to speculate the beauty of the micrographs or donate some nice images which are not scientifically useful but could be spectacular by casual errors."

Elena Lucia Constantinescu, Feather Sculpture

Third Place: Dr. Björn Dämpfling grew up in Northern Germany, he lives and works since 1969 in Berlin/Germany. In 1983/4 and 1987-91 he lived in the USA. He was spending 2/3 of his time on science, and 1/3 on art. For the last 10 years, art is his main profession. He exhibits worldwide, like London, New York, and Beijing. Identifiable but unpredictable, even for himself, every new image has to prove the core value of creativity for him: freedom of creation, newness, and being recognizable at the same time, based on complexity and quality of composition. "In creating NanoArt I am always quite happy being provided with images to work with, because finding myself the best fitting image for my purpose or just taking material as an inspiration for something in need of a commentary to find its nano roots, wouldn't do it for me. It is like a non-physical material to be used like a physical one, like wood for a wood-cut, which develops into a piece of art, not by hiding its given structures, but by enhancing, twisting, coloring and using dozens of plates. That's what I do, most of the 'ab-using' filters, layering dozens of times and painting digitally into the images. The titles for my NanoArt works are taken from the works of H.P. Lovecraft."

Björn Dämpfling, Xura

Fourth Place: Carol Flaitz, USA. "I am a professional artist and my husband, Phil Flaitz, is an electron microscopist working for IBM, East Fishkill, NY. One evening he showed me some of his images. I was awed by what I saw and began to paint them using a combination of mixed media. Since I was originally a ceramic artist I use a great deal of texture to express and interpret his micrographs. Some of the materials that I use to achieve these effects include: ground glass, pumice mediums, dyed glue, polymer resin, oxidized metallic paints, and various acrylic mediums. The title comes from my husband's screen name. The work is a reflection of my own marriage where art and technology unite. I have been thrilled to find out about the Nanoart movement and I am very interested in participating in anyway possible. I would love to see more exhibitions of this type of work and would be willing to participate to help this come about."

Carol Flaitz, Stuck on the Right Side of the Brain

Fifth Place: Daniela Caceta, Brazil, was born in 1977. Since 1992 she has been working at the Centro Multidisciplinar para o Desenvolvimento de Materiais Cerâmicos (CMDMC) / Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP) and Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCar) (Brazil) on computer generated artwork. Working also with a Field Emission Gun Scanning Electron Microscope (FEG) she revealed some interesting features. She used Microscopy FEG to monitor the formation, growth, development, and mostly, the morphology of several nanostructures.
"Nanometric materials are invisible to the human eye. By comparison, particles at the nanometric scale are many times smaller than the thickness of a hair and smaller than a bacterium. Since the time of ancient Greece, through their imagination, humans have engineered materials at the nanometer level. Although the Greeks where unaware of the size of the particles with which they were dealing, they created colorful pottery glazes by manipulating nano-sized particles."

Daniela Caceta, Union of Tulips

To view the multimedia featuring the TOP10 artists visit NanoArt21 website.
To view all artworks entered the competition visit the NanoArt21 Online Exhibition site.

Bookmark:
Delicious Digg Newsvine Google Yahoo Reddit Magnoliacom Furl Facebook

NanoNews-Digest
The latest news from around the world, FREE




  Premium Products
NanoNews-Custom
Only the news you want to read!
 Learn More
NanoStrategies
Full-service, expert consulting
 Learn More











ASP
Nanotechnology Now Featured Books




NNN

The Hunger Project