Arts Design

MAGIC = SCIENCE + ART

Is magic the perfect fusion of art and science? Swiss artist and photographer Fabian Oefner has one foot in each camp. He is a bit of a wizard.

His images capture the artful magic of natural phenomena that appear in our daily lives, such as bubbles, sound waves, centripetal forces, iridescence, or the unique properties of magnetic ferroliquids.

His exploration of the unseen parts of the natural world asks us to “stop for a moment and appreciate the magic that constantly surrounds us.”

BLACK HOLE

Black Hole is a series of images, which shows paint modeled by centripetal force.

Inspired by Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings, Oefner was intrgued by what happens when paint moves through the air with force. In this case, it is the force of whirling.

To capture the magical millisecond, where the paint formed a distinctive shape, Oefner connected a sensor to the drill, which sent an impulse to his hyper-fast flashes -- flashes as short as a 1/40000 of a second -- freezing the motion of the paint.

LIQUID JEWEL

The “Liquid Jewel” series is a further exploration of how natural forces can manipulate paint. In this series, Oefner used air pressure to create what he calls “liquid jewels.”

Oefner covered modeling balloons with paint right after they were pricked with a needle. The air inside the balloon expanded explosively, throwing the paint in all different directions.

“What I particularly love about the images is that if you look closely, you can see, how the individual shades start to mix with each other, blue and magenta becomes violet, red and yellow becomes orange…within a few microseconds, the paint forms into the most beautiful color combinations…and then its gone again. What remains is the capture of that firework of colors, frozen in time…” muses Oefner.

DANCING COLORS

Oefner set out to make sound visible -- turning a wave into a visual signal.

He mounted a thin plastic foil on top of the membrane of a common loud speaker, then topped it with hundreds of colorful, tiny crystals. The vibration caused by the sound emanating from the speaker makes the crystals jump up and down. Magical forms and “figures” appear. Shapes change with changes in frequency, pitch and volume.

You may have seen Oefner’s incredible images in an LG commercial, where you get the added thrill of seeing this magic in motion. If not, watch it here.

AURORA

This is a “brain” on alcohol.

We’ve all seen alcohol burn -- but this is some cool scientific burn “magic” you’ve probably never seen. Check out these images of alcohol fumes taken at the nano-second they catch fire.

To create his Aurora Series, Oefner added a few drops of alcohol into a large glass vessel, let the volatile fumes expand within it, then ignited them. As the flames travelled through the vessel, they formed into these magical brainlike “fire sculptures.”

MILLEFIORI

The composite of shapes you see in this image is only about the size of a thumbnail. It is a piece from Oefner’s Millefiori Series, created with ferrofluid, a liquid with unique magnetic properties which contains millions of iron nanoparticles. When put under a magnetic field, the particles rearrange due to the attraction and repulsion of iron.

Oefner then added water colors to the ferrofluid mix. As with oil, ferrofluid and water don’t mix. This, influenced by the moving magnetic field, caused magical structures to form, with black channels and tiny rainbow colored ponds.

NEBULA

Oefner can magically create tiny stars, galaxies, and astronomical phenomena. It’s an illusion, of course. Each photograph focuses on the glowing ends of a fibre glass lamp.

Using a long exposure, Oefner moved the around in a pitch black room to create streaks of light across the frame. He then created a composite of multiple images together to conjure outer space.