Sweet Sensations

This is one chemistry lesson we won't want to skip! No boring textbook or crazy professor tagging the blackboard with obscure chemistry theorems in double-Dutch speak. Here we have liquid poetry in motion, harmless explosions revealing their complexity, dilutions into water creating swirly bursts of colours mixing into ombrés, captured on camera, immortalised in their fleetingness by a host of talented artists. The inky shots lend a cocktail of special effects, illusory textures, modern ballet choreography, 3D profoundness that captivate and take us to the antichamber of dreamscape and the imaginary before they evanesce.

If only our science teachers had used the trick as a way to captivate a class of pesky teens to illustrate themes based around the periodic table of chemical elements, molecular formulae, density and gravity, then kids like myself would have given science more than a passing glance. Now I simply cannot take my eyes off those little beauties:

Source: (1) and (2) Part of Marcel Christ's non-commissioned 'Pario' series, via Wired. The paint and water mix was blasted with compressed air and captured at the staggering shutter speed of 1/10,000th of a second, to immortalise pattern effects that would otherwise be invisible to the naked eye! The result creates unique one-of-a-kind ephemeral abstract artforms that look set in glass (akin to those glass marbles or paper weights that enclose swirly patterns). (3) and (4) From the 'a due Colori' personal portfolio by Alberto Seveso, via Behance (3), which also applies the high-speed camera process to an ink and water mix. We would be forgiven for mistaking the liquid mix for crunched organza or magnified close-ups of pollen! (5) and (6) 'Abstract 1931b', both part of the 'Across the Volumes' series by Kim Keever, via Co.Design. Artistry comes out of diverse talented guises. Take ex-NASA thermal engineer Keever, who has channelled his creativity via visual effects created by dropping industrial paint tints into 200-gallon fish tanks, with a scientific approach. "The natural properties of the different pigments allow them to move in different ways through water molecules" (via Co.Design). Here pigments and water create clouds reminiscent of renaissance paintings.