Nobel prize winning crystallographer Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin created another physical visualization in the mid 1940's, showing part of the structure of penicillin. An original of this artifact is in the Oxford Museum of the History of Science. This technique recently inspired artist Angela Palmer for her glass portraits. Sources: Lachlan Michael and David Cranswicka (2008) Busting out of crystallography's Sisyphean prison: from pencil and paper to structure solving at the press of a button: […]

Artist Bathsheba Grossman has been 3D printing mathematical surfaces as early as 1997. In 2002 she started to use subsurface laser engraving to produce 3D physical visualizations of data from astronomy, biology, and physics. Left image: a piece of DNA molecule. Right image: a 3D map of our nearby stars. The artist explains to us: This medium excels at imaging less structural data such as disconnected volumes, non-compact point clouds, and the convoluted strands of proteins. It works by […]

This work by the chinese designer Yisha Cai explores meteorological phenomena using digital data, conception and production tools. Especially interested in data visualization, Yisha Cai collected rain data through sensors and an arduino device. The data were then processed to generate a 3D model. The cylindrical clay tornado form was generated by code in a digital platform. It was subsequently printed in porcelain by a 3D ceramics printer. The accompanying glass globe form was shaped as a […]

Dexter Callender III’s work captured light moving across several iconic architectures of the Boston area throughout the course of a day. He captured light using a unique setup of photography and code. Those data were then converted into layers and shapes, carved into glass and assembled to form a set of unique sculptures that won Dexter the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Prize in the Visual Arts in 2024. The final shape represents the “immaterial” shape of light moving through […]