To enter, just submit your previously unpublished image along with a description by Tuesday, 1st November 2011. The winners will also be asked to write for the magazine, as part of the regular Uncovered feature. Every issue will feature a page devoted to the cover, where authors can explain the science behind the image.
Your entries should be broadly related to at least one of the subject categories below.
The winning image will be selected by judges appointed by Materials Today.
The judges’ decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
By entering your image to this competition, you agree that Elsevier can use the image in future promotional material.
Entries are judged on their scientific merit, as well as the attractiveness of the image and its suitability as a cover image. Winners will be selected by our panel of judges.
Ten winning images will be chosen and featured on the cover of the journal throughout the 2012 catalogue year. Winners will be announced at the MRS Fall meeting, taking place in Boston later this year.
Infinitesimal landscapes of precious metals transformed by electric current come to enlarged life in Touching One Billionth of a Meter, a solo exhibition of recent works by multimedia artist Carol Flaitz a TOP 10 artist at the 5th edition of the NanoArt International Online Competition organized by NanoArt21. Flaitz’s tactile panels, which she encourages visitors to touch, are based on extreme magnifications of the insides of computer chips. If you are in the area from October 8 through November 6, it is well worth a visit to BAU gallery, on 161 Main Street in Beacon, New York, where the exhibition is hosted.
Flaitz, originally a ceramics artist, became infatuated with project images from an electron microscope brought home by her husband, IBM senior engineer Phil Flaitz. Cross sections of the metals inside layers of computer chips, originally used for diagnostic purposes, fascinated the artist while teasing her with nanolandscapes she could see but not touch.
Flaitz then began interpreting these images onto large wooden panels (the largest currently at 5 feet long) and building up reliefs using various materials to mimic the imagery she encountered; images of structures so small that light particles themselves were too large to capture with even microscopic photography.
Flaitz digs into her panels, creating “fissures” or deep crevices that hint at further worlds beyond, then builds up her surfaces with various compounds, salts, resins and glazes to bring to life geological landscapes that man has created but until her work could not truly inhabit. “For all the benefits of digital technology,” says Flaitz, “the machines man creates literally shut him off from direct experience, reducing everything to the virtual world of light under glass. Within my lifetime, humanity has become beholden to a man-made world we cannot touch or feel. But once we get down to the molecular level, we find that the tidy clean chips and boards that run and rule our days are really organic minerals subject to the stresses of natural geophysics, and the illusion of perfection quickly breaks down, replaced by a natural beauty that is profound, chaotic and much more interesting.”
While the final pieces themselves look like they occurred naturally, the work required to make them seem so is anything but a simple process. Single panels can take weeks or even months to layer enough to create the desired effect, and the combination of sometimes volatile materials often requires the artist to be as much chemist as painter or sculptor.
Flaitz has exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently in Cologne, Germany. She holds a Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Wales in Cardiff, Great Britain and a Bachelors of Fine Arts from the prestigious College of Ceramics at Alfred University in New York. She and her family live in Newburgh, New York.
This article is an excerpt from the exhibition program.
The winning entry in the Life Sciences category at Andor 2011 Insight Awards was Dr. Satoshi Nishimura of the University of Tokyo with a new in vivo imaging technique which will allow scientists to work at a cellular level and will provide the basis for future clinical usage of in vivo imaging for humans. He entered a series of confocal captures entitled ‘Inflammatory cellular dynamics in obese adipose tissue revealed by in vivo imaging technique’ using an Andor iXon3 EMCCD camera and a Confocal Spinning Disk Unit.
Dr. Satoshi Nishimura is a world-renowned expert of intravital molecular imaging; which means in vivo imaging of microcirculation and molecular dynamics in living animals with high spatiotemporal resolution. Intravital Molecular Imaging is a powerful tool to elucidate not only vascular pathological conditions such as arteriosclerosis, but also to study molecular mechanisms of pathological conditions caused by complicated and multi-cellular abnormal interactions, such as cancer or metabolic syndrome.
The winners were selected from a panel of expert judges from both life and physical science that included Dr. David Jess of Queen’s University, Dr. Neil Ganem of the Harvard Medical School, Professor Stefan Diez of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG), Dr. Gábor Csúcs of the Institute for Biochemistry in Zürich, and Dr. Donal Denvir from Andor Technology.
