The invention of the electron microscope in the 1930s radically changed how we see and understand the world. Zoom out from an underwater tropical tree and you’ll find it’s actually a human hair, seen at a resolution of one billionth of a meter. Now, with new technology developed over the past decade, a number of scientists — or part-scientists, part-artists — are not only observing the atomic landscape but shaping it, creating miniscule sculptures and other works known as NanoArt. Images from electron microscopes have a distinct 3D negative style that gives the landscape a ghostly fuzz. The images are also black and white, but many artist-scientists add layers of color and then print the images onto canvas or fine art paper.

NanoArt is a glimpse into an unbelievably tiny world that only a small number of scientists have viewed. For the average person, the realm of nanotechnology -- that is, structures smaller than a billionth of a meter -- is as remote and inaccessible as the moon. But nanoartist Cris Orfescu wanted to change that. He created the NanoArt Exhibition to share the beauty of the nano-world with those of us living in the macro-world. Using electron microscopes, scientists capture images of nano-sized landscapes and then colorize them with digital photography software in order to create pieces of art. Although you may be interested in learning what the image is, Orfescu wants the public to see the nano-world independent of its source, for just its simple beauty.

... the molecular landscapes of various materials, where features are measured nanometers, became a preoccupation in recent years... artists face a fundamental hurdle, of course. Nanotechnology is the realm where materials have dimensions of 100 nanometers or less. Since a single hair is roughly 80,000 nanometers wide, nanoscale objects are not only too small to see but too small to photograph with even the fanciest of cameras. It takes devices like scanning electron microscopes to get nanoscale images of any sort. Moreover, since nanoscale particles are smaller than the wavelengths of visible light, the electron images that capture them are studies in gray.