Nebula with gas streams – cat fur, garlic powder, salt, flour, cumin...

March 30, 2015 5:08 AM

Artist Creates Artificial Space Images Using Food Supplies

Brooklyn-based artist, Navid Baraty’s latest project “WANDER Space Probe” creates a fictional universe constructed from food and home supplies. Partially edible, Baraty’s photographs are made by arranging household items on a scanner. With the help of a pinch of sugar, cinnamon, flour, and a glass of coffee, Baraty produces stunning images of an alternate galaxy.

posted by moody cow (14 comments total)

This is one of those things that makes you think, "why didn't I think of that?". Cool!
posted by escape from the potato planet at 5:32 AM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Those are fantastic!
posted by rtha at 6:11 AM on March 30, 2015

I liked looking at the images first and then the list of items used later, I would not have guessed cat fur the first time around, but now I can't unsee it. I guess someone got their cat stuck in their scanner and voila - nebula.

But, seriously, these are fabulous images!
posted by dawg-proud at 6:16 AM on March 30, 2015

I remember in Disney's "The Black Hole" they created the black hole effect by pouring paint into a toilet or something.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:35 AM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

These are all great, but the first planet and the last globular cluster remind me the most of actual astronomical photography.
posted by TreeRooster at 6:58 AM on March 30, 2015

Nebula with gas streams – cat fur, garlic powder, salt, flour, cumin...

I'm looking at the list of "food supplies" being used to create this art, and can't help but notice one of these things is not like the other ;^)
posted by surazal at 7:13 AM on March 30, 2015 [4 favorites]

Nebula with gas streams – cat fur, garlic powder, salt, flour, cumin...

I'm looking at the list of "food supplies" being used to create this art, and can't help but notice one of these things is not like the other ;^)

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that perhaps our artist is a cat owner. And thus fur is one of the main food groups ingested!
posted by dawg-proud at 7:21 AM on March 30, 2015 [8 favorites]

These are all so cool. I love how artists can look at something so common and see something so new in it.
posted by xingcat at 7:28 AM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Now I want to add food coloring to the cream I put in my coffee.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:42 AM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

cat fur, garlic powder, salt, flour, cumin...

So, basically my kitchen floor at the end of this weekend.
posted by happyroach at 8:44 AM on March 30, 2015

Very cool!

It looks like most of the planets and moons are scanned separately and the image is composed in Photoshop, right? How else do you get the shadows, or even more perplexing, the moon passing in front of planet in the third picture? Since there isn't much detail about the process, I'm wondering if there's something clever that I'm overlooking.

Also, in "Deep space", it's weird that there's a spotlight on the planet, especially since he got the shadows mostly right in all of the other pictures.

The black hole is probably my favorite. It looks super cool, and it even distorts the shapes of the shapes of the stars in a fairly accurate way. That's Photoshop again, I'm assuming, otherwise there would probably be some stars in front of the black hole. I'm pretty sure gravitational lenses don't cause chromatic aberration, though.
posted by WCWedin at 8:53 AM on March 30, 2015

It now makes sense, we are in a petri dish, in a dusty, abandoned lab where feral beasts roam. NASA-Not As Stuff Appears.

Wonderful approach to making art. I hope he works all the way up to alternate realities. I want to work on his Mars project.
posted by Oyéah at 9:00 AM on March 30, 2015

I'm assuming photoshop as well, WCWedin, since I don't see any other way the glasses could overlap like that. Which rather took the shine off it for me.
posted by tavella at 9:53 AM on March 30, 2015

Arist would've had a good career doing Star Trek space backgrounds.
posted by curious nu at 1:02 PM on March 30, 2015