"The trick to education is to teach people in such a way that they don't realize they're learning until it's too late."Fluorescein-dyed water appears suspended in midair, only to "flow" upwards moments later. The careful dance of a splashing drop is frozen and taken for granted, painstakingly analyzed in a brilliant defiance of how water should behave. Such is the wonder of what modder Nate True calls his
Time Fountain (YouTube embedded & worth it)—a well-documented, DIY version of classic science center favorite, the
Water Piddler. MIT's own
Strobe Alley is lined with photos created using the same technology, pioneered by
Harold Eugene Edgerton, a professor whose work you're almost
certainly familiar with. Naturally, some beautiful pieces have followed under the same ideal, courtesy
Martin Waugh.
posted by disillusioned
on Aug 8, 2006 -
14 comments
Little visual miracles. For more than forty years that most American of photographers,
Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters Lee Friedlander, has recorded
modern American urban life -- with its
jumble of
people,
signs,
buildings, and
cars, and
television sets. He likes to turn
a common blunder of amateurs -- photographing something nearby
with one's back to the sun -- into a
leitmotif.
His shadow plays the role of alter ego, sticking to the back of a woman's fur collar, clinging to a lamppost as a parade of drum majorettes passes by, reclining like a stuffed doll on a chair. Clever jigsaw puzzles, his pictures frequently reveal themselves to be
laconic, austere poems to what
Friedlander has termed "
the American social landscape',' meaning mostly ordinary places and affairs. "Friedlander,"
an exhibition of more than 480 photographs and 25 books covering decades of work, runs at MoMA through Aug. 29, before traveling to Europe until 2007. More inside.
posted by matteo
on Jun 14, 2005 -
8 comments
