SciPhotos

As we navigate through the world we are surrounded by amazing curiosities. Through constant exposure we lose sight of just how amazing our little corner of existence is. Take the absolutely beautiful millipede above. I stumbled upon her while blustering my way through the woods. There is a high likelihood this was the only moment in all of time that this millipede would ever come into contact with a human. Until spotted, humanity had no idea this individual millipede existed. It would have lived an entire millipede life without our knowledge. Yet the relationship this millipede has with its environment influences are own lives in a compounding way through a great exchange of energy and matter. This millipede (as with all life on earth) is the product of countless specific events occurring over billions of years. The formation of heavy elements, the movement of the cosmos, and millions of years of evolution had to happen in a very precise way for this encounter to happen. Despite all that effort, of course the millipede has no idea about any of this. It probably only wishes I would stop poking a camera lens in its face.

This is in no way meant to disparage the millipede as we are in much the same position. We barely have a grasp on the forces and interactions that define our universe. Even still we do have two tools that help us light a torch and give us a better grip on the tail of the behemoth that's charging its way through the darkness that surrounds us. We have art and science.

It takes the mind of an artist or a scientist to dedicate their lives to the search for beauty, poetry and objective truth. Through that search the whole universe becomes more enlightened. This is why I started Sciphotos.com, to promote a more collaborative approach between art and science. We are still looking for new collaborators so if you're an artist with an interest in science, or a scientist with an artistic desire. Check out the site and contact me if you're interested in contributing. You can email me at matthew@sciphotos.com.

Lonely Creatures "dearest world"

We recently finished recording Lonely Creatures first album, "dearest world." You can give it a listen below. We hope you like it. We're already hard at work writing some new music which we hope to start recording soon.



Starry eyed mind cry out "Wake up Courage" for the moon will fall and still you sleep.


Credits: Erin Wall, Matthew Ross, Joshua Raucci

The Heart

The Heart by Matthew T. Ross

24 by 18 limited edition signed gallery canvas print 1 of 5 Sold

24 by 18 limited edition signed gallery canvas print 2 of 5 $648

16 by 12 photo print unlimited print $42

Of all of our viscera, the heart receives the most praise and attention from artists, musicians, and authors. This admiration began as far back as Aristotle, who called it “the most important organ of the body”. He thought the brain was merely there to prevent the heart from over-heating. As our understanding of anatomy has improved, we’ve learned that a lot of the functions early peoples attributed to the heart were really controlled by the brain. Functions such as the control of our emotions, thoughts and reasoning. And so, while the heart may not deserve all of the accolades people bestow on it, it is an amazing piece of biological machinery.  The heart keeps energy, heat and oxygen flowing throughout our body. The beat of our hearts is a constant reminder of our continued existence on the earth. The earth spins and our heart beats. There are few things as wonderful as feeling the heartbeat of a loved one, thus connecting you to the direct physicality of their life. Every beat containing the strength and fragility of that life. Even though our hearts will stop beating long before the earth stops spinning, that deep thumping is a reminder that we are cells working and clinging together to hold our shape for as many spins of the earth as they can muster. 

The Heart is a work of digital art created as part of my series on anatomy. The style of the series is meant to change in appearance depending on the viewer's perspective. When standing away from the artwork, the "cells" of the heart blend together creating a cohesive image, but as you approach it the individual curves and circles that make up the heart become apparent. To understand anything, you must zoom in and explore the individual units that coalesce into some greater whole. The cell was discovered in 1665, however it wasn't until 1839 that cell theory stated that all living organisms are made up of individual units.

The heart in the image is made up of about 12,800 individually drawn "cells", while there are an estimated 2 billion muscle cells that make up the actual human heart.

The anatomy is based on Plate 505 of the anatomical illustrations of Henry Vandyke Carter first published in Grays' Anatomy in 1858. The heart as he drew it was perhaps a little too elongated, but for the most part accurate. As I have drawn it, the image would need to be rotated approximately 25 degrees counter-clockwise to represent it's position in the chest cavity.


The colors are sampled from images of the "Orion Nebula" taken by the Hubble telescope. On either side of the mass spectrum lies awe, beauty and terror at the tiny bits that make up ourselves and the grandness of the universe we live in. It is up to the artist as much as it is to the scientist to explore our place among this continuum. As we have explored this continuum it has only grown wider as a result of that exploration, but we have always been the better for it. 

Below you will find a video showing a time-lapse of the drawing process:

Image Information:
Number of strokes: ~12,080 strokes make up the heart itself
Image Medium: Vector
Image References: Plate 505 The anatomical illustrations of Henry Vandyke Carter first published in Grays' Anatomy in 1858.
Colors sampled from: Orion Nebula taken by the Hubble Telescope

online

The Hand

The Hand By Matthew T Ross

24 by 18 limited edition signed gallery canvas print 1 of 5 Sold

24 by 18 limited edition signed gallery canvas print 2 of 5 Sold

24 by 18 limited edition signed gallery canvas print 3 of 5 $648

16 by 12 photo print unlimited print $42

 The hand contains one of the densest concentrations of touch receptors in the whole body. The receptors respond to the pull, stretch, and vibration of the skin when it comes into contact with an object. The greater the density of receptors the more detail we can discern, from the texture to the shape of the object. We feel the physicality of the world around us through our touch receptors. We can see an object, but to truly appreciate its presence in the universe, we have to be able to push against it and sense it pushing back.

Our hands feel and manipulate the world around us. They've created and wielded weapons, gripped paintbrushes, instruments, and the hands of fellow humans. Through our hands we have modified our world into the image we desire. While our brains might be the most complicated structure in the known universe, our hands are the most powerful.

The Hand is a work of digital art created as part of my series on anatomy. The image is based on my own left hand. The style of the series is meant to change in appearance depending on the viewer's perspective. When standing away from the artwork, the "cells" of the hand blend together creating a cohesive image, but as you approach it, the individual curves and circles that make up the hand become more apparent. To understand something, you must zoom in and explore the individual units that make it up before you can understand how those units coalesce into some greater whole. 

The cell was discovered in 1665, however it wasn't until 1839 that cell theory stated that all living organisms are made up of individual units. This truth has been at odds with our sense of identity ever since. We think of ourselves as a single whole, however, our hands along with the rest of our body is made of individual cells. Those cells function both independently and as a group. Of course, for those cells to stay alive they depend on an extremely complicated series of interactions with the many cells around them. 

 No single cell knows of its own existence and yet together the cells in my hand created this image.

The colors are sampled from images of the "pillars of creation" taken by the Hubble telescope. From the microscope to the telescope lies awe, beauty and terror at the tiny bits that make up ourselves and the grandness of the universe those bits inhabit. It is up to the artist as much as it is to the scientist to explore our place among this continuum. As we have explored this continuum it has only grown wider as a result of that exploration, but we have always been the better for it. 

Below you will find a video showing a time-lapse of the drawing:

Image Information:
Number of strokes: ~11,350 strokes make up the hand itself
Image Medium: Vector
Image source: Photo of the artists left hand
Colors sampled from: "Pillars of Creation" photographed by the Hubble telescope

online

The Eye

The Eye by Matthew T. Ross

24 by 18 limited edition signed gallery canvas print 1 of 5 Sold

24 by 18 limited edition signed gallery canvas print 2 of 5 $648

16 by 12 photo print unlimited print $42

The human eye is an absolutely gorgeous albeit bizarre structure. Just about everything about the eye is the opposite of our intuition. The visual scene hits the retina upside down. The retina itself is "backwards" in that the photo-receptors are towards the back of the retina while their projections are towards the front (this ultimately results in us having a blind spot). The information sent from the eye is based on a lack of electrical activity, rather than the electrical activity itself (as in most other sensory systems). Despite the peculiarities of our eye's anatomy, the brain can process visual information with amazing fidelity.

Humans have a particularly strong dependence on the sense of sight, giving us something a little more in common with birds than most other mammals (as they tend to rely more heavily on their sense of smell). It's not surprising that visual information is such a large part of cultural expression throughout all of human existence, including imagery of eyes. While many mammals use chemical signaling, such as pheromones, to attracts mates, we rely most heavily on appearances (again something shared with birds). This alone gives the medium of the image an amazing amount of power in culture. We're surrounded by images trying to command our attention, from the sexualized imagery of other humans to expertly sculptured and photographed shots of food. The image draws its power from our brain's reliance on sight to interpret the world around us. It should be no surprise that when creating artwork inspired by our own anatomy the best place to start would be with the eye itself.

The Eye, along with rest of my series on anatomy is meant to change in appearance based on the viewpoint of the observer. The shapes and details blend or become distinct depending on how closely you look at the artwork. Even our own cohesiveness depends on the vantage point of our observer. This was most fully realized upon the discovery of the cell; we were no longer one whole individual, but billions of individual pieces. 

The colors for this image came from samples of my own eye color and images of the helix nebula. Despite being "simply" a giant cloud of space dust and gases the helix nebula looks to us to be a massive cosmic eye staring back at us. Ultimately, this speaks to our visual systems ability to determine patterns, particularly patterns that look like faces and eyes. Either that, or there is some great artist floating among the stars painting eyes to inspire us lowly earth artists.

Image Information:
Vector image of more than 10,000 strokes
Image source: The artist's right eye
Colors sampled from: Helix Nebula & the artist's eye color

online

Dorsabot and the Saurus

Behold the story of Dorsabot and the Saurus. A dinosaur and a robot just trying to make their way through a universe plagued by asteroids and electromagnetic pulses.