Zooming in on something makes you experience the thing your looking at in such a different way then looking at it from a distance.
Seeing different structures, colors, layers and framing things in a different way makes you think about more then only the object. It makes a difference if you know where you’re looking at, because if you don’t, you’ll probably wonder more, and if you do, you start connecting more things.
In the Exposition ‘Beauty in Science‘ in the Boijmans van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam we are confronted with a lot of ‘beautiful’ visuals that appear when we approach something out of nature in a different way, by for example zooming on something like blood cells moving.
While we are looking at these ‘wonderful’ and ‘beautiful’ images you can start thinking about the thing that contains this beauty or maybe even start appreciate it more when you see it real size. You start wondering about life, the world, the universe, us as uman beings ..things we might all think about once in a while;)
I think it’s really interesting to see these things displayed, because I personally never look trough a microscope(well, not every day) and I don’t see what a lot of scientist do, but I don’t think it is necessary to connect it to a peace of art created by human hands or mind. At least not as they do.
In a lot of texts or quotes on the wall they refer to the fact that the world creates beautiful things. And we as human beeings for example try to imitate what nature creates every day. By displaying everything so big I have the feeling they really want to put it in your face that we have to look more around us and accept that the world already contains so much ‘beauty’ that it’s unnecessary that we want to create more.
I think we all agree that nature creates beauty and of course we might want to reproduce or create, inspired by these wonders of nature, but therefore making art is a totally different thing.
But what happens if we approach art in a different way? Literally approaching art in a scientific way is what you can do while visiting Google Art Project online.
While zooming in so intense on a painting, framing/cropping it differently and seeing it on your computer screen makes you search for different compositions, details. Brushstrokes almost become something else and seeing cracks in the paint or the canvas and colours make you think about art, ageing, the maker….
You see an artwork in you’re own setting at home and you can zoom in more then your bare eye can do in a museum.
Should it be like this? Is this necessary? A way of archiving? …it could be a good inspiration source, just as nature is and what scientific images show us.
Again I think, it’s another interesting thing man is capable of doing …evolution? And we do it, produce it. But it could be reductive for art.