Science Behind the Art

Alienor Hammer reveals the scientific concepts influencing two pieces of artwork.

Kelly Briggs, The Language of the Spheres, A3 ink on paper

This artwork by Kelly Briggs explores patterns of growth on different scales, spanning micro to macro. The artist describes how she has been observing samples from an ancient forest near her home and studying its microscopic landscapes. She says: “Looking so deeply into these new lands and their inhabitants feels like space travel – except instead of looking out I’m looking in.”

Ancient woodlands are extremely complex ecosystems which have evolved over centuries and harbour very specific communities of native wildlife that can be found nowhere else. In the UK, they only cover 2.5% of the countryside, despite being the richest and most intricate ecosystem, providing shelter to the most threatened species.

It is vital to protect such ecosystems, because you can’t consider centenary trees and young saplings to be the same. They are both trees, but ancient oaks, for example, have created their own unique ecosystems and become home to species that have taken a long time to accumulate and thrive. If these oaks are gone, there is absolutely no guarantee such species will come back and live on younger trees.

You can recognise ancient forests by looking at specific species known as “indicator species”. In the UK, these include wildflowers such as bluebells, wood anemones, and lily-of-the-valley. They also include slugs like the lemon slug.

Steffi Smith, Porthole, mixed media

The artist, Steffi Smith, was inspired by the mystery behind the deepsea exploration that is being conducted as part of the UN Decade of Ocean Science.

Very little is known of deep-sea ecosystems and, in fact, space has been explored more than the deep-sea. Part of the reason why is because of pressure: when you start at sea level and journey out to space, you only have the atmospheric pressure in between. But when you start at sea level and dive into the sea, at just ten metres of depth, you have already added the equivalent of atmospheric pressure. In other words, every ten metres of oceanic depth is equal to the pressure of our atmosphere. So, if you try to reach the deep-sea floor at 2 kilometres of depth, you will have 200 times the atmosphere’s pressure on top of you.

If you’ve ever seen submersibles designed to explore the ocean depths, you can now understand why they look so thick and clunky! They are made to withstand huge amounts of pressure for long hours at a time.

Because of the issues we face in exploring the deep-sea, it remains a mysterious and fascinating ecosystem, and one of our last frontiers of discovery.