Imagery

In scientific imagery, extraneous and ridiculous elements are a thing of the past. Or are they?

A bacterial colony growing in a petri dish? A close-up of a lizard's iridescent, scaly skin? Answer after the jump.

In tribute to a visionary artist, strobing, massing, fluorescent patterns of technological imagery that have something of the spiritual about them as well.

From Steve Martin to the shield of Achilles, considering the relationship of image and text in a networked age.

A slime mold attacking bacteria in a petri dish? Marbling on the endpapers of a rare first edition of Galileo's Starry Messenger? Methane storms on one of the Jovian moons? Answer after the jump.

Some of the earliest examples of scientific imagery have proven the most durable.

The renaissance Vitruvian Man helped to bring about was above all a rehabilitation of the human being as the pinnacle of creation and the expression of a divine ideal; with the discovery of new cultures and ideals that followed, the notion of a single human ideal would be put to the severest test.

Kinect hacks are emerging at a rapid pace; it�s hard to recall a mass-market gadget so quickly adapted to new uses. As Bruce Sterling points out, �Microsoft accidentally invented a primo piece of art-installation hardware.� It's this kind of DIY innovation that keeps tech feral.

The animated GIF may be little appreciated in the world of Web 2.0�but in the right hands, it plays with the unsettling riddle of our mechanical nature.

"Some flashes of lambent light, much like the aurora borealis, were first observed on the northern part of the heavens....as soon as the meteor emerged from behind the cloud, its light was prodigious."