Orbs

photography

by Jean-Baptiste Duret

The term orb describes unexpected, usually circular artifacts that appear in photographs. Sometimes they leave a trail, indicating motion.

Though interpretations may differ on the causes of these artifacts, there are many natural reasons that may cause orbs to form: specks of dust floating in the air, moisture and other tiny foreign elements on the lens like hair, cobwebs etc., the light reflected on which can form a “circle of confusion.”

They are especially pronounced in modern ultra-compact cameras and can also be called orb backscatter or near-camera reflection.

More on http://www.theorbzone.com

Josiah McElheny’s sculpture Island Universe (2008) is made in five parts from highly reflective chrome-plated aluminium and hand-blown glass. McElheny, a contemporary American artist, collaborated with astronomers and cosmologists like David Weinberg to create an accurate structure for his work in order to express a model of a ’multiverse.’ Instead of the early Big bang theories that would explain the origin of the universe as a single explosion at a single moment back in time, it offers a model where the universe bursts into new possible expanding universes, with varying amounts of energy or matter present at the universe’s origin.

The dimensions and positions of the elements as haphazard as they may appear are the result of precise placement and design, with the glass discs and spheres representing galaxies in our universe, and the rods’ lengths are used to depict time measurements.

As much a work of art as it is a piece of contemporary cosmological work, Island Universe is a representation that his author sees implications in other realms as well, such as sociology and politics.