Design By Nature
Pictures in Motion
Photography By: Diane Kirkland, Tim Barnwell & Robert Glenn Ketchum
Sculpture By: David Hayes
“All art and science are branches of the same tree.” – Albert Einstein
“Everything that moves is a flow system. One that generates shape and structure in order to facilitate
movement across a landscape filled with resistance. Flow systems have two basic properties…
current that is flowing and the design through which it flows.” *
Rivers, lightning, trees and the human body all have a like architecture
because it is the most efficient way to move current. Buildings, traffic flows,
social organizations… even computers and cell phones… owe their ability
to function to the same design considerations.
*Design in Nature, Adrian Bejan & J. Peder Zane, Doubleday, 2012
Pictures in Motion
Design principles influence all systems…animate and inanimate….constantly in motion to find equilibrium with their environments. Rivers, trees, lightning, technology and wildlife all reflect nature’s design.
Professor Adrian Bejan of Duke University in his groundbreaking thesis on “ Constructural Law” observes that, “Design evolution never ends.”
The images in this exhibition are recordings of the effects of thousands of years of change. They are scenes from a motion picture….a snapshot in time.
Photographs of streams, rivers, marshes, trees, mountains….birds and alligators. All a subset of a larger global system that nature strives to balance in real time. Leonardo da Vinci proclaimed that, “Motion is the cause of everything in life”.
A tree’s branch structure moving water to the drier air is the same design as that of rivers and tributaries transporting water to the ocean. An animal’s cardio-vascular system’s artery and capillary design flows fluid to support life. So. too, a lightning burst’s branch structure helps dissipates energy efficiently.
Animate objects are designed to optimize the use of energy to support movement.
The alligator with its aerodynamic body, powerful tail and short legs is optimized to generate the most speed in water with the least amount of energy. A deer, by contrast, has long legs to raise its center of gravity to improve speed on land.
The same is true with human designs. A difference in torso length can determine the championship potential of a swimmer versus a distance runner.
In this exhibition, we have the work of three master photographers. The common element in their professional lives has centered around the use of the camera to become one with nature.
Diane Kirkland, Tim Barnwell and Robert Glenn Ketchum have spent decades understanding their environments. From the Marshes of Georgia to the Mountains of North Carolina to the raw majesty of Alaska. Their photographs are complemented by the sculpture of David Hayes – a Guggenheim Fellow and Fulbright Scholar whose natural forms have been presented in over 300 exhibitions.
This work complements an exhibition open from August to October at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History co-curated by Lumière.
Featured in this exhibition is the work of four artists highlighted below.
Select the image below to view the complete artist page for these photographers.
Diane Kirkland
Tim Barnwell
Robert Glenn Ketchum
David Hayes
