TED Talk – Biomimicry

Posted: May 7, 2014 | Author: matthew beese | Filed under: subject | Tags: bat, beetle, benyus, biomimicry, bubble, conch, humpbackwhale, illustration, locust, mussels, nature, nautilus, oilpaint, peanuts, silk, spider, submarine, TED | Leave a comment

For this project we were told to illustrate a science based TED talk with at least ten images. I chose to do Janine Benyus’ talk ‘Biomimicry’s surprising lessons from nature’s engineers’ as I found it interesting and found it rich with imagery. the talk consists of many examples where by we could use biological knowledge to aid us, so I illustrated a few of the examples.
The first picture I did was of a bat and a submarine, this wasn’t an example from her talk but I wanted an image for the introduction. The coupling talks of echolocation/sonar a rather well known example which I thought would work well to introduce the idea. I used a toy submarine as it made the two a similar size so they could be easily incorporated, I used the bell jar and the stuffed bat to create a stillness and also make it more interesting. I had to make the back ground black so that the jar is visible. The hard copy of the image was a bit off centre but that has been corrected digitally.
The next image taken from her story about limescale building up in pipes and how looking at the proteins secreted by shells has helped to stop this. I put the shell in the scaled pipe almost as though the shell has formed in the pipe and is blocking it. Initially the image was too washed out so I turned up the contrast, creating a stronger sense of light and made the inner shell more colourful.

The image of a nautilus and pots illustrates the ideas of self assembling ceramics at low temperatures in the same way that a shell is created. I chose to use a nautilus as it has a shell and also looks interesting, I wanted it to look as if the pots were in his tank. I like the colouring I’ve achieved with the cephalopod adding the blue tinge to the brownish shell.
The next had to incorporate the fin of a humpback and a plane wing. Trying to put these together in a coherent image was tricky, so I used perspective to create a comparable size. Trying to bring attention to the tubercles on the fin I gave them highlights.

Staying with shape theme I looked at creating colour with shape by thin film interference. I used two examples which use this so as to clearly demonstrate what i’m talking about. This iridescence was not easy to paint especially the bubble, again I needed the black background to show it up. I quite like the layout of this image as well as the sheen it has.
The bag of mussels is about the threads which attach them to the rocks which degrade after two years, the idea being if you made plastics in the same way to stop a build up of waste. I would have liked to have had more referencing for the bag as it is entirely made up and I don’t think it feels as though it has the mussels in it.

This image of peanuts and peanuts is illustrating making plastics from carbon dioxide in a way similar to plants. Originally I was going to do a plastic tree/fruit next to a real one, but this  was very hard to do as they just looked like the same thing. I think this pun works better as they don’t look the same as each other and the polystyrene is clearly plastic.
The cone covered in locusts is a little bit undetailed so I probably should have done it a bit larger (probably true with all the pieces). It is indicating the fact that locusts don’t come into contact while flying in close quarters but people are always having car crashes. The cone brings to mind the idea of car accidents without having to use a car, which if it had to be drawn the locust would be much smaller and harder to paint.
The two crops show the difference between regular crops and perennial crops, this image was quite dull so I added wild prairie flowers scattered across them. The plants could have had more detail and a stronger sense of light.

The water bottle covered in Namibian beetles is about how they are able to collect water from fog. The empty bottle with the lid off gives a sense of dryness which fits with these desert animals. I like the semitransparent nature of the bottle with its blue tinge, the bug on the other side of the bottle gives it more of a solid three dimensional feel.
The spider and the material speaks of how spiders are able to make strong threads at low temperatures using limited elements. I decided to use yellow material to liven up the image and to contrast with the black and white. Making the web thin was tricky and I think the material could have looked more glossy and smooth.

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