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Scientists investigate paintings for clues about volcano eruptions

Submitted by John Jones on Mon, 2007-10-01 11:05

The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken by J. M. W. Turner, 1838
GLOBAL WARMING!


On the heels of yesterday’s post about the art (and absolute fidelity to reality) of scientific photographs, this story from The Guardian describes how scientists from the National Observatory of Athens are investigating sunset paintings “to work out the amount of natural pollution spewed into the skies by [volcanic] eruptions such as Mount Krakatoa in 1883.” Apparently the method has some validity:

They used a computer to work out the relative amounts of red and green in each picture, along the horizon. Sunlight scattered by airborne particles appears more red than green, so the reddest sunsets indicate the dirtiest skies. The researchers found most pictures with the highest red/green ratios were painted in the three years following a documented eruption.

via Boing Boing

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Comments

It's interesting that

Submitted by Brett Ommen on Mon, 2007-10-01 13:30.

It's interesting that scientists would return to the subjective images of painting to cull them for data. It seems to disrupt the idea that images can be parsed out based on their fidelity to reality (which is so often the first criterion applied to visual communication). Once that distinction becomes confused, we can begin to ask some more interesting questions about why images are useful (to their producers and audiences). For more on science and its use of painting, you might consider: Kenneth Haltman, “The Poetics of Geologic Reverie: Figures of Source and Origin in Samuel Seymour’s Landscapes of the Rocky Mountains,” in Art and Science in America: Issues of Representation, ed. Amy R.W. Meyers (San Marino, California: Huntington Library, 1998), 138-139.

Painting data

Submitted by John Jones on Mon, 2007-10-01 22:44.

It's interesting that scientists would return to the subjective images of painting to cull them for data.

I totally agree. What is interesting is that they actually can correlate the paintings to volcanic eruptions. I’m curious to see how this evidence will fly with other scientists.

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