Neato

Cool stuff! Go check it out.

That's about as articulate as I can manage today.

CGI geology

I suspect Silver Fox is happy to see sketching because it means actual rocks were observed not just data derived from rocks. It is very important that rocks are actually used in the study of geology. (You laugh, but my thesis area was mostly 500+ feet under ground. I started to miss actual rocks and get really sick of well logs.) But I still want discuss the computer stuff. Computer-generated illustrations fall into two categories in my mind - model/reconstruction "photos" and drawings. The sketches I draw would never be published, I'm not that good. But I can, if required, produces drawings in Canvas (or Illustrator or whatever) that are of publication quality. I like Canvas for cross-sections because I can scale them and keep track of line lengths and areas but for general drawing I guess Illustrator is better (partly because Adobe is taking over the world). "Pictures" of computer models can't be substituted for.


Screen shot from a reconstruction of the top Pratt cycle based on well logs in 3DMove (from my thesis work). Surface is colored by elevation (blue is deeper) CI=200 feet IIRC; points are colored by peak gas production (red higher/blue lower); approximately 5x VE, wells average 1/4 mile spacing (400m).

There is no better way to show structure and it's relationship to gas production (or water production, thickness, porosity, mineralogy...) than with pictures like this, IMHO. Structure contour maps, et al. are great. I've done them, lots of them. I've done some by hand. I've had to correct ones done by computers. But for those who don't visualize in 3D well, being able to "see" the rocks 1000feet below their feet is priceless. And the computer models allow for even those of us who can see the structure in our heads to drape other attributes over the structure and see the relationships better. Besides it makes for some really sexy figures.

Draw a photo

The reason is that photography can't always pick up what's important. Sometimes the light is just not right in the field. You can take a photo from all different angles, use the flash to fill-in a shadow, not use the flash to prevent washing out, cast your shadow over a bit... and nothing will get the lighting right. Beautiful days in the field can be too pretty - bright light and hard shadows often make for terrible outcrop photos. There are places where I have three photos for one spot and none of them really show what's important - sometimes the picture is too busy and the interesting bit gets lost in the details. With a sketch you can suggest all those unimportant details and focus on the important ones. Sometimes the feature of interest just isn't very photogenic due to coloring or contrast. Let me show you some examples.

In this example the photo does a pretty good job of capturing the crack fill texture and type of cement. My sketches are ok at it.

In this case I'd say the sketch does a better job of showing the fractures than the photo. (The sketches are not of exactly what's in the picture but similar piece of core.)

This is an outcrop with both standing Calamites fossils and stigmaria (take that young Earth geologists!). The photos don't do it justice, fossils are very faint (although the Calamites do stand out fairly well and look good in close-ups). I have some better examples of problems at the outcrop scale but I didn't sketch them because we're going back to do a detailed description another day.

Obviously when one needs high quality photos or a core or outcrop one can take the time and effort to make sure the photos are good (take core outside, use umbrella to shade, go back to a field site on a cloudy day...) and really show what one wants but for everyday, quick work often a sketch is better. Even with really good photos lines, circles, arrow, and the like are often added to draw the readers eye to the important bits.

To shoot or not to shoot.

I kind of want to gush about Buffy growing up and telling the Watcher's Council off and all but that might lead to more ramblings about season 5 and lots of spoilers for Honu-Girl.* So instead I'll ramble on about photos, sketching, and computer-generated illustrations and their respective uses in geology, as I see it.

The Lost Geologist (who's temporarily lost his motivation, I'm sure it'll come back soon) posted an abstract and a fold sketch the other day. Based on the scale my guess is the fold is a detail of an outcrop. Silver Fox commented that she's (?) glad that some people still draw and not just use computers; TLG replied that they draw a lot in his program. I'm impressed by the quality of his sketch, my own tend towards the sloppy, but the art of sketching outcrops, hand samples, structures, sedimentary fabrics, etc. is alive and well. If not necessarily alive well in my hand:).


*Honu-Girl doesn't have nearly as much time as I do to sit around and watch TV. She has 2-legged children that demand attention, playing with, taking to soccer practice, real dinners, and tucking in. My children are 4-legged and the big one demands a scoop of food followed by tv watching w/wo snuggling every evening and the front door opened on occasion. The more couch time the better.

Bonus: I turned one ramble into three posts simply by being overly verbose!

Love

Wow. Sad. Cool.


Untitled by Felix Gonzalez-Torres

From the Art Institute of Chicago's web-page:

This installation is an allegorical portrait of the artist’s partner, Ross Laycock, who died of an AIDS-related illness in 1991. The 175 pounds of candy corresponds to Ross's ideal body weight. While on display in our contemporary galleries, viewers are encouraged to help themselves. As the pile diminishes, candies are replaced.

(Thanks for the photo, Penn)

Cool thing from the internet.

I just ran across this map of the world at Strange Maps (Ok, it popped up in my Reader.) Cool idea using musical notation to make a picture. The fourth commenter on Strange Maps has some quibbles with the actual map but I still think it's kind of cool. I like Plakovic's other stuff, too.

I'm not sure the song linked to the picture is suppose to actually be the music written in the art but is the song that inspired the art. Maybe? He writes about how he has strong visual connection to music. He sees it. (I'm not describing it well.) But then the "about" page reads like the linked song is the song he wrote with the art. Without notations to indicate the instruments meant to play the piece, I can't say I know what the song would sound like. And even then, all those years in band and orchestra, I know very little about percussion scores.

Either way about the music it's self, it's kinda cool. And brought to you by the Internet.