{"id":165,"date":"2014-12-18T13:26:00","date_gmt":"2014-12-18T13:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbbd.sg\/blog\/uncategorized\/tumbling-down-the-bismuth-steps\/"},"modified":"2014-12-18T13:26:00","modified_gmt":"2014-12-18T13:26:00","slug":"tumbling-down-the-bismuth-steps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbbd.sg\/blog\/2014\/12\/tumbling-down-the-bismuth-steps\/","title":{"rendered":"Tumbling down the Bismuth Steps"},"content":{"rendered":"

So the other day I went to see Interstellar, which was fairly enjoyable if not for the massive plot holes and inconsistencies and its unnecessarily long running time. If there was one thing I appreciated about Interstellar, it was that at least they attempted to visualise the 5th dimension. Even if it ended up looking a lot like a giant building-sized piece of bismuth built out of shonky wooden library shelves, tracing paper, and a lot of black thread. At least they tried. I’d like to see more people try to imagine what it might look like, even if the representations fall flat on their faces.<\/p>\n

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Bismuth from Flickr user cobalt123<\/small><\/center>
The structural qualities of minerals is fascinating. On a personal level, I am attracted to rocks and geological features which are so orderly and angular that one imagines – that if the image were presented out of context – then one might just believe that it could be man-made, although in reality these shapes and forms are a product of nature. Like a artificial\/man-made mine, in which square chunks are methodically hewn out, or dug out to form huge man-sized hollow hopper crystal structures in which humans could nestle within… To think of planets as petri dishes for life with their respective larder list of minerals and baking temperatures!…<\/p>\n

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Here for example, this is the Pool of Serpents (Poll na bpeist) – a naturally formed olympic sized pool cut-out in the rocks of the Aran Islands, which I went to see last year. My wish list of places to visit in the coming spring includes Fingal’s Cave on Staffa (Inner Hebrides, Scotland) with its hexagonally jointed basalt columns and the Delabole Quarry in Cornwall with its crazy steps of slate.<\/p>\n

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Naturally formed hexagonal Bismuth illustrated in my mineral book<\/small><\/p>\n

The distinctive hollow stair-step crystals of the Bismuth are mainly the product of artificial processes – you can grow hopper crystals<\/a> like these at home. The metallic iridescence comes from a thin layer of bismuth oxide causing light scattering.<\/p>\n

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Who doesn’t like shiny things? In my own digital paintings, I found that painting in some “shine” with pin-points of white light (like a 3D model) give an image a realism\/fakeness to them. I would make latex clothing if I had the resources to or if I were more inclined to doing something fashion related (as it were, I do intentionally avoid having to think too hard about clothing as I think time can be better spent on other things). But I enjoy looking at glossy and shiny materials, and I don’t understand why it has an image of being “kinky”.<\/p>\n