Astronomical images and animations
Many websites like the one we suggest give access to wondrous
pictures of celestial bodies. Consult the «A little of everything... sound»
section for amazing excerpts of the theme music from Star Trek or Star Wars and others.
But let’s come back to Earth... In the interior of the photon
orbit of a black hole, the curvature of all light rays is so great that they cannot touch
the surface. What would happen if the Earth turned into one of these black holes?
The Black Earth
It looks very complicated, but this page explains in a very
easy-to-understand way what would happen if this unlikely phenomenon occurred. We are
lucky enough to view it from the outside.
One of the most beautiful and enigmatic phenomena of nature are the
aurora borealis and australis. Charged particles from the Sun enclosed in the earth’s
magnetic field collide with gases in the atmosphere as they approach the magnetic poles.
The resulting spectrum depends on the gas they collide with.
Auroras, pictures in the sky
The colour corresponding to each spectrum is what we perceive through
our sense of sight. We suggest a trip around this site, where you can learn more about the
auroras.
What would happen if our sense of sight also worked in infrared, one
of the wavelengths we are unable to perceive? A window opens onto an amazing world.
Infrared photography
The author of this site takes us into the fascinating world of
infrared photography, through which we perceive trees with white leaves and luminous white
clouds against a black sky, on a journey around Mallorca and Portugal and elsewhere.
For everyone interested in the sense of sight, this website is a sort
of Galactic Encyclopaedia.
VisionScience
Although in principle aimed at experts, here you can find everything
from demonstrations of optical illusions to the latest in ophthalmology, from studies of
colour vision to resources pages for the blind, all organised in general categories.
It’s worth being patient and having a good look at all the services and resources
this site offers.
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Our eyes are fascinating optical instruments. They
enable us to distinguish light from darkness, to see colours and depth, and they give us
access to the most used of our five senses. Although the eye is an extremely complex
biological mechanism, we can understand a great deal about how it works by applying some
simple geometric rules.
The optics of the eye
This site, by a lecturer in optics at the University of North
Carolina, provides careful information on the optics of the eye and the working of the
retina.
The retina, the place where light is actually converted into
sensation, is the point where the electromagnetic waves turn into nerve impulses and
chemical fluxes. In fact, it is an integral part of the brain that is exposed to external
stimulus.
Webvision
The authors of this site, who include Eduardo Fernández of the
University of Alicante, offer wide-ranging and carefully prepared material for experts on
the functioning of the retina from all points of view, beginning with Ramón y Cajal and
ending with the most recent discoveries.
Ways of deceiving the sense of sight open a door to knowledge of our
own mind. Even though we have the sensation that our eyes are like video cameras, faithful
reproducers of a three-dimensional reality, the facts show that our sight is partial and
fragmentary and that what we believe we are “seeing” with absolute clarity are,
largely, elaborations of the mind based on fragments of visual information which reach us
through the retina.
IllusionWorks
Optical illusions may be a fantastic window on this process, since
they combine entertainment with surprise and knowledge. Dare to experience it at this
site!
And on the subject of illusions, we can imagine how to introduce
ourselves into the life of the sense of sight.
Fractal viruses
In the words of the author of this curious site, “To coexist
with fractal viruses is not to feel like God and his creatures. To coexist with these
virtual organisms is to feel as if your brain forms part of their MS-DOS ecosystem, as
millions of synaptic connections divide and reconstruct at high speed...”.
Our perception of the reality supplied by our senses is from their
interaction with the brain, which makes it possible to obtain a global sense experience.
Likewise, the resources provided by the Internet may be combined to give rise to global
virtual experiences.
Nirvanet
This site invites us to a virtual experience. You can move around
between a cybertheatre programme and a place to consult about concepts like cloning or
cryptography. Don’t miss experimenting with the sound!
The visual sense is always present on the Net, and so there’s no
lack of photography as a form of artistic expression.
Cròniques
«Cròniques» is a great opportunity for new professional
photographers to show their creations on the Net. But not just that, their aim is to break
down the oppressive walls of non-communication and use photography to a chronicle
different realities, personal experience as oppsoed to imposed truths.
If the points of view of each individual emitted light, this would be
projected on a specific surface around the emitting subject. In this way, the interaction
of various individuals would create new light or, using the metaphor proposed, conceptual
spaces.
Lightpools
The Lightpools project, included on this site, attempts to analyse the
movement of these individuals in a multi-user virtual reality system.
We look at a painting and capture a static scene which can cause
multiple sensations: fullness, colour, movement... Internet also experiments with these
sensations.
Min Sugiyama’s Gallery
Min Sugiyama is an artist with a personal page showing what a painting
made for the Web is like (Web Art). The page also explains Min Sugiyama’s personal
vision of art as an interaction of the five senses.
Have you never wondered how other living beings see the world?
Be-Eye
Visit this site and click on any of the images in “The
Gallery”, and you can see the world through the eyes of a bee. Or rather, how we
believe the world looks through the eyes of a bee. If you wish, you can send in any
picture archive and view the effects. Experts may even visit the inside of the simulation
and modify some parameters.
