death - lines
Caspian sea 41°56′ N 50° 40′ E Seabed destroyed and marked by bottom trawling.
Bionic layers / fine art print by Udo Vieth (credit: contains modified satellite data, USGS/NASA CC BY- SA 3.0 IGO)
Toxic swirls
Algae bloom in the Baltic sea. Swedisch south coast around the island Gotland. Driven by overfertilisation, sewage, lack of oxygen and high temperatures the algae bloom reached expansion of 200.000 Square Km. (changing winds caused the swirls, lines and patterns)
Bionic- layers / fine art print by Udo Vieth ( Baltic bloom – credit: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data, processed by ESA, CC BY- SA 3.0 IGO )
Tamed Mississippi
Meandering Mississippi vs farmland geometry – south of Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Bionic layers ( credit: contains modified satellite data, USGS/ NASA/ Landsat 7 CC BY- 2.0 )
Profit - forming
Former tropical dry forest Bolivien, Santa Cruz 17°47′ S , 63° 12′ W
– been cleared for radial patterned farmland. (The colors show the growth status of the crops. Sinuous lines represent smaller rivers)
Bionic- layers (credit: deforestation in Bolivis/ contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data, processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO )
my eyes on earth
It is always nice to have support “from above”. My support orbits the earth at an altitude of 786 kilometers. They are earth observation satellites with amazing features. In terms of design, however, they are unfortunately a bit plain, with a lot of function but little form. Therefore, I have transformed them into bionic butterflies. Also because of the perspective. In addition, the beautiful insect represents transformation, the magic of the moment and the ephemeral.
The high-tech butterflies in orbit are my eyes on the earth. They observe over wide ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum – with the perception of a human, a butterfly, a machine. Of an alien?
In their flood of images, I go on a voyage of discovery. An explorer of the modern kind, operating from the digital station at home. With basic food and stimulants within reassuring reach and protected from pesky insects or worse. My digital helpers in orbit give me freedom and opportunity to visit almost any place in the world in a timely manner. And to dis- and uncover from an unusual perspective both millennia-old and newly emerging structures of the earth’s surface.
Like the new geometry of a nature tamed, ordered and controlled by man. The profit maximization of the Anthropocene gives birth here to a rapid transformation of the earth’s surface of partly absurd, destructive beauty.
Or the hitherto hidden, wild and complex geometry of the “old” world. A world of slow transformation, of the seemingly chaotic and random.
20 years ago I started in my documentaries about the climate ( more info: https://de.wikipedia.org ‘ wiki ‘ Udo_Vieth)
to work with satellite images. Fascinating photos of cloud formations, dune structures and water eddies. Today these multispectral photographs and measurements form the raw material for my artistic works.