Nathan Northrop
Mutations
The world Is full of discontented ideals founded in the mutated thought that “bigger is always better”. In my series, working with microphotography, I am exploring this idea by documenting mutated species to show that the idea of bigger is not always better. I am working with the idea that the smallest things in the world can make the biggest difference. On the microscopic level, energy concentration and energy flow are more complex. Plants have an energy called black-body flow. It's essentially the life of the plant or the base of these living things, according to science. Black-body flow is invisible to the naked eye but I am creating a metaphorical example of it through ferrofluid, a magnetic substance that behaves in a graphic way when "excited." This substance reacts by spiking up and distorting. I will be suspending plant samples within this “fluid” to represent both the decay and life within each plant itself. The microscopic plant itself shows that the world has more meaning than just what we perceive—allowing us to explore alternative spaces to give an example of the beauty and destruction of this world.
