Work · Art & science · 2010–2018
Liquid Crystals
Polarised-light photographs of liquid crystals from doctoral research at Oxford and Leeds, collected in the IOP book Liquid Crystals and used in a Max Cooper music video.
These photographs were taken with a polarising microscope at the Universities of Oxford and Leeds, during and after my doctoral research. Nothing here is CGI: the colours come from the way liquid crystals bend polarised light, and the shapes are the defects, droplets and domain walls that form as the material moves between phases.
If you would like to use these images for educational purposes, please feel free. For any other purpose, contact me.
The book
Liquid Crystals (IOP Publishing, 2018) collects these photographs alongside an introduction to the physics behind them: what liquid crystals are, why they form the textures they do, and how the same materials drive the displays we look at every day. Buy it from Amazon UK or through IOP Publishing.
Music video with Max Cooper
Video footage of the crystals became the official video for Max Cooper's Music of the Tides (2018), edited by Jennifer Tividad. Techspot, Digital Trends and Vice all covered it.
Gallery
Nematic textures
Older photos and the complete unsorted collection from my PhD are on Flickr: selected set and the full archive, free to use as textures, references or illustrations.