Esoteric Creativity: Michael Paulkner’s Visualizations

By Maria Popova

What 100 monkeys have to do with Atlantis, Indian yoga and Stonehenge.

One of the reasons we love data visualization and the infographic arts so much is that at their best, they can bring a level of intuitive understanding to overwhelmingly esoteric subjects. Which is why we’re head-over-heels with Austrian visualization artist Michael Paulkner, who tackles the obscure and the enigmatic with creative quirk and a unique graphic style.

The Hundredth Monkey Effect: Theory, which posits that a learned behavior or idea spreads instantaneously within a group, in an almost paranormal fashion, once a critical number is reached. Click image for details.

His work is a kind of modern artistic alchemy, exploring both real phenomena and the eeriest corners of quasi-science, those fringe worldviews that have always coexisted with and challenged the dominant scientific dogmas of the time.

The Celtic Zodiac: 13-month lunar calendar dating back to around 1000 B.C., devised by Celtic priests known as Druids and constituting the ancient origins of Halloween. Click image for details.

Kundalini: Sanskrit word meaning either 'coiled up' or 'coiling like a snake.' The Kundalini movement in Indian yoga deals with 'corporeal energy' that circulates in and around the human body in an artificial electromagnetic flow. Click image for details.

Stonehenge Rebuilt: Click image for details.

Metatron's Cube: Pattern believed to have sacred geometry with religious value depicting the fundamental principles of space and time. Click image for details.

Capital City of Atlantis: Reconstruction of the mythical city based on a German plan Michael found on an obscure website. Click image for details.

See more of Michael’s work in his relentlessly fantastic Flickr stream.

via Coudal

Psst, we’ve launched a fancy weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays, offers the week’s articles, and features five more tasty bites of web-wide interestingness. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.

Share This

Related posts:

• Running The Numbers: Oceanographic Visualization What 20,500 tuna have to do with your old toothbrush, or how a plastic comb ended up on top of Mt. Fuji – Chris Jordan takes on the decline of marine ecosystems....
• TEDGlobal Highlights: Day 2 Optical illusions, aquatic apes, and the sweat of genius. The second day of TEDGlobal offered an endless flurry of brilliance, and we have the photos to prove it. For a full blow-by-blow verbal recap, be sure to skim our live Twitter feed — and stay tuned for more coverage tomorrow....
• In-Formed: Physical Objects as Data Visualization Part data visualization, part industrial design, part social awareness – designer Nadeem Haidary's project exposes little-known facts designed to effect actual behavioral change by inspiring us to be a bit less wasteful....
• Visualization of Global Bottled Water Consumption A visualization of bottled water consumption by geographic area....
• Art, Science, Food: Kevin Van Aelst Unconventional photography captures "big-picture" concepts through "little-things" elements of daily life....

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 7:26 am in art, culture, design, science and was tagged art, cool, data visualization, design, history, science.