[Bill Nye Voice] QUILTS! OF SCIENCE!

"Artists and scientists are not that different," artist Anna Von Mertens says, "We're in our own little worlds grinding away at ideas." The field of new media art would definitely agree with Anna, which doesn't separate artist from scientist. According to Professor Doug Gast at Washington State University, Tri-Cities, one of the roles of the new media artist is to invent new ways to visualize data and make the results public. Anna has done so with her quilts, incorporating scientific phenomena into them, such as a nuclear detonation:

The black quilt shows a side-view of a nuclear bomb blast, while the white view shows a top view. The article linked above describes her process:

She designs her first patterns on the computer, sometimes drafting them from scratch. Once that’s complete, she uses a projector to draw the pattern onto the fabric. “I transfer each line by hand, with chalk. I chalk out my stitch pattern onto the piece. If the piece happens to include color, I hand dye it too,” she said.

Other quilts have included the starfield during significant historical events (such as September 11, 2001), ocean currents, the Aurora Borealis, and tree rings.