dolphins

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Art

Flight of the Baji: A Pod of Suspended Driftwood Dolphin Skeletons Flies through the Baltimore Museum of Art

This immersive site-specific installation by artist Jonathan Latiano (previously) depicts the fate of China’s famous Baji dolphins rendered in driftwood flying through a gallery at the Baltimore Museum of Art. To create the immersive installation Latiano collected bleached and mangled wood from local rivers which he used to form a procession of skeletons. The bony structures materialize from a stack of logs in one corner before gradually dissolving back into component pieces in the other.

Freshwater Baji dolphins (dubbed the “Goddess of the Yangtze”) were once a thriving part of the Yangtze River ecosystem in China, but are now largely assumed to be extinct. The last known member of the species died in captivity back in 2002.

Latiano shares about his work via his artist statement:

The pieces that I create contrast abstracted human intuition with the reality of our natural environment. I strive to emphasize the areas that exist in‐between the boundaries of defined regions. My work, in many ways, is my own personal attempt to understand my place in the physical universe. I find the poeticism and concepts of the natural universe simultaneously fascinating, beautiful and unsettling. Many of the areas and theories of science that appeal to me, particularly ones that deal with vast expanses of space and time, are so complex that the only way I can truly wrap my head around them is to abstract them. It is through my artwork that I interpret, contemplate and fine-tune these scientific theories and notions on both a universal and personal level.

Flight of the Baji was on view last year at the Baltimore Museum of Art, a culmination of Latiano winning the 2013 Baker Artist Award. You can also catch an interview with him over on I Lobo You.

Amazing

Freediver David Helder Possesses the Uncanny Ability to Blow Perfect Bubble Vortexes Underwater

French freediver David Helder has been diving for over 35 years, and somewhere along the way he discovered a strange ability. Like a dolphin, Helder can blow perfectly controlled bubble rings underwater. While many divers have playfully experimented with blowing these whirling vortexes, Helder has dedicated significant time to perfecting the technique which he uses to perform dozens of different tricks. Watch the video to see him in action, thing get really interesting around the 2:40 mark. (via Sploid)

Photography

Software Architect Turned Photographer Alexander Safonov Captures Breathtaking Underwater Scenes off the Coast of South Africa

Alexander Safonov is a software architect from Voronezh, Russia who currently lives and works in Discovery Bay, Hong Kong. Not content to sit in front of a computer full-time he obtained a diving license in 2002 and started to experiment with underwater photography about two years later. He has since made numerous excursions to photograph underwater wildlife off Cocos Island, Fiji, the Galapagos and Raja Ampat. However his favorite destination is the annual sardine run off the coast of South Africa where most of the photos you see were captured over the last few years. You can see much more of his work on Flickr and 500px.