11 March 2011

Art imitates art

Posted by Callan Bentley

Something occurred to me this morning when I saw this:

(source)

…And it was this:

(source)

Do you think it’s a coincidence that NOAA’s mapmaker chose that particular royal blue / sky blue / white color scheme, augmented by gray continents with yellow accents? I suspect it’s a beautiful shout-out to the classic piece of tsunami art. The reality is that tsunami are often a horrid brown gray color, full of entrained debris and suspended sediment. The blues in these maps don’t capture the reality of tsunami in nature. Art may imitate art, but it’s not imitating life in this case!

We are seeing some profound destruction today, but while it thoughtlessly slaughters us, the Earth also generates some beautiful patterns… (Links go to a select cut among the many striking images hosted at the Boston Globe’s “Big Picture” site.) What a strange, scary, beautiful planet we live on.