A fascinating exploration of exquisite images captured from natural
materials, and of their applications in fashion, environmental design,
and apps that anticipate a new era of digitally-driven individual
creativity. Data From Nature begins with the chance encounter between an
ammonite and a digital scanner and goes on to relate the author's
growing immersion in the micro-scale beauty of minerals and--thanks to
new digital means of production--their applications in wide areas of
design. These include an award-winning range of silk scarves for Liberty
of London (also sold in Saks Fifth Avenue); "frocks from rocks"; a
striking architectural façade in London, and the transformation of his
own house and garden using the latest digital techniques. Along the way
we learn about how minerals form in the Earth; ways they have been
admired and imagined from ancient civilizations to the dawn of
Modernity; and discover how the inlaid surfaces of Renaissance cabinets
of curiosity could inspire creative coloring and design apps intended to
equip children and adults alike to participate creatively in the Digital
Revolution. And as if all this weren't enough, the book ends as
improbably as it started with a short biography of a "lost" (for which
read "fictional") seventeenth-century artist, Carlo Alcite, whose
"works" reveal powers of invention and draftsmanship worthy of a baroque
master.
