Lux Aeterna: A Journey of Light, From Distant Galaxies to Small Drops of Water

In years past, we’ve shared with you two ani­ma­tions by Cristóbal Vila — first Nature by Num­bers, which cap­tured the ways in which math­e­mat­i­cal con­cepts (Fibonac­ci Sequence, Gold­en Num­ber, etc.) reveal them­selves in nature. And then Inspi­ra­tions, a short film cel­e­brat­ing the math­e­mat­i­cal art of M.C. Esch­er. Now Vila returns with Lux Aeter­na, a 3D study of light. On his web site, Vila describes the essence of the film.

[It’s] a look at light from sev­er­al points of view. On one side it’s a pow­er­ful radi­a­tion emit­ted by the most dis­tant stars in the uni­verse, and also by our Sun; light floods every­where in nature, from the largest things to the small­est, cre­at­ing inter­est­ing and beau­ti­ful effects; humans always used light as a sym­bol­ic and spir­i­tu­al ele­ment; and it’s an intrigu­ing phys­i­cal phe­nom­e­non deeply stud­ied by sci­ence too.

Vila’s site also hosts a series of screen­shots that take you into the mak­ing of the film. Down the line, the Span­ish artist plans to record a series of video tuto­ri­als in Span­ish ful­ly demon­strat­ing the cre­ative process. If you fol­low him on Twit­ter or Face­book, he’ll let you know when they’re ready for view­ing. Inci­den­tal­ly, you can catch Open Cul­ture on Twit­ter and Face­book too. Hope to see you there.