A striking image demonstrating the science behind a flock of starlings in flight has been announced as the winner of this year’s Research Images as Art/Art Images as Research competition, run by the UCL Graduate School.
Birds of a Feather by Chris Falla (UCL Bartlett School of Architecture), captures the unseen bonds which choreograph starling flight paths by freezing a moment in time of a simulated flock of particles. The image was chosen as the overall competition winner with a £250 prize.
Commenting on his win Chris Falla said: "I am truly honoured to have been selected as this year’s winner. This competition gives a great opportunity to put the spotlight on the beauty found within research rather than only giving shine to the final product or result."
Six runners up, each receiving £150, were also announced:
- Unisphere by Jonathan Gardner (UCL Archaeology)
- Fixing the Wheel by Pratik Patel (UCL Bartlett Development Planning Unit)
- Satellite City by Dr Thomas Grisaffi (UCL Institute of the Americas)
- Elite Network by Stefano Gurciullo (UCL Political Science)
- Remember what you see when you look by Olga Koroleva (UCL Slade School of Fine Art)
- X-Ray of a Headland by Charles Thomson (UCL Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering)
The competition and exhibition, which is in its 12th cycle, saw a record number of entries from across UCL - over 360 images were submitted from all ten faculties.
Professor David Bogle (Head of UCL Graduate School) commenting on the competition said: "Images are able to convey powerful research messages and this was a key factor taken into account by the judging panel. All the entries to this year’s competition were incredibly striking and I’d like to offer my congratulations to everyone who entered."
The winning images were selected by a panel of judges from around UCL based on their aesthetic appeal, the nature of their subject matter and technical quality. The people’s choice prize, based on votes submitted by visitors to the exhibition, will be announced next week.
Professor Sharon Morris (UCL Slade School of Fine Art), Chair of the Judging Panel, said of this year’s entries: "One of the challenges presented by research across different fields at UCL is that of the representation of research data. All the images have a form of representational function - but those dealing with the transformation of complex data, or the presentation of medical imaging, appeared to have the greatest difficulty in finding new conventions of representation.
I think I’m right in saying that we all felt that the range of colours and the interactions of a default range of colour for these data representation has become over-familiar. We were therefore delighted to find images, which transposed data with greater sophistication and imagination."
View an image gallery of all this year’s winners:
Image
- Birds of a Feather by Chris Falla (UCL Bartlett School of Architecture)
