Laser Tracks Snail’s Path

Snail Trail by Philipp Artus tracks the journey of a snail, visualizing it using a phosphorescent glow. The results are a visual representation of the snail’s circuitous journey.

From Artus’ site:

The basic idea of the work is inspired by processes of exponential acceleration, which can be observed at different levels. Thus, the evolution of life proceeds at an extremely slow pace for more than 3 billion years, until it suddenly seems to explode in the Cambrian period. The tools of human beings progress relatively little during the Stone Age until there comes a rapid cultural development during the Holocene. Nowadays, a similar acceleration process is generated by the exchange of information through the internet. From this perspective, the exponential spiral on a snail shell may almost appear like a miraculous wink of nature.

[via The Creators Project]