'arborescent forms'

No. 40

I read about William Armstong's experiments with electrical discharges in his book 'Electric movement in air and water', see last post.

No. 41

While he recorded many of these experiments directly onto photographic plates and created beautiful photos all along, he had to find a different way to capture experiments that produced very bright sparks.

Images No. 40 and 41 are made on plates with a very thin layer of wax and dust. What he captures this way is describes like this [p. 50]:

Inverse image of a wintry tree

"I have already spoken of electricity as organised motion, and we have here an example of it carried apparently to the verge of life. (No. 38)
[...]in the succeeding figure (No. 40) we see arborescent forms, showing trees and undergrowth, in which stems, branches, and leaves find their approximate representatives. Lastly, in the one remaining figure to be shown (No. 41), even the root is indicated lying at the foot of the stem.”

And later on he concludes [p. 52]:
“Examples have been presented of the remarkable correspondence between some electric figures and living organised forms.”


It brings back the photos of the trees I took last winter and Drawings in the sky.