In the world of macro video, artists like Thomas Blanchard and Roman De Giuli explore the topographies of moving and colorful fluids that collide, rebound and slide past one another like supernovas. In his latest 4K macro video, Land of Mine, De Giuli dispenses with several of these tried and true methods, which he used to great effect to create a tiny big bang and organic patterns in a petri dish. Gone are fluids like milk and soap. All that remains are various layers of paint, placed not in a petri dish but on paper, making it appear as if a drone is flying over a sparkling, nighttime alien landscape.
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"The colors do a lot of their own work and have their own character," De Giuli tells Creators. "From a creative point of view, this was a complete breath of fresh air to me. [And] working on paper instead of glass planes and petri dishes is totally different. The paper, its thickness and texture, is very important: it starts bending and curving over time, which helped me a lot getting dimension into my scenes."
De Giuli used dark paints as a base, which simulates the ground in what he describes as a crumbly and very complex texture, almost like a puff pastry. Atop these base layers the more luminous and colorful paints glisten and flow, creating a gorgeous moving nighttime landscape.
"The viewer's experience might switch from seeing an abstract piece of art to believing that this is a lively scene," says De Giuli. "I tried my best to create the effect of a flyover with a drone or helicopter, [and] reenacting planet earth and its landscapes is a personal and emotional approach."
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