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BEWARE OF MODELS
The focus of this web site is not the models themselves so much as it is an embodiment of the tension between the visual pleasure and biological content that results from the process of making the models, that tension between the icon and the fetish.

There is a danger hidden in this seemingly innocent process of model-making. Successful models can be transformed from being iconic representations ('is like...') to the status of "truths" ('is the same as...'), from theories used in the search for explanation to the status of discoveries. These models of the embryonic alveolae can too easily make this shift from iconic model to fetish object. The fetish, whether scientific theory or art object, assumes dangerous magical powers.

Beware of models.
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Image Credits

"Dr. Crypton". "The Mathematics of the Honeycomb", Science Digest (June 1985) 74-77.

El-Said, I. Parman, A. 1976. "Patterns Based on the Double Hexagon", Geometric Concepts in Islamic Art ( London: World of Islam Festival Publishing Co. Ltd.) 98-113.

Fuller, R. Buckminster. 1965. "Conceptuality of Fundamental Structures", in Structure in Art and in Science, ed. G. Kepes (New York: George Braziller Ltd.) 66-95.

Nasr, S.H. 1976. Islamic Science, an Illustrated Study ( London: World of Islam Festival Publishing Co. Ltd.)

Parke, W.W. 1975. "Photographic Atlas of Fetal Anatomy". (Baltimore: University Park Press) 11, 9, 187.

Smith, C.S. 1981. "Grain Shapes and Other Metallurgical Applications of Topology" (3-33) and "Structure, Substructure, Superstructure" (54-69) in A Search for Structure, Selected Essays on Science, Art, and History, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press).

Wang, N.S., Ying, W.L. 1977. "A Scanning Electron Microscopic Study of Alkali-Digested Human and Rabbit Alveoli", in American Review of Respiratory Disease,Vol.115, 449-460.